Chapter Nineteen
Stefanie was groggy and disoriented, with a sore jaw after being hit, and thirsty, as she opened her eyes—surprised to see that she was still alive.
She focused on the attractive oval face of a slender thirtysomething female with a blond balayage A-line haircut and blue eyes behind rectangle glasses standing over her in what Stefanie determined was a hospital bed—and obviously not the morgue.
The woman smiled and said softly. “You’re awake…”
“Yes, it appears so,” Stefanie quipped, thankfully, noting she was wearing a hospital gown and no longer naked.
“I’m Dr. Hennessy,” she told her, wearing a white lab coat. “You were brought into the ER after overdosing on fentanyl.”
“I remember all too well.” Stefanie made a face, not taking her eyes off the doctor. “So, how did I manage to survive?” She recalled Mia and Jasmine not being so lucky.
“Well, fortunately, paramedics were able to quickly administer naloxone to reverse in time the effects of the fentanyl poisoning or opioid overdose.” Dr. Hennessy glanced at a chart and back, smiling.
“Aside from some bruising on your face and body and a mild concussion—all of which should heal—your vital signs are all normal. I’d say you can expect a full recovery. ”
Stefanie nodded, counting her blessings. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“Actually, I’m not the one you should be thanking…” she insisted, and averted her eyes to the other side of the bed.
Stefanie followed suit and gazed at Campbell’s handsome face. He grinned at her, but she could see the strain in his features, despite his best efforts to hide it.
“Campbell…” she uttered weakly.
The doctor said coolly, “I’ll leave you two alone—”
After she left the room, Campbell moved closer. “Thought I’d lost you for a minute there,” he admitted caringly.
Honestly, I thought that, too, Stefanie told herself, against her best wishes. More importantly, she feared she’d lost him forever once the fentanyl and its deadly effects kicked in. She forced a smile. “Afraid you can’t get rid of me that easily.”
Campbell chuckled. “That’s good to know. Especially when I wasn’t at all prepared for that to happen anytime soon.”
“Neither was I.” Stefanie swallowed into her dry throat and coughed. He handed her a cup of water, which, after sitting up, she happily drank. “So, how did you find me…?” And save my life, she thought, sensing that Campbell had come to her rescue. In spite of Bella and Juan’s plans to the contrary.
He sighed. “We were able to establish that it was Juan Barrientos who—in cahoots with his lover outside of the Braison Family, Bella Reston—gave Mia and Jasmine the deadly combo of fentanyl mixed with carfentanil. A license plate reader spotted Barrientos’s SUV headed toward Reston Hills Park.
Something told me that he and Bella—whom you were visiting—had planned to kill you as well with a drug overdose…
and, I suppose, sail off into the sunset afterward—if you could call getting away with murder that…
” Campbell rolled fingers through his hair.
“When Barrientos resisted arrest, he was shot. But he’ll live.
And so will Bella, whether she wants to or not… ”
Stefanie was pleased to know that her onetime friend, as well as Juan Barrientos, would face justice for what they had done. “I’m glad they were caught,” she said, gazing up at him. “Who knows what else they were capable of.”
“Right,” he agreed, a contemplative expression crossing his face.
“Getting back to how I managed to locate you in the park… With no time to waste, I suppose I just let my instincts guide me…till I came upon you on the trail. You were unconscious, but had a strong enough will for survival that you were able to escape the fate that Bella and Barrientos had in mind—”
Stefanie pondered her brush with death—focusing on Bella’s role, in particular, and her dark family legacy.
“Bella admitted to conspiring with Juan to kill Mia O’Dell, after Mia tried to blackmail her.
This came about when Mia discovered from Stuart Reston’s journal—which she stole—that he poisoned to death his lover, Lynda Boxleitner, to prevent Lynda from making public their affair after he refused to leave his wife, Eloise Reston, for her.
Mia, who was struggling to make ends meet, in spite of her involvement with the Braison Family, hoped to cash in on her knowledge. ”
Campbell frowned and said matter-of-factly, “But Bella, wanting to protect her family heritage, rejected this—choosing to kill Mia instead…”
Stefanie nodded. “Bella wasn’t about to allow Mia to ruin everything her family stood for.
Using the Braison Family angle, Bella tried to tie Mia’s fatal poisoning to the poisoning death of Lynda Boxleitner—to make it seem that both were orchestrated by the father-son cult leaders, Wendell and Kenneth Braison.
