Retribution Read online

  “All right?”

  “Look at this.” He pulled up one page, a Coming Soon announcement.

  Final touches are being added to my self-published, tell-all book that will get you behind the scenes with mega-bestselling author Tyler Paulson in a no-holds-barred way, inside access no one else has achieved before. Personal information, exclusive stories, interviews, and even details on that infamous shooting years ago that you’ll not see anywhere else but in my book! Once I publish it, I’ll be posting the pre-order links on my main page…

  It was dated just days after Zoey’s rape.

  Andrew felt the cold, hard rock in his stomach threaten to upend what little was in it, including the medication he’d just taken.

  Adam showed him some of the other pages on the website, and there were several candid shots that, based on Tyler’s mustache and goatee, his clothing, and what Andrew could see of the cropped background, had been taken inside Tyler’s home within the past couple of weeks.

  But Adam wasn’t finished. “It gets worse. Lyle said his sister told him Christine idolized Dad, had all his books, used to stalk the book websites and Publishers Weekly and stuff, for any information about him. And she used to write fanfic about Augustine, romantic fanfic, idolizing him and writing herself as his lover.

  “I found some of it. It’s…it’s really gross. I don’t mean that as a kid talking about their parent’s sex life. I mean she wrote it with Augustine described as looking exactly like Dad, and speaking with a British accent. And in one of the stories, it was posted two years ago, they kill off a man named Tom Kennedy, who was described looking just like Poppa, down to his bad leg and old head injury, and a woman named Nadine, who looks just like Mom.”

  Andrew fought the urge to gag. “You have to tell your parents.”

  “Mom loves her, though.”

  “She loves her family and your fathers more than some psychotic woman she’s barely known a few weeks. You must tell them!”

  “What do I do?”

  “Tell them!”

  “Will they believe me?”

  Andrew stared at the proof before him on Adam’s phone and knew he’d have to take drastic measures.

  Immediately.

  He returned Adam’s phone. “Go. Now. Call Uncle Bob and see if he’s in town yet. If he is, we need to meet him, so text me the info. If not, you and I need to talk to him on the phone and we’ll do it once I get to hospital, because we might need him to talk to your dads for us.”

  “You’re not riding with me?”

  “I’ll take my car and follow you. I must make a quick stop along the way.”

  He looked relieved. “You think I’m right?”

  “Bloody hell, of course I do! There is something wrong with that woman, and maybe she’s even behind what’s happening to your mother. We owe it to them to say something. Bob will know what to do with the information. Now, go!”

  Adam bolted for the bedroom door. Andrew heard him run down the hall, then the sound of the front door slamming behind him.

  Andrew closed and locked the bedroom door again. Then he quickly gathered what he knew he’d need before he headed out.

  Karen’s head popped out of Chloe’s room after he’d passed. “Dad!” she hissed.

  He walked back to her, a gloved hand on his midsection, his stomach tight with tension and concealing his extra burden under the light windbreaker he’d also donned. “Yes?”

  “Should I go to the hospital?”

  “No, stay here with Chloe. There’s nothing you can do there anyway. I’m going back there now with Adam.”

  “Didn’t he just leave?”

  “I want to have my car there. I’m following Adam.”

  “I’m worried about Nevvie.”

  “So are we all, love. Keep Chloe occupied, right?” He forced a smile. “No need to stress her out with that. I’ll text you with updates.”

  “Oh, I think you’re parked in.”

  “I know. Crystal left her keys. I’ll take care of it. You stay in here with Chloe. Keep her distracted.”

  He picked up the fob from the bookcase near the front door and walked out to move Crystal’s car. He left it parked far to the eastern side of the yard where it’d get some shade, nose in and past where everyone else usually parked, behind a thicket of red cypress trees screening it from the house.

  His mission only took a moment. After returning the key fob to the entry, he removed his gloves, dropped them into the caddy on the bookshelf that corralled stray items like that, and headed out.

  Adam texted him by the time he reached the main road.

  His usual hotel right down the road from your place. Rm 120. He said come right now, he’s there. Hadn’t left for the hospital yet.

