No One Knows Part 26

Josh.

Six Years Ago.

"So, Dr. Hamilton, what made you want to get into medicine?"

Josh was across the table from Derek Allen at Jimmy Kelly's Steakhouse, eating hot corn cakes and drinking an incredible glass of wine, waiting on the most expensive filet he had ever ordered. Allen didn't seemed fazed by the prices, ordering filets and lobsters and the $180 bottle of Nickel & Nickel cabernet sauvignon casually, as if he did it every day.

Josh was impressed. Someday soon, that would be him.

"I want to help people. I know that sounds cliche, but it's true."

"And what kind of doctor are you training to be?"

"Well, interesting you should ask that. Today was my first day of surgical rotation. I thought I wanted family practice, but now . . . there's something special about surgery. Though it means more schooling. More money. More everything."

Allen was looking at him with the same small smile on his face, almost like he'd known what Josh was going to say.

"And your wife? What will she think?"

Josh shrugged. "We'll figure it out. We always do."

Their meals arrived. Josh cut into the steak; it was perfectly done and smelled like heaven.

"Another three years of school will be very expensive. What if I could find a way to help you along?"

Josh stopped eating, fork poised over his plate. "What do you mean?"

"A little side job, to make ends meet."

"I was thinking of taking a position at the morgue."

"Oh, this would be much more fun. And much more lucrative."

Josh put his fork down. "What is it you do, exactly, Mr. Allen?"

Allen put his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers. His smile was crooked, and he leaned in so he wouldn't be overheard. "I'm a bit like you, actually. I make people feel good."

Josh walked out of his dinner with Derek Allen halfway through his very expensive filet, panic driving him back to his Audi.

What the man wanted was impossible, and there was no way in hell Josh was going to get involved.

Allen's "problem" was a simple one. He was a dealer, albeit a fancy one. He needed good, pure product for his upper-class clientele. Pills, especially. For while Nashville's elite wasn't going to be caught dead with a needle in the arm, a little bit of Oxy on the tongue was a whole different matter.

Allen needed a source who could get him pills. Simple as that.

Josh had balked immediately, started to rise, but Allen had grabbed his arm and said, "Sit. Down."

Josh sat, but didn't move to pick up his fork or wine again.

"Good. You need to think this through carefully. It isn't chance that led you to be here. Why do you think I was at that particular coffeehouse? I know you, Dr. Joshua Hamilton. I've been watching you. I know about your little upper issue. Adderall, is it? Tsk."

Josh froze. When he could form cognizant thought again, he leaned across the table. "Who told you that?"

Allen smiled. "I think you and I could do business together. I'm a good boss, I take care of my own. You'll get everything you need to finish your schooling and take care of your wife, and no one needs to know."

"I don't do drugs. And I don't run them, either."

"Bullshit. You started by taking wifey's pills, and when you couldn't do it anymore without her noticing, you struck a deal with the pharmacist at the hospital. An expensive habit you've got going on there, Doctor."

"You're crazy."

"Come, now. Look at your hands, they've been shaking since you sat down. Your pupils are pinpoint, you're sweating."

"It's hot in here."

"Hamilton, stop. I know all about it. All about you. Your friend in the pharmacy works for me."

Allen sat back, took a deep drink of his wine. Josh followed suit, trying desperately to calm himself. Oh, God. Bob, you fucking idiot. You're working with an outsider? You told? Who else have you implicated?

If the school found out, he'd be expelled, and he'd never get into another. Oh, God. Oh God oh God oh God.

Play it cool, Hamilton. He's fishing. Just play it cool.

"I don't know what you're talking about. And I have to go now. My wife will be waiting for me."

"Three thousand a week. All I need are a few pills here and there. Think about what I proposed, Josh. You're going to want to do this. I'll make it worth your while, and I'll protect you. And if you don't play ball, there will be consequences."

Josh nearly knocked over his chair trying to get away from the table.

In his car, he wanted to cry. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. He wanted to kill Bob, the fucking prick. He started to drive to the pharmacist's house, then pulled to the side of West End and had himself a breakdown.

