by Karen Rose
‘I packed you some clothes,’ Lucy told Thorne. ‘JD and that horrible little Detective Brickman were with me in your house the whole time, so don’t say any of those things you’re getting ready to say, because I was safe.’
Thorne scowled. ‘Thank you,’ he grunted. ‘And thank you for getting my bass.’ He lifted his cheek when Lucy bent to kiss it. ‘Do I have a swarm of media around my house?’
‘Yep,’ she said. ‘Part and parcel, Thorne. You knew to expect it.’
‘I know. But I don’t have to like it. At least getting in here was easier than getting away from the hospital.’
Because Gwyn’s new condo had excellent security. She paid for it through the nose, but along with a kick-ass security system and several handguns in her safe, it enabled her to sleep at night. Sometimes.
Lucy checked Thorne’s eyes and nodded at whatever she saw there. ‘You’re looking better. Did they tell you what they found in your system?’
‘Yeah. I’ll cover that.’ He looked to the door with a sigh. ‘When everyone gets here.’
Within five minutes, Gwyn’s small living room was packed to near bursting. Jamie had positioned his chair at the foot of the sofa. Phil was sitting at his feet. Sam and Ruby were on the floor along with Paige. Clay and Stevie took the only chairs because they’d accumulated enough injuries over the years to make walking painful, so sitting on the floor was not going to happen. Stevie still walked with a cane after being shot nearly three years before, and probably always would. Clay was noticeably slower after his last brush with a bullet – taken while guarding his adult daughter, Taylor.
Clay had brought Tweety back, and the dog followed Gwyn around, looking puzzled at all the people.
Taylor’s stepfather, Frederick, filled out the group. He pulled two of the milk crates she used to store her vinyl albums from a corner, carefully stacked the albums on the floor, then made the crates into a makeshift chair. ‘I worked a ranch for years,’ he said when Clay tried to make him take his own chair. ‘I’ve sat on a whole lot worse, trust me.’
The two men had bonded over their love for Taylor, who was absent. ‘Is Taylor babysitting?’ Gwyn asked.
‘She is,’ Lucy confirmed.
‘And loving it,’ Frederick added, then gave Thorne his attention. ‘What the hell happened, Thorne? Who is Patricia Segal, and why was she in your bed?’
‘And why is she dead?’ Clay added, and heads nodded throughout the room.
Thorne sighed. ‘Okay. Look, this is hard. I haven’t talked about this in nineteen years. So . . .’
‘So . . . ?’ Clay prompted.
‘Take all the time you need, Thorne,’ Paige said quietly. ‘We’ll be patient. Won’t we, Clay?’
‘No,’ Clay answered. ‘Because this is really bad.’
Heads bobbed in nods again, murmurs rippling through the room.
Her dog curled up at her feet, Gwyn perched on the arm of the sofa, leaning against Thorne’s rigid back. Here she could give him support, but the mirror on the opposite wall allowed her to see his face. There were mirrors all over her condo. Nobody would ever sneak up on her in her own home, ever again. ‘At least he’s honest,’ she murmured in Thorne’s ear. ‘You want me to tell them what we know so far?’
Thorne nodded gratefully. ‘Please.’
Gwyn proceeded to tell them everything she, Thorne and Jamie had discussed in the hospital room, including the possible scenarios. ‘Hyatt says the woman is Patricia Linden Segal. This means something to Thorne and Jamie. All I know is that Patricia Linden is the sister of the boy Thorne was accused of killing nineteen years ago.’
Thorne twisted abruptly so that he could look up at her over his shoulder. ‘Did I tell you that?’
‘No, but I can Google,’ she told him, keeping her tone sarcastic. Sarcasm was both her weapon and her best shield, and she wielded it as bravely – and as often – as she could. ‘It wasn’t easy to find, but I was determined. You were being seen to by the doctor and I needed something to do.’ She’d always respected his right to privacy, but the game had changed the moment she’d found a dead woman in his bed.