  Adam’s car was already parked outside Bob’s room when Andrew arrived, and Bob opened the door to the room for him before he’d even made it out of his car.

  Once Andrew joined them, Bob shut the door behind him. Adam sat on the bed.

  “He said this is important but wanted to wait for you to get here.”

  “Yes. Long story short…Adam has evidence Crystal is lying to us all and using us to gain information about Tyler. Perhaps she’s even behind whatever’s wrong with Nevvie.”

  “What?”

  Adam told Bob the long story, which took longer, nearly fifteen minutes in all to tell. As Adam told it, Bob pulled up information on his laptop to see for himself.

  “Fuck!” He grabbed his phone.

  “Who are you calling?” Andrew asked.

  “Elliot.”

  “We don’t want her tipped off too soon.”

  “No, he knows me. We’ve worked together for Tyler for decades.” The call connected. “Elliot? Bob Campbell. I have a really strange question I need to ask you and need kept quiet.” He looked at Adam and Andrew. “I need you to pull Crystal’s personnel file and look something up for me. … Yeah. What’s her legal first name? … I can’t tell you right now, but I mean it when I say do not say anything to anyone about this, especially her, until I get back to you.”

  Bob’s grim expression when he finished the short call told Andrew all he needed to know.

  “What do we do now?” Andrew asked.

  “First of all, why do you think, beyond this rising shitstorm that I’ll deal with shortly, that Crystal might be behind Nevvie getting sick?”

  “Instinct,” Adam and Andrew said in unison.

  Bob barked a laugh. “Okay, that’s freaky. Add Tyler, and it’d be a hat-trick.” His smile faded. “Seriously. I need to know, because that’s a damned serious allegation that will have legal ramifications whether you’re wrong or right.”

  “The strange figure,” Andrew said. “From the security camera. I’d bet if you find out where Crystal is staying, if the hotel locks are those new ones that can track entry and exit times, she was probably out of her room when the figure was captured on camera. She was in town when Cole Johnson was murdered. She knew his parents wouldn’t be home because she’d been accumulating Facebook information for Nevvie. We all heard her talk about it. Once Crystal knew about the improved security measures, she didn’t return for one of her midnight visits.”

  “But what was her plan? Why do that?”

  “Possibly to go in when she thought everyone was asleep and search for information to use in her book. It’d be too risky to attempt that when people were awake. She knows Tyler and Tom’s offices are downstairs.”

  Andrew went there. “And the gun is still missing. Perhaps she stole it while inside the house, and after Cole’s murder, she tried to return it and found she couldn’t. Perhaps that’s why the visits started the night of the murder. She might have thought they didn’t lock their doors at night, because she’d only been at the house during the day when we all come and go all the time when someone’s home. Maybe she wanted to plant the murder weapon and perhaps implicate Nevvie, since she knew by then about Nevvie’s outburst at the police station. But she couldn’t pl
ant the weapon and needed something else to get her out of the way.”

  Bob’s entire posture changed, stiff, all business. “Holy shit,” he muttered. “What’d she say her dad did for a living?”

  “He’s an equine vet,” Andrew said. “Her step-father, in Kentucky.”

  Bob smacked himself on the forehead before he grabbed his phone. “Let’s go. Now. Ride with me.”

  “What? Where?”

  “The hospital.” Bob headed for the door. “I think I know what happened to Nevvie.”

  “What?” they asked.

  Bob turned to them, his expression grim. “What’s commonly used both by vets and date rapists?”

  Adam shook his head, looking confused, but Andrew felt the chills race through him again. “Ketamine. Bloody hell.”

  “What?” Adam asked.

  “Read your dad’s books,” Bob said, yanking open the door. “It’s one of Augustine’s favorite cocktails to subdue his victims. Ty’s used it in at least five books. Let’s go. You both ride with me and keep your mouths shut when we get there. Adam, you’ll stay with your mom, and don’t let her have anything to eat or drink that Crystal touches. Even if you have to drop it on the floor or knock it out of her hand.”

