24
Eric raised his chin, locking eyes with the tall detective. He wondered if he’d overplayed his hand. Was it a crime, blocking Tessa’s door? Obstruction of justice?
He wouldn’t back down. They’d have to drag him away in handcuffs before he let the girl on the other side of that door face another round of interrogation.
The detective edged closer. Eric braced, waiting for the order to step aside. Instead, Detective Stevens reached out and patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a good guy, Eric. She’s lucky to have you.” He flipped his notebook open and cleared his throat. “I’ve got more questions for you too as long as we’re here.”
Not under arrest, then. Eric swallowed, suddenly aware of how dry his mouth had gone. “You’re not going to record me, are you?”
“We can if you like, but we’d have to take you back down to the station.”
Eric shook his head. No way. He’d be perfectly happy if he never set foot in a police station again.
Morales approached and whispered something in his partner’s ear. Detective Stevens nodded. “We’re still nailing down Maury Gilroy’s motive. Can you shed any light on why he brought Dr. Regan to that hotel room the night she died?”
Questions, Eric thought. Still so many questions, flooding his mind, drowning out his ability to think straight. At least that one he could answer. “Chalet Santé.”
Detective Stevens cocked an eyebrow.
“Google it.” Eric pointed to Morales. “There’s a website. Look it up.” He waited for the policeman to pull it up on his tablet. “‘Hit Refresh on your life.’ It’s a treatment center for Internet addiction.”
Morales nudged his partner, reading from the screen, as Stevens jotted notes. “Ninety-day voluntary lock-in… Secluded setting… No access to electronic devices of any kind…”
Eric waited for them to catch up, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Maury told Tessa’s mom that she had an Internet addiction! He totally lied to her. He must’ve told Dr. Regan the same story.”
Detective Stevens stopped writing and squinted at the tip of his pencil. “Why?”
They still didn’t get it. He wasn’t making sense. Eric pressed his hands against his legs, gathering his scattered thoughts. “Maury was trying to break up Tessa and me. He wanted Dr. Regan to talk Tessa into going to that place. That way she’d disappear. Poof ! No phones. No Twitter. No Snapchat. It would look to me like she totally ghosted!”
He paused a moment, thinking. It was all starting to make sense. He felt like the truth was right in front of him, just out of reach, like a word on the tip of his tongue that he couldn’t quite remember. “There’s something else,” Eric said slowly. “That DM yesterday. The one from @Snowflake734. Did Maury send that?”
Detective Stevens met his eyes. “He must have. Who else could have done it?”
“But how?” Eric asked. “I was so careful. No one could have guessed that password!”
The lead detective stood silent, tapping his pencil eraser against his chin. It was his partner, Morales, who chimed in. “I could venture a guess. Can I see your phone?”
Eric glided it out of his pocket in its custom titanium case. He entered his passcode, and then he stared at it with widened eyes. No, he thought. No way… Morales plucked it from his hand, but Eric already knew what the detective would find. “Maury programmed that phone. It came in my swag bag at the YouTube Awards.”
Morales handed it back to him with an app on the screen that must have been hidden from view until now.
iMonitor
“Spy software,” Morales explained. “He had access to every keystroke you made. Your passcode. Passwords to all your accounts. The works.”
Eric exhaled slowly. He could feel all the blood in his body rushing to his head. His legs had gone rubbery. He needed to sit down, but he couldn’t think about that now. “That’s why,” he whispered. “Maury wasn’t expecting me to show up at the hotel. He thought it would be Tessa. Because that night when I set up the meeting with MET, I was using Tessa’s phone!”
“You catfished the catfish.” Morales eyed him thoughtfully. “You’re lucky. He might’ve gotten away with it if Tessa had shown up.”
Detective Stevens frowned. He’d been writing frantically, but he looked up from his notes. “I still don’t understand why Gilroy brought the psychiatrist and the mother into it. If he wanted to get rid of Tessa, all he had to do was get her alone and stage a suicide.”
Eric closed his eyes. He had a headache coming on. A bad one. He pressed his temples between his hands. He could have lost Tessa so easily—and he never would have known where she had gone. It was too much to process. He sucked in a ragged breath and held it.
Maury one…Maury two…Maury three…
Morales answered his partner. “I don’t think Gilroy initially intended to kill anyone. He was hoping Tessa would leave willingly. He said so in the video, didn’t he?”
Stevens flipped backward in his notebook, searching. “Here. Suspect was asked why he killed Dr. Regan. He responded, quote, ‘That wasn’t supposed to happen. She’d still be alive if she didn’t have such a stick up her ass.’”
