The thought struck me so suddenly it caused a wave of morning sickness. Or maybe it was just fear. Delta was a champ and held my hair back as she helped me through the sickness.
At least the baby was okay, even if my stomach was in knots.
I fought the nausea and removed my IV. “We have to go. I have an idea.”
Delta didn’t like it already. “Please, stay in bed.”
No. No more waiting. No more secrets.
“All my life, I’ve played by the rules,” I said. “This whole town tricks you into thinking it’s innocent, and I was fooled. I said Maddox was out of his mind for wanting revenge, and he thought I was naïve for seeking justice.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going vigilante.”
“No. Chief Craig and Nolan caused these lies and conspiracies. I won’t live in a world where manipulation is the only way to solve problems and vengeance is the only real punishment. It ends now.”
I couldn’t leave in a hospital gown. Delta offered me her windbreaker. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m ending the corruption. We’re going to find Chelsea, and we’ll make her confess to the affair. Then no one can hurt her or Maddox anymore.”
Delta said it was a stupid idea, but she covered me as I raced to the door. We ran to the stairwell and busted out of the hospital through the side exit into the parking lot. She led me to her car and rooted through her gym bag for a pair of pants and a shirt.
I dressed in the car on the way to the motel. Delta drove fast, peeling out of a red light with as much displeasure as her accelerator could squeal.
“I should find Chelsea,” she said. “You need to be in the hospital.”
“You used to make me cut school with you.”
“Yeah, running out on your IV isn’t like skipping gym.”
“Chelsea might only talk to me. She was never close to Maddox. Hell, she only came around when she needed help or money.”
“Sounds like a great sister,” Delta said.
“She was his only family, broken as it was. He tried so hard to take care of her. I’m sure she’ll help him too.”
“Now who’s naïve? What if she runs? Or goes to Chief Craig?”
Then Maddox would be killed. I couldn’t fail. It wasn’t an option.
Delta pulled into the motel. Grit still coated my lungs, and I coughed all the way to the room. A light shone through the corner window. I knocked hard enough for the entire town to hear.
Nothing.
“Chelsea!” I shouted for her. “It’s Josie Davis. I need to talk to you.”
Not a sound.
I banged harder.
“Chelsea, please!”
She was content to ignore me, and why not? The town didn’t give her a reason to show her face. We pretended her family never existed. The town avoided them until I shoved Maddox into their lives and forced them to confront the problems that no one talked about. Drug use. Domestic abuse. Their parents were born rotten, but Maddox and Chelsea only shared a common name with them. They deserved better.
“It’s about Maddox.” My words hissed over a gasped breath. “He’s in danger. You’re the only one who can help him.”
The door opened partway, still connected with the chain. Chelsea peeked out. She guarded herself with a scowl, but her voice wavered over her brother’s name.
“Maddox is in trouble again?”
“This wasn’t his fault,” I said.
“Find that hard to believe.”
“It’s Chief Craig, Chelsea.”
The door nearly closed. I forced it open again. “I know what’s been happening. I know Maddox was giving him money to keep you safe.”
Chelsea groaned. “Why doesn’t anyone understand? John loves me. He wants to run away with me.”
Delta shared my glance. The poor girl was completely taken with a man who would destroy her.
“Right now, Chief Craig is saying Maddox tried to hurt me. He didn’t. If I go down there and argue with him, he’ll murder Maddox. I can’t do anything to help him.”
She touched the bruise on her face. “But what can I do? I’m nothing.”
“You have to come forward about the affair.”
The door almost closed again. Delta and I both pushed it open. Chelsea teared up and hid her face.
“I can’t do that,” she said.
“It’s for Maddox.”
“John will hate me.”
“Do you really want to be with a man who would threaten your brother? After everything Maddox has done for you?”
She picked at the paint on the door. “Josie, I’m a junkie. I’m a whore. No one in this town would believe me. John is the only way I can escape this life and become something more.”
“Will he actually help you?” I asked.
“I…he said he would.”
