Never Let You Go

by Erin Healy

  “Lexi. She doesn’t want my help.”

  “Does she know she needs it?”

  Grant started to say of course. Lexi was the one who’d told him about Ward’s demands. But Grant’s words got stuck on Ward’s claim about the inventory Lexi kept at her house. If it wasn’t outrageous enough that Lexi was in the business, it was even more ridiculous that she would keep a supply so close to Molly. Grant didn’t believe a person would change that much in seven years.

  Then again, he hoped he had.

  What did he know?

  Ward’s lie about Lexi’s affair with Norman Von Ruden had come on the heels of this claim. Why bother adding insult to injury unless he’d expected it to turn Grant against her?

  It was the first thing that had made sense to Grant in a long time. Ward would turn him and Lexi against each other. He’d load her up with Grant’s debts and make her resent him. Ward would fabricate some lie about an affair to make Grant throw up his hands.

  Why?

  Grant thought on this. Why? Why would Ward bother?

  To have her for himself.

  Grant snorted a laugh at this thought—Lexi wouldn’t have Warden Pavo any sooner than she would have run off with Norman Von Ruden! Angelo was more her type. Grant wondered if they were officially an item. Could he blame her? Yes. Yes. He and Lexi were still married, and he didn’t care what anyone had to say about that. She was his wife.

  In fact, their marriage was reason enough for Ward to lower the boom on them. Divide and conquer. Keep Grant from playing the hero. Ward must have been ticked off at Lexi about something other than jealousy.

  What better way to harm the parents than to harm the child? And what better way to harm a child than to come between her parents? Worse, what would happen to Molly if Ward convinced authorities Lexi was up to no good? What if he’d planted drugs at Lexi’s place and she didn’t know about it?

  A drug dealer for a mother and an ex-con for a father. A grandfather in a mental institution and a grandmother who traveled the world on a fixed income.

  They’d take her away.

  Grant wasn’t sure that Lexi needed him, but Molly did. He pushed past Richard out of the bathroom and searched for his cordless phone. It sat on top of a pile of junk mail in the kitchen.

  He punched in Alice Grüggen’s cell phone number. “Take a rain check on lunch?” Grant asked Richard.

  “Sure. Looks like you need to get to work.”

  “Not today I don’t.”

  It was nearly noon. High noon. Grant looked at that front door of Lexi’s apartment and saw it as the last opportunity he had to make things right. Because if he messed this up, if Ward hadn’t hidden any drugs here—if Lexi and Molly didn’t need protection from anything—Lexi would call the cops on him herself.

  Of course, the whole thing could be a lie. That was his risk, wasn’t it? Better to risk himself than Molly, he decided.

  Lexi wasn’t one to keep a spare key anywhere except maybe in the glove box of her car. Nevertheless, Grant checked. He sifted through landscaping rocks under the front windows. He ran his fingers along the top of the door frame. He knocked on the siding, looking for a loose or hollow panel.

  She shared walls with neighbors on both sides, so when Grant exhausted his search of the front, he had to jog down the sidewalk a few hundred yards before finding an easement that led into the rear common areas. He counted units until he reached Lexi’s. Two plastic chairs sat on a six-foot-square concrete slab under a small awning. Behind the chairs, a sliding glass door led into the master bedroom.

  The curtains were drawn, the door locked at the handle and bolted at the seam. A sawed-off broom handle lay in the track.

  The window of the second bedroom was six feet down the wall. Grant moved one of the chairs under it to get a better look.

  It was open three inches. Lexi would never have left it unlocked, but Alice . . . That must be the room she was staying in. Well, Grant thought, if he wasn’t the hero of the day, there was a slim possibility that Lexi might be more angry at her mother for giving him this opening than she would be at him for breaking and entering.

  He used his car key to slice an access in the screen, then stuck his hand through to shove the window open. He lifted the metal mini blinds and crawled in.

  In seconds Grant was standing on Alice’s bed. He closed the window and studied the other apartments within sight of Lexi’s unit. Nothing caused him to think he’d been spotted. At midday in the middle of the week, it was possible he’d been lucky. Or everyone was at work. Regardless, he needed to move quickly.

