She sniffled. “Hey you.”
Julie groaned and tried to push upright. A pain in her side stopped her. “What...?”
“You fractured your arm,” her mom said when Julie stared at the hard, white cast cocooning her entire forearm from hand to elbow. “The doctor said it’ll heal in six weeks, but no heavy lifting.”
Still dazed, Julie stared at her mother like the other woman had just spoken Dutch. “What?”
Her mother wrung her slender hands anxiously together, making the multitude of rings adorning each finger glint in the harsh, fluorescent light. The plastic and copper bracelets along her arms jingled. She shot an anxious glance towards something behind her.
“I ... I should get the doctor,” she decided, speaking to herself. “He said to call him if you...” She trailed off, licked her lips and straightened her shoulders as though she were going into war. “Just lay still, okay?”
Not waiting for a response from Julie, Tessa hurried from the room in a flurry of shimmering silk. The airy dress in peacock blue woven through with gold threading was one of her designs, Julie could tell because it was flashy, but comfortable. Two things her mother deeply loved. Yet that still didn’t explain anything to Julie.
Licking her lips and trying to swallow down the nasty, pasty taste in her mouth, Julie heaved her sore body as high as the pillows would allow without agitating her arm.
She was in a hospital room. Like all hospital rooms, it smelled of disinfectant, medication, and sick people. The walls were a warm peach color, probably to counteract all the white that was everywhere else. Across her lap was a stiff, mint green blanket that made her skin itch. It kept getting caught in the IV tubes puncturing the back of her right hand, the hand not swaddled in a cast.
Julie sighed. She dug the heel of her right hand into her forehead, attempting to forcibly shove the chiseling little demons straight out of her skull.
“Headache?” A short, round man with kind blue eyes and a neatly trimmed beard the exact white of his doctor’s coat stepped into the room. He held a clipboard in one hand and a pair of glasses in the other. He smiled at her as he crossed to the bed. “Hello Julie. I’m Dr. Dreyer. How are you feeling?”
“Confused,” Julie replied honestly. “What happened?”
He slid his glasses onto the bridge of his nose and peered down at the clipboard. “You suffered from multiple contusions, lacerations, a fractured wrist, and a concussion.” He lowered the clipboard to peer over it at her. “You don’t remember?”
The pain behind her eyes was blinding, but she worked through it, wracking her brain for memories of why she hurt so badly and why there was an anxious gnawing in her chest, like she needed to do something, be somewhere, but she couldn’t remember...
“Mason!” His name blurted out of her even before she had the full image in her head. “Where is he? Is he all right?”
The doctor stared at her a moment. Very slowly, he set the clipboard down on the end table next to her bed and took a careful step forward.
“Why don’t you relax,” he told her gently. “I want to take your vitals, then afterwards, I’ll get a nurse to—”
“Mason!” she said again, louder. “Where is he?”
The doctor shook his head, and Julie’s heart plummeted straight into her stomach. “I don’t know,” he said. “If he’s in this hospital, he’s not my patient.”
Julie blinked. “He would have come in with me!”
Dreyer continued to rock his head slowly from side to side. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
“Where’s my mother?” she demanded. “She’ll know.”
“Ms. Brewer.” The doctor set his hand on Julie’s shoulder. “I really need for you to calm down, okay? Let me check how you are and then I’ll get a nurse to find your friend.”
She agreed and sat perfectly still while the doctor looked her over. He made several notes in his charts, asked her a bunch of questions and, only when he was satisfied that she would live, did he walk to the door and motion her mother back into the room.
“She seems to be recovering well,” he told her like Julie wasn’t there. “I am going to keep her an extra night simply because that head injury concerns me, but if all goes well, she can leave in the morning.”
Her mother thanked him profusely and walked him to the door as though he were a guest in their home.
Once he was gone, she turned to Julie.
“How are you feeling?”
“Where’s Mason?” Julie asked instead. “And Shaun, and...” She hesitated before adding, “Luis.”