“Dr. Regan must have spoiled his plan somehow.”
Eric held up a hand. A memory came to him, jarred loose by the cross talk between the two detectives. “Tessa always used to complain about her…how she was so rigid. Always by the book.”
“Maybe he tried to pay her off, but she insisted on evaluating Tessa herself.”
That made sense, Eric thought. Obviously, once Dr. Regan talked to Tessa, she would have seen that the so-called “Internet addiction” was a load of BS.
Detective Stevens scratched his nose. “So he dosed the doctor’s drink with phenobarbital. Only he overdid it. She must have gotten dizzy and hit her head.”
“And then he had a real mess on his hands,” Morales added. “He needed to pin that dead body on someone. Probably intended to stage it as a murder-suicide then and there.”
Eric nodded. “Only Tessa didn’t show up. I did.”
“Right,” Morales agreed. “At which point, the whole plan was shot to hell. He had to wait and finish the job on Tessa the next day.”
Eric gritted his teeth. He could feel the weight of his cell phone in the front pocket of his jeans, pressed against his thigh. He was surprised the detectives had let him keep it. They would probably need it for evidence, and Eric wouldn’t mind handing it over. He never wanted to touch his phone again. In fact, he might be ready to wash his hands of personal electronics altogether.
“The TV,” he said slowly. “In my bedroom. With the secret camera… Was Maury the one who put it there? Or Blair?”
Detective Stevens closed his notebook and stuffed it in the pocket of his suit jacket. “We should know more soon. Blair Duncan was picked up by agents this morning for violating federal wiretapping laws.”
Eric nodded. Good. At least that was one less cyberstalker to worry about.
“But, Eric, that’s why we need to talk to Tessa. We need to hear from her if she wishes to press charges.”
“Of course she does. Why wouldn’t she?”
“Blair Duncan saved her life.” Detective Stevens gestured past him toward the entrance of the room, but Eric didn’t budge.
“You can’t talk to her,” he said. “Not today.” Not while the biggest question of all remained unanswered.
• • •
Tessa woke disoriented. It took her a moment to remember where she was.
The hospital.
The baby.
She pressed her hand to her belly. How long had she been sleeping? Where was everyone? She sat up, but the room was empty. The door was propped open a crack, and she heard voices coming from the other side. Was Eric out there? Who was he talking to?
“Blair Duncan saved her life…”
Tessa froze.
Did she hear that right? Her mouth dropped open, but otherwise, she sat perfectly still as the words reverberated inside her skull.
She’d been looking at her lap. Her eyes remained fixed in place, but she no longer saw the sheet covering her legs. She couldn’t hear whatever words Eric said in reply. She ceased to follow anything going on around her. She only heard the thrum of her own heartbeat, whispering that name inside her ears.
Blair.
Blair.
Blair.
Blair…
“Tessa?” Someone was shaking her arm. Tessa looked up, confused. How long had she been out of it?
Eric’s hand rested on her shoulder. He bent close, examining her face. “Tessa?” he said again. “Earth to Tessa.”
She must have missed something. The hospital room door stood open. A woman in scrubs had entered, wheeling a machine before her.
“What happened?” Tessa blinked, trying to get her bearings. Her hand lay in her lap, gripping a damp tissue. Or not just damp, she saw. The bloodred stains stood out against the white. She’d clutched it so hard that she’d dug holes in her palm with her fingernails. The sight of the bloodstains made her panic worse somehow. Maybe it was the fact that she hadn’t even felt the wounds as she’d inflicted them.
Tessa thrust the bloody tissue beneath her sheet before Eric could notice.
“Tessa,” Eric said. “Did you hear her?”
She shook her head. Her eyes went to him, and then to the woman pushing the machine.
“Tessa, I’m Dr. Keller,” the woman said. “Someone called for a maternity consult?”
Tessa’s mother stalked into the room, and Tessa slumped down in the bed. She couldn’t face it. The anxiety consumed her, sucking her down like quicksand. She couldn’t escape its pull, no matter where she turned her thoughts. Maury. Blair. The baby…and somehow, her mother’s presence made it infinitely worse.
Tessa closed her eyes. Her hands were shaking. Why didn’t any of them say anything? Couldn’t they see she was suffocating right before their eyes? Instead, they all ignored her, talking to each other. The doctor explained something about the machine and how it worked. Tessa couldn’t even understand what she was saying. It was like her brain had forgotten how to comprehend the English language.
