“Buzz off or I’ll call the main desk.” She fought her gorge and lost. “Bbblluurrgghh! And they’ll ream you a new one before or after they call the cops!”
“Yes! The police! Summon them immediately! Your life may be at stake!”
It is. It is going to go on all night. Shivering, she flushed, got to her feet, got to the sink
“Have you called the authorities? Shall I?”
“Will you give me five seconds?”
washed her face, brushed her teeth, went to the door, took a breath, opened it.
Tom greeted her with a gasp that could only be described as horrified.
“What’s the matter?” she snapped. “Have I lost my youthful glow? A barf session will do that.”
“Why are you still here?” he demanded.
“Annnnnnd I’m shutting the door now.” She scratched her arms and glared. “Can you slam the door in your own face? I’ve got a lot going on right now … no, no, from the other side of the door … goddammit!”
“Please.” Tom had his hands up like he was being arrested. Which was still in the cards for the evening as far as she was concerned. “Please answer my question. Why are you still here? Why were you grounded?”
She stomped to the minifridge and grabbed a ginger ale. “Why are you assuming I was grounded? Maybe I just love all this tropical Midwest weather.”
“Because the only reason you would have remained is if you could not leave.”
Fair. “If I answer, you’ll go away forever?”
“No.”
She almost smiled, but it turned into a grimace as her stomach roiled. “Points for—uurrggh—candor. I flunked a drug test. Actually, I didn’t flunk the test; the test flunked me.” That made sense, right? Right. “Took them a day or so to get it straightened out. But I’m flying the mostly friendly skies as of tomorrow morning.”
He reached out sloooowly and she watched, bemused, as he did a pretty good imitation of molasses. He gently grasped her arm, turned it over, and studied the welts rising on the pale underside. “And this?”
“No idea. I’ve been itching like crazy.”
“Yes, I saw you were scratching earlier; this looks like textbook irritant contact dermatitis.”
“Of course,” she deadpanned. “Exactly what I was thinking.”
“And you’re ill.” He inclined his head toward the bathroom, where the toilet was still running and all the lights were on. He reached up, put the back of his hand on her forehead, touched her cheeks. “But no fever.”
“Thanks for the update.”
“You’re being sabotaged,” he said flatly, and the moment he said it, she realized he might be on to something.
“By the killer?”
“Very possible.”
“But some people think I’m the killer.”
“Which works out nicely for the real killer, don’t you think?”
She sighed. “You’d better come in.”
“I am in.”
“Oh. Right. Stay put. Don’t snoop through my stuff.”
Five minutes later, she was reasonably certain the barf party was over—for a while, at least. Tom, meanwhile, had taken a seat at the small desk in the corner and was on his phone, but set it aside the moment he saw her.
“Would you like me to get an antinauseant?”
“Why? Are you sick?”
“Ava. This is serious.”
She sighed and perched on the end of the bed. “I know. I’m just a little numb right now. To this and … everything.”
“Will you tell me about your drug test?”
“It flagged me for PCP, ecstasy, weed, coke, benzos, oxy, and PCP.”
“You said PCP twice.”
“Apparently there was a lot of it. A lot of fake PCP.”
“But the test was wrong.”
“Of course. Wait, why do you know that? We’ve known each other less than a week. Who are you to say I’m not a raging cokehead?” Wait. Am I actually offended that he assumed I’m clean?
“Point. However, it’s difficult to picture you breaking the law and jeopardizing your health and your license for something as oddly specific and ultimately mercurial as a benzodiazepine-PCP-cocaine-MDMA-marijuana-oxycontin high.”
“Well. Yeah, that’s mostly true. But.” She cleared her throat. Took a sip of ginger ale. Coughed again. Good God, she’d told this story to any number of counselors, employers, and coworkers. Why was it difficult now? “Uh. Back in the day, after Danielle and my folks were killed, I started having trouble sleeping.”
“Having trouble sleeping” was code for lying in bed night after night after night after night, staring at the ceiling with gritty eyes and seeing Danielle’s corpse and the demolished wreck that had swallowed her parents (she’d talked the insurance agent into letting her look at the pictures, an action they both immediately regretted), and wondering if anyone would care—or at least notice—if she OD’d. Over-the-counter Unisom turned into booze, but she had to drink too much of it to get numb and disliked the taste of just about all of it. Or, as she told her T-group, “I failed as a drunk. Just couldn’t get it done.”
So she turned to Ambien, which turned into scamming prescriptions from just about every doctor within a 120-mile radius, which turned into buying loads of it online, which turned into popping six to eight Ambien a night to sleep, then being a zombie during daylight hours, only to gulp down another half-dozen Ambien to force herself under again, and somewhere in there she lost track of a year.
“I ended up in a Minnesota slough—Hazelden—for just under a month, and they helped me get my shit together,” she explained. “I’ve been clean for close to a decade. But hearing I’d flunked a routine screening brought back bad memories.”
“Of course it did.” He didn’t sound judgmental, just upset on her behalf. “It would be unpleasant for anyone, never mind someone with your history. Which makes for an extra sadistic touch, don’t you agree?”
Yikes. When he put it that way, it seemed a lot more ominous—and personal. It suggested the killer didn’t just know her but had kept up with her post-Danielle history. Could it be?
Dumb question. Of course he or she kept up—they managed to reach out from wherever and fuck up my drug test. Among other things.
“Tell me about the irritant.”
“He’s sitting about eight feet away.”
Tom chuckled. “I suppose I earned that. When did the symptoms start?”
“Late yesterday. I didn’t think much of the itching at first, because I’d misplaced my damned moisturizer, so I figured it was just my skin crying out for more Eucerin.”
“And then you found it again.”
“Yes.” On the driver’s-side floor of her rental car, as a matter of fact … she’d looked down and seen the top of the bottle sticking out. At the time, she’d wondered how she had missed it when she ransacked the car earlier.
“Which you then immediately, and generously, applied.”
“Oh my God. What the hell did that shithead put in my lotion?” Poison? Bodily fluids? Please, please let it be poison …