Drake looks at me. “You wanna question her?”
“Sure. Why not? I’m not a cop and supposed to be finishing my margarita at home, but hey!”
“Don’t sass me, Noelle,” he says. “I’ll have you arrested for impeding my investigation.”
“It’s hardly impeding your investigation when you won’t question her yourself,” I sigh. “But yes. I will talk to Portia. I happen to know her very well.”
“Hey,” he says to the other officers. “Go get a coffee or something from the cafeteria. We’ll let you know if we need you.”
They file out of the room.
As soon as the door shuts, Drake’s eyes focus on me. “You ‘know her very well’?”
I swallow and perch on the edge of the bed, fully aware of his and Trent’s eyes on me. “Yes.”
“Fuckin’ hell, Noelle. Don’t tell me she’s a case,” Trent says.
“She was a mistress,” I reply, looking out the small window that faces the parking lot. An ambulance comes speeding past it and out onto the main road. “Recent case. Maybe a month old. Kieron Vaquez wanted to know if his wife, Diana, was cheating on him with her boss. The irony is that Diana had hired us, too, and Kieron was the real cheater.”
“With Portia.”
“Yes. It was a cut-and-dried case.”
“Do they have anything to do with Lena or Daniel?” Drake asks.
Slowly, I bring my gaze from the window onto him. “That’s the funny thing, isn’t it? I don’t even think Portia knew either of them.”
Concern darkens my brother’s eyes, and Drake’s jaw tightens.
“Go and talk to her,” Drake orders. “Now.”
I hover outside Portia’s room. After speaking to several nurses and either pretending to be family or having Trent back me up as part of the HWPD, I finally got the correct directions to her room. And here I am.
Putting off going in to speak with her because I’m more than a little afraid of what I’m going to find when I walk into that room. Will she be in pain? Will she be partially paralyzed? Will she be sick for the rest of her life? Will she even want to talk about it?
Unfortunately, I’m not gonna find anything out by standing here like a goddamned lemon waiting to be made into lemonade. I’m only going to get the answers I need by walking through the door and asking the questions.
I take a deep breath and knock lightly on the door before pushing it open slightly. Peeking through the door, I see Portia lying on the bed, pale and tired but awake.
She turns her head and faces me. “Noelle,” she says quietly. “Come in.”
“How are you feelin’?” I ask stupidly, closing the door behind me.
“Like someone just tried to poison me.” She cracks the barest of smiles. “Say, could you ask the police if your hunk of a brother, Brody, could come question me? My day could use some brightening.”
I smile. “I would, except they’ve sent me in to ask you some. If you feel up to it right now, that is.”
“Sure. Don’t have anything else to do.”
“Great.” I sit in the chair next to her bed. “Talk me through your evening—from when you got home.”
“I got in from work, called my mom, then went into the kitchen. Paws—that’s my cat—had taken it upon himself to eat the salmon I’d set out to defrost for my dinner, so I decided to call for takeout.” She takes a moment, and I hold my breath. “I called up that new pizza place on the corner of Eleventh. You know… Fernando’s or something?”
“Sure, I know it.”
Nonna was complaining just last week that they couldn’t claim to be an Italian restaurant when the owners didn’t have a drop of Italian blood between them. That, and she was most aggrieved that a second, unneeded Italian restaurant had opened in town. She might be planning to run them out of town when she isn’t setting me up on dates.
“Well, I called, ordered, then poured a glass of wine and got changed.” Portia takes another moment to breathe, this time reaching for the small cup of water on the table.
I pass it to her and she smiles gratefully.
“What did you order? Just a pizza? Or maybe a salad?”
“Oh, just the pizza. I raid Mom’s veggie garden every week to get my salad items.”
My stomach twists. “So, you made your own salad?”
“Keep a small bowl in the fridge, always.”
“What did you eat first? The salad or the pizza?”
Portia closes her eyes. “I opened the pizza to let it cool for a moment. The crust is stupid hot on the fingers, you know? So I grabbed some salad and had a few bites.”
I swallow. “How’d you know somethin’ was wrong?”
“I started feeling like I couldn’t breathe, and my toes started to tingle. I’d only had a couple bites, so I called nine-one-one and, well, here I am. Just escaped a poisoning.”
And torture by means of genital mutilation to the death.
“Thanks, Portia. I’ll let Detective Nash and my brothers know everything you just told me.” I pat her hand. “Is there anyone you want me to call?”
“Your brother.” Her lips quirk despite her eyes still being shut.
“I’ll see what I can do.” In my next life. “Thanks for speaking with me. I’ll leave you to rest.”
“Thanks, Noelle. And do me a favor?”
“Which is?” I ask, my fingers on the door handle.
“Find the motherfucker who tried to kill me.”
“That’s the plan.” I walk through the door and close it behind me, leaning back on it and shutting my eyes.
Victim number three: someone I once tailed as she screwed one of the mayor’s right-hand men behind his wife’s back. Someone who is connected to me because they were a mistress. Someone not connected to Lena and Daniel in the slightest.
Which means I, and I alone, am the single connecting factor for these murders.
Sure, I suspected it. Maybe I even knew it in my gut. From the very beginning, I was connected to this case deeper than just investigating. But now, to know one hundred percent that I’m in the middle… It’s terrifying.
I’m more than a little scared. I’m terrified to be alone and terrified to be with anyone in case anyone else gets hurt.
What if the next victim isn’t someone I once watched? What if the next victim is one of my friends? My family? Me?
A shudder racks my body. It feels as though a thousand ants are crawling across my skin as the thought that I could be next washes over me. That maybe I was always the target. I inhale desperately through my nose as my lungs constrict and my throat feels dangerously tight.
No.
I won’t succumb to this fear. I won’t let this panic take over, because I am a strong woman, dammit. I won’t let this fear overrule my determination to find the person behind all of this, even if that means I’m walking into a potentially dangerous situation. It happens all the time in movies and everything is okay.
Yeah, yeah. My life isn’t a movie, but it’s a comforting-ass thought right now, so I’m going with it.
I’ll be like Scarlett Johansson in Avengers. Tied to a chair and about to be knocked off—then I’ll come whoop some ass like the badass I supposedly am.
Except I’ll probably shoot someone instead of whooping ass. Because, you know. I’m Southern. That’s what I do.
“Noelle?” Drake’s voice cuts through my comfortingly random musings, bringing me out of my head and back into the here and now.
I push off the wall and meet his eyes. They’re soft and concerned, yet they’re edged with pure, hard determination, and the contrasting combination seems to make his irises glow in a bright burst of color in the otherwise bland hospital hallway. The power of his gaze is entrancing, and my cheeks are burning beneath his concerned scrutiny, but I can’t look away.
“Noelle?” he prompts, stepping closer to me.
I run my fingers through my hair and repeat everything Portia just told me, including the difference in the way she was almost killed.