Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
AUGUST
I haven’t even thought about pulling myself out of bed for the day when there’s a pounding at the door.
It takes me a second to come to and remember where the hell I am. I sit up, expecting to duck my head for the shelf I installed over the headboard back in the RV.
But instead of my dark, cozy little haunt, light pours in through four windows of a bright rental bedroom, and the pounding at the front door gets more insistent.
Shit.
Did Jake learn I’m here somehow?
I stumble to my feet and head for the door. At this point, a confrontation with the bastard would almost feel good, after weeks of him quietly torturing Lennon.
Even if it is just stress, and she keeps trying to put on a good face in chat, I can tell she’s suffering—
I yank the front door open.
Instead, it’s Lennon herself. Except she looks like absolute hell. She’s stooped over like she’s barely managing to stand up, clinging to a big backpack that looks too heavy for her, with hollowed-out, bruise-dark shadows under her eyes.
“Oh my god!” I yell, reaching for her just in time for her to collapse into my arms.
What did he do to her? I knew I should never have let her go back in my house. Oh my god, I pull back to look at her face because I need to convince myself she’s still breathing. “Lennon! Len!”
“You were right,” she breathes out weakly in relief against my chest. “Too dangerous. The bastard’s been poisoning me this entire time. We’ve got to go to the cops. I need you to drive me.”
He poisoned—
“We’ve got to get you to the hospital,” I choke out. She’s in my arms and she’s alive and that’s the only fact I can hold onto right now or I will quite literally lose my mind.
“After,” she says, and I can tell she’s fighting to make her voice firm in spite of her physical weakness.
Jesus, why didn’t she tell me it was this bad?
I would have broken the door down to get to her.
“Cops first,” she keeps saying, “or he’ll figure out a way to twist it. I have proof.”
I take her backpack, then scoop her up and do a half-turn to grab my keys, then I’m jogging with her out to the truck, parked in the garage where I drove it the night I moved in and haven’t moved it since.
Poison. I never thought he’d go that far. Clearly neither of us did, in spite of everything we already knew about him.
He snowed us both. We actually believed there was a hurt little boy somewhere under all of it, lashing out because it was really Mom who twisted him crooked.
And fuck. Maybe she did. But whatever happened to him as a kid, he’s the one who let himself become a man who hurts people without a shred of conscience.
And now he can burn in hell as far as I’m concerned.
Protecting Lennon is the only thing that matters right now.
Even though I’ve already failed her.
I should never have let her go back into that house.
She feels so lifeless already in my arms.
“Lennon.” My heart jumps into my throat and I give her a little shake.
“Here,” she says, nuzzling tiredly against my chest. “Safe now.”
Which nearly breaks something in me, because she thinks reaching me is the safe part. Hasn’t she been paying attention?
She might have actually escaped my brother the first time if she hadn’t let herself be dragged back on my account.
And she almost died for it. Fuck.
I’ll deal with that later, I tell myself, the way I’ve trained myself to do with anything that isn’t useful in the next five minutes.
Right now, she needs a driver who isn’t falling apart.
So that’s what I’m going to be.
I yank open the truck door, settle her onto the bench seat, and toss her bag in the rear. She curls up sideways, knees drawn toward the middle, and when I climb in on the driver’s side, her head finds my lap like it’s already decided that’s where it lives.
God, she’s killing me.
“We’re going to the hospital first,” I declare, tracing some hair back from her face. Is it just me, or is her hair thinner than it used to be?
“Don’t you dare.” Her tired eyes flash up at me. “I will murder you myself, August. Don’t you dare take advantage of my weakness to take me anywhere but the sheriff’s office.”
I glare down at her. “We did it your way last time, and you ended up poisoned.” I yank the gearshift into reverse. “I’m in the driver’s seat now.”
Lennon lurches upright and reaches for the door handle like she’s actually going to open it.
“Dammit, woman!”
Her head whips my way. “I’m finding a second wind. And don’t you dare think I’m gonna let any man imprison me again or tell me what to do.”
Dammit. Now I feel like garbage all over again.
“Fine, you stubborn goat. The sheriff’s station first. But then straight to the hospital.”
“Fine.”
Her head sinks back against my thigh, spent.
“Why didn’t you come to me sooner if it’s been this bad?” I ask thickly, reaching over to wrestle the seat belt awkwardly around her before I pull out onto the street.
She shrugs, barely a movement against my leg. “It just felt… normal.”
Something in my chest ratchets straight past boiling into some register of furious I don’t have a name for. Somewhere near the heat of the seventh fire of hell.
“Because it’s not the first time he’s poisoned you,” I mutter, just as horrified but no longer shocked.
She’s said she had migraines on and off her whole marriage.
So what sets him off? What triggers it? Anytime she got a little too—what, self-reliant? He makes her sick so she stays dependent? So she can never quite trust her own body enough to leave?