  Working in Grant’s favor was the size of the apartment. Seven, eighthundred square feet. Also working in his favor was the fact that hiding drugs was a bit old-hat for him. He could make a fewassumptions:

  One. Neither Lexi nor Ward would hide drugs anywhere that Molly might accidentally find them. Laundry, out. Video and DVD players, out.

  Two. If Ward hid this stuff and Lexi didn’t know about it, he’d spread it out, reduce his chance of her finding the whole lot. Grant, however, knew at least some of Ward’s favorite spots.

  Three. On the downside, Grant had no way of knowing exactly how much to collect to clean out the stash.

  He started in Alice’s room, which did not appear to have been shared by Molly. Someone else lived here. The clothes and shoes in the closet were too grown up for a nine-year-old, too youthful for a travel writer in her late fifties. Grant checked the heels of the shoes, and the insoles too. He patted down every item of clothing that was lined, and looked in every box on the shelves. He checked the carpet for loose corners. Nothing in the light fixtures, in the computer software jewel cases, or in the books on the shelf over the bed.

  He lifted framed pictures off the walls and checked the backs. One of the pictures was of Lexi with her old friend Gina. Maybe all the stuff was hers. He opened two framed pictures on the desk—nothing but cardboard and photos inside. He went through all the dresser drawers. A suitcase—heassumed Alice’s—stood in the corner of the room, and Grant touched every square inch of the inner and outer surfaces, looking for telltale padding in the lining.

  Fifteen minutes into his search of this one small room, he had found nothing. Grant began to wonder if he was a bigger fool than even Lexi had presumed.

  His eyes went back to the window, and the blinds that covered it. They were a bit battered, and the string ladder on the left was frayed. The center string was completely undone. Grant pulled on the cord to raise the slats. Friction caused it to drag.

  The blinds’ hardware was rusty, but the box flaps moved easily enough when he lifted them on each end and slid the blinds out of the window. The tube where the strings were threaded was hollow. Or should have been hollow. Grant landed his first find: a plastic bag of weed, maybe two or three ounces.

  This small discovery refreshed his sense of urgency, and he moved into other parts of the house. He couldn’t remember what time Lexi got off work. If Alice barged in, she’d be more understanding.

  Within a half hour, Grant found packages of weed, crystal meth, and cocaine in the bathroom and Lexi’s bedroom: in the base of a lamp, in the elbow of a floor vent, in the toilet tank, and in the spring-loaded rod of the toilet-paper dispenser. There was more taped to the bottom side of Lexi’s headboard.

  Eventually, Grant thought he had maybe three or four thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise—more if the coke hadn’t been cut. If there was truly twenty-five grand in this little place, he had a lot more to unearth, but it wouldn’t be much longer before someone found him here.

  He gave himself two minutes to check one more place. Withdrawing the pocket knife he carried, he flipped open the screwdriver and removed the face plate from the light switch in Lexi’s room. Another bag of rocks had been stuffed into the wall there.

  When he repeated the process with the electrical outlets in the bedroom, the discovery repeated itself too. Grant broke out in a sweat. It would take him hours to go through t
he house like this. If he’d hidden this stuff himself he doubted he’d remember all the locations he’d used—and so far he’d gone through only the bedrooms and bathroom.

  Grant had amassed quite a pile of merchandise on the bedroom floor. Surely it was enough to convince Lexi to let him come back in and finish the search later. She’d see he was trying to help her, wouldn’t she?

  He grabbed a pillow off the bed and stripped it of its case, then dropped what he’d found into the makeshift bag.

  Someone pounded on the front door.

  Sweat broke out at Grant’s hairline.

  “Ms. Solomon? Sheriff’s department. May we have a word?”

  Not too bright, these guys, if they thought she was home instead of at work. Or maybe, Grant thought, he was the dim bulb and she had left the store a while ago. Or a neighbor had ratted on him.

  He looked out the sliding door. No cops back there.

