Stanton Series Box Set: Stanton Series (Box Set)

by T L Swan

  I hang up and get dressed as quickly as I can and call the lawyer. Luckily he has seen the news and is on his way to the police station now. How much more shit can we take? Half an hour later I arrive at Joshua’s house and walk into the lounge room to find Bridget distraught and the mothers crying as they watch the news on the television.

  Now on breaking news, Joshua Stanton billionaire software developer has been arrested and charged with the murder of his wife Natasha Stanton. Natasha went missing from their luxury yacht 26 days ago in what can only be described as bizarre circumstances. Many are likening this to the Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood case thirty years ago. In explosive allegations a love triangle had emerged between Natasha, her husband and Natasha’s bodyguard only hours before her death. Police are yet to disclose the evidence they have found.

  “Turn that shit off,” Cameron snaps. I look around the room full of people, but there’s no sign of Ben.

  “Where’s Ben?” I ask Bridget.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  I walk through the house in search of him. He’s taking this hard and blaming himself for Natasha’s death. It’s not his fault; it’s nobody’s fault. I walk up the hall and the only light on in the corridor is coming from Joshua’s garage. With a heavy heart I open the door and between the two cars I see Ben, his back to me and his head down.

  “Ben,” I call as I walk toward him.

  He drops his head and doesn’t answer me.

  I walk around to face him and he has tears streaming down his face.

  Empathy fills me. “Ben,” I whisper.

  He shakes his head, unable to speak.

  I grab him in an embrace. “Ben, it’s ok. This is not your fault.”

  “It is,” he grinds out.

  I pull back to look at his face. “Ben, pull your shit together. More than anytime in Joshua’s life he needs you now to be strong and lead his security team.”

  He screws his face up as he tries to hold in the tears. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispers.

  I run my hand down my face as I think—we are all so out of our depth.

  He shakes his head. “I can’t figure this out. I don’t know how to figure this out, Adrian.”

  “Nicholas is a psychologist and may have an opinion on the suspects. He will be here tomorrow. We can work this out, Ben, but I need you with me.”

  His head stays down.

  “Joshua and I, even Cameron, have full faith in you and the longer you sit around blaming yourself the longer the killer is walking free.”

  His haunted eyes meet mine.

  “Get your fucking shit together and help us,” I urge.

  He nods.

  “I mean it.”

  He nods again.

  “And talk to Bridget, she needs you more than ever and you’re just being a prick.”

  He wipes his eyes. “I can’t handle Bridget at the moment.” He shakes his head. “She’s just screaming at me all the time and crying.”

  “Her sister was just murdered, Ben. What do you expect? You can’t be that naïve as to think that she would take this well,” I snap. God, this guy is clueless when it comes to women.

  He swallows as he listens and pulls his hands through his hair.

  “Man up, get out there and do what Joshua is paying you to do,” I snap.

  He nods with renewed purpose.

  “We can do it Ben, I know we can. We can find this person.”

  He gives me a sad nod and walks toward the houseguests.

  I blow out a deep breath. Now I just have to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do next.

  Joshua

  I walk through the police station with my hands behind me in handcuffs. The officers all stop what they are doing and stare and I drop my head in shame. How could they think I did this to Natasha? I adored her. I wish it was me dead instead of her. I am ushered into a cell and a pair of orange overalls lie folded on the bed.

  “Get changed, Mr Stanton,” the female officer says as she undoes the handcuffs behind my back. I hold my wrists in my hands as I stare at her. I don’t think I have ever been so close to the edge. I’m about to lose it.

  Stay calm, stay calm.

  “I said get dressed,” she snaps.

  I frown. “What? Here?” I snap as I gesture to the twenty something people who can see into the cell through the glass wall.

  She fakes a smile. “Get used to it. We save the privacy for non-murderers down the hall,” she sneers sarcastically. The male guard snickers under his breath.

  “We need to do a full body search,” he replies.

