CHAPTER THREE
The hospital where Hunter is a patient is the same one where my stepfather worked as an MRI technician for fifteen years. Happier days. Now he probably hammers out license plates while wearing an orange jumpsuit. At least the hospital layout is familiar.
I hurry through the main lobby past the check-in desk and push through double doors leading to the elevators. When I called earlier this Saturday morning, the receptionist told me Hunter’s condition had been upgraded from critical to serious and that only family members could visit.
If the hospital is that uptight about visitation, makes you wonder why a patient’s phone extension is the same as his room number.
I summon the elevator, my gaze darting up and down the hall to make sure security’s not poised to descend. My cell vibrates. It’s Becky. Again. Still annoyed I didn’t return her car in time for her dentist appointment. Still making sure I’m picking her up.
Heels click on the tile floor while I’m firing back a text. I lower my head and angle my body toward the wall, the better to hide my lack of a visitor pass. A short, dark-haired woman in a white lab coat starts to breeze past, then stops.
“Jade, honey! Is that you?” It’s Cora Barnes, who used to work with my stepfather. Since I last saw her, she’s regained every pound she lost. She hugs me like we’re best buds, squeezing tight. She smells like pancakes and maple syrup. “What are you doing here? Please tell me nobody in your family is sick.”
“My family’s fine. It’s a friend of mine.” I don’t plan to give details, but she’s looking at me expectantly. “They rushed him here last night. He was having convulsions.”
“Oh, dear. That doesn’t sound good. Is this a close friend?”
“Yeah, it is.”
Can’t blame a girl for being optimistic.
“I hope he recovers.” Cora rubs one of my shoulders, compassion oozing from her. Her gaze zeroes in on my face. “How are you?”
“Fair to partly cloudy.” I bite my lip, but it’s too late to take back the words.
Cora blinks rapidly. “Your father used to say that all the time.”
“Stepfather,” I correct. I wonder what’s worse, a stepfather who’s a convicted felon or a biological father who split rather than take any responsibility for me?
Cora wipes tears from under her eyes. The blinking didn’t work. “How is he, Jade?”
I don’t know, I think. “He’s doing his time,” I say.
“I keep meaning to get out there and visit him, but I couldn’t stand seeing that dear man in a jail cell.” Tears actually well in her eyes. “Such a gentle soul he has.”
The owner of the liquor store might have a different take on that.
“The whole thing is so out of character,” Cora continues. “I still can’t believe he’s guilty.”
“There was a camera.” My voice is flat. “The police have video.”
“Video of your stepfather with an unloaded gun,” Cora points out.
“Doesn’t matter if the gun’s loaded. It’s still a felony.” I repeat some legalese I wish I didn’t know.
“It proves he never intended to hurt anybody,” Cora says. “I keep thinking there must be a good reason he did it. Money problems, maybe.”
A week before my stepfather robbed the liquor store, he’d found a wallet stuffed with five hundred in cash in a store parking lot. He’d turned over the wallet and all the money to the store’s customer service department.
“Maybe his reason is that he’s a selfish asshole.”
Cora gasps. “Jade! You shouldn’t say such things. No matter what your father did, at heart he’s a good man. And he needs his family now more than ever.”
The elevator arrives, saving me from making more sarcastic remarks. Like how my stepfather’s family needs him at home instead of behind bars.
“I’ll catch you later,” I tell Cora before the elevator door slides closed and shuts out her disappointed face.
At the fourth floor nurses’ station, a middle-aged woman in royal blue scrubs takes notes with a phone cradled to her ear. I hurry past her down the hall toward Hunter’s room. A tall, balding man in a white lab coat raps sharply on one of the doors and disappears inside. It’s Hunter’s room.
Loitering in the hall is out, but there must be somewhere I can wait. I walk until I reach the open door to a lounge. I’m about to enter when a female voice says, “I can’t imagine who would do such a thing to Hunter.”
Stopping short, I peek around the door frame. A man and a woman in their forties, likely Hunter’s aunt and uncle, sit next to each other. She’s dressed in a suit that was probably designed by someone like Oscar de la Renta. He’s in jeans and a casual shirt.
I pull my head back before they spot me, leaving a dilemma. Announce myself or eavesdrop?
“Your sister warned us livin’ with Hunter would be rough goin’,” the man says with a broad southern accent.
Eavesdrop, I decide.
“Jackie certainly had that right, but things have been going so well lately.” The woman sounds vaguely British, as though she sticks out her pinkie while she’s drinking tea. No online dating site would match up this pair. “I thought the trouble was behind us.”
