Chapter 44
FORTY-FOUR
“She shouldn’t be anywhere near him!” Eli was the last person I expected to block my way as we arrived at the hospital. It caused Roy to become my unlikely ally. All six foot seven of him.
Piper sat in a chair outside the examining room. She had her face buried in her hands, sobbing.
“Why are you here?” I asked, nonplussed by Eli’s bluster. Who knows what the cops had told him about me?
“Because we’re his family!” Piper answered for him.
A doctor stepped out into the hallway, carefully blocking my view of the room with his body.
“You’re Mrs. Manning?” he asked Piper.
“She is not,” I said. “I am. What is my husband’s condition?”
He looked to be in his early sixties. Certainly a man who’d seen everything in his career as an emergency room physician. His name tag read Lyle Honeycutt.
“Let’s talk somewhere more private,” Dr. Honeycutt said. He took my arm.
“Lock is my best friend. Whatever you have to say, I’d also like to hear,” Eli said.
“Sorry,” Honeycutt answered. “I can only speak to his patient advocate. You should step over to the waiting room beyond those doors so Mrs. Manning will know where to find you.”
I expected an argument. Mercifully, both Piper and Eli complied. As soon as they were out of earshot, I felt panic start to rise.
“Is he going to die?”
Honeycutt gave me a tight-lipped smile. “No. Your husband is going to recover. His worst injury is a concussion. He was lucky though. If he’d been struck a few inches lower, his neck might have been broken.
He’s got a broken collarbone, some cuts and bruises.
But everything on him will heal. He’s a bit disoriented, which comes with the territory for his grade of concussion.
I’d like to keep him overnight for observation and until I get his bloodwork back.
He says he was drugged. There’s evidence of that in his affect. But I’m waiting on initial toxicology.”
I let go of a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Lock was alive. He would recover. He had been truthful about the drugs. Corrine hadn’t killed him. I felt a stab of horror that Corrine never got to know that.
“Can I see him now?”
Honeycutt gave me a more genuine smile. “He’s been asking for you. Try not to agitate him. I don’t love his blood pressure.”
“Thank you,” I said. I touched Honeycutt’s sleeve and headed for the exam room door.
“Mina,” Roy barked. “I need to talk to Lock before you do. You understand this is still an ongoing criminal investigation.”
Honeycutt gave each of us a look, then stepped away.
“Fine,” I said. “But I’m in the room when you do.”
“I’d rather—”
“I don’t care what you’d rather.” I didn’t wait for him to argue with me. If he wanted to stop me from going into that room, he’d have to handcuff me again. I turned the knob and went to my husband.
I gasped when I saw him. The side of Lock’s face was grossly swollen, making him almost unrecognizable. I replayed Dr. Honeycutt’s words. Everything on him would heal.
“Lock?” I said.
He turned his head toward me. He tried to raise his shoulders off the bed. The effort made him grunt. I rushed to his side and pulled up the wheeled stool Honeycutt had left behind.
“Mina,” he croaked. “It’s you? Is it really you?”
“Of course,” I said, smiling. “Who else would it be?”
Roy stood against the wall, looming like a colossus. Lock looked his way, then settled back against his pillows. He didn’t ask Roy to leave. It seemed he wanted him to hear what he had to say as well.
“You’re okay?” Lock asked. “She didn’t hurt you?”
I shook my head. “Nothing that won’t heal. Same prognosis as you just got.”
Roy stepped forward. “Mr. Manning,” he said. “I know you want to catch up with your wife. But there are some questions I need to ask you about what happened.”
Lock closed his eyes and nodded. When he opened them, he reached for my hand. Something in me hesitated. It was as if his touch could shatter some spell. Bring reality slamming back into me.
“I was abducted by Corrine Egan,” he said. “What day is it?”
“May seventeenth,” I answered.
Lock squinted as if thinking actually hurt his brain. “I flew back on the fourteenth. It’s been three days? Mina, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know who she was.”
“Corrine?” Roy asked before I could. “Are you saying you’d never met her before?”
“No,” Lock said, coughing. I reached for a cup of water at his side and brought it to his lips. “I knew her. I just didn’t know her real name was Corrine until three days ago.”
“Where did you meet?” Roy said, his voice dropping to a lower, grimmer tone.
Lock kept his eyes fixed on mine. “Originally? I met her online. Through WhisprMatch. About five years ago. We had a brief romantic relationship.”