  “You are not touching me,” I snap.

  She rolls her eyes. “Just take all of your clothes off and put them onto the bed, pretty boy. Remove your underwear and socks and when we are satisfied you may put those two items back on.”

  I frown as my eyes flick to the bed. “I’m innocent,” I state.

  “Yeah and I’m fucking Brittany Spears, asshole,” she replies.

  “Get out!” I yell.

  She fakes a smile. “If you want I can get the boys to hold you down while we do a cavity search. It’s your choice,” she sneers.

  I am humiliated and drop my head again in shame. The male officer gives me a breath test and I blow into the tube. I’m going to fail. I’ve had a lot to drink.

  The female officer takes a look at the reading on the machine and shakes her head. “Out celebrating that you got away with murder, were you?”

  My eyes hold hers. I have never wanted to hit a woman so much in my life.

  “Sorry to break up the party,” she sneers.

  I step toward her.

  “Get fucking dressed, asshole, before I taser your ass once more. If there’s one thing I love to do is taser motherfucking wife beaters like you.”

  I narrow my eyes and undress in silence as their beady eyes watch me and they take my clothes and put them into a plastic bag.

  “Watch?” she demands as she holds her hand out.

  I remove my watch and pass it to her and they look at it together.

  “How much did this watch cost?” she asks.

  I glare at her. “More than your fucking house,” I sneer.

  She narrows her eyes in disgust.

  “You won’t be questioned tonight because you are over the legal limit,” the male officer replies. “Sleep it off. See you tomorrow.” He throws a blanket onto the plastic bedding and they both leave the room.

  The door locks behind them with a deafening sound.

  Natasha

  Four weeks earlier

  The distant sound of a buzzer bounces off the walls around me and I struggle to open my eyes. Shit, my head hurts. My hands instinctively clutch my temples as I fight my heavy eyelids. My vision is blurred and I continually blink to try and bring them into focus in the darkness. What the hell is going on? In my peripheral vision I see someone enter the room and attend to the thing making the buzzing noise. From what I can see it looks like a drip or something. I squint my eyes to try and see. Where the hell am I?

  “Joshua,” I whisper through a gravelly throat. “Baby, what are you doing?”

  No answer.

  I frown. “Joshua.”

  “Sshhh,” a male voice whispers.

  My heart rate picks up—that’s not Joshua’s voice.

  “Joshua?” I call, more desperate. I blink my eyes frantically as I try to see. “Who are you? Where am I?” I stammer.

  I feel my arm being lifted and something being injected into the drip. “Oww,” I snap as I pull my arm from the grip.

  “You are in the hospital, Natasha. Go back to sleep. Joshua is here,” the gentle voice coos.

  Oh, relief fills me and I smile as I slip back into unconsciousness, my love is here. All is ok.

  I wake to the dusting of sunlight kissing my face. It’s early morning and my eyes search the space I am in. Where am I? Distant foggy memories of the night before and a man in the room make me sit up instan
tly.

  Was that a dream?

  My eyes dart around nervously. What the fuck? The carpeted room is huge and luxurious, with a king bed and bedside tables. On the far wall opposite the beds are six televisions hanging mounted from the ceiling and under that a small table for two and two highback chairs. I bring my hand up to wipe my hair from my face and see that my right wrist has a large bandage around it. What happened?

  “Joshua?” I call.

  I stand and slowly walk to the doorway to the right of the room and open it: a large bathroom complete with marble bath and shower. Where am I?

  More urgently I walk to the large black door on the other side of the room and turn the knob.

  It’s locked. I jiggle the handle as I try to open the door. Panic sets in and I bang on the door.

  “Hello,” I call. “What’s happening? The door is locked,” I yell.

  “Joshua,” I yell. “Ben.”

  No reply. Silence.

  I walk back to the bathroom with my heart pumping hard. What’s going on? Where am I? Where the hell is Joshua?

