Wicked Release (4 page)

6

T
hey weren't the typical street drugs Jess thought of when she heard about dealers. There was no cocaine or white powders of any kind. No marijuana, no heroin. The entire room consisted of prescription medication. The exact sort of drugs Cass would have an easy time getting ahold of thanks to her job at a pharmaceutical company.

“Biophuterol,” Jess read from one of the labels. “I've never heard of it before—” She reached to pick up one of the bags when a firm grip pinched her wrist.

“Don't touch anything,” Elliot snarled. “Not without gloves on.” He pointed to a box of latex gloves sitting on the edge of Cass's desk. “I'm guessing your sister was meticulous about that. One of the reasons she was never caught.”

“It's a new drug,” Dane said. “Biophuterol. Not FDA approved. It's replacing the demand for Oxy on the streets.”

More cobwebs filled Jess's brain than she could handle. It was as though a spider were living in her head, constantly spinning a web to fog her thoughts. How in the hell could this be her sister's doing? How could she be so involved? This was beyond just a little bad judgment. Cass was officially neck deep in drug dealing. Or so it seemed. “M-maybe someone else was using this room?” Jess offered as an explanation. But even she didn't believe it.

Elliot strolled over to the back shelves as easily as if he were on a walk in the park on a summer day. Tucking his hands into his pockets, he smiled just a bit. “Who else do you know who would color-code the pills based on when they arrived and when they're supposed to go out?” he said, nodding his head toward the different bins.

“That's what these dates are?” Jess asked.

“I would assume so. Each bin has two dates on it. I would assume the earlier date is when the drugs arrived to her and the second date is when the drugs have to go out to the dealers.”

“Prescription drugs are like anything else—they expire,” Dane explained, looking around the room, his eyes lit. “And as they expire, their effectiveness . . . or their high would lessen.”

Jess spun to face him. “You seem to know an awful lot, don't you?”

“About what?”

“
This
. The drugs!”

“I knew she had gotten involved with the wrong people. But it was for the right reasons,” he said.

“What does that mean?” Elliot asked.

Jess had been thinking the same thing, only Elliot had beaten her to the question.

Dane didn't answer, keeping his eyes focused on Jess. “I didn't know about all this. I just thought she had to pick up a handful of pills from Canada each month and bring them across the borders for the dealers.” He shook his head, rubbing a hand down his face. “But all this? This is just nuts.”

“No,” Elliot said, gesturing to the walls of pills. “You wanted to know who keeps threatening you and why? Well,
this
is what they want.”

“Now what?” Jess asked. “You say the cops are dirty, so I can't call Sam. I can't just leave all this here.”

“We need to find a way to leverage it to save your life. If these drugs are what they want, then this is what they'll get. And hopefully it will be enough for them to leave you alone.”

“How the hell are we going to move all these drugs without Sam or someone getting suspicious? With all the threats on my life and the tunnels having been discovered? Sam's going to have someone watching me constantly,” said Jess.

“I know that,” Elliot said. He was so calm. So put together, despite being in a room filled with easily millions of dollars' worth of drugs. “Keep it together, okay, Jessica? I'll be in touch soon with a plan.”

“Wait!” Jess grabbed his sleeve without thinking. She loosened her grip, immediately recognizing her mistake. “Where are you going? You can't leave me here with all this—”

His hands fell to her shoulders, and the weight felt reassuring. And the way he looked down at her, a bit of dark hair flopping subtly over his forehead—well, it gave her just the tiniest bit of hope that things might be okay. Even though she knew that likely wasn't true. “Relax. Have your chat with Dane. I have to go check on a client, but I promise I won't leave you in the midst of this confusion for long. I'll call you tonight and be back tomorrow with a fully formed game plan. You can count on that.”

Her cheeks flushed. Was it fear? Anxiety? Or this stranger's hands on her body?

“Jessica,” Elliot continued. “You can count on me.”

And when he said it, she believed it. Jess believed it in a very different way than she believed Dane or Sam when they said it.

A snort came from behind them and Jess cast Dane a fiery look. With a squeeze to her shoulders, Elliot backed out of the half-sized door.

She watched as he disappeared, his footsteps growing fainter as he made his way down the stairs.

“
Please
don't tell me you're falling for his charms, too.” Dane's voice broke her trance and Jess rolled her eyes, turning to face him once more.

“
No
. Not even a little. I just find him . . . strange. And unsettling.”

