I felt sick as the puzzle pieces slammed into place. He was blackmailing them. Blackmailing them to ensure their silence. Harris was preying on married women with children. Women with successful, rich husbands who had the means, social standing, and resources to completely ruin their lives. He had purposefully taken misleading photos, suggesting he’d been dating his victims, that the sex was consensual. When in fact, Harris was a twisted, sick predator who apparently preferred his victims passed out in the back of his car.
I sagged against the bench seat and stared at Harris’s phone. Then at Patricia’s note. Patricia was right. I didn’t know where I was taking him, but there was no way I was returning this monster to Patricia Mickler’s home.
CHAPTER 8
It was nearly ten o’clock when I jerked to a stop in my driveway.
And I still hadn’t figured out what to do with Harris Mickler.
I sat in the van, engine idling, knuckles white on the steering wheel as the garage door lifted on its track. The headlights reflected off the pegboard as I pulled inside, casting eerie shadows over the interior of my garage.
This was not okay.
The unconscious kraken on the floor of my minivan was not okay.
I should call Georgia and tell her everything. She would know what to do. And she probably wouldn’t let anyone put me in jail because then she’d be stuck watching my kids indefinitely.
I got out of the van, my body dimming the headlights as I navigated the tight space between the bumper and Steven’s workbench, the humming engine warming my legs as I brushed past. The night had grown cold, and the exhaust from my van billowed in thick white clouds down the driveway toward Mrs. Haggerty’s house. Her kitchen windows were dark across the street, and I sent up a silent prayer of thanks that the neighborhood busybody had already gone to sleep.
I threw open the door to the kitchen. The room smelled like the wet waffle scraps on the piled dishes in the sink, and the cordless phone was still sticky with syrup, on the table exactly where I’d left it. I hit redial and pressed it to my ear, counting rings as I slid down the back side of the door in the dark, too afraid to turn on the light.
“Finn?” Zach wailed in the background. I pinched my forehead. My children’s cries were a language I’d learned to understand through years of trial and error and sleepless nights.
“Couldn’t get him to sleep, huh?”
“What am I doing wrong?” she asked, a little breathless. Georgia was cool in a hostage crisis, but a toddler meltdown was obviously more than she felt qualified to handle.
“Nothing. He’s just overtired,” I said, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes. Funny how the sound of your child screaming could silence everything else in your mind.
“Then why won’t he sleep?”
“Because he’s two. Listen carefully to my instructions,” I said in my best hostage-negotiator voice in the hopes that it would calm my sister and keep her focused. “Do you have his blanket?”
Her shuffling was drowned out by his howls. “Yes, I have his blanket.”
“Wrap it over him and hold him against you. Then put his paci in his mouth. Press it in place with a finger while you pat his back.”
“I’m not an octopus.”
“Or you can let him scream until I get there.”
“How long until you get here?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
I rested my forehead on my knees. “How long will a grown man stay unconscious after taking a roofie?”
Georgia’s pause was punctuated by Zach’s pathetic whines. “You lost me.”
“Research. I’m working on a book.”
“I thought you said you had something important to do tonight.”
“This is important.” Why did everyone think my job wasn’t important? “I’m stuck on a plot point.”
“Roofies?” she mumbled. “Depends on the size of the man and the strength of the drug. Maybe a couple hours. Maybe a whole night.” The phone rustled as Georgia wrestled Zach into his blanket, his cries stifled by the pacifier she’d popped in his mouth. More rustling. Zach sniffling. “Okay, I think it might be working.”
“So if you were the heroine of a story, and you drugged a really terrible man who’d done really horrible things—?”
“Like what kind of things?”
“Illegal things.”
“Are we talking misdemeanor things or felony things?”
“Definitely felony things. And let’s say he was passed out in the trunk of your car. What would you do with him?”
“Could you prove he had committed felonious crimes?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters,” she said, as if the answer should be obvious. “If your heroine has evidence, she ought to dump him at the police station and turn that evidence over to a detective. Let the authorities handle it.”
I lifted my head, blinking in the dark of the kitchen. Harris’s cell phone pictures. I had physical evidence that he had surreptitiously photographed and blackmailed who knows how many women. And I’d witnessed him try to drug one of those women, which supported the likely fact that he had drugged the others as well, which was evidence of assault. I could turn him over to the police and give them Harris’s phone. Hell, I could take him to Georgia’s house and leave him and his cell phone with her. I didn’t have to tell her about Patricia’s note. I’d just tell her I was out at a bar, realized he was trying to drug someone, and switched his drink. “Would I … Would my character get in trouble for drugging him?”
“Depends on the circumstances. Premeditated? Illicit drugs? Probably.”
“Are we talking a lot of trouble, or a little trouble?”
“Does it matter? It’s a romance novel.”
“Yes, it matters! I want it to be accurate.”
Georgia heaved a sigh. “Well, I guess if she turned herself in, a prosecutor might go easy on her and cut her a deal.”
I sat up. That was it. I could turn myself in to Georgia. Given the choice between arresting me or letting me go, she would definitely let me go. The alternative was being stuck with my kids until someone posted bail for me, and she wouldn’t keep them a minute longer than absolutely necessary.
“So are you coming to get Zach and Delia now that we’ve solved your fictional problem?”
Zach was asleep. I could hear his snotty-nosed soft baby breaths over the quiet hum of the van in the garage and the distant barks of a neighbor’s dogs down the street.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m wrapping things up now. I’ll be over soon.”
Georgia disconnected. I set the phone on the floor. It was still sticky, furry with strands of Delia’s hair. Somehow, the day had gone from bad to worse. I was no further along on my book, and no closer to being able to pay my own bills. And once the police report was filed, Steven and Theresa’s attorney would have one more reason to paint me as an unfit parent. It wouldn’t matter that a monster like Harris was in jail and off the street. I’d been out at a bar in a wig and a stolen dress, drinking the money my husband had given me for gas. I had drugged a man, and then abducted him in the back of the family minivan.