  Across the narrow strip of brown lawn that covered the residents’ shared open space, another sliding door opened. A heavy-set, middle-aged woman stepped out with half a sandwich in her hand. She took a seat on her concrete step next to a pet’s water dish and bit into the bread. The name Juliet was painted on the side of the bowl.

  A foot-high headstone stuck out of the dirt near the woman’s feet.

  Choices: Run with the stash straight past a witness. Risk getting caught. Dump the supply. It would take awhile to flush this stuff. Risk Lexi disbelieving him. Risk that Ward would do this right next time. Leave the supply here and tell Lexi where to find it. Risk the officers coming in with dogs.

  Couldn’t anything be easy?

  It was a small town. More than likely these guys would leave and come back later, or keep an eye on the place. But if they had a warrant—and Ward could have given them enough for one, however he managed that—busting the door down to search and seize wasn’t out of the question. They didn’t seem either stealthy or equipped for that kind of a move, though.

  If they didn’t have a warrant, Lexi might invite them in, overconfident in her own innocence.

  Impossible to say.

  Grant tiptoed to the kitchen at the front of the apartment, keeping his head below the checkered curtains that covered only the bottom half of the windows. Two officers stood at the end of the long walk between Lexi’s front door at the gravel-edged driveway, talking to each other. Maybe they were going to wait for her after all.

  The sink had a garbage disposal in it. Grant lifted the tap and flipped on the motor, then emptied the pillowcase onto the counter and started dumping what he could. Several precious minutes ticked by.

  He threw twist ties and rubber bands into the trash and hoped no canine units would be involved in searching her home, if it came to that.

  A bigger problem was what to do with the plastic bags. Clogged plumbing would be a giveaway.

  Grant slipped out of his cross trainers and yanked the insoles out, layered folded bags in the bottom of the shoes, then replaced the linings. The material shifted around under his weight. Not a foolproof hiding place, but it might buy him some time.

  In the bedroom, he replaced the pillow case, then returned to the sliding door. The rear yard was empty.

  Grant scurried to make his exit then. His PO was going to apply to be reassigned when he heard about this one.

  He struggled to get the broom handle out of the track. The peg lock on the bottom of the door jammed. The lever lock on the door handle was broken. He wondered if Lexi ever opened this door.

  When the door finally came loose, it screeched.

  Silently apologizing to Lexi for not being able to lock the door from the outside, Grant exited, dropped the curtain behind him, and ran.

  Straight into a brown-shirted beanpole of a sheriff.

  { chapter 29 }

  At noon, out of habit rather than hunger, Lexi went to the deli and scooped a few spoonfuls of macaroni salad into a plastic tub. Fifteen minutes wasn’t long enough for lunch, but Lenny allowed her to help herself to the lowerend salads because she never took much.

  Lexi stared at the sallow pasta and couldn’t imagine eating it.

  You killed your sister. You killed your sister.

  Her mother’s voice would not leave her alone. Lexi considered taking a few of her sick hours and going home early.

  A cute couple was at the counter ordering sandwiches. They had the tan raccoon faces of skiers and were laughing with each other. The girl put her arm in the crook of the guy’s elbow and leaned on him. He was tall and blond.

  Lexi’s thoughts went to Angelo, who was both a practical stranger and the closest friend she’d had in a long time. Close friend wasn’t quite right. It was more like he was the husband she never had. The protector she needed. A miracle worker.

  It was a miracle how he’d gotten rid of the crazed resident who’d attacked her. Angelo had been tight-lipped about the incident, refusing to answer her questions about his perspective on what had happened, in particular how the lunatic had gotten away so fast. She would have said he vanished, but that didn’t make sense. The image of steam rising from that discarded jacket wouldn’t leave her alone. Even now, she shivered.

  Whatever the explanation was, Lexi owed Angelo her own life now, in addition to Molly’s.

  Someone was calling her name from the direction of the break room. Rachel, she thought, the head cashier.