Somehow in this tiny room, Dane looked even larger, standing tall with both hands tucked into his front pockets. Jess was suddenly very aware of how much stronger he was than her. Her back was nearly against the wall and as she glanced around, the already small room seemed to close in around her. With only one half-sized door as her escape, her throat tightened. “Is it possible to get trapped in here?”

“No,” he said. “This button can open and close the door from the inside.” He pointed to a small switch on the wall. “So, if Cass wanted to close herself in to do some work, she could.”

“And what if the button failed? Or there was a power outage or something?”

Dane chuckled softly, and the sound was oddly comforting in the midst of a very unsettling moment. “You're so much like Cass,” he said, and shook his head, moving over to the corner of the room. He tugged on a ring, and the floorboards came up, revealing a steep staircase. “These lead to the basement. That way if she got locked in, she could always go down and then be back inside her house.”

“I didn't see any doorway in the basement.”

“Of course not. That would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?” He paused, and his eyes flicked down her body for half a second before he brought them back up to her face. “Wanna see?”

Holy God, yes.
But Jess only shrugged. “Okay.”

“You still got Cass's skeleton key?”

“I—you know about that?”

“Cass trusted me, as well. Despite what Warner might tell you. She always wore that key around her neck.”

There was something in his voice—a hesitancy that left Jess uneasy and made her blood roll in her veins.

“Well, I left the key downstairs. Another time, maybe.”

“I'm sorry again about stealing the prescription pad from you, Jess. I have a damn good reason, though. Those pills—”

“I'm less concerned with your drug habits these days and more curious as to why you lied to me. And Sam.”

His eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

“The day I caught you in this house . . . the first day I moved in. You lied. You knew she was dead.” Jess's voice cracked and she couldn't help the obvious emotion in it. “Why, Dane? Tell me why you lied.”

Dane face flashed with anger and he stalked toward the exit. “I don't have to explain anything to you. You're not the cops.”

She lunged for the button, and slamming her palm down on it, the door slid shut.

“What do you want from me?” Dane asked.

“The truth.”

“The truth?” He cracked a bitter laugh. “You want to know if I killed Cass, right? Just like your boyfriend thinks I did. Well, I
didn't
. I have an alibi.”

“Yeah? The supposed truck stop on your way to Boston, right? Except that the timeline of that doesn't quite add up. It's a two-hour drive to Boston . . . even less at one in the morning when you were claiming you were on the road. And the schedule you gave means that your trip to Boston would have been almost three hours. It doesn't make sense.” There was a tense pause as Jess gave him a chance to explain. Only, he didn't. “Your alibi is thinner than lace. Now, why'd you lie to me?”

He sighed. “Because that day when we first met I was here in the house looking for
this
. For the drugs. And I thought it would look far less suspicious to just pretend I didn't know about her yet. But . . .” His voice faded away and he looked again to the floor, shaking his head.

“But
what?
”

“But you were so . . . so . . . kind. And you offered to bring me to Cass's headstone. I really did like you. And I don't like lying. It was the means to an end.”

“Is that also what you were doing the night Cass died? Poking around the house?”

“If I said yes, would you even believe me?”

“If there was someone to corroborate your story, then yeah, I would.”

“Everyone was drunk and no one would have noticed me poking around. And I wasn't the only one in this house looking. Lots of people are looking for this room. That mug you dropped when you first saw me? Do you ever recall Cass wearing that shade of red lipstick?”

Jess remembered the coffee cup with the scarlet lipstick print. He was right—it was so not Cass. “No,” she said, and gulped as she also remembered the intruder she heard in her basement just after Dane left that afternoon. The police hadn't found anyone . . . something Jess could now chalk up to the secret passage in the basement.

“We had a cleaning service here the night Cass died. We have one after every party. Things are spotless by four a.m. That mug would have never been left by the service. Someone else—someone other than Cass was in here searching.”

Dane held Jess's stare and she didn't even realize until that moment that his hand was on her arm. His grip was tight but tender at the same time and his thumb moved in little arches over her bare skin, firing little pulses of electricity off in her belly. Jess wet her lips as she searched Dane's face for the truth. For the honesty that she so desperately wanted from him. She needed friends. She needed people she could trust in her life and there was still a little flicker of hope inside of her that Dane was good.

“Hello?” a woman's voice called from the second floor. Both Jess and Dane stiffened. “Ms. Walters?”

“Oh my God,” Jess whispered. “Someone's here!”

“Jessie!” Matt's voice echoed up her staircase. “Jessie, you home? The door was open.”

“Come on.” Dane grabbed her hand, hit the button opening the door, and tugged her out of the room, nodding to the keypad. “Type in the code. Quickly.”

