by Baxter, Cole
Usually, Mary simply threw them in the trash without opening them and then forgot they existed. She didn't want to know what that lunatic had to say. She'd wasted too much of her time, energy, not to mention health, on Ruby to waste more. Mary found herself tempted a couple of times to open them. She was a bit lonely in her new town while settling, cut off from her friends, but she resisted. Mary was worried that would lead her to a very dark path, and she wished to reside in the light. She was not going back to all that again. She’d worked really hard with Dr. Carson to throw everything away simply because she’d had a bad day.
After finishing work one day and returning home, Mary found five new letters from Ruby awaiting her in the mail.
"Great," she mumbled. Five letters meant Ruby felt extraordinarily inspired for some reason. Not that Mary cared. At the same time, that old curiosity spiked again. Maybe she could open just one of them. No, she shouldn't bother, the other part of her argued.
While she looked at the letters and had her internal debate about what to do with them, her phone started ringing. She instantly smiled once she saw who was calling her. If that wasn't a clear sign of what she had to do with the letters, Mary didn't know what else was.
"Hi, Mace," she greeted.
"Hi. You busy?"
"No, just got off from work."
"Great. Look, I'll be in town this weekend to spend some time with Robin." Robin was his nephew.
"The whole weekend?"
"Yup, so I've been thinking, maybe you want to have some dinner with me?"
"Like a date?" she blurted out before she could stop herself.
Stupid, stupid.
As of late, Mary had realized she had a serious crush on Mace. She played it cool, though. Considering what she'd been through, she was a bit wary. Mary knew Mace was a standup guy, kind and generous, who would never hurt her, but she simply wanted to know him a little bit better and not rush things. Of course, there was a big possibility that he didn't feel the same way about her.
Her days of playing it cool were over. That ship sailed the instant she opened her mouth and asked her question, and Mary felt like smacking herself across the forehead. And then she realized she could because he couldn't see her.
Luckily, he then said, "Yes."
Her heart soared.
"If that's all right with you," he hedged.
"Yes," she was quick to reassure him. "I would be glad to go on a date with you," she added, not trying to hide her enthusiasm.
"Great," he replied in the same manner. "I'll call you when I arrive, then."
"Great," she said.
After they disconnected, she was still wearing a huge grin on her face.
I have a date with Mace. I need to buy a new dress. What shoes to wear? As she mused, she completely forgot about the letters she was holding. Without a thought, Mary dropped them in the shredder.
No more Ruby. Good riddance.
Game over.
If you liked this book, make sure to pick up my last book, Did He Do It! Keep reading for a preview!
If you have already read Follow You, then you will love my other book, Follow You. You can get it here!
Preview of Did He Do It
Chapter One
Ariel Carter woke up slowly. She felt as though she was clawing herself awake, pulling herself through layers of sleep before she was finally able to open her eyes. She lay on her side, facing the bedroom door, and she didn’t have the energy to move yet. She lay in place, trying to shake off the last of the residual sleep that clung to her. She reached up with an arm that felt heavy and rubbed at her eyes. Her head pounded with a dull ache that flared in time with her pulse.
For a moment, Ariel lay still in bed, trying to remember what the hell she had drunk the night before to give her a hangover like this. As she thought back, it occurred to her that she didn’t have that far-away nauseous feeling she always had when she had drunk too much the night before.
No, this wasn’t a hangover. It was her body’s response to the pills her husband, David, sometimes fed her. Pills that sent her into a deep sleep that she struggled to wake from the next morning. Pills that made her feel like a zombie the next day.
She could never remember what happened to her while she was out cold, but David had drunk a little too much one night and confessed to her that he occasionally slipped the pills into her drink or food and that he liked to fuck her while she was comatose. She could remember his words like he had said them only yesterday. She could remember the fear and revulsion she had felt when he’d told her what he was doing to her. Her husband was drugging her and raping her in her sleep. What sort of a monster would do that?
She had known she should leave, but where would she go? She had nowhere else to go, and she had reasoned that David loved her. And if he liked to do something a little freaky now and again, wasn’t it her wifely duty to accept that? She hadn’t really made her peace with the situation, but she’d convinced herself that she had. She loved David and she wanted to be a good wife to him, and in the end, she told herself worse things go on in marriages. She never fully believed that, but it was easier to live with the lie than it was to accept herself as a victim of domestic abuse.
For all Ariel was sure she had been drugged, something felt different this time. Her hair was wet—that was new. Had David showered her after he had fucked her? No, that would be too much like a workout, holding her up in the shower. Had he thrown her into the bathtub? But why would he do that? And didn’t he realize how dangerous that would be?
She rolled over, ready to ask David what had happened, not sure how much he would tell her but needing to ask him anyway. She saw that she was alone in the bed. She should have known this sooner. She nearly always awoke before David, and the air was always punctuated with David’s loud snores.
Ariel blinked a few times, trying to blink away the slowness in her brain. She turned her head back toward her bedside cabinet and looked at the clock, sure she must have slept in late for David to be up before her. It was barely seven. There was no way David would be up this early without a good reason. She couldn’t think of one, but with her brain addled like this, it didn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t one.