She needed to hold it together. Focus! Forget everything except the one thing that mattered.
The baby.
Tessa nodded to herself. She could do this. She didn’t have a choice. She pushed the blanket down to her hips and hiked up the hospital gown high enough to expose her abdomen. The doctor pulled up a rolling chair beside her. The ultrasound wand made contact, and Tessa sucked in her stomach, chilled by the sensation of the gel that spread across her skin. The room fell silent aside from a low whooshing sound that came from the machine.
Her mother’s voice broke through. “What’s that? Is that a heartbeat?” She pointed at something on the monitor, gray and pulsing rhythmically.
The doctor shook her head. “That’s Tessa’s heartbeat.”
Tessa’s eyes flew to her mother’s face. She’d heard the way her mom’s breathing had quickened just now. Hoping, Tessa realized. Her mother was hoping they found a heartbeat.
Could that be? Could Carla Hart—queen of the safe-sex lecture—actually want this baby to live? It went against everything Tessa thought she knew about her mom. And yet, she could see the evidence all over the older woman’s face.
Tessa’s eyes widened with a sudden flash of insight. She understood exactly how her mother felt. Tessa knew firsthand how a baby could be unplanned and poorly timed—but still wanted. Still loved.
The thought made Tessa’s eyes flood with sudden tears. She clamped her hand across her mouth to stifle the sob that threatened to escape. Eric moved to stand beside her, and Tessa slipped her hand in his. His grasp felt firm, and it helped ease the hollow pain inside her chest.
The doctor pursed her lips. Her eyes never left the rectangular screen that sat atop the rolling cart as she slowly moved the wand across Tessa’s skin. “And you’re how far along? Eight weeks? Are you sure about that timing?”
Tessa felt the color rise to her cheeks. Maybe she should ask her mom to leave. Not that it would really come as a surprise to her mother when she heard Tessa’s answer. Her mom had predicted it all along.
“It was the first time,” Tessa answered in a halting voice. “The first time I ever…we ever…”
Even as she spoke, she could hear her mother’s voice inside her head. You’re a Hart, Tessa. It runs in your blood…
The doctor pulled the wand away and wiped Tessa’s stomach with a towel. “You can lower your gown,” she said. She picked up the medical chart and scribbled something at the bottom.
Eric rose to his feet and took a step in her direction. “But what did it show? What did you see?”
The doctor shook her head. Her face was blank, her voice matter-of-fact. “I need to call for a consult.”
“Another one?” Tessa could hear Eric’s frustration. “Why?” he asked, peering over the doctor’s shoulder. “Can’t you tell? Isn’t this supposed to be your specialty?”
“I’m an ob-gyn,” she replied. She looked up, but her eyes went past Eric, seeking Tessa instead. “Ms. Hart, would you prefer to speak privately? I can have your family clear the room.”
“No,” she whispered. Tessa gripped the sheet at her waist. Something in the doctor’s face made her tremble. “Just tell me. What is it?”
The doctor smiled at her kindly. She patted Tessa’s foot through the blanket. “Do you have a history of anxiety?”
“How is that relevant?” her mother asked. “What’s going on? What did you see?”
But somehow, Tessa knew what the doctor was about to say. She could hear the answer in the gaps and spaces—the words the doctor hadn’t uttered.
Tessa’s mouth filled with the familiar taste of acid burning the back of her throat. Not morning sickness after all. She should have realized… She even knew the name for the cognitive distortion.
“Priming,” Tessa whispered. “It was all just priming.”
Eric turned toward her. Did he remember what that word meant? She’d explained the concept over Snapchat not so long ago.
The mind perceives what it expects to find, even if it’s not really there…
Tessa placed a hand on her belly, still sticky from the gel. Her mother had warned her a thousand times. A million times. I got pregnant the first time your daddy even looked at me sideways… Of course her brain was primed.
“Did you take a pregnancy test?” the doctor asked.
Tessa looked away. “I was so sure,” she said slowly. “I had all the symptoms. The nausea. I even missed my period. Did I imagine all that?”
“The mind can do all kinds of funny things,” the doctor explained. “We use the medical term pseudocyesis. Phantom pregnancy.”
“Wait.” Her mother edged closer. She rested her hand on Tessa’s shoulder, and Tessa covered it with her own. “Phantom? You mean…”
The doctor slid Tessa’s chart back into its holder. “I’ve called for a psych consult,” she said. She turned to collect the ultrasound machine and wheeled it toward the door. “I see no sign that the patient is currently, or ever has been, pregnant.”