Chapter 14 Secret Form Of Protection
SECRET FORM OF PROTECTION
“Are you smuggling drugs?”
“What?” That question couldn’t have been any more shocking to her than if Ford asked if she was a big hairy gorilla.
“You heard me,” he said, walking into the cabin. He’d said he would be over tonight to check in, but she hadn’t known it was going to turn into an inquisition of unrealistic questions.
“I’m not sure I did.”
“Reenie,” he said. “I asked a straightforward question. We haven’t been in each other’s lives in twenty years. I don’t know what you did or do and you’re on the run and don’t want me to run your name. Now I’m wondering if maybe there is a warrant out for your arrest.”
She blinked her eyes a few times, her heart hammering in her chest. “You don’t believe me?”
She never expected this to happen. Not the one person in her life who was there for her when no one else was.
The person she was opening her heart to again in just the short week she’d been here.
He stepped closer, the pain in his eyes reflecting her own. Whatever she was feeling, he was battling just as hard.
“I want to. Desperately. But the information I received tells me I’ve got to look at this another way. I don’t want to be blind to something right in front of me. I can’t be and have to think of you as I would any other part of my job.”
“What information?” she asked. She didn’t want to be hurt that he considered her his job and nothing more.
If that was truly the case, why was he so upset over this?
He put his hands on her arms, not letting her move. He held her stare. His dark eyes drilling for knowledge out of her.
Knowledge that she read he hoped wasn’t true.
“Information that helps you and now I’m wondering what side of the law you might be on.”
She swallowed past the lump of disappointment in her throat. There was a time in her life she’d expect to be hit with words like this. Not by Ford. He’d never physically hurt her.
But emotionally was another thing.
Once again, she opened the door a tiny crack to let someone in and then it was slammed shut on her toes, crushing the bones, and freezing her in place.
“Answer my question first. It’s not a hard one. Yes or no,” he said, his displeasure and anger barely controlled despite his quiet tone.
“No! I’d never do that. I’ve never done drugs. I have never even smoked a cigarette or tried weed. Nothing.”
Her voice was loud. Louder than she’d spoken to him since she’d been here.
She needed him to believe her.
If he didn’t, she’d have to leave. She could sneak out tonight when he was gone.
But she didn’t want to do that.
She didn’t want to see Ridgeway Orchards and Ford in her review mirror.
She wanted to drive up to him headlights to headlights.
Their futures shining on each other.
But if he didn’t believe her, it’d never happen.
He moved her to the couch, his hands burning through his old sweatshirt that she’d been wearing.
Each day she’d put one of his articles of clothing on. If not a sweatshirt to wear around the house, then a T-shirt to sleep in.
Something that once touched his skin would cover hers in a secret form of protection.
“Come sit down,” he said. “We need to talk. I need answers.”
“You need to be convinced,” she said.
“I do. I’m sorry if that hurts you. Nothing about this situation is normal. You know that. I can’t help if I don’t know everything. I’m not even close to knowing it all. So talk.”
“We have to talk,” she said. “But I don’t know why you’re asking me this.
Why do you think I’d do that or lie to you?
And I want to know what you found out and if I’m in danger.
Do I need to leave?” The wetness on her cheeks told a story of her coming undone.
She’d tried so hard for years not to let anyone see her pain.
See her fears. Those people in her past only fed on them.
But with Ford, she needed him to see everything there was about her. “I don’t want to leave.”
If he saw her pain again, he’d believe her. She knew that deep down and told herself to open up. Let the grief and dysfunction of her life shine brightly for him to see, embarrassment aside.
He held her stare, her chest heaving as she gasped for air.
His firm no bullshit glare disappeared and one of sympathy replaced it.
He pulled her into his arms and held her as she cried.
She didn’t know if the tears were emerging from his accusations or the fear of never seeing him again.
That fear was why she’d stopped last week.
Just one more glimpse, she’d told herself.
To see how he’d turned out.
After driving around without seeing him, she realized it wasn’t meant to be. It was only a slim chance anyway.
Until it was time to drive away for good and there he was.
That was meant. That was fate.
She didn’t want that shattered.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said softly. His hand was running up and down her back as she got closer to his chest, the warmth from his embrace relaxing her tense muscles.
It was her job to get him to believe her.
“I swear to you I don’t do drugs. I don’t have any on me. Nothing. I hated when Oliver did them.”
She felt him tense, then let out a sigh.
Ford might feel she withheld that from him now that it was out.
She wasn’t though. Lots of people did drugs.
“I had Clay look into Oliver, which led to his cousin Randy. That’s the information I’ve got and it’s what steered my question tonight.”
“What did you find out?” she asked, running her hand under her nose. “I never liked Randy. Ever. There was something evil in him that frightened me.”
“More than Oliver?” his head angled.
“Yes. Randy never laid a hand on me, but I’d heard him talking to Oliver before to take care of me. Put me in my place. I felt he egged Oliver on.”
“Don’t make excuses for someone that hurt you,” he said, his arms tightening around her. Not to hurt but rather show his reaction.
She looked into his eyes and pushed out of his hug as much as she wanted to stay there for hours. “I’m not. I never would. I’m only saying that sometimes Randy made it worse. Or wound Oliver up. Whenever he would come over, I had to be on my best behavior.”
“Did you know Randy was a drug dealer?”
She closed her eyes, her shoulders slumped. She felt like such a damn fool.
“No, but it’s making sense now.”