With her this fragile, I drive slow and careful, which is its own kind of difficult with how wired and furious I feel.
My fists go white-knuckled around the wheel, steadier than they have any right to be. It’s the same trick I use to keep a needle from shaking over somebody’s skin. Right now, though, I’d give anything for my hands to just shake like a normal person’s would.
At least the sheriff’s substation is less than five miles out. She’ll be safe the second I get her there, and hell, we can make them call an ambulance from the lobby if she won’t let me take her straight to a hospital.
Meanwhile I’m quietly losing it, convinced every decision I’m making is the wrong one.
“Lennon. Len? Fuck, are you still with me?”
“Jesus, I’m not dying, August.”
“Well how the hell do I know that? You’ve been poisoned.”
“Not enough to kill me. I really don’t think he was trying to kill me…” her voice goes distant. “Yet.”
“That’s not as comforting as you think it is.”
“Are we at the station?” She starts to sit up and I ease her back down.
“Not yet. Stop moving. You’re gonna make yourself sick.”
“I’m already super nauseous. And you’ll regret it if I throw up all over your lap.”
“Good grief, woman. Just stay put. GPS says two minutes. Can you stay put for two minutes?”
“Maybe,” she allows, grumpy about it.
I’d laugh at how adorable she is, if the circumstances weren’t so goddamn dire. How does anybody look at a spirit like that and decide it needs snuffing out?
It’s a good thing I’ve got Lennon to focus on right now. I’m not a violent man, but I still feel like I could kill my brother with my bare hands if he were in front of me this second.
Probably not the best thing to be thinking on the drive to an actual sheriff’s station.
I pull into the gravel lot of the county substation south of Austin. It’s a squat brick building with a flagpole out front and a couple of cruisers nosed up against the curb. I ease into a spot close to the door. My hands don’t fully unclench from the wheel even after I’ve thrown it in park.
Lennon needs me cool-headed, so that’s what I’ll be. Same as when Owen needs me. I’ve learned how to keep my head in the game even when the crazy’s poking at the edges. Nobody needs manic, hot-headed August running loose right now.
“We’re here,” I say, gently helping Lennon up to sitting.
She might be bound and determined to march in there herself, but I’ll be damned if she takes one step on those wobbly legs.
I’ll carry her the whole way if I have to, then set her down in a chair once we’re inside so she’s got her dignity back—
“Duck!” she gasps, and dives sideways for my thigh again the second I’ve got her upright.
She grabs me on the way down, nearly driving my face into the dashboard. I catch her against my chest at the last second and yank the seat-back lever, dropping us both flat.
“What?” My heart’s slamming.
“It’s Jared,” she breathes, air coming out in little gasps, like even that much motion cost her everything she had left. “He’s Jake’s best friend.”
“So what? Is Jake with him?”
“No.” She’s still breathing hard. “But there’s another man from the church with him. In a sheriff’s uniform. I’ve seen him at the cookouts, too. They’re all Jake’s friends. Fuck. Drive. You need to drive. Jake’s got them all convinced I’m crazy.”
I’m already backing out of the spot, tires chirping once on the gravel. I glance over my shoulder in the rearview and notice the two guys look our direction. One lifting a phone up. Maybe to snap a pic of my back license plate? Shit.
As soon as I can I’m back onto the road and a few stops later, on I-35 heading north.
“Then we’re going to the hospital,” I say through my teeth.
“Not in Austin.” She flops back against the seat, one hand pressed to her temple. “Important people come down to our church. It’s a growing megachurch, and I don’t know everyone Jake’s connected to. I think one of them might be a judge.
A judge. Jesus Christ.
If there’s one thing I know about my brother, it’s that he gathers influential people around him like camouflage and armor, over years of potlucks and Bible studies and favors owed so that his sterling reputation makes him untouchable—the kind of man no one would ever believe was poisoning his wife.
He’d have them convinced it was anything except the obvious by the end of his long-winded speeches.
“Let’s go to a hospital in Houston instead. It’s only a few hours.”
“Fuck that. I’m getting you to the nearest hospital.” I glance over just in time to catch her eyes flashing.
“And what if Jake walks in and convinces everyone you’re the crazy one who needs to be carted off, and that he’s my husband who by rights gets to see his wife? What if he brings his sheriff buddies to back him up so he can drag me right back into that house?”
“Fuck!” I slam the wheel, hating myself when it makes her flinch.
“It’s fine. I’m feeling a little better already.” She tries to sit up once we’re properly on the highway and I ease her seat back down instead.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Fuck. You’re right. Just rest. I’ll drive you to Houston. Wherever you need to go. I’ll take care of you. Whatever you need.” My jaw clenches so hard it’s a small miracle a molar doesn’t crack. “Anything to make this better.”
She nuzzles against my knee. “Don’t you get it? Just being with you already makes it better. Everything’s better when I’m with you.”
I wish to God that were true.