“He’d been planning this,” Felice said, staring down at her hands.
“How do you know?” the deputy asked.
“We, uh, kind of broke into their rooms, earlier tonight, I mean, last night. They’d basically packed up most of their crap. Even their gaming console. That’s when we knew something was up. I think Garrett realized we were on to them.”
Felice’s face contorted and she suddenly started to weep. “We lived with these guys for a month. Ate pizza and drank beer and hung out with them. And they meant to kill us.”
Felice was full-on sobbing now. She fumbled helplessly for the tissue box on the stand next to the bed with her thickly bandaged hands. Traci plucked some tissues and held one up to Felice’s nose. “Blow,” she commanded.
Felice did. Traci gently dabbed at the tears on the girl’s face with another tissue.
“Thank you,” Felice whispered.
“I was supposed to be the lookout at the front door—in case the guys came back. We didn’t want to get caught snooping.”
“What happened after that?” Shapley asked.
Felice sniffled. “We went to the kitchen. I got my jug of kombucha from the fridge. But then Liv’s phone rang and she knocked over the whole jug. It spilled all over the counter and I figured maybe she was drunk, because she’d finished off the bottle of wine in the fridge. But really, I guess the roofies had already kicked in on her. Because she barely made it to bed. She couldn’t even hardly walk.”
Traci reached over and pressed the tissue to Felice’s nose and she blew hard, then nodded to signal that she was done.
“I feel so guilty. About being pissed at her for knocking over my kombucha. She always made fun of me and called me a hippie and asked me how I could drink such nasty stuff.”
Felice turned baleful eyes to Traci. “But her spilling most of it—so I only got to drink a little of it? Probably saved my life.”
“But you risked your own life, to save hers,” Traci pointed out. “So I think, when Livvy is herself again, she’ll say it’s all good.”
“Maybe.” Felice looked around the cubicle, at Shapley, who was assiduously scribbling notes. “When can I get out of here? I hate hospitals.”
Her face sagged. “Except—I don’t have any place to go to, and everything I own was in my room.” She looked down at the hospital gown she was wearing. “I don’t have anything at all, not even a pair of jeans.”
“You can go home with me,” Traci said firmly. “We’ll figure out the rest later.”
CHAPTER 66
Shannon sat in the world’s most uncomfortable green vinyl chair, pulled close to the hospital bed.
Her daughter was sleeping. Just an hour earlier, a nurse she’d never met before had bustled into the cubicle and taken Livvy off the oxygen.
The nurse’s name was Beth. “Your daughter’s gonna be fine,” Beth said, washing her hands at the sink. “I hear you work upstairs?”
“In ICU,” Shannon said. “Did her drug screen come back yet?”
Beth hesitated.
“This is my kid we’re talking about. And it’s just between us,” Shannon promised.
“Your kid is lucky. We see a lot of girls in here, some guy they meet at a bar dopes their drink, and… the worst happens.”
“No lasting effects, right?” Shannon had worked the ER early in her nursing career, but that was well before roofies and date rape drugs were a thing.
“Shouldn’t be,” Beth said. “Her doctor will probably want to do follow-ups, make sure her liver function is good, but they’ll tell you about that with all her discharge papers.”
Shannon could have wept from relief.
“Your friend is still out in the waiting room. Why don’t the two of you go get some coffee or something to eat? It’s slow right now. I’ll stay with Olivia. Give me your number, and I’ll text you if she wakes up.”
Shannon scribbled her cell number on a scrap of paper and handed it over. “Thanks. I guess some caffeine would be good.”