It would have been nearly impossible to find the article about the murder of which Thorne had been accused if she hadn’t known his legal last name had once been White. He’d changed it to Thorne when he was eighteen and she’d never asked him why. But now she thought she knew. The name change had been filed in the court only a few days after the jury had returned with their not-guilty verdict.
She wondered why he’d chosen Thorne as his new name and not Jamie’s last name – Maslow. When they were alone, she planned to ask. Among many other things. Her list of private questions was steadily growing.
‘So the murder of Patricia Segal is a deliberate link to your past,’ Clay said.
‘Deliberate and painful,’ Phil murmured, and Gwyn remembered that the man had known Thorne back then. He’d been Thorne’s teacher in high school, and he and Jamie had taken Thorne in. But that was all she knew. Neither Thorne, Jamie nor Phil ever talked about that part of their lives.
‘Yeah,’ Thorne murmured, then bumped her lightly with his shoulder, indicating that she should continue.
‘The only other thing I know,’ Gwyn went on, ‘is that the doctor said that Thorne had been given GHB – and a lot of it. It is possible to OD on the stuff, and he’d come very close to full cardiac failure.’
Angry murmurs filled the room and Jamie’s jaw clenched. ‘The doctor also said that had Gwyn not found him when she did,’ he said, ‘there wouldn’t have been enough of the drug left in his system to find. It has a short half-life. Levels had already dropped considerably. The doctor wasn’t exactly sure when he’d been dosed, but she guessed at the minimum he could have been given based on his body weight, considering he’d been knocked out. She believes he’d been dosed at least four hours before Gwyn arrived, maybe a little more.’
‘How long had the victim been dead?’ Stevie asked.
Lucy shrugged. ‘Her wounds were fresh. I’ve recused myself from the autopsy due to my friendship and business relationship with Thorne. Neil Quartermaine will do it, but I trust him to do a good job. We’ll have to wait for the report, but I can tell you that rigor had only started to set in. I noticed that her jaw was affected when I tried to find her pulse, but her extremities were still fluid. I’d guess that she’d been dead no more than two to four hours.’
‘Does Hyatt know this?’ Stevie asked.
‘Yes,’ Lucy said. ‘Well, he knows my two-to-four-hour guess because I told him that when they first brought Thorne in. Unless Thorne gives his permission for the ER doc to share his medical information with Baltimore PD, she hasn’t told Hyatt yet about the time frame in which he was drugged.’
‘I didn’t give my permission,’ Thorne said. ‘I’m not sure if I will or not. It depends on what else we find.’
‘We’ll come up with a plan of action, but we can’t do that until we hear the whole story.’ Clay grimaced as Paige elbowed him. ‘Dammit, Paige, that hurt.’
‘You’re supposed to be being patient,’ she hissed.
‘You’re supposed to not hurt me,’ Clay shot back.
Stevie rolled her eyes. ‘Guys, enough. See what I put up with every damn day? They call themselves professional business partners, but they squabble like siblings.’
Clay had brought Paige into his PI firm three years before, but their work styles – and their personalities – had meshed together as if they’d known each other forever. The two grinned at one another before turning back to Thorne expectantly.
Thorne shook his head. ‘I’m so sorry for you, Stevie. I’d have knocked their heads together a long time ago.’
‘Like to see you try that,’ Paige muttered, but it was said with humor. Paige was a black belt and an international sparring champion. Thorne had her by about eight inches i
n height and a hundred pounds of solid muscle, and Paige had recently given birth to a beautiful daughter, but it would still be a fairer fight than most.
Gwyn chuckled. ‘I’d buy tickets.’ She had a lot of respect for Paige. The woman had helped her immeasurably over the last few years. The self-defense classes she taught had enabled Gwyn to feel confident enough to leave her house again. Now Gwyn had her own brown belt. Her personal goal was to be a black belt by the time she was forty. That gave her two years, and Paige believed it was possible. Paige was her hero and one of her greatest allies.
Now she gave Gwyn an encouraging wink that managed to convey as much sympathy as sass, and it struck Gwyn that her sensei was there for her as much as for Thorne. That at some point the woman had become one of her friends as well. It shouldn’t have surprised her so much. But it did. Maybe they’d been friends for a while. Maybe I just never noticed.