  Andrew rode in the front seat and didn’t know what Bob had in mind, but the attorney possessed a grim, determined air as they followed him inside the ER.

  Tyler and Tommy were both at Nevvie’s bedside when they arrived, Crystal hovering in there with them. Colin waited with Mikey, Steven, and the girls, and now John and Kelly and Clay, in the waiting room.

  Bob cocked his head at Tyler, indicating he wanted to talk. Tyler reluctantly stood and left the room to join them while Adam took his place at Nevvie’s side.

  Bob had Andrew come with them. When Tyler tried to question Bob as they headed for the nurses’ station, Bob held a finger to his lips in a gesture of silence. Keeping his voice low, he told the desk nurse he needed to speak to Nevvie’s on-call, immediately, in private, and that it was urgent and related to her care.

  They took over a small consultation room and Bob wasted no time. “I’m Mrs. Kinsey-Paulson’s attorney, and I need you to immediately order a swab test for Ketamine.”

  “What?” Tyler echoed the doctor’s question.

  “You heard me—Ketamine. Now.”

  The doctor understandably looked confused. “We were assured there was no way she took drugs. And the preliminary drug and alcohol screens we performed came back—”

  “She didn’t take it. I think she was deliberately poisoned. And do your regular swab tests specifically test for Ketamine?”

  Tyler’s jaw gaped. “Bloody hell! Who would do that to her?”

  Bob’s grim visage focused on Tyler. “You cannot get up and run out there screaming,” he said. “Because first they need to test her to verify our theory. Then we need to get the cops involved immediately.”

  “Who do you think did it?”

  “Crystal. And that’s not her real name.”

  Tyler started toward the door, but Bob grabbed him and shoved him back, hard, into his chair, and planted his hands on Tyler’s shoulders. Andrew helped, standing behind Tyler and also holding his shoulders.

  Bob looked at the doctor. “Doc, please go run that test ASAP, but make sure you don’t let on what’s going on. That woman, Crystal, is at her bedside right now. The second you confirm it’s Ketamine, please come get me so we can get security and the cops. I’d suggest you and a nurse clear the cubicle first, or ask Crystal to go to the waiting room since she’s not immediate family. Tell them there’s too many people in the room or something. She sees you with a test kit, she’s gonna bolt before the cops get here.”

  “On it. I’ll need to get a swab kit. I’ll go do it myself.” He headed out, Bob and Andrew still trying to hold Tyler down.

  “Let me go! She’s out there with Nevvie right now!”

  “Listen to me,” Bob said. “So’s Tommy and Adam. And Adam knows. He won’t let her do anything else to Nevvie before the cops get here.”

  “But—what the bloody hell?”

  Bob and Andrew gave him a super-condensed version of what Adam had discovered.

  Tyler’s face turned red and it looked like he wanted to rage past Bob.

  “Ty! Stop for a minute and think about this. We could be wrong about Crystal poisoning Nevvie. If we are, and we accuse Crystal, that’s a fucking messy lawsuit you’ll be involved in for years, especially if she’s as whacked as we think she is. Worse, if she’s somehow tied up in Cole Johnson’s murder—”

  He sagged, slumping into a chair. “Oh, no!” He stared up at Bob. “You think…she’s been in my fucking house! Around my children!”

  “I know, Ty. That’s why we have to get this right. Right now, we have a lot of circumstantial evidence that she’s a shithead and fairly fucked up, but unfortunately, that’s not illegal, not even in this state. I’ll have to get a DMCA request filed on the website to have it taken down, and a cease and desist order to lock down the domain names. I should be able to do that based on her violating the NDA Elliot has on file for her. But if she’s done something to Nevvie, we need to deal with that immediately, and the fastest way is to see if Nevvie’s been poisoned with Ketamine.”

  “Why Ketam—” His face went from red to white. “She’s read my books. Brilliant. I participated in my wife’s poisoning by allowing her attacker into my home and giving them a blueprint on how to commit the crime.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tom actually felt relieved when the nurse asked Crystal’s relationship to Nevvie, and then asked that she leave for a little while so they could do more tests.