She lay on her back for a moment and closed her eyes, determined to go back to sleep and get a couple of hours of real sleep rather than the drug-induced sleep that left her feeling more tired than she was when she went to bed. It was no use. All she could think about was why David wasn’t in the bed beside her. She was starting to grow uneasy about it, although she couldn’t put her finger on why.
She pushed back the duvet with a sigh and got to her feet. The room spun dizzily for a second, but it soon settled. Ariel made her way to the chair in the corner of the room where her robe was strewn. She glanced into the full-length mirror on her wardrobe door as she moved past it, looking for any marks on her body. Sometimes, David got carried away and she woke up with bruises or bite marks on her breasts or her thighs, but there was nothing like that on her today.
She pulled the short robe on and tied it. She ran a brush through her blonde wavy hair, still trying to put her finger on why she felt a sense of dread. The answer came to her as she pouted into the mirror, admiring her good looks and her willowy figure.
There was no noise at all from downstairs. The TV wasn’t on, and there were no sounds to indicate David was in the kitchen making himself some coffee or fixing breakfast. It wasn’t like David to be so silent. The house always seemed to be filled with the sounds of his presence.
Ariel left the bedroom, ignoring the dull thumping in her head. The bathroom door stood wide open, and Ariel could see without having to go into the room that David wasn’t in there.
“David?” she called out as she started down the stairs.
Her voice sounded slightly slurred, almost like she was sleep talking. Or drunk. That’s what people would think if they heard her talking this way. Ariel, the good time girl, always up for a drink and a fuck. That’s
what people thought of her. She knew that. But she had left that life behind when she married David. She was no longer a cam girl, drinking just to get through each performance. Now she was a stay at home wife to a rich man, a lady who lunches, she thought, smiling to herself at the irony of it all.
David had swept her off her feet in the first days of the relationship, and he had continued showering her with affection for weeks after that. She had fallen for his charms instantly, feeling like she was worth more than just a cheap thrill for the first time in her life, and when he had proposed after they had been together for three months, she’d readily said yes. It was only after the wedding that David’s true colors started to show. The abuse, both physical and mental. The torment. Ariel had realized, too late, that she was more trapped as a wife than she had ever been as a cam girl. At least then, the perverts hadn’t been in bed with her. All she had to do then was turn her camera off and their link was broken. Now, it felt like she was living on the other side of the camera, out of control, waiting for someone else to turn it off.
“David? Where are you?” she called again as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
There was no answer. The house seemed to swallow up her question in its silence. Ariel crossed her arms in front of herself, shivering in the robe even though the house was pleasantly warm.
She made her way to the kitchen. There was no sign of David. Half a pot of coffee sat on the countertop, but when Ariel touched the pot, she found it stone cold. It was from last night. It had to be.
She wondered if David had an early morning meeting that she’d forgotten about, but that felt wrong. He would have made fresh coffee before he left the house. He never went to a meeting of any kind without his caffeine fix. Or his cocaine fix if the meeting was later in the evening.
Ariel left the kitchen and went to David’s office. She tapped gently on the door. No answer. She rattled the doorknob, but the room was locked. She debated calling David, but it seemed extreme when she hadn’t even finished searching the house yet. Besides, she felt like she didn’t have the energy to go back up the stairs just yet, and her cellphone was still up there. She had no idea what David’s cellphone number was off the top of her head, so it wasn’t like she could use the land line.
She moved down the hallway and pushed the lounge door open. She screamed loudly, instantly fully awake at the sight before her.
David was in the lounge, all right, but he wasn’t sitting in his favorite chair. He was on the ground, face up, his unseeing eyes wide open and staring blankly at the ceiling. He was completely naked, his cock shriveled and small, his stomach and chest pasty white, the bottom of his body mottled and purple, angry looking.
A pool of partially dried blood surrounded his body, and Ariel, even in her state of shock, counted at least twelve marks over his torso and chest. The marks looked like little mouths, their edges red like lips. They stood out against the whiteness of his body. Ariel knew exactly what they were. Stab marks.
Ariel felt her knees buckle, and she fell to the ground, still screaming. Somewhere in her dazed state, she managed to drag herself up off the floor and to the hallway, where she used the land line to call nine-one-one. She stuttered out that she had found her husband murdered in their home. She gave the address and hung up, stumbling back into the lounge where she sat on the ground beside the congealed mess around David. Tears ran down her face, and she was vaguely aware of the land line ringing. The noise made her head buzz again, and she covered her ears with her hands, another scream forming in her throat as she found her eyes fixed on David’s body. She screamed again, and she kept screaming until she was half-starved of oxygen and her vision went black and she fell into a state of unconsciousness.
Chapter Two
Michael Lancaster woke up from a pleasant dream. He couldn’t remember it in any great detail, but the warm feeling it left behind told him it had been a good one. He tried to search for the thread of memory to take him back to the dream, but it was no use. He was awake, and falling back asleep seemed unlikely.
