Chapter 23
‘LIL BIT FUZZY
Maggie
A warmth on my face woke me up. My limbs pressed into the bed, heavy and immovable. The sheets felt wrong. Too soft. Too crisp.
That heaviness extended to my eyelids, but I managed to get them open. Sunlight filtered in through thin curtains. Those weren’t my curtains. This wasn’t my bedroom.
The walls were wrong, some peachy cream color. And a diamond-studded chandelier hung from the ceiling directly overhead.
I tried to sit up, but it took a moment before I had the strength.
“Mo chróí, you’re awake.” Hunter rushed to the bed, sitting to my side. “Did you enjoy your massage last night?” He grabbed my hand and ran his thumb over the ring.
How did that get back on there?
“Yolanda said you were so tense she needed an extra twenty minutes to get the knots out.”
“Oh, uh… yeah. I guess.” I finally sat up, confused as to where I was.
Hunter put a pillow behind my back. “Well, you look refreshed. Didn’t want to wake you when I returned from the bar with your father, so I slept on the couch.” He rubbed my arm softly.
“My father? Hunter, where are we?”
“Wow, Yolanda must have really knocked you out.” He chuckled. “At the hotel, darling. We split up. Remember? The men down to the bar, and you women had a night at the spa.”
“I thought everyone left from home.” I rubbed my forehead, trying to make sense of it all. “We stayed back… and Graham—”
“No, darling. Graham was not involved.”
“But Annie said—” I opened my mouth and closed it again. The edges of last night kept sliding away every time I tried to grab them.
“Aye, Annie said you were zonked. She stopped in to see you during your massage. Said she was surprised we didn’t call when we changed our minds about coming. When she got here, you were already passed out mid-massage.”
None of this made any sense. I knew I was with Graham last night in my room. The leather? The straps? One doesn’t forget a dick like his.
“A chuisle mo chróí, are you alright?”
“I’m just… confused.”
“What about, darling?”
“I-I… I swear… Graham was with us last night… as a guest… back home.” I stared at the silk embroidery on the comforter, hoping it would give me answers.
Hunter wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Maybe that fourth glass of wine added a wee something ‘extra’ to your dreams.”
“It seemed so real.”
“Well, was I involved, darling? Or was this just another one of your alcohol-induced fantasies?”
“No, you were there... but… only at the beginning.” I rubbed my lips together, my mouth dry and tasting oddly like old pennies. “You had me text Graham… to tell him that I needed him.”
“Well, it obviously was a dream if I was not involved with the good stuff.”
“Yeah… must’ve been.” I said it because it was easier than the alternative.
Hunter pressed a kiss against my forehead. I held still and waited for it to be over. “Let’s get you dressed and ready for breakfast. We’re meeting your family downstairs in an hour.”
“Do you have my clothes?” I asked.
“Yes, over with your bag.”
“Then you’ll have the leather dress I had on.”
“Leather dress? My, my… I do wish I would have witnessed what all went on in that dirty wee mind of yours.”
“What? No. Hunter—” I slid out from under the covers and opened my bag to find a lace negligée, a casual cowl neck sweater, some leggings, and knee-high boots.
“We were only staying for one evening, so I figured we didn’t need to pack your entire wardrobe.”
Did I really dream a night with Graham strapped to my bed?
I mean, I had been known to dream of hunky men in leather straps.
Hunter was probably right. I just had too much to drink—wasn’t like I’d never done that before.
Christ, Maggie. Keep this up and you’ll be in rehab before the year’s over.
Whatever happened—imagination or not—alcohol was definitely involved, because this hangover was killer.
After breakfast, Hunter and I arrived back at the manor, but when we pulled in Graham’s squad was parked in the driveway and Katie had parked her trike by the gate.
Hunter rolled the car to a stop and shut it off.
Graham barreled out of the house, Katie following close behind. He was fuming.
“What’s going on?” I said, stepping out of the Bentley.
“Ask him.” Graham opened Hunter’s door and ripped him out of the car by his collar and swung.
Graham’s face was something past fury. “What’s the matter? Only hit women?”
“Graham, stop!” I rushed around the front of the car.
“Not until he gives me some answers.” He pulled back and swung again, the crack of it cutting through the cold air.
I tugged at Graham’s arm, pleading. “Answers for what?”
“I should have had Nettles follow up on that domestic I filed when you threw her down the stairs.”
