Captain Sullivan gave Chase a hard look. By the way he said “your friend” it appeared he didn’t know Chase. His expression was hard, almost cold, the compassion she swore she saw when she first woke up definitely gone.
“You mind if I speak with Ashley alone?” Captain Sullivan growled.
Chase took his hand from her forehead, his expression tight and unreadable as he backed away from her bed. She searched his face, wishing she remembered something, anything. When he disappeared around the curtain, leaving her alone with her captain, he came up alongside the bed, moving a stool she hadn’t noticed and then sitting next to her.
“What do you remember before coming here?” he asked.
“Everything is foggy.” Flashes appeared in her mind, making love to Chase, him fucking her so hard she was barely able to make it to her kitchen for water. That wasn’t something she was going to share with her captain.
“You worked the crime scene for Chris Perkins,” he prompted.
Ashley searched his dark features. In the ten years on the force, John Sullivan had never aged. He had to have one of the highest-stress jobs in the city, yet his smooth black skin didn’t wrinkle, and his brooding stare once again appeared concerned, and not stressed.
“Chris Perkins,” she whispered, the flashes in her mind piecing together. “I remember.” She nodded, once again trying to sit up in her bed. There was something weird about lying against pillows while talking to her captain. “It appears we’ve lost another lady to ISIS.”
Captain Sullivan nodded. “Where did you go when you left the crime scene?”
She squinted, frowning. The fog was lifting from her brain, leaving a dull, thudding headache in its wake. “I headed over to . . .” She hesitated. Captain Sullivan hadn’t acted as if he knew Chase.
“You went over to the guy’s house who brought you in here?” He asked the question but looked at her as if he were reminding her that was what she did.
Ashley nodded. “I really don’t remember anything after that.” She couldn’t even picture his house in her mind. “How did I get here?”
“He brought you here. What’s his name? Is he a close friend?”
Close enough that she fucked the shit out of him. Ashley wondered how thorough an exam they did on her when she arrived. Losing a piece of her life seriously sucked. She couldn’t account for anything after leaving the crime scene.
“Yes, he’s a close friend,” she conceded. “I guess I was more exhausted than I realized. I don’t ever remember passing out this hard.” She hoped her smile appeared sincere. The so
oner she could get out of this hospital the better.
“You didn’t pass out, Ash. You were drugged. They found small traces of ISIS in your system.” Captain Sullivan’s dark features turned dangerous, the white around his black eyes suddenly glowing as he stared at her. “I want to know everything about the guy who brought you in here. How long have you known him?”
ASHLEY STOOD in her living room, staring at her familiar surroundings but not seeing them. Chase had taken off after leaving the side of her bed, which made him even more of a suspect in everyone’s eyes. But her gut told her he wasn’t the ISIS killer, that he couldn’t have been because he’d been with her when Chris Perkins died. Her reaction to the lethal drug was proof, though, that a person could ingest and not die for a few hours.
“Have you had company recently?” Captain Sullivan, who’d brought her home, walked through her living room and into her bedroom, switching on the light.
In spite of having slept almost all day, Ashley still felt exhausted. They’d almost pumped her stomach at the hospital in an effort to get the ISIS out of her system. When test results showed she’d only ingested a minuscule amount, and her reaction was more an aftereffect than being drugged, they’d let her sleep it off, monitoring her until she woke up.
Ashley walked past her captain, knowing what her room probably looked like, and headed to her kitchen instead.
“Who’s been over here, Ash? Was it that guy who brought you in? What did you say his name was, Chase?”
She’d done her best to avoid giving too much information about him, although the more vaguely she was answering him, the more guilty she made him look. Ashley knew he wasn’t her killer.
“Yes, Captain, his name is Chase. He’s not your man, though.”
“He’s a suspect. You’ve been poisoned. Who else have you been with?”
“No one,” she said quickly, spinning around but then realizing she wasn’t helping Chase’s case. “You’re going to have to trust me on this one, John,” she offered softly. “There is no way he killed any of those women, or drugged me. What I need to figure out is how, and when, I would have ingested ISIS.”
“You know as well as I do people will defend criminals when they have feelings for them. Some people honestly believe a serial killer is as innocent as God when they love them.”
Ashley stared at her kitchen, willing the dull headache throbbing at her temples to go away as she fought to replay every event that transpired over the last twelve hours. Wait. Make that over the past twenty-four hours, since she’d slept over eight hours at the hospital.
Her kitchen was clean. They hadn’t eaten anything here. She’d had a beer at the bowling alley before coming here, but as many times as she replayed walking into the bowling alley with Chase, she didn’t remember him ever touching her beer. And she’d never left his side, not even to go to the bathroom. Other than the beer, they hadn’t eaten, but come home and gone at it.
Danny had called. No. Wait. She’d called him. He’d broken into her home. How the hell had she forgotten that?