Adverse events, p.13
Adverse Events, page 13
When she turned to walk back toward the kitchen, she caught him rearranging the flowers. She laughed again.
“I’m terrible at that kind of thing, remember?”
“Oh, I remember.” He flashed her a grin that made her heart skip. “Ready?”
“Yep, let’s go. I’m starved.”
They made the short drive to the seawall in a companionable silence. When they arrived at Frank’s, she opened the door and hopped out at the same time he did. She stopped short when she saw him frowning playfully at her.
“You know, I would have gotten that for you.”
“Sorry,” she said, half sheepish, half defiant. “I’d forgotten about your archaic manners.”
He shook his head. “Letting a man open your door doesn’t actually diminish your independence, you know. I’ve read all the research. No scientific link at all.”
She laughed. “I’m ill-prepared for this skirmish. Let me look into this supposed research and I’ll get back to you.”
He grinned and offered her his arm as they walked into the restaurant. The hostess greeted Brian by name and ushered them to a secluded table in the back of the dining room. Kate resisted the urge to ask him if he’d brought someone else in the five months they’d been apart. It was none of her business. And if he had, he obviously hadn’t found someone permanent or he wouldn’t have asked her out tonight.
“Shall I order us some wine?” He peeked at her mischievously over the top of the menu.
She rolled her eyes. “Of course. You don’t want me ordering it.”
“No, definitely not.” He gave a mock shudder.
As if on queue, the waiter appeared at Brian’s elbow. He took the order with a murmur of approval and padded deftly away. Kate watched his retreating tuxedo-clad back wistfully.
“It’s just not the same without Slava.”
“Ah, Slava. He definitely made each meal memorable. I do miss hearing him call you Louis Lane.”
Kate laughed. “I know he had to go home, but I wish he could have stayed.”
The Ukrainian waiter had shepherded their regular trips to Frank’s for months. He had regaled them in clipped English with the trials of life in the international student worker program. And he’d been instrumental in helping Kate break up a major prostitution ring. But even those heroics couldn’t delay the expiration of his temporary visa. He left Galveston in December and made it back to Kyiv just in time for Christmas.
Thinking about Slava reminded Kate of a few things she’d rather forget. Shaking away the memories, she smiled across the table. Brian was watching her carefully.
“So, tell me about you,” she said. “How’s work?”
Brian had an endless supply of entertaining stories from the emergency room. He kept her in stitches through the appetizer and main course. It wasn’t until they’d ordered dessert that he turned the conversation to her.
“How are things at the paper? Better, I guess, since you have another big story to follow.”
Kate snorted. “Yeah, the publisher is happy, I’m sure. He hasn’t threatened to lay anyone else off, so that’s a bonus.”
“You’ve done a great job covering all the Newhouse drama. I don’t see how he could complain.”
“It’s all about his bottom line,” Kate said, trying not to sound as bitter as she still felt about the last round of layoffs and the publisher’s spineless refusal to take on local powerbrokers caught in a scandal.
Brian cocked his head and looked at her through slightly narrowed lids.
“How are you doing?”
Kate waved her hand dismissively. “I’m fine.”
He raised an eyebrow. “It’s got to be hard to have to stare down the mayor every other week at council meetings.”
Kate pressed her lips together. This was the last thing she wanted to talk about.
“It sucks. But there’s nothing I can do about it.”
The waiter saved her from having to say anything else by delivering two slices of key lime pie. But not before Kate caught a fleeting look of exasperation cross Brian’s face.
They ate in silence for a few minutes before Brian tried again.
“How was your trip home? Your parents must have been happy to see you.”
Kate’s face flushed. In all the months they’d dated, she’d never told him about her mom. She’d always deflected questions about her family, her past. He hadn’t pushed. It was one of the things she’d appreciated about him. And probably the only reason they’d lasted as long as they had.
She stared at him. How could she tell him the whole story now, even if she wanted to?
Brian frowned. “I guess you don’t want to talk about that either.”
“Can I get you anything else? Coffee?” The waiter had impeccable timing.
“No, thank you.” Brian gave him a tight smile. “I think we’re all done.”
Kate’s key lime pie felt like a lump of concrete in her stomach. She watched silently as Brian took two $100 bills out of his wallet and tossed them next to the empty wine bottle. He stood, walked around the table, and slid her chair back so she could stand. He offered her his arm again, but the gesture lacked the warmth of their walk into the restaurant.
The silence of the drive back to her apartment was much less companionable. When he pulled up outside her building, she took a deep breath and steeled herself.
“Brian, I’m—“
“Look Kate,” he interrupted. “I can’t force you to open up to me. I waited patiently last year. I thought I’d eventually earn your trust. But you shut me out every chance you got. I don’t know what you’re running from, but I won’t keep chasing you.”
“I’m not—“
“Yes, you are,” he said firmly, opening his door. He walked around to her side of the car and opened her door.
She clenched her teeth and swallowed against the lump filling her throat. Before she could step up onto the curb, his hand gently circled her arm. Regret filled his eyes as he looked down at her.