“Now, mate, you know I never—”
Another punch.
“Shut up. Answer me.” Graham held Hunter by the throat. “Why’d you drug me?”
Drugged? “Graham, what are you talking about?”
Graham’s eyes cut to me. “Don’t you remember?”
“Remember what?” My head throbbed.
“He drugged you too.” Graham let go of Hunter’s throat.
I shook my head. This couldn’t be happening. “No, we went to the hotel. My family’s still there. Why would he drug me?”
“To make you question everything—even me.”
“If you think I’m not pressing charges, you’re sorely mistaken,” Hunter said, wiping the blood from his lip.
“Maggie, I found Graham strapped to your bed,” Katie said.
“What?” I held my forehead, a throbbing pain hitting me in waves. “But Hunter said—”
Hunter scoffed. “Katie, real funny. Quit playing games. I sent you that text about Maggie’s dream in confidence.” He smiled like he was a kid caught in a lie.
Graham shoved him and he stumbled backwards losing his footing. “Quit gaslighting her, you fuckwit.”
Before I could even process what the hell was going on, I shouted, “Graham! Hunter! Katie! I need all of you to leave.” I turned away, my thoughts rushing rapidly through my brain. Small flashes of last night weaving in pixilated bursts.
“Maggie?” Graham put his hands on my shoulders. “Come on, you know last night wasn’t a dream.”
“No.” I shoved him off. “Leave.”
“Mo chróí?” His eyes were tight at the corners—not worry. Calculation.
I turned on him so fast he took a step back. “You too. Either leave now, or I’ll have the police escort you both off the premises.”
“You heard the lady, everybody out.” Katie waved her hands around, directing Hunter back into the Bentley, and Graham to his squad.
She squeezed my arm once, quick, on her way past. “I’ll call you in a few hours, kay, girl?”
I nodded and went inside. None of this made any sense.
I remembered the dress. The leather. And I remembered someone rubbing my back on the bed at the hotel.
But if the dream was just a dream, why did it feel so real?
Why did this headache feel like it was so much more than too many glasses of wine?
Why was I still foggy?
As the morning sun shifted into the afternoon, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Everything was fuzzy, my eyebrows were constantly clenched.
I made my way upstairs to retrace my steps. Maybe bringing the evening back into the forefront of my mind would help.
I went straight to my room and to my surprise the bed was a mess. Blankets and pillows scattered on the floor. Then poking out from under a wadded-up sheet was something dark—black.
I reached down and pulled the sheet back. It was Graham’s utility belt.
In an instant, the entire evening washed over me. Hunter’s outburst. Annie checking in. The bubble bath. The text. And Graham. Strapped to the bed, just like in the dream. Flashes of us together played in my mind. The sounds he made—not something I dreamed up.
My breathing quickened.
“He did it,” I said to the room. “Hunter drugged us.”
I searched the room for the wine bottle, the glasses. They were gone.
Maybe in the kitchen?
Running downstairs, I found the glasses in the dish drainer. The bottle, nowhere.
Maybe he put it back in the liquor cabinet.
I rushed to the study and swung the doors open on the cabinet. I knelt, scanning the bottles inside.
Nothing.
I rose and placed both hands on the top of the cabinet and leaned in.
If Hunter drugged us, he would have known to get rid of the evidence. Washed the glasses—obviously. Throw away the bottle? Maybe… but probably not here. He most likely ditched it at the hotel last night.
“Shit,” I said under my breath, looking down to the sake set I’d given him. Under the corner of the box was the tiniest amount of white powder that had gotten stuck in the decorative groove carved into the cabinet.
For curiosity’s sake, I pulled open the drawer and found a tiny plastic bag. In it? More powder.
“Uncle Silas!” I screamed. “Uncle Silas!”
“Good heavens, child!” Uncle Silas materialized in front of me. “I thought we agreed that is not the proper way to get my attention.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry.” I held up the baggie. “Do you have any idea what this is?”
“Open it, dear.”
I did, and he dipped his translucent pinky in, then tasted it, smacking his lips together.
“Salty… soapy…” His brows lifted. “Why in heaven’s name do you have GHB?”
“Fuck.” I closed the baggie and threw it back in the drawer, slamming it shut. “Hey, have you noticed anything strange about Hunter? I know you lurk about when you think I don’t notice.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Uncle Silas, come on, I can’t handle any more lies right now.”
