Page 74 of Won't Back Down
Maybe Daniel was off duty. Although, if he was, he was probably up on Nag’s Head instead if here. That wasn’t exactly a hop, skip, and a jump.
Which left me exactly… nowhere.
When my phone rang, I pounced on it. Dax.
“Hey, man.”
“I call with good news. Everything has been effectively planted, and there is no reason that anyone would think that you and your lady love have not been actively seeing each other for the last three years. Feel free to start pulling info for the courts.”
The courts. Right. Because the lawsuit was still open. Because of the hurricane, Willa and I had gotten extra time to gather all the documentation. Crazy that I’d forgotten for even a moment. But in the grand scheme of things, after finding human remains on the property, everything else had felt relatively quiet.
“That is good news. Thanks, man. And not that I think you have any moral qualms about doing this, but it seems worth mentioning that even though it didn’t start how you laid everything in, it is real. For both of us.”
“Man, that’s awesome!” When I didn’t immediately reply, he added, “Why doesn’t it sound like it’s awesome?”
Dax had a quick and admittedly suspicious mind. And I knew he’d operated in some of the same circles Jace did now, so I took the opportunity and filled him in on everything that had happened since we’d last spoken.
“I just can’t shake what Jace said.”
“Well, of course not. The implication is that either she saw something that was so traumatic that her brain and body are noping out anytime she gets remotely close to remembering what it was, or someone took what was already a horrible experience and exacerbated it so she couldn’t remember.”
Hearing it laid out so succinctly made some of the itch in my brain go away. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s it exactly. And my worry is that, in either of those scenarios, there’s another actor out there who was involved that night. Either doing something to her directly, or potentially doing something to this guy who got shot—which maybe Willa saw happen.”
“Have the remains been dated to the same time period?”
“No idea. I think forensics is still doing their thing. And either way, we’re not law enforcement, so there’s no reason the police chief would update us. But I worry that if she did see something that someone wanted to keep secret, what if that someone is still out there and sees her as a threat?”
“Fair concern. But let’s think this through. Willa’s been out on her own all these years. If somebody meant her actual harm, wouldn’t they have already come back to do that?”
Ten years where she was on her own, with no one to protect her. Jesus. And yet, she’d been fine all that time. “In theory. But there’s never been any suggestion she was going to remember before.”
“Is there a suggestion that she might now?”
“Not really. But ever since we found this body, she’s been having pretty extreme reactions to things. That’s what made us start thinking about all of this in the first place. It’s just got me paranoid about everybody we pass on the island, wondering if they had something to do with what happened to her. Do they have secrets they’d hurt or kill to keep? I can’t shake the idea that something bigger is going on here. Jace is planning to look into the doctor and the hospital to see what he can find out. At the very least, it sounds like there’s a malpractice suit waiting to happen, but I haven’t heard anything from him. Given his deployment status, there’s no telling when that might happen.”
“You want me to look into it? See what I can find?”
“I’ll owe you.”
“Consider it a wedding present. Do you know the name of the facility and the doctor?”
Thanks to Jace, I had some of that information without bothering Willa about it. I didn’t know how she’d feel about my doing this, so the less I had to involve her, the better. “The doc is Collin Caswell. Not sure about the hospital itself, but it’s located in Columbia, South Carolina.”
“Okay, I’ll see what I can find out. Do some digging into the good doctor to see if I can find a connection to Hatterwick. If nothing else, it might give Jace some additional lines to tug toward supporting that malpractice suit.”
“Thanks, Dax. I appreciate it, man.”
“Now, you let me do my thing and go enjoy this time with your wife. Be vigilant, but don’t let the paranoia take over, okay? We’re doing what can be done and taking the steps to establish a threat assessment. I’ll let you know what I dig up.”
I hung up the phone, feeling a little steadier. Like I’d at least voiced my fears and taken some steps toward either dismissing or validating them. With Dax’s go ahead, I went inside to grab the laptop and begin the laborious task of gathering the email trail to prove our relationship. It was something else productive I could do that would, hopefully, finally get rid of this bullshit lawsuit from Willa’s parents and allow her to truly move forward with her life.
I wanted that for both of us. I wanted the chance to start figuring out what a life together would really look like.
And as I logged into my email and began pulling the emails Dax had so seamlessly slid into our chain of correspondence, I ignored the voice of disquiet in the back of my brain, saying it was too soon to relax.
CHAPTER 33
WILLA