“When you finally decide to stop running, let me know.”
An hour later, Kate was still pacing her apartment. She kept replaying their last conversation. His conversation, really. Because she hadn’t said anything in her own defense. Of course, she could think of half a dozen smart responses now that he was gone. But when he confronted her, she just froze.
Brian was wrong. Totally wrong. She wasn’t running. She was just protecting herself from emotional entanglements that inevitably ended badly.
“Ugh!” Her exasperated cry echoed off the brick walls of her apartment. She felt like a tiger pacing a cramped zoo exhibit.
She stomped to the door, grabbed her car keys off the hook on the wall, and flung open the door. The warm night air caressed her cheek as she pulled out of the parking garage, windows down. She drove toward the seawall and parked in one of the empty slots parallel to the beach. A full moon cast a warm glow over the sand. The white light made the tops of the muddy waves sparkle.
She got out of the car and picked her way down the steep stairs that led to the beach. She slipped off her shoes on the bottom step and sank her bare feet into the sand. In 30 steps, she stood at the edge of the lapping tide. The cool water tickled her toes and sent a wave of goosebumps up her legs. She retreated to a safe distance and sat down.
The short drive had taken the edge off her anger. But it hadn’t changed her conviction.
“You’re wrong,” she said, the sudden sound of her voice startling several seagulls into flight. “I’m not running.”
The hypothetical Brian in her head didn’t back down.
Oh yeah? Then why won’t you talk about your family? Why don’t any of your relationships last longer than six months?
“Because I’m not interested in anything serious.” She said out loud, flipping her hair over her shoulder for emphasis.
Really? You seemed pretty interested four months ago.
A memory of tangled sheets and the scent of warm skin floated through her mind. She dug her fingers into the sand at her side and flung a clump at the water. Tears pricked the back of her eyes.
“I’m not running.”
Then why are you sitting here alone?
She drew her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, resting her forehead on her knees. She’d barely been a teenager when her mom died. Back then, she was so fragile she felt like she would shatter at the slightest disturbance. So she’d built an imaginary glass box to keep herself safe. She could see out. Everyone on the outside could observe from a distance. But no one could touch her.
Still, that wasn’t running. That was just self-preservation.
She picked up her head and watched the waves roll ashore. Who wouldn’t do whatever it took to protect themselves? Hadn’t she just witnessed a prime example of that today? Aaron Newhouse had killed Emily Gibson to protect his precious vaccine trial. And now he was spinning a crazy theory about her disappearance to save himself from a murder conviction.
She let her mind wander back over their conversation. He’d said the vaccine trial failure had demolished the foundation Emily had built her whole life on. That might have been the only thing he’d said that wasn’t hard to believe. In fact, Kate had no trouble believing it at all. She knew exactly how that felt.
This morning, she’d listened to Newhouse’s theory through the filter of logic. But she knew better than anyone that logic didn’t apply to someone whose world had just shattered.
She closed her eyes and drifted back to her 13-year-old self. It was a week after her mother’s funeral. She had just come home from her first day back at school. And she was determined never to go back. The familiar desperation swamped her as she relived the memory. Her dad wasn’t home from work yet. She’d grabbed an old backpack from the bottom of her closet and stuffed it with clothes. She was headed out the front door when he came home. One look at his face and she knew she couldn’t leave him all alone.
But if he hadn’t come home right then, she would have been gone.
She would have just disappeared.
Kate’s breath caught in her throat. Suddenly, Newhouse’s theory didn’t seem so far-fetched.
Of course, as Lewis had said after the interview, Emily Gibson didn’t just blink herself off the island. She’d run out of that beach house in a bathing suit, carrying nothing more than a towel. If she really had planned an elaborate ruse to disappear, she had help.
And that meant someone had to know something.
It still wasn’t the most likely explanation, but it wasn’t as preposterous as she’d thought six hours ago. And if Emily wasn’t dead, a jury might actually convict Aaron Newhouse of a murder that never happened.
Kate’s stomach lurched like she had just crested the top of a rollercoaster. Justice misapplied was just as bad as justice denied.
She jumped to her feet, heart pounding, and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Was she letting her own bias talk her into something crazy? She could only think of one person she trusted to give her an honest answer.
Chapter 13
Johnson rubbed both hands over his face to wipe away the last traces of drowsiness. He’d been about to climb into bed when his phone rang. Kate was talking so fast he could barely understand her. But one thing came through clearly: she wanted to see him. Right then.
Alarm had snapped him awake, and he’d peppered her with questions until he was sure she wasn’t in any danger. When she’d finally convinced him she was fine, his tide of exhaustion had rushed back in. He was sitting on his front step, elbows resting on his knees, when she pulled up in front of the house.
The wind whipped her hair in a swirl around her head as she trotted up the steps. Her eyes sparkled with a feverish intensity. If she noticed his lack of enthusiasm for still being awake at this hour, she didn’t show it.