  He didn’t even feel guilty for not bothering to ask the nurse to let her stay, and from the look Adam gave him, he suspected his son felt the same way.

  Felt good to finally be rid of her for a few minutes.

  Once Crystal left, the doctor who’d followed the nurse in closed the door and pulled the privacy curtain around the bed before removing a sealed plastic pouch from his scrub jacket pocket.

  “What’s that?” Tom asked.

  Adam answered before the doctor could. “Ketamine test kit.” Adam’s expression looked hard, grim, like Tyler’s had when he’d killed Alex.

  “What?”

  The nurse helped the doctor get the swab in Nevvie’s mouth. Nevvie acted a little more responsive than she had been, but barely. She’d look at them when they talked to her, but she was still talking nonsense. Except now she was using actual words, just not in the right order or context.

  The doctor spoke. “Your attorney thinks she was poisoned.” They didn’t talk, waiting while the doctor kept looking at the time. “Okay.”

  They removed the swab and put it in the tester. A moment later, it turned a bright blue.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “Call security, tell them to get every officer here, but do not page it openly. Use the code. Tell them we need law enforcement, too. And go tell her attorney about this.”

  The nurse’s face turned white. “Yes, doctor.” She hurried out.

  The doctor met Tom’s gaze. “It appears that your wife’s friend poisoned her with Ketamine.”

  “That’s a—” Horror filled him. “Fuck,” he whispered. “That’s how Tyler’s character subdues victims!”

  Andrew returned to the room just as the doctor was leaving. “Dad! What’s going on?”

  “Shh!” Andrew peeked out the small window in the door. Moments later, it looked like several men in uniforms ran past the door. Andrew opened it and Adam rushed over to stand there with him.

  Out in the lobby, Tom heard screams, shouting, orders yelled for someone to get down on the ground—

  The electric zaaap of a taser.

  Bob and Tyler appeared in the doorway, Tyler looking ashen and Bob with a death grip on his arm. Tyler rushed over to hug Tom.

  “Someone want to tell me what the fuck?” Tom asked.

  Bob rubbed h
is face with his hands. “Yeah. What the fuck is accurate.”

  * * * *

  Four hours later, Nevvie was finally responding a little, but she was still pretty out of it. They’d moved her to a private room and gave her some IV medicine to help ease her through the worst of coming out of the “K-hole,” as the doctor had referred to it, but there wasn’t really an antidote for most of the drug’s effects except time. They also kept the lights turned down in her room, because she seemed to become sensitive to them. The doctors told the men that was a common side effect that would wear off.

  Adam stayed at the hospital with Tom and Tyler, while Andrew and Colin took the other kids home. Colin stayed at the house with them while Andrew went home to meet the police to grant them access to the property and to watch them search Crystal’s car after they had received an emergency search warrant.

  He reported that they found a bottle of Gatorade with a few swallows left in it and took it for evidence.

  It was what they found in the trunk of Crystal’s car that interested them most.

  When Detective Dunn arrived at the hospital to talk to the men, he looked particularly ashamed of himself, Tyler was satisfied to see. Adam stayed in the room with Nevvie while the men took over a small consultation room near the nurses’ station.

  “Mr. Paulson, we confirmed by the serial number that it’s your gun we found hidden in the trunk of Christine Higgins’ rental car. When would she have had the opportunity to steal it?”

  Tom pounded his fist on the table. “Motherfucker!”

  Tyler forced himself to focus. “Well, she was in our home after we filed the initial report about the rape. She drove down from Kentucky, or so she said. For all I know, she could have been in Savannah even longer than that.”

  “We’re in the process of getting that information from the hotel. Would she have had an opportunity to steal the gun when she was in your home?”

  “Absolutely. I know at one point she went upstairs with Nevvie to talk to Zoey. Nevvie came down by herself, then Crystal—I mean Christine—a while later. We all assumed she was still talking to Zoey during that time. It was at least ten or fifteen minutes. Perhaps longer. That’s plenty of time to have done that. Not to mention the other times she was there.”