  “You got a call,” she yelled. King Grocery’s small-town, mom-and-pop version of a PA system. Lexi hurried around the counter and down the aisle to the back of the store. Rachel stood there with the old cord stretched out the door behind her.

  “New boyfriend?” she whispered, waggling her brows.

  Lexi must have looked as shocked as she felt, having not dated for nearly a decade, because Rachel said, “You’ll have to introduce me to him, ’kay?”

  Lexi frowned and held out her hand. Rachel placed the receiver in it.

  “Hello?”

  “Sexy Lexi, how are you?”

  At the moment she was wishing she could avoid the last person she wanted to see, think of, or speak to.

  “What do you want, Ward?”

  Rachel mouthed, Ward? Lexi turned her back.

  “What have you decided about Matthew’s parole?”

  “I thought I had until Friday to decide.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Lexi. You know what you’re going to do already. Most people know and never change their minds, no matter how long they think about it.”

  “I need time.”

  “You’ve had seven years. A couple of days isn’t going to change anything.”

  Lexi let the little plastic cup of macaroni salad fall into the large trash can under the phone.

  “I heard you went to see your old flame yesterday,” Ward said. “How is he?”

  “How did you know—”

  “Ready to take you dancing as soon as he’s out of the slammer?”

  “Stop it.”

  “You’re a heartbreaker, Lexi,” Ward said. “Probably drove Grant right back to his sordid past. You and Norman, you and Angelo . . . he was all broken up.”

  “You told Grant.” She meant to ask it as a question but it came out as a fact. Lexi hoped Ward was messing with her.

  Probably not. She wondered if the news had wounded Grant.

  Wounding Grant, getting back at him for his hurtful actions, should have been satisfying on some level. So why wasn’t it? She realized she didn’t want to hurt him again. The anger she’d felt toward him at the Residence was what she’d conditioned herself to feel but not what she wanted any more. They’d both suffered enough.

  “Sure I did. You haven’t gone soft on your old man now, have you?” The sharp tone of Ward’s voice recaptured her attention. “Your bitterness is what gives you your edge, Lexi. You don’t want to lose that, do you?”

  Wariness crept into the corners of her mind. What edge? “Ward, get to the point or end the call.”

  “My point is that you don’t
need until Friday.”

  Lexi’s knuckles went white on the receiver, she gripped it so hard.

  “You already know, for instance, whether you will let your sister’s killer go free or protect your own reputation. What’s it going to be, whore?”

  It took some courage for Lexi to say, “I haven’t decided.”

  “You know. In your heart of hearts, you know.”

  “For the sake of everything that is holy, Ward, deal with me straight.”

  “Straight? Straight? All that I know is crooked, Lexi. Your crooked little ways in your crooked little heart, acting like you drew your life map with a ruler! Let’s stop and talk about what is bent, why don’t we?”

  His lips were close to the phone. Lexi could hear him breathing.

  “Let’s talk about all the ways you could have saved your sister from dying.”

  “What do you know about that?”

  “All that I need to. Tara’s death was your fault.”

  “No.”

  “Blame it on whomever you like. She wouldn’t have made arrangements to see him if you hadn’t crammed her pleas down her throat and turned her away. She wouldn’t have tried to save your marriage if you hadn’t prostituted yourself to—”

  “It wasn’t my fault! Norman was . . . I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. It’s over. Now.”

  “Yes, we’re done.”

  “Don’t call me again before Friday.”

  “Oh, I won’t be calling you again, Sexy Lexi. It’s been a pleasure knowing you.”

  She blinked. What was he saying? “What? But what about . . . Did Grant give you the money?”

  “You were supposed to give me the money. Too late for that, though. I have what I need from you now.”

  Her heart rate kicked up as if she were running. “I don’t understand.”

  “I thought we were finished with this conversation.”

  “Do you want the money or not?”

  “As I said, no. I have secured something far more valuable. Superior collateral. We’ll call it even, shall we?”

  Dear God, please, not Molly . . . Her mind couldn’t form any more coherent thought than that. Lexi’s eyes started to burn. She screamed without thinking, “Warden Pavo! This was not what you said would happen!”