Her mom perched a hip on the edge of the cot. “Luis didn’t make it,” she said evenly, but there was anger in her eyes. “Good riddance if you ask me.”
“Did ... did I...?”
She shouldn’t feel bad for having taken a life when it was justified and she was protecting herself, yet the idea still made her nauseous.
“I don’t know,” her mother replied. “The sheriff didn’t say. Only that he was dead.”
Julie nodded slowly. “And...?”
Her mother looked down. “I don’t know about the other two.”
Julie stiffened. “What? How is that possible?”
“Because they’re not in this hospital.”
Julie’s frown deepened. “Where are they? Where am I?”
“You’re home,” her mother said. “They were kept at the hospital in Salmon Cove.”
“But why am I here and not there then?”
“Because I had you transferred,” her mother replied shortly. “I wasn’t going to drive four hours to see you lying in a hospital bed and since you weren’t a high risk, the hospital agreed.”
Julie, brain still fuzzy, had no idea how her mother managed to pull that off, but that wasn’t the problem.
“Have you talked to Maureen?”
Her mother sniffed. “I haven’t. She didn’t even call to see if you were okay. Can you believe the nerve?” Fire sparked in her mother’s eyes. “Not one phone call after it was her fault you were placed in that situation.”
“It wasn’t Maureen’s fault ... entirely,” she added when Tessa’s finely penciled eyebrow lifted. “She couldn’t have known about Luis.”
Her mother flicked her wrist dismissively. “Still. A phone call wouldn’t have hurt.”
“Where’s Dad?” Julie asked, changing the subject.
“Rome.” Tessa checked the gold watch hidden amongst her bracelets. “He’ll be home tomorrow.” She lifted her gaze to Julie’s face. “Now, you need rest. Your color is simply awful and that hospital gown makes you look ghastly. Honestly, would it kill them to add a little color to these things?”
Her mother stayed with Julie through the night and drove her home the next day after the doctor released her. She was placed on several antibacterial and pain medications that knocked her out cold for hours at a time. Tessa stayed with her, bringing her soup and all but ladling the rich broth down Julie’s throat like a child. All the while, she made comments about the state of Julie’s nails, her haircut, the shade of highlight that would look dazzling with Julie’s eyes, and when she got to Julie’s boobs and the fancy new bra that promised three extra cup sizes, Julie called quits.
“You’re not ready to move back to your apartment!” her mother protested after the third day of holding Julie hostage in her childhood bedroom. “What if you faint? What if a tumor bursts in your skull and you die?”
“Then the couple in room 3B will call the police when I decompose and leak through their ceiling.”
Her mother blanched. “You are a disgusting child.”
Julie kissed her mother’s cheek. “Thanks for being there, Mom, but I need to go home.”
Tessa huffed and pursed her red lips. “Can you at least promise me you’ll look into a new manicurist? Darling, the first thing people see are your hands.”
Rolling her eyes, Julie ambled her way out of the bedroom and down the hall. At the top of the stairs, she adjusted her
grip on the small bag her mother had brought for her from Julie’s apartment containing some of her nicer outfits.
Stairs had become tricky since fracturing her arm. Her balance was still off and it was a task climbing down without holding the banister and not falling.
At the bottom, she exhaled a relieved breath and shuffled into her parent’s sunroom. Her father sat at the glass table, a newspaper in hand. He looked up when she walked in.
“Hey there,” he said, folding up the paper and setting it aside. His gaze dropped to the bag in her hand. “Leaving?”
Julie nodded. “I need to get home.”
Hazel eyes narrowed on a face mapped with laugh lines. “Mom driving you nuts?”
She laughed. “Not any more than usual.”
Wayne Brewer, a tall, handsome man with dark salt and pepper hair eyed his daughter carefully. Unlike her mother, he wasn’t looking for imperfections that needed correcting. He was assessing just how badly injured she was and what he needed to do to make it better.