It made her wonder what else she hadn’t noticed from within the walls she’d hidden behind for the last four years. Maybe it’s time to come out now. Thorne needs us. All of us. All of me.
‘You’re supposed to be on my side,’ Thorne murmured.
Gwyn leaned in close. ‘You know I am,’ she whispered, so that only he could hear.
He drew a deep breath, then let it out. ‘I know,’ he murmured. ‘Let’s do this.’
She lifted her eyes to the mirror to find he was looking at her reflection as well. There was something there. Something grim but also . . . hopeful.
‘Yes. Let’s,’ she murmured back, and felt a tiny spear of terror because she was promising him . . . something. She wasn’t entirely sure what, and that scared the bejesus out of her. One step at a time. It was how she’d lived her life for the past four years. She’d get through the next few days. And then they’d see.
Baltimore, Maryland,
Sunday 12 June, 7.30 P.M.
This story . . . Thorne didn’t want to think about it. He never wanted to think about it. But he always did. Every time he walked into Sheidalin he thought of it. And he thought of Sherri.
‘I wasn’t born in this country,’ he started. ‘I came from New Zealand as a child.’
Every eye blinked at that. ‘I never would have thought that,’ Stevie said. ‘You have no trace of an accent.’
‘Because I left when I was young. And I was . . . persuaded to lose it when I moved to the US.’
Lucy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Persuaded by whom?’
‘My stepfather, but I’ll get to him in a minute. My father’s name was Thomas Thorne Junior. I’m actually a third.’ He swallowed hard, remembering his dad. How much the man had loved him. How much I loved him back. ‘My dad died when I was five, and my mother remarried. She told everyone it was because she’d fallen in love with Willy White, but that wasn’t true. She told my grandmother – my father’s mother – that it was because she could no longer afford to support me on her own, but that wasn’t true either. My grandmother paid the bills and made sure I saw every one of them, in case I ever had to do it myself someday. The life-insurance money my father had left my mother was more than enough.’
‘Why would your grandmother think you might need to pay the bills when you were only five years old, Thorne?’ Lucy asked, and he realized he’d gone silent.
‘She didn’t really expect me to pay bills, but she was old and she worried about what would happen if she died, because after my father’s death my mom started drinking. She drank a lot. Anyway, she met up with this man, Willy White, in a bar and brought him home. He was not a nice man. But by then my mother was no longer a nice woman either, so they got along all right. I was another story. He liked to use his fists and he was a big guy. I wasn’t this big then.’
‘Because you were only a baby,’ Ruby murmured, her voice thick. ‘He beat you?’
Thorne smiled down at her where she and Sam sat on the floor, twined around each other. He’d always had a soft spot for Ruby, starting back when she worked for Lucy in the ME’s office. She was fiercely loyal. ‘It’s okay, Ruby. I turned out fine.’
Her smile was teary, but that was because she was pregnant and her hormones were all over the place. That would make what he was about to say next hard for her to hear. He gave Sam a glance that he hoped communicated some kind of warning. He was relieved to see Sam’s arm tighten around her. All right then.
‘My mother married him because she got pregnant. He continued to beat the shit out of me. What I didn’t know at the time was that he beat her too. In any case, she lost the baby. All I knew was that she’d miscarried and that they yelled at each other a lot afterward. I didn’t understand why at the time. It made sense later. Anyway, he was an American working in New Zealand on a visa, and if his abuse became known and he was arrested he could lose his job, because his visa would be revoked. I only know this because it’s what they argued about most often. My mother would threaten to tell, and I wished she would. But she never did. His job ended and he was called back to the US. We came too. We became citizens a few years later, right about the time he lost his job. He’d come back from lunches drunk too many times. He blamed my mother and me, right up until the year I turned fifteen.’
‘Because then you became bigger than him,’ Sam said quietly.
Thorne knew he’d understand. Sam’s father had been an addict. Sam knew the drill.
‘Yeah. I told him that he’d laid hands on us for the last time. He hated me even more after that. He was barely making ends meet then. We counted every penny. But by some miracle . . .’ he grimaced as he said the word, because it still left a bad taste in his mouth, ‘I won a scholarship to a very fancy prep school.’
