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Cross That Line

Page 66

by Barbara Freethy

"The pain comes back worse when the drugs start to wear off. In the beginning, I thought the medication was helping because I'd feel better for a while, but I guess they were just blinding me to the pain, not taking it away."

"I'd love to give you something, but without knowing what else is in your body, you're going to need to just make it through a few more hours. It would be helpful to take a blood draw, so we can see what's in your system."

He immediately shook his head. "I can't do another needle."

"We wouldn't be injecting anything, just taking some blood."

"Will it change anything?" he challenged.

"We may be able to identify the drugs they've been giving you."

"Will it change anything?" he repeated.

She'd always believed information was power, but she could see that in Jack's case, his need to be free from medical intervention might be worth more. It had been about thirteen hours since they'd picked him up at the laundromat. Whatever he'd taken might not even show up on a drug test, so she decided to let it go. "Okay, we won't do a blood draw."

She sat on the couch across from him once more. Despite his calm, she liked having the coffee table between them. The lamp and shards of glass were still lying by the overturned end table, and she probably should clean it up, but she didn't have the energy. It was taking everything she had to just breathe and stay calm.

"Let's talk about Megan Prescott," Tyler said, sitting next to Jack again. "She came to the bar to see you last week, a few days before you showed up at the East River Veterans Hospital. Why was she there?"

"How do you know that?"

"Security cameras. We were looking for information on who might have put a bomb in your apartment, which was triggered to detonate with the opening of your door. That was the fire they told you about. It wasn't an accident."

Jack stared at him, as if he was still struggling to compute his words. "They said if they hadn't rescued me from the hospital, I would have been caught in the blast when I went home. They had saved my life. I didn't understand; I still don't. Why would they blow up my apartment?"

Rachel wondered that, too. "It doesn't make sense," she put in. "They had Jack in their custody. Why did his apartment need to be destroyed? Just to take away his home, his bearings?"

Tyler met her gaze. "That's possible."

"And that guy in the storage unit the next day. What was he doing there? What was he looking for?"

"Did you have anything at your apartment, Jack?" Tyler asked. "Did you take anything out of the clinic at any time?"

Jack stared at Tyler for a long minute. "I did."

"What?" Tyler pressed when Jack didn't elaborate. "What did you take?"

"I took meds when they weren't looking. I wanted to have some at home, because I wasn't sure I could keep paying for the treatment program. It was insurance. I didn't know then how bad the drugs were."

"And they were in your apartment?"

Jack shook his head. "No. I put them in my shaving kit, and I left it at Melody's place, just in case Megan ever came to my apartment. I didn't want her to see them."

"It's starting to make sense," she murmured.

Tyler turned to meet her gaze. "They didn't find the drugs or didn't have enough time to search, so they set up a bomb, and if Jack happened to escape, it would serve two purposes: destroy any evidence and kill him at the same time." He paused. "It's also possible that they were going to let him go at some point when they were done with him. He'd go home, and that would be the end of everything."

"If I hadn't touched the doorknob, it wouldn't have gone off. It would have been waiting for him."

"And he would have probably been too muddled in his head to hear the click, to notice anything wrong," Tyler finished.

"So, it's all gone?" Jack asked. "My place. What little I had was destroyed? Nothing survived? Not even a photo?"

She thought that was an odd question for a man who didn't seem sentimental.

"Nothing was salvageable," Tyler told him. "Sorry."

"I guess that's that," he said heavily.