“Do you need a ride?”
She had completely forgotten about her car. “Shoot!” she hissed.
Her dad rose, dug into the pocket of his beige trousers and came out with a set of keys. “Here.” He held them out to her. Then he snatched them back. “Can you drive with the medication they gave you?”
Julie nodded. “I don’t take the pain ones until bedtime to help me sleep and the antibacterial ones don’t affect me. But even then, I can’t take your car. How will you get to work?”
Keys jingling, he strode around the table and stopped when he was in front of her. He took her shoulders lightly between his hands and pulled her into his arms. He kissed the top of her head.
“Don’t worry about that.” He pushed the keys into her injured hand gently. “Get home safely and call when you get there.”
“Thanks Dad.”
But Julie didn’t go home. She drove four hours until she reached the visitor’s parking at Salmon Cove General. She tucked the keys into her pocket and hurried inside.
The receptionist looked up and smiled kindly from behind a high counter. The nametag pinned to her ample bosom read Dawn.
“Can I help you?”
“Hi.” Julie dampened her lips. “I’m here to see Mason Brody. He—”
Dawn’s silvery eyes turned sympathetic. “Oh honey,” she crooned quietly. “Are you family?”
A numb chill stole through Julie. “I ... kind of. I’m ... we’re...”
The other woman pursed her lips, tucking the little corners downward. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I can’t allow anyone who isn’t family—”
“Please!” The plea burst out of Julie before she could stop it. “Please,” she whispered again. “I need to see him. I need to know if he’s okay.” Tears distorted the woman’s face. She tried to blink them back, but one slid down her face and dropped off her chin to leave a splotch on the counter. “I need to tell him I love him, too, in case I never see him again and this is my only chance.”
There were tears in Dawn’s eyes when Julie wiped her own eyes dry. Pink spots covered her neck and her round cheeks. She sniffled, cleared her throat and turned to the computer. The seductress red of her nails glimmered in the bright lights as her fingers flew over the keyboard. She was still sniffling when she turned back to Julie.
“Room two sixteen down that hall.” She jerked her chin down the corridor on Julie’s left.
Thanking her, Julie sprinted down the hall before Dawn could change her mind and call security.
Nurses and doctors hurried past her and shot her curious glances as she mumbled two sixteen over and over again under her breath. She paid them no attention, too focused on finding Mason.
His door stood open. The curtains inside were drawn, blocking the bed from prying eyes. Julie slipped inside and carefully pushed back the plastic.
He was alive. The steady beep, beep, beep of the heart machine assured her of that much. There were other machines around him, helping him breathe, dripping medication into his veins, and keeping note of his vitals. A thin, clear tube was hooked over his ears and under his nose. He wore a white hospital gown that made his already pale complexion seem almost translucent. His dark hair was tussled and he had the same itchy, green blanket over his legs.
Julie shuffled forward and gingerly lowered herself down on the cot next to his hip. She rested her good hand on the back of his, careful not to disturb the IV piercing his skin. The knuckles were battered, bruised, and scabbed.
“Hey,” she whispered. “It’s me.”
The machines kept beeping and wheezing, but no sound came from him.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner,” she murmured. “I wanted to. I was so worried...” She bit her lip when it wobbled. “No one would tell me anything.” Her voice broke, but she plunged on. “I thought I lost you.” She sucked in a shaky breath. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “I can’t lose you, Mason, not now. Not when I finally have you.”
Nothing. Not even so much as a flutter of his eyelashes.
She was still sitting there, holding Mason’s hand and watching his face for signs of change when the plastic rustled and the curtains were pulled back. At first she thought it was a doctor or nurse who would tell her to leave, so she was surprised when Sheriff Reynolds walked in. He seemed equally surprised to see her.
“Ms. Brewer,” he said in his booming voice. “Wasn’t expecting to see you back at Salmon Cove.”
Julie rose off the bed. “I came to see Mason,” she said.
