It took Warrick a minute to figure out why his head was pounding and his mouth felt like someone had planted wheat stalks in there overnight. He had broken a rule he never broke. When the grief had swamped him after Vicki and his baby died, he’d been so damned tempted to bury himself in a bottle. But he’d also been smart. He knew damned well if he went down that road he wouldn’t come back out of there.
So he limited himself carefully, always maintaining complete control. Except for the one night of the year when he let himself go. Now, he’d broken the rule, getting completely sloshed in an effort to erase the guilt, the memories, the feelings. He thought he could do this with Sara. That he could let some feeling back in and maintain control.
He was wrong. There couldn’t be any halfway on this. Letting himself feel meant he had to feel it all, face it all. As it turned out, he wasn’t as strong as he thought he was. Not nearly as in control as he’d hoped to be.
He eyed the empty bottle next to the couch and the mass of broken glass in the corner of the room. He stood and walked to the patio. Apparently, he’d gone after the rose shrub at some point the night before. There was now a broken branch and a crack down the center of the largest stem. If it wasn’t dead before, it was dead now. He stared at it blankly before pulling out his phone.
Plenty of missed texts and calls.
“Charlotte,” he said when his assistant answered the phone, “I need you to cover things for me for a little bit at the office.” He looked at the clock on the microwave. It was 9 a.m. She’d already been covering for him for an hour at work since he’d had meetings scheduled at eight. But that wasn’t what he meant.
“For the morning?” She asked, her voice holding a tone of uncertainty.
“No,” he said rubbing his temple. “I’ll be gone through Friday, maybe longer.” He could hear the stunned silence at the other end of the line. “Cancel what you can, handle anything that can be handled, just put people off.”
“Is everything all right?” He knew she had to be worried to ask that kind of question. Charlotte was old school. She was the type who believed in privacy.
“Everything is fine. I just… Need to go away.” He didn’t know where he was going. Maybe he’d start house hunting for that cabin in the woods.
He still had a place in the woods, but William Tyvek had used that cabin to kill one of the scientists working with him. He’d left the body there to make it look like Warrick was the killer. Charlotte had arranged for some crime scene cleaning company to clean it out, but somehow, the idea of going there didn’t appeal. They’d listed it for sale, but word was out about the dead body. Funny how that slowed things down.
He could go look for something else now, though. Maybe he could figure out his next step. Things at Simms were getting back on track. The cousins didn’t seem to be calling for his retirement any longer. Sales had been coming back into line with what they’d seen before all this started. It was time for him to start thinking about where to go from here.
“Oh and Charlotte?”
“Yes?”
“Can you have somebody come and clean my condo while I’m gone?” He had a regular cleaning service that came every week, but he didn’t want to leave all this broken glass for them to find. “It’s, uh, it’s a bit of a mess.”
“Of course. I’ll send someone over. Is tomorrow okay for that?” He knew she was asking if he’d be there when they came or if she could send them anytime.
“That’s fine. I’ll be gone by then.” He hung up the phone and went to pack a bag.