“You want to come inside?” he asked as she rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms. The spring night had turned cool and the damp wind made it feel about 10 degrees colder than it really was.
She nodded. “That would be great. Thanks.”
An image of the police chief’s disapproving frown flitted through his mind. No doubt this looked like a slightly less than professional visit. He glanced around as Kate stepped inside. None of his neighbors were out and about at this hour. He sighed and followed her inside.
“Can I get you something?” he asked.
“No, I’m good,” she sounded distracted as she slowly looked around the room.
His mother’s paintings hung on every wall. It was like having a window to home. But also a reflection of the past. Some days, he wished he could just take them down.
“These look just like the one in your office,” she said. “Are they by the same artist?”
He nodded. “My mom.”
She tilted her head to the side and looked at him for a few moments in silence. Afraid she would start asking questions he didn’t want to answer, he motioned toward the couch.
“What’s all the excitement about this time?” he asked.
She eyed his disgruntled tabby, who was curled up on the opposite end of the couch. He chuckled.
“She won’t bite, probably. Just give her a wide berth. She doesn’t like her routine being disrupted.”
Kate arched an eyebrow at him and sat down on the opposite end of the couch. He perched on the ottoman in front of his favorite armchair. The one he’d almost been asleep in when she called.
“I met with Aaron Newhouse today.”
“And? Did he convince you of his innocence?”
She laughed. “No, not exactly. In fact, he spun a story I found completely unbelievable.”
She paused, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap.
“And?”
“Well, now I’m not sure.”
“About what?”
“About whether it’s really that unbelievable.”
“Okay. So what’s the story?”
Kate took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Newhouse insists he didn’t do anything to Emily Gibson and that he has no idea what happened to her. So if she didn’t drown, he claims that leaves only one option: She disappeared on purpose.”
“What? That’s ridiculous.” He’d heard a lot of excuses from criminals trying to get out of a conviction. But they usually tried to pin the crime on someone else, not claim that a crime hadn’t actually been committed.
“I know. That’s what I thought, too.”
“So why are you suddenly not sure?”
Kate looked down at her hands but glanced at him sideways, like she was trying to decide how much to tell him. He resisted the urge to push.
“I… I was thinking about some of my own experiences. It’s just… ” She jumped to her feet and started pacing. “Newhouse said Emily was plagued by doubts about whether she really wanted to be a researcher. He said when they ran into problems with the vaccine trial, it ripped the rug out from under her. It basically threw her whole world into chaos. She felt like there was nothing left for her here but misery and humiliation. So she decided to run.”
She stopped pacing and looked at him, her grey eyes pleading.
“I know it sounds crazy. That’s what I told him. But when I put myself in her shoes, suddenly it didn’t seem so crazy.”
Johnson frowned as he looked up at her. Eyebrows drawn together, she was gazing at the painting closest to where she stood. In it, a young boy led a big white cow down a red dirt road.
“Haven’t you ever… just wanted to disappear?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper.
He shifted uncomfortably, suddenly self-conscious. Not only had he wanted to disappear, he actually had.
“Maybe,” he hedged. “But I never would have left my family. I wouldn’t have let the people who loved me think I was dead.”
Kate looked down, but not before he caught the shimmer of tears in her grey eyes.
“What if you felt like that was your only option? Like you had no other choice?”
He looked across the room at a painting of a field, men and women stooped to gather in the crop. It looked so peaceful. But that was before the attacks. Before the retaliation. Before his late-night flight in the back of the plane that carried supplies to remote villages. He’d disappeared from the only home he’d ever known, but he hadn’t left his parents behind.
“No,” he said firmly. “I couldn’t have done it.”
Kate sighed in exasperation and sat back down on the couch.
“Besides, Kate, we have evidence that Newhouse threatened her. This is off the record, okay?”
She nodded, her eyes glued to his face.
“He threatened to kill her. He said he would never let her expose the vaccine trial as a failure. If we didn’t have that, I might believe what you’re saying. But it’s hard to buy his claim that he did nothing when he warned her he would.”
Kate chewed on her bottom lip.
“There’s no way that could have been planted?”
“By who?”
“Emily! Look, I know it sounds like something out of a spy novel, but if she really planned her own disappearance, wouldn’t she want it to look like something had happened to her? Wouldn’t she want people to think she was dead so no one would come looking?”
He threw up his hands. “You’re right. This does sound like a spy novel.”
She huffed. “It’s not like no one has ever faked their own death before.”
“Faking her own death would have been making people think she drowned, which we did, at first. What you’re talking about is making us think she was murdered.”
“Maybe that was her way of getting back at Newhouse.”
He shook his head. “I understand why this sounds possible. It is possible. But it’s just not plausible. Not based on the evidence we have.”
“And you’re positive that evidence is real?”
“I never had any reason to doubt that it was.”
“Until now.”
He crossed his arms. Exhaustion made his brain sluggish. He was not going to spin around on an argument merry-go-round all night.