Reynolds nodded. His gaze shifted to the unmoving figure behind her. “How is he?”
She swallowed and shrugged. “I don’t know. He hasn’t woken up.”
Reynolds sighed. “So, the same.” He moved closer to the bed and peered into Mason’s slumbering face. “The doctors think he just needs some rest. The knife barely missed all the really important things, but it did one hell of a job cutting him up.”
Julie blanched at the image. “Do you know if he’ll be okay?”
Reynolds shrugged. “They think so. It’s all up to him now to wake up when he’s ready.”
Relieved, Julie fixed her attention on the man in front of her. “What are you doing here?”
He hesitated, keeping his gaze trained on Mason. But when he finally spoke, he looked Julie straight in the face.
“I let you kids down,” he said solemnly. “I let my arrogance keep me from doing my job and I would never have forgiven myself if I wasn’t at least here.”
Julie frowned at him. “I told you it wasn’t Mason or Shaun.”
Reynolds nodded. “You did. I should have listened.”
It was hard to stay upset when he already looked so beaten down. Adding to that would have just been mean.
Julie let it drop.
“Shaun ... where...”
“He’s in the room down the hall,” Reynolds said. “He lost a lot more blood than Brody, but he’s awake.”
It irritated her that the news irked her. Why was Shaun awake and not Mason? But as soon as she thought it, she flinched with shame.
“I was actually going to drive up and see you,” Reynolds went on. “I wanted to ask you some questions, seeing as how you’re the only one well enough to talk about it.”
Julie nodded. “Okay.” She wet her lips. “Do you want to do it here?”
He drew out his notepad and pen. “Maybe in the hall?”
With a nod of agreement, Julie motioned for him to go ahead. She waited until he was gone before turning to Mason.
“I’ll be right back,” she told him, brushing a kiss to his mouth.
Reynolds was waiting just outside the door for her. He looked up when she approached.
“I just need you to tell me what happened that night,” he said.
She did, recounting the whole thing from the time she woke up to find Mason gone, to the ambush of lights before she fainted and everything in between.
When she got to the part where
Luis had her cornered, he made her repeat it several times.
“Dr. Nixon ID’d the body,” he told her finally. “He didn’t seem all too happy that Luis, or whatever his name was, was dead.”
“How did he die?” Julie asked.
Reynolds looked at her. “It doesn’t matter—”
“Please,” she prompted.
He sighed, folded up his notepad, and stuffed it into his pocket. “Severe contusion to the head,” he said. “Doc says he died on impact.”
Julie’s insides gave a tremor. “I killed him?” Her hands were ice cold when she covered her mouth. “I killed him...” Wide, fear-filled eyes lifted to the man watching her. “Am I going to jail?”
Reynolds dropped his gaze. He heaved his large frame off the wall he’d been leaning against and folded his arms.
“You said it was in self-defense, right?”
Julie nodded.
“There you go,” he said evenly. “It’s all in my report and it collaborates with your story about what happened. He attacked you, you defended yourself. What happened next was unavoidable.”
“What about Luis?” she asked. “The real Luis.”
“We’re looking,” he assured her. “Along with all the others he came in contact with. Dr. Nixon is helping us go through other similar cases. Hopefully we can give some families a little peace of mind. We were able to locate the place Bethany Row was killed. It looks like he bled her out on the deck then dragged her body inside through the storm hatch.”
“The basement,” Julie whispered.
Reynolds nodded. “He moved her from there to the basketball court when, we think, she started to smell.”
“But why? Why not bury her?”
Reynolds seemed to hesitate a moment as he examined the floor at their feet. “There’s something textbooks don’t tell you, Ms. Brewer.” He fixed her with his gaze once more. “We will never know what really goes on in a twisted mind. I personally think he wanted his work showcased, to get recognition. He had gone so long without getting caught that he had gotten cocky. We’ll never know.”
Kissing Trouble Page 33