“Where are you?”
“Bring Beaumont if he’s around,” I demand. “I’ll text you.”
Ending the call, I send a text to Ford with Charlie’s address. I know that it’s going to take at least thirty minutes for them to get here.
Gripping my phone tightly in my hand, I leave Charlie alone just long enough to lock all of the doors. I don’t know if Mark did this, if he has a key to this house, but since the front door was unlocked, hopefully he doesn’t.
I know that I won’t be able to clean Charlie up myself, she’s at least four inches taller than me, so I go about attempting to bag up some of the trash around me.
It’s apparent by the way her body has started to change that she hasn’t been eating so it makes me believe even more that Mark has been doing this to her.
My heart aches as she just lies in bed like a zombie while I move around her. She smells, not just like sex and cum, but like piss and feces too.
It takes every single part of my strength to stay standing and not sink into a ball on the floor and cry at the sight of my friend.
My entire body jumps with a small scream that escapes my lips when I hear a knock at the door. Rushing toward the sound, I glance through the peephole, thankful to see that it’s Ford and Beaumont, looking completely confused on the other side.
Wrenching the door open, I tilt my head back to look in their eyes. “This is my friend Charlie’s place. I’ve been worried about her. She worked at Headlights with me. She went home with my boss Mark one night, and I haven’t really talked to her much since. I called her today and she sounded funny so I kind of demanded that she let me come over,” I say in a rush.
Ford lifts his chin, looking past me into the house and I watch as his nose wrinkles when he takes in the stench. “What are we walking in to?” he asks.
“I think he’s been drugging her. I mean, she could have been an addict and I didn’t know it, but I didn’t think that she was,” I explain.
Beaumont and Ford both brush past me and I lock the door as I hurry behind them. Their bodies come to a rocking halt when they see Charlie lying in the bed, naked and bruised in her own filth.
“I’m not strong enough to pick her up,” I whisper.
Ford turns to me, looking at me from over his shoulder. “Call the sheriff, now.”
“Ford?”
He shakes his head once. “Do it, Tulip.”
Without hesitating a moment longer, I do what Ford requests. I don’t leave Charlie though. I expect them to pick her up and bathe her, but they don’t. Instead, they both just stand there. Once I’m off the phone with the police department, I march up to them with a scowl.
“The sheriff’s deputy needs to see how we found her, Tulip. She’s breathing, she’s alive, we’re watching her, but they need to see the exact condition that we found her in,” Beaumont explains.
“He did this to her, didn’t he?”
Beaumont shrugs a shoulder. “I’ve been addicted, but never drugs like this so I can’t say. But it appears as though that’s what’s happened. She’s lucky to have a friend in you, Tulip.”
“I should have come sooner. I was being selfish,” I whisper.
Ford snorts. “Known who you were for a while, Tulip Fischer, and never have I heard you were selfish, so you can get that shit out of your head right fuckin’ now,” he snaps. “Charlie’s an adult, the man who did this to her is a sick fucking pervert, so I have no doubt that this was planned. You wouldn’t have been able to stop it.”
I don’t say anything aloud, but all I can think about is Silas. This is how he wanted me. Dependent on him by any means necessary. How does one little town breed so many sick perverts?
“Christ,” Deputy Hernandez hisses from behind me.
I yelp, wondering how he got inside when Beaumont strolls in behind him. I must have been completely zoned out, thinking about Silas and everything that happened just a few weeks ago. How this has happened to my beautiful friend, too, I don’t know.
“Charlie,” he says, shaking his head.
“You know her?” I ask.
He dips his chin, his mouth pressing against his walkie talkie as he says some codes. He lets out a sigh. “You could say that. Charlie’s my sister,” he murmurs. “She’s done drugs in the past, but I thought that she was done with that shit.”
He seems resigned. Not surprised, not mad, just resigned. “Even if she did the drugs, those bruises weren’t put there by her own hands and she’s been seeing Mark from the grocery store,” I say, feeling like a tattletale, but Mark isn’t right. Nothing about this is right, either.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to get to the bottom of this. Thank you for calling me,” he murmurs, dipping his chin then jerking it as if dismissing me.
“Shouldn’t you have another officer do all of this? Aren’t you a little too close?” Ford asks.
Hernandez snorts. “Don’t worry about me and my own. Thank you, now the three of you can leave.”
He turns his back to us as he walks over to the side of his sister’s bed. The three of us reluctantly walk out of the house, but we don’t get into our cars immediately. The ambulance pulls up and we watch as the paramedics rush into the house.
“This was so weird,” I whisper.
“No shit,” Beaumont grunts.
“You gonna be okay the rest of the day?” Ford asks, his gaze focused on me.
Nodding, I lift my chin a bit. “I’m meeting Hutton at Laurie’s then going home to try and shake off the weirdness of this whole incident.”
The guys walk me to my car and I thank them for coming over, though it doesn’t seem that they were needed at all. Once I’m in my car, I drive toward Laurie’s house.
I’m completely lost in thought, my mind unable to stop thinking about Mark and Charlie, about the sheriff’s deputy and everything else that has weirdly happened today.
Laurie’s house comes into view and I smile as I look up at Hutton. She waves at me as I arrive and as much as I want to push everything away, I can’t. The night ends up with me crying in Hutton’s arms and completely breaking down as I attempt to try on sexy dresses for the fight.
“It’s going to be okay, I promise,” she whispers, holding me in her arms.
“How?”
“She’s going to get the help that she needs and hopefully that jackass will go where he belongs.”
Shaking my head, I lift my gaze to meet hers. “I knew he was creepy. I felt it and I didn’t stop her. This is all my fault.”
Hutton shakes her head, her hands gripping my shoulders firmly before she gives me a small shake. “Stop that. It is not your fault. You cannot control other people’s actions. He’s going to get no less than he deserves and if her brother loves her, he’ll take care of her the way that she needs him to.”
“It just feels so awful.”
“That’s because it is.”
We stay like that, just her and me, holding one another for far longer than we should. I’m thankful, grateful even, for her caring concern.
Later that evening, Louis calls, but I can’t bring myself to tell him what’s happened. He doesn’t need to worry about me. But I can’t deny that everything makes me think of Silas and Joey, over and over.