‘Ridgewell Academy,’ Gwyn supplied. ‘It was in the article about Richard Linden’s murder.’
He nodded. ‘Yeah. I hated it there. I was so hopeful at first. It was my ticket out of my own life, you know? I worked hard.’
‘So hard,’ Phil murmured. ‘You were my very best student.’
Everyone blinked in surprise once again. ‘You knew him then?’ Clay asked.
‘Phil was my history teacher,’ Thorne said, then smiled at the older man. ‘The only one who spoke up for me when the shit hit the fan.’
‘Because the others were fucking cowards,’ Phil growled.
Jamie petted his partner’s hair. ‘Easy,’ he soothed. ‘He turned out okay, remember? We did good.’
Thorne swallowed a laugh. ‘Yes. You both did good.’
Jamie gave him a wink. ‘And you were already potty trained. Bonus.’
Thorne cleared his throat, conscious of the stares pointed in their direction. ‘They kind of adopted me. But I’ll get to that in a minute. There were a few of us scholarship students and I think we were all equally disappointed. The school really didn’t want us there, except for a couple of teachers like Phil. Maybe Coach Marion, but that was only because I was lead scorer on his soccer team. We made the state finals every year I was on the team. But even he didn’t stand up for me when the chips were down. He started to, but the principal threatened his job. Threatened Phil’s too, but Phil did the right thing.’
‘Your coach had a wife and five kids,’ Jamie said softly. ‘Phil had only me, and I had a trust fund.’
Phil gave Jamie a questioning look, and Jamie nodded. Phil turned to Thorne. ‘Your coach contributed to your bail. He made us promise not to tell. He . . . he never really got over not standing up to the principal for you. But he cared. You should know that.’
Thorne stared at the two men who’d been his fathers all these years. ‘Really? I . . . I’ll need to think on that later. I need to get through this.’ Because he was coming to the worst part. Sherri. He shuddered out a breath. ‘I had a girlfriend. Her name was Sherri.’
Behind him, Gwyn inhaled sharply. ‘Your letters,’ she whispered.
He’d known she’d figure it out. ‘Yes.’ He closed his eyes, rem
embering Sherri’s face. Her laugh. The way she’d looked at him that very last day.
‘When we started the club,’ Lucy explained quietly, ‘we each contributed three letters of the name of someone we’d loved and lost. The L-I-N at the end was for my brother Linus, who died when I was fourteen. I’m guessing S-H-E was Thorne’s Sherri.’
Everyone looked over Thorne’s shoulder at Gwyn, whose body had grown tense against his back.
‘I-D-A was from my aunt,’ she said stiffly, and he had the distinct impression she was lying. He wondered why.
A glance in the mirror revealed that her expression had grown shuttered. ‘None of us told the others who the letters were for,’ he said, trying to take the group’s focus off Gwyn. She was probably at her nerves’ end just having so many people invading her private space. She’d had lots of parties before Evan’s betrayal four and a half years ago. She’d moved immediately afterward, and this condo hadn’t had more than a few people in it at one time. ‘We just put the letters together to make Sheidalin and moved forward.’
His attempt to divert attention hadn’t worked. Everyone was still staring at Gwyn, and she shifted behind him uncomfortably.
Until Paige spoke. ‘Wait. Lucy and Linus? Lucy, your parents were the worst.’
Lucy rolled her eyes. ‘I know, right?’
That Lucy’s father had physically abused her as much as White had Thorne would be left unsaid, because chuckles filled the room and behind him, Gwyn relaxed. In the mirror he saw her throw a grateful glance Paige’s way. Paige’s slow smile was a silent ‘you’re welcome’.
‘Anyway, back to Sherri.’ All eyes returned to Thorne and he drew another deep breath. ‘We dated all the way through high school. Her father wasn’t crazy about me, but I called him sir and treated Sherri like she was precious. Because she was.’ His voice cracked a little and he cleared his throat again. ‘So he didn’t hate me.’