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“She’s not here.”
“Well, no shit, Sherlock. I see that now.” Addy flapped her arms. “Want to tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Yes, but while we’re on the road.” I grabbed my sister’s arm and hauled her from the room.
* * *
“Ace? I’m with Zeke,”Addy said when her husband answered our call.
“I’m on my way to the hospital—”
“We’re not at the hospital,” I interrupted my brother-in-law. “We’re heading toward San Francisco.”
“What? What the fuck?”
“Did you run the water in the bottle?” I demanded.
“Yeah. It was laced with fentanyl. Care to tell me why you’re taking my wife to the city?”
“Because I’m trying to save my wife’s life,” I ground out, flooring Addy’s Range Rover as I pulled onto the highway. “I need Dex to get me Kenzie’s previous address and then look into her hospital records. Pull them all and pull who was the first paramedic on scene for each drug-related incident.”
“I can do that if you tell me what the fuck is going on—”
“What’s going on is that water bottle was Jake’s.” I sped up the left lane, knowing I didn’t have much time. “He dropped it in the sand when he ran for Kenzie, and I picked it up, forgot it was his, and drank some of it.”
“So, someone tried to poison a kid…”
“Not someone. Kenzie’s ex. Jake’s father.”
There were bombs that detonated with less destruction than the words I’d just uttered. I didn’t want to say them. Hell, I could hardly believe I was saying them, but deep in the pit of my gut, I knew they were the truth.
“Zeke…”
“If you just have Dex look up the records, it will confirm I’m right.”
“How will records on Kenzie prove Stan was harming the kid?”
“Because he was doing this to her first.” My heart felt like it was beating outside my body, refusing to come back home until I had her back in my arms and knew the two of them were safe.
“How could he drug her if he was working?” Addy asked.
“Because he laced it into her food. Her drinks. Christ…” It was all clicking into place. Why she bought the damn individual yogurts. Why she never shared any food or drink or never took anything offered to her unless she saw exactly where it came from and that it wasn’t tampered with.
“So… he drugged her just so he could save her?” Ace drawled slowly. “It doesn’t—”
“Munchausen by proxy,” Addy blurted out, horrified. “Oh my god, Kenzie…”
“Why wouldn’t she say? Why wouldn’t she tell me…” I gripped the wheel harder. Didn’t she know she could trust me?
“Who would believe her over him? Question him, the man who saved his partner’s life? Why would anyone believe that the man who kept saving her was also the one responsible for her almost death?” my sister murmured, her mind working to keep up with mine.
This was why she’d been afraid of him—because he’d hurt her in ways she couldn’t prove. In ways that weren’t classically physical.
My stomach rolled. I’d never been so disgusted by the idea that someone could use altruism to obscure abuse.
“I would’ve believed her,” I rasped.I was her husband.
“But would you have been able to keep Jake safe?”