  I look around the room nervously for my handbag. That’s right, I left it at the wedding. Huh? I was on the boat. I sit on the edge of the bed while I go over the last thing I remember. We went to the wedding. The text. Max. My eyes widen and then we went to the boat and went to sleep. I frown. I don’t understand. I stand and walk to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. I look like shit and what am I wearing? I look down at the black nightgown I am in. I don’t own this.

  What the hell is going on?

  I start to bang on the door frantically. “Hello. Is anybody there?” I scream. I start to panic. Where am I? Where is Joshua?

  “Ben,” I yell. “Where are you?”

  I listen for an answer.

  “Cameron,” I scream.

  Silence.

  The televisions all come on at once. No sound. Just vision. I drop to the bed at what is unfolding in front of me. News channels, every one of them has a different channel. I frown as I try to make sense of this. I walk around the room once more and notice on one of the bedside tables a basket with six television remotes in it.

  Huh? This is bizarre. I pick up one of the remotes and point it at the televisions to change the sound and the volume on one of the televisions goes up slowly. I try to change the channel but it doesn’t work, just the volume.

  I’m lost. I have no frigging idea what is going on. With the news playing in the background I go into the bathroom and look in the bathroom cupboards. Hair products, face creams, moisturiser, tampons and pads. I slam the door shut in shock and storm back into the bedroom and swing open the wardrobe cupboards. Clothes, underwear, pyjamas. Whose bedroom am I in?

  The television sounds.

  Now to breaking news. Joshua Stanton’s wife Natasha has gone missing from his luxury liner moored in the bay overnight. Mr Stanton awoke to find Natasha missing and the boat covered in blood. Just whose blood still remains a mystery.

  My eyes widen in horror. What?

  The footage goes to an aerial shot from a chopper, of divers searching the water around the boat. Ben, Max and the bodyguards are on the shoreline talking to police. Television cameras and reporters are everywhere. Oh my god, what the fuck is going on?

  Joshua Stanton is apparently so distraught he has been taken against his will to County Hospital where concerned family members are by his bedside. Police are still unsure exactly what unfolded here but eyewitnesses report that the Stantons were last night involved in what appears to be a very public domestic dispute over Natasha’s affair with her bodyguard.

  Oh no. My hand goes over my mouth. Oh my god. I stand and start to pace. Oh my god. Oh my fucking god. I hold my hands together as if to pray. Joshua, oh my darling. I’m ok. I’m ok. My fury ignites and I start to pound on the door.

  “What do you want?” I scream.

  “Name the price, asshole,” I yell. I pound on the door with all my might. The vision goes to the news story of us on another channel and I quickly run for the remotes and start picking them all up and aiming them at the television showing that story to work out which remote works with it. I finally find the right one and I turn it up. It shows the aerial vision of the boat again and then it goes to vision from the night before and footage from someone’s phone of Joshua and me fighting in the carpark. My stomach drops.

  Joshua—did they hurt Joshua and that’s why he’s in the hospital? I start to bang on the door and then I run to the window. I am on a farm, paddocks as far as I see. No neighbours. I try to open the window but I can’t budge it. I start to cry in frustration as I struggle with the heavy window. Oww, my arm is hurting. What happened to my arm anyway? I slowly unwrap the bandage and gasp when I see the huge cut across my wrist with large black stitches. God, it’s a bad job. My tears of fear start to fall. Whoever cut my arm didn’t care if I bled to death as that’s a main artery. With shaking legs I walk into the bathroom and close the door. I throw down the lid and sit on the toilet. What do I do? For fifteen minutes I sit, frozen with fear.

  Break the window. Yes, break the window. I look in the bathroom cupboard for something strong enough to do it with. Nothing but plastic bottles. I walk back out and look through the room for something, anything. God, why didn’t I pay attention when I watched McGuiyver all those years ago? There is a plant in the corner in a ceramic pot. I remove the plastic pot from the ceramic one and pick up the heavy pottery piece. I go back to the bed and take a run up and throw it at the window but my arm hampers my throw and it hits the window sill and bounces off. I pick it up again and the door opens.