God, Aubrey couldn't find out. If she knew he was supplementing, as he thought of it, she would freak the fuck out. She was so antidrug it was insane. That's why she'd had the leftover Adderall in the first place; she didn't like how they made her feel, so she'd tossed them under the sink. She hadn't noticed when they disappeared. He'd been refilling the prescription for a year, but when it ran out of refills, he needed a new source.

Bob was that source. He did it for most of the med students. Skimmed off the top of the bottles coming into the hospital.

And now, because Bob was a stupid motherfucker, Derek Allen wanted Josh to get involved as well.

Oh, God. He needed a drink. He needed a shitload of drinks.

He put the car in drive and headed toward Sam's.

CHAPTER 46.

Aubrey Three Years Ago The lines on her wrist weren't natural.

It was an interesting revelation. Aubrey stared at the thin white flesh, now marred, confused for the briefest of moments before she remembered.

It was like this every day when she woke. The drugs they were giving her were too strong; they were numbing her brain, making her see flying things out of the corners of her eyes.

The bandages had come off yesterday. The cut was a thin line demarcating the flesh, the inside of her delicate wrist scored. Forevermore she would be able to identify her wrist's north from south, a permanent latitude etched into her skin.

They didn't understand.

She rolled onto her side. That was an improvement. The restraints had been overwhelming; she'd been panicked the whole time she was in them. The idiots thought she was fighting to get out; they were wrong. It was the idea that she couldn't that made her frantic. So they'd drug her, and she'd wake still tied and panic again. A vicious cycle, one that only stopped when one of the other patients, the one in the bed opposite hers, pointed out what the issue probably was.

They finally unhooked her, and she calmed immediately, taking huge, deep breaths, moving her fingers and arms and legs. She didn't try to get up, just moved all her parts, like a stunned fish finally put back into water.

They added claustrophobia to her growing list of "issues."

Bipolar. Depression. Suicidal ideations. Antisocial personality disorder. Narcissism. Delusions.

They sat with her in the afternoons with a wide, thick book called a DSM-IV and tried to explain all the things that were wrong with her.

They were the ones who were insane, but Aubrey had to concede one point: she did have a problem with panic. Being tied down, being forced to do what others wanted-she had a major issue with that. And depression, well, shit, who wouldn't be depressed if they were in her shoes? Her husband was dead. Missing. Dead. Whatever.

Let her out, let her get her own clothes on her back and sleep in her own bed, however grim that might be, and she'd be right as rain.

She hadn't exactly been trying to kill herself. She didn't think so, at least. She had been drunk. Rip-roaringly drunk. And she'd fallen, tripped over the dog into the kitchen. The beer bottle she was carrying broke into fifteen or so sharp green pieces, and since she couldn't stand up, she managed to get herself seated Indian-style on the kitchen floor and, weaving, began picking up the pretty green shards.

She was just drawing, the glass a permanent pencil. Pretty pictures, Christmas on her wrist. She told them that over and over, but they didn't believe her.

The glass was sharper than she expected, the flesh inside her wrist thinner. The blood that bloomed was so bright and red, contrasting with the dark green glass, a wreath tied in a bloody bow. It was fascinating, so she pushed a little harder to see if she could make the bow bigger.

She wasn't trying to kill herself.

Not that she hadn't tried that once before . . . but she was fourteen then. Fourteen and alone in the world and scared and dirty and not realizing what promise life held. Tyler had found her, saved her life. And things had gotten better after that. The kids at the group home had taken her seriously. She'd been mythologized. She was popular. Cool. She had taken a bottle of pills-not aspirin or Tylenol, like the poseurs did, but a bottle of codeine she found in her therapist's purse. Turned out someone had herself a little pill-popping problem.

And that same someone had realized her drugs were missing and returned to the group home in time to help Tyler get Aubrey to Vanderbilt's emergency room for a stomach pumping.

She shivered at the memory. The handcuffs, the tube full of charcoal being shoved down her throat, being forced-yes, that was her issue, anything or anyone making her do something against her will. Coming to just long enough to rush out of the bed, trying to make it to the toilet to vomit, the coal-black streams dripping from her mouth and nose, the ER staff screaming at her, grabbing her arms to force her back to the bed, tying her down.

