The Boyfriend Deal(22)

I wasn’t sure my legs would hold me much longer. I snagged a chair and pulled it over beside the bed, then took Hadley’s hand in mine. She was cool to the touch and I wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I squeezed her fingers and lifted her hand, placing a kiss on the back of it.

“I’m here, Hadley. Can you open your eyes for me?” I asked.

She didn’t move.

“The doctor said she might not wake for a few hours,” Mrs. Ryan said. “It was a fast-acting poison. Within a few hours, she’d have been dead.”

I looked over my shoulder at Robert. “Call the police and tell them you have information for them. I want Alicia arrested.”

He nodded and pulled out his phone, stepping into the hall. Mrs. Ryan looked shaken, and I wanted to offer her comfort, but I wasn’t sure how. All that mattered was getting Hadley well enough to go home. And if she was staying in the hospital overnight, then I would too, even if Mrs. Ryan kicked me out to the waiting room. Football be damned. I didn’t care anymore about the scouts coming to Friday’s game. If Hadley wasn’t there, I didn’t care if I played or not. There would be other opportunities, but there was only one Hadley.

“Mrs. Ryan, I’d like to stay with Hadley, if that’s okay with you.”

“You can stay as long as you’d like. As much as I’d love to be here until she goes home, my husband has already told me to go home for the night and he’d come sit with Hadley for a while.”

“He’s a police officer, right?”

She nodded.

“And he knows Hadley was poisoned?”

“Well, I told him she’d ingested Hemlock, but we had no idea how she’d gotten any.”

“Mrs. Ryan, I know you don’t want to leave Hadley, but you should probably look for that gift basket and the items it contained. There may still be traces of Hemlock that would prove Alicia poisoned her.”

She stood slowly. “If you promise not to leave her for a minute, I’ll call my husband and ask him to meet me at the house. We’ll do a thorough search for it. If we find something, he can call the crime lab and have everything processed as evidence.”

“I swear I won’t leave this room.”

Mrs. Ryan picked up her purse, paused by the bed long enough to kiss Hadley’s cheek, and then she quietly left the room. Robert came back in and claimed the seat Mrs. Ryan had just vacated.

“Why didn’t you tell me Hadley’s dad was a cop?”

“I didn’t think about it. Mrs. Ryan was about to call him. They’re going to search their home for the gift basket and see if anything in it contains Hemlock. But even if there isn’t any evidence, I’m convinced Alicia was behind this. Where the hell else would Hadley have gotten Hemlock?”

“Maybe you should be asking where Alicia got it.”

“Probably from her aunt. She runs one of those spiritualist shops and has all kinds of herbs and stuff in there. If anyone knows how to get Hemlock and hide it in food, it would be her Aunt Esther.”

Robert leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees. “So Hadley is going to be okay?”

“As long as they got it all out of her system. I guess they’ve given her something to counteract it, like antivenin when someone is bitten by a snake. I wish she’d open her eyes though. I’d feel so much better if she’d talk to me.”

“Want me to stay with you a while? I can call my parents and tell them what’s going on. I should probably hang out until Mr. Ryan gets here. I need to give a statement, even though I told him over the phone what I’d overheard. Of course, he said it’s my word against hers, but at least they have a direction to go now.”

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” I asked. “If I’d known before practice that Alicia left something for Hadley, I could have warned her.”

“I just thought it was a harmless prank. I’m really damn sorry. I can’t tell you how sick I feel knowing Hadley could have died because I didn’t say anything sooner.”

I could tell he was tormented and let the matter drop. There would be plenty of time for finger pointing later, and really, the only person to blame was Alicia. I didn’t know what I was going to do about her. Maybe Mr. Ryan would be able to pin the poisoning on her, and she’d be punished. Although, I had a feeling she’d face jail time since she nearly killed Hadley. It sickened me to think my ex was capable of such a thing. Just what kind of people had I been hanging out with? Did that make me as bad a person as Alicia?

Robert eventually left and I remained with Hadley, holding her hand and talking to her softly. I told her about practice, told her how beautiful she was, even in a hospital gown, and just rambled about nonsense so she could hear the sound of my voice. It was quite a while later before a man stepped into the room, wearing a worn gray tee and jeans.