  “What are you doing?” a huge man growls as he grabs my arm. I cower away from him, unsure of his intentions.

  “What do you want?” I cry.

  “I want you to shut your stupid mouth,” he sneers.

  “Help!” I scream as loud as I can over his shoulder into the house. “Help me!”

  He raises his hand and hits me hard across the face and I fall to the floor and then he kicks me in my stomach and I scream in pain.

  “Scream again and I will fucking kill you,” he growls as he picks my head up by the hair and slams my head against the ground.

  I see the side vision of the door shutting behind him and the sound of it locking.

  Tears roll down my face sideways to the floor. “Help me,” I whisper through my pain. “Joshua, help me.”

  Joshua

  I sit at the table next to Arthur, my lawyer, and opposite two police officers.

  One policeman places two vials in a ziplock plastic bag onto the table in front of us. “Can you explain this, Mr Stanton? Can I call you Joshua?”

  My eyes narrow at the vial. “What is it?” I ask.

  “You tell me,” he says flatly.

  I shake my head. “I’m not playing fucking charades. What is it?” I snap.

  “Rohypnol,” he says matter-of-factly.

  I frown.

  “We found eight vials of it at your property Willowvale,” the policeman continues.

  My eyes meet Arthur’s and I shake my head.

  “I don’t know how they got there,” I reply.

  “Course you don’t, that’s why your fingerprints are all over them.” He fakes a smile.

  “This is preposterous,” demands Arthur. “He was drugged himself.”

  “Did you murder Miss Marx and then take Rohypnol to cover your crime, Joshua?” the policeman sneers.

  I screw up my face. “No, I did not.”

  “Tell me about the prostitute in Australia who was murdered,” the policeman asks as he sits back in his chair.

  Arthur frowns at me in question.

  Fuck. I swallow the lump in my throat. “I was being blackmailed by a prostitute. She had footage of me and her having sex and was threatening to go public. She was blackmailing many men and apparently one of them got sick of it and she was murdered. I don’t know much about it,” I reply.

  Arthur rubs his face in f
rustration. He didn’t know that before now.

  The policeman cocks his head to one side. “Like you know nothing about the Rohypnol in your house.”

  I screw up my face. “It’s obviously been planted there. You can’t be that stupid,” I snap.

  The policeman sits back on his chair and folds his arms in front of him. “We can do this the long and hard way or you can just admit it to now and go for a more lenient sentence. Either way we will have you charged with murder.” He sneers as his eyes hold mine.

  “Enough,” Arthur snaps. “Application for bail is pending. There will be no further questioning until then.”

  “We are not finished.”

  “Yes, you are!” Arthur snaps as he bangs a folder onto the table in anger. “My client is innocent and unless you are going to ask some genuine questions and not seek a guilty plea we won’t be a part of this conversation.”

  The policeman narrows his eyes at me.

  Arthur stands. “Joshua, I will see you in the bail hearing soon, son.” His eyes stare at the policeman. “Show Joshua back to his cell.” His eyes turn to me. “And Joshua, don’t answer anything they ask you without me being present.”

  I nod gratefully. Thank fuck someone around here knows what the hell is going on.

  The policeman stands furiously as Arthur leaves the room and I sit in silence. One of them pushes a security button alerting someone to come and get me

  The taller policeman leans over the desk and sneers. “Just because you have money doesn’t mean you can get away with murder twice. We got you Stanton and the evidence is rock solid.”

  I glare at him.

  “Make yourself comfortable because you not going anywhere soon.”

  Five hours later I am led into a courtroom by my cuffs. My father, Cameron, Adrian and Ben are seated at the back of the room and I nod gratefully at them for coming.

  “All rise.” We stand as the judge enters the room. He nods and then sits down and starts to read the file notes. He looks over his glasses and studies me.