“Stop,” I said. “Lock, you don’t have to do this. Roy, if—”
“No,” Lock said. “Mina, it’s okay. I want to.”
He took my hand. I had the urge to pull it away. He lied to me. “You gave her a ribbon,” I said.
Lock nodded. “I should have told you when you asked. Mina, I’m so sorry. I thought I could handle her.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Just what I said. I dated her… if you could even call it that. Long before I even met you, Mina. She told me her name was Andrea. I told her my name was Matt Woodson. I wanted to be anonymous. I wanted to go out with someone who didn’t know all my baggage.
It was stupid. I understand that now. We mostly communicated through the app.
And we met face to face twice. Once when I took her to dinner.
Another time, we spent a night together. ”
“The Frank Lloyd Wright house,” Roy said. I resented his presence. It seemed I would have to be humiliated in front of him again.
“What about her letter?” I asked. “Lock, I found a love letter she wrote to you.”
Lock narrowed his eyes in confusion. “I never got any letter from her.”
“She planted it,” I said. “Then she stole it back from me. So you’d all think I was making it up.”
“It sounds like something she’d do,” Lock said. “And, yes. I gave her a ribbon. We were… intimate. Do I have to go into graphic detail in front of my wife?”
“No,” Roy said. “If I feel the need for a follow-up, we can deal with it later. Tell me how it ended.”
“Badly,” Lock said. “I realized halfway through the weekend that Andrea… Corrine… wasn’t the person I thought she was.
She called me by my real name. It just raised a serious red flag for me.
I was concerned she had a different agenda.
It was a violation of my trust and my privacy that she went to some pretty odd lengths to find out my real name.
I tried to end it as gentlemanly as possible.
I took her home, walked her to her door, and told her I didn’t think it was going to work out between us.
She got very angry. She started calling me vile names.
She slapped me. I turned my back on her and left.
That was it. If it had been up to me, I never would have had any contact with her again. ”
“But you did.” Roy and I said the same thing at the same time.
“Yes,” Lock said. “She started showing up. Waiting for me by my car. I was having lunch with an associate in Ann Arbor. She showed up at the restaurant. She was tailing me. I told her if she didn’t stop, I’d have to file a police report and get a restraining order.
But things escalated. She had taken photographs without my knowledge the night we spent together.
I have no idea how. I never saw a camera.
She threatened to make them public if I didn’t get back together with her.
She actually thought she could get me to marry her. ”
The photographs. I knew they were the same ones Corrine had left for me at the hotel. I assumed they were recent. Lock was saying she’d taken them five years ago.
“How did it end?” Roy asked again.
“I called her bluff,” Lock said. “She wanted me to meet, and I stupidly agreed. I should have deleted that app the second she slapped me. But I met her. I told her in no uncertain terms that I would not be blackmailed or bullied. That if she wanted to publicize those photos, I couldn’t stop her.
But that was the last time I would ever communicate with her.
I left. I deleted my WhisprMatch profile.
Weeks went by, and I never heard from her.
Then I got an envelope in the mail. She sent me a copy of the police report she’d filed.
She concocted this whole story about me being the one to stalk her.
But she didn’t use my name. She used Matt Woodson and claimed she didn’t know how to find me.
It was all lies. She said I threatened her.
Assaulted her. That never happened. She put a note in the envelope threatening to tell the police who I really was.
But nothing ever came of it. I realize now I should have gone to the Kalamazoo County sheriff and explained all of this back then.
Then I never heard from her again until three days ago. ”
“Stop,” I whispered. “But you still lied. Lock, I asked you about those ribbons. Why didn’t you tell me this? Why didn’t you tell me about Andrea?”
“I was a coward. I saw how this case was affecting you. It was starting to come between us. I thought you were going to leave me. I didn’t want to lose you over something I didn’t do,” he said.
“I swear, I had never heard of Corrine Egan. Only Andrea Phillips. But, yes, when you told me about the ribbons, it bothered me enough that I met with a private investigator. His card is in my wallet if you can find it. It might be at her apartment. I don’t know.
She took my phone. She took everything I had on me. ”
“Your phone,” I said. I fished mine out of my pocket. I pulled up the last text Lock had sent me, accusing me of violence, saying he wanted to be apart, and asking me to meet him. I gave it to Roy to read.
Lock looked puzzled. “What is it?”