I didn’t believe her, and I knew she didn’t believe him. “Maddox and I will help you. But you’re the only one who can save him now. Please, Chelsea. I can’t do this without you.”
She shook her head, blonde hair falling over her eyes. The door slowly closed. Latched.
“No!” I pounded the frame. Delta pulled me back. “Chelsea, please. I’m begging you. I love Maddox. I’m trying to protect him. I won’t let anything happen to you, but you have to help me.”
“Josie…” Delta tugged on my arm. “Come on. We gotta get you back to the hospital.”
“Chelsea!”
“We can try again tomorrow. The doctors are going to freak out if you aren’t in your bed.”
I broke down. I couldn’t leave. I fought away from Delta’s arms.
“He won’t survive the night.” I coughed too hard, and the words tumbled from me in a blitz of fear. “The chief will kill him tonight. No one would know it wasn’t a suicide. No one would care!”
Delta took my hand. I batted her away. “We’ll figure something out.”
“No! It has to be now! It has to be this. God only knows what will happen to him—and if Nolan…” I didn’t want to imagine it. I’d be sick thinking about it. “Nolan will come after me too. We’re not safe. We need—”
The door opened.
Chelsea shouldered a book bag and bundled a jacket in her arms. She hid the track marks, but the bruise on her cheek said more than the scars on her arm.
“He wasn’t really going to leave his wife, was he?” Her whisper broke my heart.
I shook my head. “No.”
“He spent the money Maddox gave him on a necklace for her. I saw it.”
I pulled her into a hug. “It’ll be okay. Trust me.”
“How are we going to do it without…” Chelsea’s lip trembled. “John has a temper.”
Easy. We needed to expose the secret, and I worked for a newspaper. It wouldn’t be a Pulitzer Prize winning article, but it’d reveal the corruption.
“I’ll take you to my editor,” I said. “We’ll give him the story and bring down both Chief Craig and Nolan Rhys. It’ll be on the Saint Christie Reporter blog in the morning and printed in the paper by the evening.”
I led Chelsea to Delta’s car, squeezing her hand as she hesitated before the door.
“But what if John wants to get revenge?” she asked.
“We won’t let him,” I promised. “Because we’ll have justice.”
Chapter Twenty Two – Maddox
The cell’s metal bars separated me from Chief Craig.
I didn’t know if they protected me or him.
The police denied me the hospital and elected for medical treatment at the station. That was probably a lawsuit waiting to happen, but I doubted I’d get a chance to talk to an attorney. We skipped the phone call. The finger prints. All due-process.
Whatever happened tonight wouldn’t be lawful.
The chief’s stare burned through me. I wasn’t intimidated. How the hell did a man as old and weak as him have power over me? He abused my sister. He took my money. We had nothing left to exchange except a resolution to a long-standing problem.
We both wanted the other dead.
If he stepped into my cell, one of us would die. My foot already was halfway in the grave. The other slipped in the puddle of blood that pulsed from my head.
I stood, even though the injury throbbed and my body ached. I didn’t need rest. If the chief had it his way, I’d get plenty from my long nap when I hanged from the bars.
The lieutenant stapled the last of my paperwork and turned off his desk lamp. “Chief, do you need any help?”
“No,” Chief Craig said. His hands lingered too close to his belt, to the Taser inches from his fingertips. “I got it from here, Ted. Thanks for the overtime tonight.”
“Gotcha.”
The lieutenant gathered his belongings. I studied the cell. I had nothing inside the cement walls. I’d have to defend myself from a man armed with pepper spray, a Taser, and a gun with only my trembling hands, scraped and burned from the fire.
But I had plenty to fight for.
Josie. Our baby. Justice.
Nothing was going to keep me from taking what was mine.
Nothing.
The lieutenant was leaving just as a call came in. He reached for it over the desk, answering with an exhausted grunt.
“You know Nolan Rhys abducted Josie Davis.” I kept my voice low. Not that it mattered. I figured the Chief already shut off the cameras facing the cell. “Rhys would have killed me and her.”