Jasmine was poisoned with fentanyl after she asked too many questions and Bella panicked that the truth might come out.
Also, it didn’t hurt if another drug-induced death could be connected to the Braison Family to further try and influence the investigation. ”
Campbell took a breath, meeting her eyes. “Why did Bella want you dead, too?” Before Stefanie could answer, he said intuitively, “Let me guess… Bella felt further threatened by your interest in the investigation and how that might come back on her?”
“Yes, something like that,” she told him.
“Apparently, Bella became paranoid by my talking to Jasmine and any type of rippling effect that might expose her. Then there was also her determination to make the Braison Family wrongfully culpable for past and present sins in the poisonings. She hoped to use my death to set up Kenneth Braison—short of tattooing his initials on my arm—by planting evidence at his house and making sure it was found. All to protect her family’s good name.
Though just how good it is, is questionable. ”
“Yeah, quite.” Campbell rolled his eyes. “And what would Barrientos get for his trouble?”
“Control of the Braison Family and all that comes with being the cult’s leader,” Stefanie told him.
“I thought as much, when trying to piece it all together.” Campbell ran hand across his jawline. “But they failed to achieve their goals, with both now in custody and facing years behind bars.”
“Good.” Stefanie adjusted herself in the bed and looked up at him, while thinking about them and their own future prospects. “So, when will I be released?”
“As far as I’m aware, the process is already in the works for you to be discharged,” Campbell answered equably. He sat on the side of the bed, and held one of her hands affectionately. “But before they let you out of here, there’s something I’ve been dying to say to you…”
“Oh?” She met his gaze, interest piqued. “What might that be?”
“Just that I’ve fallen in love with you, Stefanie Nguyen,” he expressed soulfully.
Stefanie beamed. “Is that so?”
“Yeah, definitely so.” He kissed her hand.
“When I feared that I might never have gotten the opportunity to say that—had Bella and Barrientos gotten their way—I promised myself that I wouldn’t allow myself to miss the chance again as soon as it presented itself to express my true feelings in living color.
And any other way to say I love you, Stefanie. ”
She blushed, squeezing his fingers. “Well, I’m in love with you, too, Campbell,” she cadenced.
He grinned crookedly. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” Stefanie was filled with happiness.
“I also feared that I might have lost that window to tell you how I felt,” she said tearfully “But now that the window has reopened, I won’t wait for it to nearly shut again before putting my heart on the line, forever and a day.
” She drew a breath and fixed his eyes. “I do love you and always will—whatever our destiny is…”
Campbell’s face lit up with raw emotion. “In that case, we can’t go wrong, as I’m with you all the way!”
He leaned over and gave her a hard kiss on the mouth that Stefanie embraced for all the strength she could muster.
In time, she hoped to be able to show him just how much she cared for him through long, tender kisses and otherwise.
But for now, this was more than enough for her to hang onto and relish to her heart’s content, while knowing that Campbell felt the same way, through and through.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, in Harriette’s Café, Campbell sat with Gloria at a table, going over the case and its unexpected twists and turns.
He knew she had more than a passing interest, given her time with the department, dating back to the murder of Lynda Boxleitner.
And how that managed to work its way to the present drug-related homicides.
While nibbling on a Danish pastry, Gloria batted her lashes and said, as if still trying to come to terms with it, “Bella Reston and Juan Barrientos…who would have thunk it?”
“True.” Campbell bit into a cinnamon roll, then took a sip of his coffee. “I guess power and privilege—not necessarily in that order—makes for strange bedfellows.”
“I suppose.” She tasted her green tea. “The important thing is that you figured out many of the sordid details and stopped them from adding another victim to the madness.”
“Yeah.” He took a breath. The thought that he had come so close to losing Stefanie made Campbell almost nauseous.
Being deprived of expressing his love and receiving the same in return was almost too much to bear.
But they had come out on the other end, stronger than ever.
In spite of Bella’s and Barrientos’s efforts to the contrary.
“Now we just need to put them away for good. Or at least for the better part of the life they have left.”
“That would be nice,” Gloria agreed before taking another bite of the Danish. “But you can be sure that Bella Reston—at least—will have the best lawyers that money can buy to try and worm her way out of this.”