He sighed. He knew what he was doing. It was what his doctor called denial. Except to Michael’s mind, he wasn’t denying his surroundings. He just wasn’t ready to face them yet.
The clanging sound of metal trolleys being pushed around, the constant hum of conversation with the occasional shouted command or name—and of course, the acrid smell of disinfectant and boiled cabbage hanging in the air—told Michael exactly where he was. The Sandstone Institute, known locally as simply the hospital, or to some of the more vocal residents, the loony bin. It wasn’t Michael’s first time here, and he was sure it wouldn’t be his last time, but this time was different. He had never woken up here to find himself restrained before, his arms, legs, and stomach strapped to the bed on which he lay.
He felt a moment of panic wash over him when he tried to move and couldn’t. He took a deep breath and began to count in his head. He reached ten, but he didn’t feel any better, so he started over again. After the fourth run-through, he began to feel a little calmer, and he was able to reason with himself. He was in the hospital. He wasn’t in any danger. He was likely restrained because the staff thought he might be a danger to himself.
He finally opened his eyes and looked around. He was alone in a small room. Other than the bed he was strapped to, there was a small bedside cabinet and an orange plastic chair in the corner. A jug of water and a glass sat on the cabinet beside him, and Michael realized how thirsty he was as he looked at the jug with its beads of condensation running down the sides. He looked for a button to call the nurse, but the keypad was out of his reach.
He sighed again and shook his head. He would just have to wait for someone to come to him. He didn’t think he would have long to wait. Generally, the small side rooms were checked every fifteen minutes. He remembered the routine from his last stay. That had been a long time ago, though. He had been in his early twenties and now he was thirty-eight. Maybe things had changed. He hoped not. Now that he had noticed he was thirsty, the feeling nagged at him, bothering him, slowly driving him more insane than everyone thought he was.
He spotted a clock on the wall and saw it was almost one o’clock. Light streamed in the window, so it had to be afternoon, and he relaxed. The worst that could happen is he would have to wait until two o’clock to see someone and get a drink. That was when visiting opened up, and he knew Abel, his twin brother, would come to visit him. Abel never let him down.
He pushed aside the thoughts of his thirst, knowing that focusing on it would only make it worse, and instead, he tried to remember what had happened to bring him to the hospital. Even before he tried to remember, he had known it would be no use. He could never remember the events that brought him to this godforsaken place. When the nurses and doctors gently explained to him why he was there, it always felt like they were describing scenes from someone else’s life rather than his own.
The last thing Michael remembered had been sitting down for breakfast at home. He remembered a plate of sausages, bacon, and fried bread. Abel had been there with him. He must have dropped in on his way to work to see Michael and their mother. Michael remembered offering Abel breakfast and Abel saying he had already eaten. Michael remembered hearing his mother moving around upstairs, getting ready for her day. He thought he remembered her coming into the kitchen, but he wasn’t sure about that. And that was the last thing he remembered.
Although losing chunks of memory like this freaked him out, he knew this time wasn’t as bad as the other times. The other times he’d blacked out chunks of time like this, he had come to in the hospital barely remembering who he was or who anyone else was, let alone what he had done. At least this time, he knew himself. Maybe the cognitive therapy Dr. Parks had recommended was working for him after all. He made a mental note to stop being so skeptical of Dr. Parks’s methods and to start trying to work with her a little more instead of against her.
The realization that he wasn’t delirious or out of control
made the fact that he was strapped to the bed even stranger. It made Michael feel a knot of anxiety in his stomach. He knew he must have done something bad. Something really bad.
It was my dark side, he thought to himself as panic began to take hold of him again. It had to be. My dark side came out when I was blacked out like I’ve always feared it would, and it’s done something awful. That’s why they’ve tied me down. They don’t think I’m a danger to myself. They think I’m a danger to them. I have to let them know I’m awake now, that the dark side is gone and I’m me again.
“Hello?” Michael shouted, needing to explain his situation before his thoughts got so out of control that they drove him into a full-blown panic attack. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
He waited for a moment to see if anyone would come. He was rewarded with a face peering in through the glass window in the door. Oh, thank goodness, he thought to himself.
“You can come in. I’m myself again,” Michael said.
The door opened and a smiling nurse bustled in.
“You’re awake,” she said unnecessarily, giving him a beaming smile that felt fake to Michael. “Let me just check your vitals, and then there are some people here who want to talk to you. Would that be okay?”
Michael smiled. It had to be Abel. But the nurse had said people, not person. Maybe his mother was here too. He nodded enthusiastically as the nurse attached a blood pressure cuff to his upper arm. She clipped something on one of his fingers and poked a thermometer into his ear. A monitor Michael hadn’t noticed on the other side of the bedside cabinet beeped, and the nurse quickly jotted something down in his chart.
“All good.” She smiled, removing her tools from him.
She started to leave when Michael called out after her.
“Wait.”
She turned back to Michael. Her smile didn’t falter, but Michael thought she looked a little nervous. Shouldn’t it be me who is nervous? I’m the one strapped down, he thought. He pushed the thought aside and gave the nurse what he hoped was a reassuring smile.