“You’re forgettin’ the boy has a talent for actin’. Yeah, he seems like the perfect nephew. But he’s mixed up in somethin’ real bad if somebody’s poisonin’ him.”
My initial hunch was right. Hunter was poisoned!
From TV cop shows, I know the best suspects have both motive and opportunity. If Hunter bought something at the concession stand after he talked to me, Adair and Max have both. Adair, because she’s steamed that Hunter might be into me. Max, because he’s no fan of Hunter’s.
“What the hell are you doing here?” The loud, shrill voice belongs to Adair. Her clunky sandals make thudding noises on the tile floor as she hurries toward me down the hall as fast as her short, tight skirt will let her.
I straighten to my full height, but it’s still five or six inches short of hers, more if you count the heels on her sandals. “I came to see how Hunter’s doing.”
“You have no right to be here.” Adair’s face is red and not because she spends too much time in the sun. “I’m Hunter’s girlfriend.”
“So you’ve said. Over and over.” My next words will probably set her off, but I can’t help myself. “Doesn’t make it true.”
“You little bitch.”
“I thought I was a skank.”
“You’re brain dead if you think I’ll let you take Hunter from me.”
I’m not positive I want Hunter anymore, but Adair doesn’t need to know that. “Try to stop me.”
The slap catches me flush against the right side of my face. My head whips at a ninety-degree angle. Stinging pain blurs my vision. Shock rockets through me. Adair slowly comes into focus, wearing a hateful, self-satisfied smirk.
“What’s the matter, Jade?” she asks in a singsong voice. “Slap got your tongue?”
I hurl myself at her, flattening her against the wall. Adrenaline courses through me in a white, hot rush.
“Let me go, you nutjob!” she shrieks.
“Not until you get what’s coming to you.” I hardly recognize the snarling voice as my own. My hand rears back to throw either a punch or a slap, I’m not sure which.
And then strong hands grip me just below my shoulders and yank me backward, away from Adair. I struggle to break free, but whoever has me won’t let go.
“Get control of yourself, Jade! We’re in a hospital, for God’s sake.” It’s Max. The realization hits me like a blast of icy air. I stop resisting and twist around. His lips are tight, and his gaze is narrowed. Disappointment fairly drips off him.
“She started it,” I mutter, as though that’s a valid excuse.
Adair straightens from the wall, smoothing down her micro miniskirt and clinging top. She bares her straight white teeth. “This is your fault, you little psycho.”
If Max didn’t still hav
e hold of me, I’d go after her again, hospital or not.
“Everythin’ all right out here?” The male half of the couple from the lounge steps into the hall. He’s prematurely gray and has an unhurried, easygoing way about him.
The woman follows close behind. Her blond hair is pulled tightly back from a serious face. “Oh, my! Adair! What’s going on? Were you girls fighting?”
“Hello, Mrs. Prescott, Mr. Prescott.” Adair transforms into the perfect teenage girl. I’m right about the couple. They’re Hunter’s uncle and his psychiatrist aunt. Adair points at me. “She—”
“It was a misunderstanding,” Max interrupts. “Both Jade and Adair are upset about what happened to your nephew.”
“We’re all upset,” Hunter’s aunt says. “But it sounded like more than that.”
“Nope.” Max is completely in control, like he was when he traded information with the newspaper reporter. “Jade and I came by to see how Hunter’s doing. Is there any news?”
Mr. Prescott nods down the hall. “News is comin’.”
The doctor who entered Hunter’s hospital room approaches holding a clipboard. He’s maybe thirty years old with wire-rimmed glasses that make his eyes look owlish. “Mr. and Mrs. Prescott, good to see you again. I’ve got an update on your nephew.” His gaze takes in our large group. “Would you like to go into a private room to talk?”
Mrs. Prescott gasps, and her hand covers her mouth. “Is the news that bad?”
Her husband puts his arm around her and gathers her close.
“On the contrary, it’s very good. But there are privacy laws.” The doctor pauses and looks pointedly at me, Max and Adair. “Is everybody here family?”
Technically, Max and I are hospital crashers.
“They’re not,” Adair announces, pointing at us, “but I’m Hunter’s girlfriend.”
“Jade and I are leaving.” Max’s hand at the small of my back propels me forward. If I don’t move and keep on moving, I’ll fall.
“Mr. and Mrs. Prescott,” Adair continues, “tell the doctor it’s okay to talk in front of me.”