“Well, my dear…” He put his hands behind his back and floated around the study. “Not odd, really. But usually when he leaves, he takes that backpack with him.” Uncle Silas pointed over to Hunter’s backpack in the corner.
“Yeah, what about it? I take a bag with me whenever I go somewhere.”
“It’s not the bag itself, Magdalene. It’s the contents.”
I moved over and picked it up. “There’s hardly anything in it.”
Slowly, I unzipped the bag and reached inside. My fingers touched something cool, firm, yet flexible, with a string attached. I pulled it out.
“Goddamn it!”
“It’s a little late for Halloween, if I do say so myself.”
“It’s the fucking mask from my visions.” Cold moved through me from the chest out, all the way to my fingertips.
“The what?”
The pieces had been there the whole time. I’d just refused to look at them. The morgue visions crashed back in, sharp and sudden, every detail I’d tried to file away. “Hunter is the one killing all those girls, and this proves it.”
“Darling, just because he owns a mask… doesn’t mean he’s the killer. I’m sure they sell thousands of this exact mask in Massachusetts alone. MaskTok has become quite the phenomenon.”
I shook my head. “What the hell do you know about MaskTok?” I blinked, holding up my hands. “Never mind, I don’t want to know. I have to tell Graham.”
Graham
God, she pissed me off. She knew it wasn’t a dream last night.
It was right there in her eyes. The only way I could think to prove it was to get a test for whatever the fuck he used to drug us.
But even then, would she believe me? Hunter had her under his own spell—one that shut off her rational thinking and twisted it into some sick form of loyalty built on guilt.
“What happened after you took your twenty, Locke?” Nettles leaned back in his chair across the desk from me tossing his baseball between both hands. “You never clocked out last night.”
“I got fuckin’ drugged is what happened.” My leg shook.
Nettles’s gaze dropped to it. “Drugged?”
“Yes. I took my twenty to have a quick… moment with Maggie.”
The captain’s eyebrow raised.
“And the next thing I know, she’s passed out on me. I followed like a sack of bricks.”
“So she drugged you both… like some sick Romeo and Juliet thing?”
“Christ, no.” I stood. “Hunter did it.”
“Hunter was there… with you and Maggie?” Somehow his eyebrow raised even further.
“Well, no. Not until the end. Right before I passed out. She might have given me the drink, but Hunter drugged it.”
“Locke, you know that without proof, the only person we can bring in would be Maggie.”
I ran my hand through my hair. “What if I took a test?”
“If you were drugged, it was most likely GHB or some other roofie. That would be out of your system by now. A positive still wouldn’t prove Hunter did it.”
God, I hated when he was right.
“She probably knew that and was just wanting to experiment with you. Do you want me to send a unit for her?”
“What? God, no.” I dragged my hand down my face, gritting my teeth. “Cap, Hunter Devereaux is the guy.”
“The guy?”
“Yes. He’s the Pretty Girl Killer.”
“Locke, not this again.” He gripped the ball tight. “Just because he’s fucking your girl and you don’t like it doesn’t make him the guy.”
“What?!” I waved my hands. “This isn’t about that. Every time a new body appears, Hunter just happens to be away on a ‘scouting’ trip, a bike ride, something.”
“Do you hear yourself? You’re driving yourself mad.
” Nettles set the ball back on its stand and rose, turning to look out the window at the harbor.
“Pretty sure I’ve been away when a body has appeared…
Does that make me a killer?” He pulled out a new toothpick from his pocket, unwrapped it, and placed it in the corner of his mouth.
“Cap, you’re not taking this seriously.”
“No. I’m taking this very seriously, Locke. County’s on it now, remember? My hands are tied here. They’re all up and down the coast watching and waiting. I can’t interfere and neither can you.”
“Fuck watching and waiting…” I paced behind my chair, rubbing the back of my neck.
“You’re really going to just let us sit on the sidelines and wait for the next girl to show up on the pier?
I’m not surprised.” My fists clenched. Everything inside of me wanted to take off and murder the guy before he had a chance to kill someone else.
“I’m not wrong. The next body’s gearing up to be her. I’m not letting that happen.”
Nettles put both hands on his desk and leaned in, looking at me from under his brows, the veins in his neck throbbing. “Locke, you get involved—I’ll be forced to suspend you again.”
I rolled my eyes and threw my hands in the air. “Then do what you fucking have to. I’m running out of options here.” I stormed out the door, slamming it behind me.