Oh, shit. What the hell was that code Elliot gave me?
“Oh, God. I-I don't know. I can't remember.”

Footsteps pounded against the stairs as Matt called out for Jess once more.

“Jess!” Dane said. “Focus.”

She pressed her fingers against her temples, clamping her eyes shut as the banister just outside the door creaked against someone's weight.

“He's a cop, Dane. We're fucked if he finds this room.”

Dane's head jerked between the keypad and the door before he ducked inside, slamming a palm against the inside button. The wall slid closed just as Matt, with Officer Rodriguez at his heels, entered the room.

7

“M
att! Laura!” Jess exclaimed, glancing nervously to the crooked sconce with the keypad still showing. As casually as she could, she nudged the sconce, sliding it back into place. “What the hell? What are you doing here, barging into my home?”

He scratched at his goatee, his eyes wandering around the room. “We were examining the tunnel and the wharf. I wanted to swing by and ask to see the basement where Sam was attacked.” But even as he spoke, his attention was divided. “Why didn't you answer me when we called?”

“Why did you feel like it was okay to just walk in? You're a cop, Matt . . . you should know better.” Her heart pounded inside her chest, a deadly cocktail of anger, panic, and adrenaline.

His face softened. “But I'm not
just
a cop, Jessie. Right now, I'm also your friend.” He paused, looking around the room again. “Why didn't you answer me?”

“I-I only just heard you and . . . um, I was getting dressed.”

“Up here?”

“Yeah. I mean . . .” Jess scanned the room, finding a rolled-up yoga mat in the corner. “I was doing yoga and just had to put my shirt back on.”

“You do yoga topless?” Officer Laura Rodriguez asked.

Jess stretched her spine, standing a little taller and noticing Rodriguez's red lips.
Could she . . . ?
She and Rodriguez hadn't exactly gotten off to the best start. She had been one of the cops to arrive on the scene when Jess first heard an intruder in the basement. She knew Rodriguez was a rookie cop. How long had she been working with Matt and Sam? How well did they trust her? “Actually, I do yoga naked.” Jess flashed them a coy smile. “It's very freeing. You should try it sometime.”

Rodriguez sneered. “I'm more of a kickboxing kind of girl.”

Matt's jaw dropped even more and he stuttered, looking away as though Jess were still totally nude right in front of him. “Oh, um, wow. Well, uh . . . no one else was up here with you?”

“I thought I heard a man's voice up here.” Rodriguez didn't seem to be buying it and while Matt was looking around the room, the young female officer's dark brown eyes fastened directly on Jess.

Jess shook her head. “Nope. Just me. I sometimes talk to myself, though. You know . . . um, motivationally.” She dropped her voice an octave. “Keep going, Jess. Come on!”

Matt and Rodriguez exchanged glances briefly and then Matt whispered, “If you're in trouble, you don't have to say anything. Just blink twice.”

Jess paused, holding his stare without blinking. “I promise you, I'm fine. Could you come back tomorrow, though, to look in the basement? Today's a bit busy.”

She started walking down the stairs and luckily they both followed her.

“Of course,” Matt said. “I'm surprised you're still here. Sam seemed pretty convinced you had left to go home to Brooklyn.”

“Not yet.” Jess gripped the banister, anxiety roiling through her chest. Reaching her front door, she held it open for them.

“Good,” Matt said with a slight smile.

“I wouldn't leave without saying good-bye, Matt.”

“Really? Because you've done it before,” he said, referring to high school when she had left town after graduation. “And I'm less worried about you saying good-bye to me—”

“I promise you,
this
time, I won't leave without letting everyone at least know.”

“We'd all appreciate that, Jessie.” He squeezed her arm, backing out the door with a very confused Rodriguez behind him. “I'll call tomorrow before coming over to have a look at the basement.”

Jess closed the door behind them and then waited until they were down the stoop before she locked the door and rushed back up the stairs.

As she pulled the sconce back, the code rushed back to her mind.
Zero-four-two-zero.

“Dane? You okay?” she called through the wall as she punched in the code.

The wall slid open and he hopped out, a grin on his face. She closed the wall once more, sliding the sconce back into place.

“Naked yoga, huh?” His grin stretched wider. “Wouldn't I love to be a fly on your wall for a day.”

Jess smacked him across the shoulder. “Don't be lewd,” she laughed as her phone rang from within her pocket.

“This is Jess,” she said, answering the call.

“Jess?” a hushed voice echoed from the other line.

“Hello? I can barely hear you—”

“Jess, this is Zooey. I need you to come to the hospital right now.”

Then the line went dead.