Max and I are too far from the group gathered in the hall to hear more of the conversation. Going back isn’t an option. I speed up so Max no longer touches me and reach the elevator before he does.
“What are you doing here, Max?” I demand in a tight voice when he catches up.
He presses the down button with a hard stab of his finger. “Saving you from getting thrown out of the hospital.”
“I didn’t need your help.” The doors slide open to an empty car. I wait for Max to do the southern gentleman thing, the way he usually does, but he enters the car ahead of me. I follow and depress the button for the lobby. “I was doing fine on my own.”
“You were about to start a fight.” His lips are as straight as the horizon at sunset.
“Adair slapped me!”
“Why would she do that?”
“Why do you think? She doesn’t want me visiting Hunter.”
Max leans across me, his forearm brushing lightly against my breast. I jump back as he hits the stop button on the control panel. The elevator jars to a halt, throwing me against him. His hands encircle my upper arms. “I don’t want you visiting Hunter, either.’
I wrench away from him and retreat until my back is against the elevator wall. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Somebody needs to. You’re making stupid decisions.”
“I am not!” For example, I’m not telling Max that Hunter was poisoned. Not until I’m absolutely sure Max isn’t to blame.
“You’ve got an imprint of a hand on your face, Jade.” His words are clipped.
“That’s what happens when a crazy girl slaps you.”
He makes a derisive noise and shakes his head. “You didn’t pick a fight with Adair over Hunter Prescott?”
“You sound jealous.”
He steps toward me and places one hand to the right of my head and the other to the left, effectively boxing me in. His warm breath tickles my face. “Maybe I am jealous.”
My heart beats way too fast. Not a-monster’s-about-to-slash-the-heroine-to-death fast. He’s-about-to-kiss-me fast.
“Suppose you tell me what Hunter’s got that I don’t.” His blue eyes bore into mine. I can’t look anywhere but at him. Heat radiates through me.
“He has...” I struggle to come up with something, anything. “Manners. He’d never back me up against a wall.”
“You have no idea what that guy’s capable of.”
I raise my chin. If only it wasn’t quivering. “I could say the same thing about you.”
“There’s a difference.” He closes the gap even farther until our bodies touch. Lowering his head, he brushes his lips over mine before he straightens inch by inch, keeping his eyes glued to mine. “You can trust me.”
One of his hands lifts from the elevator wall to brush a piece of hair from my face. I should slide sideways to get away from him, but it’s like the floor of the elevator is coated with super glue. My voice, I can unstick. “Trust you? I don’t even know what you’re doing here. For all I know, you came with Adair.”
“Now who’s jealous?” he asks softly.
If I am jealous, it’s only because Adair keeps one-upping me. Not because I hate, hate, hate the thought of Max with Adair. “Did you come with Adair?” I demand.
He laughs shortly and straightens, breaking his invisible hold on me. He steps past me to the control panel and puts the elevator car in motion before he answers, “Nope. I followed you.”
“What?”
“I went over to your house this morning and saw you getting into Becky’s car.” He says this matter of factly, like stalking doesn’t start ninety percent of slasher flicks. “So I followed you.”
The elevator reaches the lobby floor and thuds to a stop. A man and a woman with two young boys are waiting to get on. The youngest is about five years old with a buzz cut. He starts to step inside before we can disembark.
“Mind your manners, son,” the woman calls, gently pulling him back.
This time, Max lets me precede him. I wait until we’re out of the elevator and the family is gone before I say, “I am not on board with you following me.”
Max strides through the hospital. I have to take two steps to his every one to keep up. When we’re side by side, he asks, “Aren’t you curious why I came over to your house this morning?”
I’d say no, but that would be out of spite. We’re supposed to be figuring out the bad thing that’s happening in Midway Beach and coming up with a way to stop it. “Why?”
We’re passing through the main lobby. He pauses and picks up a newspaper from an empty chair. The masthead identifies it as the Wilmington News. He flips it over to the bottom of the section front and hands it to me.
Black Widow mystery deepens, the headline reads.
“I was coming to tell you about Stuart Bigelow’s story,” Max explains. “He quotes a source who saw somebody dump Constance Hightower’s body on the beach.”
Max is a lot more interested in the story than I am. So is everybody else in town. I’m curious, but with all the drama in my own life the mystery of the Black Widow takes a back seat. A girl can only focus on one bad thing at a time. “Who’s the source?”
“Read the story.” He walks away as I’m staring down at the newspaper, calling over his shoulder. “And put some ice on that cheek. Or it’s gonna bruise.”