That lovely little incident cured her of ever trying something like that again. No, if Aubrey wanted to kill herself, she'd do it right. She'd have Tyler do it for her, with a needle full to the brim of the highest-grade heroin they could afford.

She hadn't tried to kill herself with the bottle glass. This had been an accident. A legitimate accident. Just a mistake. A simple, stupid, drunken mistake.

A simple, stupid, drunken mistake that cost her six fucking weeks on the psych ward.

She didn't think they'd ever let her go. It was day after day after day of pointless bullshit, of crafts and group and personal sessions and life coaching and career development-for fuck's sake, people, she was a teacher, and a damn good one at that. She developed an aversion to being touched. She started smoking just for an excuse to see the sky. She'd never been a smoker before; it had a certain glamour to it. She pranced around outside during the breaks, puffing away, ignoring the ticklish cough that started after just a few puffs, just so freaking happy to feel the air and sun instead of the screaming buzz of the fluorescent bulbs and the pockmarked white cardboard ceilings.

The last time, when she was fourteen, Tyler had come to visit her, and reamed her ass out good for her stupidity. "It's never that bad, Aubrey. No matter what, it's never so bad that you want to end it all. Do you understand me?"

Sage advice from a boy who'd grown into a man with a drug habit so severe he had to live a life of crime to afford his fix. Poor thing.

When she thought about that, she sobered up. Aubrey truly felt sorry for Tyler. He couldn't come visit her now. He was with the last class up at Brushy Mountain doing a nickel for possession with intent.

A tisket, a tasket, a gray-and-yellow basket.

Fuck, she was still really high. The drugs they were giving her messed with the language center of her brain. She'd developed a sort of verbal dyslexia, and couldn't make the words come out in the proper order, even though she was thinking them clearly. Green. Green, not gray.

Where was she? Oh, that's right. She rolled over and looked at her wrist again. She needed to get a tattoo on that scar. She wondered if they could actually draw the line down the scar itself, or if they could anchor it, the white streak surrounded on either side with black, a bit of living chiaroscuro to make the right impact. Oooh, that would be pretty.

She just wanted to go home. Home to the emptiness that was her life. Home to the small, shabby house on West Linden she'd made sure wasn't homey in the least. Home to Winston, one of the only things from During she could stand to have around. It wasn't the dog's fault Josh was dead.

Josh was dead.

Aubrey had gone on quite the bender when the trial was over. It was interesting; she didn't have the claustrophobia in jail, where they were constantly telling her what to do. Maybe because they weren't kind. They weren't well-meaning. They didn't stare at her with sad eyes and ask how she was feeling about that.

"Rob hates you, Aubrey. He thinks your curly hair is a harbinger of death on the wings of flesh-coated Buick hoods. How does that make you feel?"

"It makes me feel like Rob is a psycho fucktard who needs to be shot, or better medicated. Can I go now?"

That outburst got her into isolation, the place she'd really wanted to be all along. No more of this pretending to be friends with the staff and listening to other patients' crap. She could smoke alone, shit alone, eat alone, sleep alone.

It was a comparative heaven.

They finally released her, on a blustery January day, with the threat of snow in the sky. She had never been so happy in her life. Even without Josh, even with her memories, this-being in her own home, away from the crawling eyes of constant organization and management and analysis-this was bliss.

And Rob really was a psycho fucktard. When they let him out, he shot up a Sprint store. They should have listened to her.

CHAPTER 47.

Aubrey Today Meghan and Aubrey assiduously avoided speaking about the photo, kept their focus on the adoption records. But the courthouse yielded nothing. Neither did an online search. Aubrey was getting frustrated, but Meghan just smiled.

"Relax, sugar. This stuff can take forever. Especially if Daisy didn't want anyone to know about it. The odds of us finding information in the first place we look is slim to none, and Slim's out of town. I think we need to expand our search."

"To where?"

"Outlying counties. Let me make a couple of calls, see what we can dig up. I'm supposed to meet Daniel in fifteen minutes."

"Can I come?" Aubrey asked. She wanted to hear exactly what Meghan was finding out. She understood that she would need all the information she could glean in order to . . .

To do what, exactly, Aubrey? Clear his name? Allow Josh to come back?

And the money, Aubrey, don't forget the money.