“Tell me,” he said. “Everything. Hold nothing back. I mean it. Nothing you say will end up anywhere it shouldn’t. The girl I knew never opened up. If you want me to believe you, I need you to give it all to me. Now is your chance, Reenie.”
“Do I need Gale here?”
She wanted to be protected. She might need an attorney if she said something so that Ford didn’t think she was part of anything illegal.
“No,” he said. “But if you say something that I think you do, we’ll call her.”
She squared her shoulders. “I found pills once in Oliver’s jacket.
I was doing laundry and his jacket was dirty.
I thought I’d wash it and when I emptied the pockets out, I found a small baggy of pills.
Maybe five or six of them. He took sleeping pills, but these weren’t them.
I asked him what they were. They didn’t look like aspirin.
I mean sometimes I’d put a few in a baggy myself. ”
“What did he tell you?”
“That it was none of my business and I had no right to go through his things. We fought that night.”
She ended up with a lump on the side of her head where he’d shoved her hard into the wall and she’d hit her temple. When her fingers came away with blood, he’d backed off.
That was one of their first fights, and she should have tried to leave then.
But he’d apologized, then turned it around as her fault. She shouldn’t have gone through his stuff.
She’d spent so much of her life believing everything she did was wrong that a small part of her thought he was right, that this was her punishment.
He promised it wouldn’t happen again, told her he loved having her in his life and appreciated all she did for him.
And because she craved even the smallest scrap of acceptance, she’d foolishly believed him.
“Did you ever see him with anything else?”
“Only when he didn’t know. There were a lot of quiet conversations between Randy and him.
They always told me to leave the room or leave the house, or they’d go outside and talk.
Once in a while I’d see Oliver with a few pills in a bag.
Not enough for me to think he was selling, but more like using.
He always complained his back and legs hurt.
I thought they were pain pills. He couldn’t sleep at night because of the pain and had the sleeping pills to help. ”
“He took those pills in front of you?”
“Not that I knew,” she said. “But when he took any pill I didn’t ask him to show it to me.
” She wouldn’t be that stupid. But she had to tell Ford everything even if he got upset with her.
“When I was leaving two weeks ago, I left my clothes with blood on them in the back of the closet. I noticed a lifted tile in a corner. As if the tile hadn’t been sealed like the rest.”
“Did you look at it closer?”
“I shifted it out of the way and there was a box in the floor. I opened it and found several bags of those mixed pills. As if he was collecting them or something.”
“Maybe skimming off the top? Clay found out that Randy was selling and Oliver would keep stashes at his house along with money so that no one would find it on Randy. Do you think that was possible?”
“Seems like anything is possible and I wasn’t aware. I’m such an idiot. But I’ve never seen money. There were only pills in there. All different colors and sizes, and just a few of each.”
“As if he was collecting them for a sale on his own or to use?”
A few more tears escaped. More from embarrassment at what a fool she’d been.
“I don’t know. I don’t think that way. But I took two of those bags and put them in the pocket of some of his clothes.
I thought there wouldn’t be enough for sale, but possession.
So you know, if the police searched his house for me, they’d find them.
It’s not like I planted it. He had them. I moved two bags, right?”
“You wanted to get away,” he said. “You were buying time. Not the way I’d do any of it.”
“I know. I was desperate, but I didn’t think he’d go to jail for murdering me and hiding the body, but just kept in the area for questioning.
Once I was safely in Canada, I would have let Gainesville Police know I was safe, but not where I was.
It’s not like I was going to tell them I cleaned up blood to frame him for something.
People knew he abused me. There was probably blood in other places too.
I’m not a horrible person to let someone go away for a crime they didn’t commit.
But the baggy of pills, that was already there and it was only shifting the spot.
Just in case he did call the police saying I was missing.
Which we know he didn’t, but I did it hoping if he had, they’d find those drugs and it’d slow him down from looking for me. ”
A fresh bundle of tears cascaded down her cheeks.
Even after everything Oliver did to her. Everything Oliver subjected her to, she didn’t want to break the law.
She couldn’t live with that guilt.
Ford pulled her close and kissed the top of her head.
Reenie curled up into his body heat for more.
“I know you’re conflicted,” she said. “I’m really sorry, but how did you find any of this out and do you think the break-in was tied to this?
It would explain why Randy and Oliver didn’t want to call the police. ”
“Clay has a Navy buddy in Florida who asked around. It won’t come back to Clay, me or you. Don’t worry about that. But he found out that word on the street was Randy lost a thousand pills. There are a few rumors and one of them is that Oliver’s girl has them and took off.”
She reared back fast. “I don’t. I really don’t.
Go through my stuff. I mean it. Everything.
My car, my clothes. I don’t have them, I swear.
And that box I found in the closet, there is no way there was a thousand pills in there.
Maybe a hundred or two, if that. I didn’t stop to count.
Each baggy had less than ten in it, closer to five. ”
She wouldn’t put it past Oliver to steal from his cousin. Unless that was his cut.
No, she didn’t know, she didn’t want to assume either.
“Take a deep breath, Reenie. You’re going to pass out if you don’t.”
This was going from bad to horrendous. “Are there drug dealers after me?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “The street value is around twenty-five thousand. That’s not enough to search for you. Not enough to risk anything. But you need to know everything we found and you have to promise to tell me anything else you remember.”
“I will. I swear. I’m not a bad person. I’m really not. I’m just trying to survive.”
“Shhhh,” he said, continuing to hold her. His hand was rubbing her back, his mouth to her head, his words muffled in her hair. “I know you’re not. And you are a survivor. Never forget it.”