Page 47 of Ghosted
“What?” Jack’s voice is low and sharp, more demand than question.
“Is anyone else here?” I crane my neck to look out the glass wall of Dean’s office. Speaking of which?—
Dean? Can you come back now? I’m kind of losing it.
Dean pops into the room and I sigh in relief, immediately feeling a bit better than I did a second ago.
“No one else is here. I’m always the first in the office. What do you mean you were drugged?” Jack asks, drawing my attention back to him and away from Dean, who sits down next to me.
“Yesterday, Dean and I came here to see if we could jog his memory, like I told you. Part of that included drinking his coffee. For the sense memory, I guess,” I say, shooting a glare at Dean, who admittedly looks pretty apologetic.
“Is he here?” Jack zeroes in on where I’m looking.
“Yeah, right here,” I say, placing my hand on Dean’s knee. It must look strange, like my hand is just hovering over thin air. Jack’s gaze catches on my hand, and he must sense the placement of it because he looks at me with a raised brow. I remove my hand quickly and clear my throat. “Anyway, I had some of Dean’s coffee and felt really out of it within twenty or thirty minutes of drinking it. I think someone spiked those coffee pods.” I swallow down the rising nausea and take another sip of water to wash away the sick taste in my mouth.
“The caramel ones?” Jack clarifies. When I nod, Jack scowls toward the left of me, in an approximation of where Dean is. “Son, I told you those things would kill you one day. Too much sugar.”
Dean grunts and says, “I don’t think the sugar is what killed me, Dad.”
I roll my lips together and say, “Actually Jack, we tested Dean’s old coffee right before I passed out.” I point to the to-go cup still sitting on Dean’s desk with the small test strip right next to it. “It tested positive for GHB. I think that’s why Dean didn’t show any signs of struggling. He drank almost a full cup of coffee right before he left work that day. It lines up with when he was killed. By the time he got home, he was probably feeling extremely tired and out of it. He mentioned he was completely exhausted and disoriented right beforehand. So someone could have spiked his coffee and then waited for him at his home.”
“Shit,” Jack states, rubbing his mouth and cleanly shaven chin. “Are you okay to stand? I want to go check the rest of the pods, and you look like you need to eat something.”
I nod and slowly stand up, both Jack and Dean immediately helping to steady me. “I’m good,” I say, after the dizziness passes. Jack drops his hand, but Dean wraps a supportive arm around my shoulders, leaning in to press a kiss to the side of my head.
I follow Jack, only stumbling a little, to the break room, grateful that no one else is here yet. It would have been very difficult to explain being passed out on Dean’s couch. Jack pulls out a chair for me and gestures firmly for me to sit down. I comply, mostly because I’m not in the mood for an argument. He hands me a muffin and a yogurt from the fridge.
Dean follows closely and squats next to me, laying a possessive hand over my thigh. While Jack inspects the box the coffee pods came in, Dean leans in and says, “I’m so sorry.”
I whisper back, “It’s okay. It’s not like you’re the one who roofied me. Or at least, not on purpose. Where did you go when I passed out?”
“I stayed with you as long as I could. Eventually, I couldn’t hold on any longer, so I had to go before I was pulled back. But I didn’t want to leave you.” He looks so genuinely distraught that all my grumpiness melts away.
His thumb traces a distracting path on my inner thigh, making it hard to concentrate on what he’s saying or to form a reply.
“I’m just glad no one else came into the office,” I say loud enough for Jack to hear as well. I take a few small bites of the muffin, wanting to see how my stomach reacts before diving into the yogurt, even though mixed berry is my favorite.
“Me too,” Jack grunts, inspecting one of the pods. “The seal on this one is different,” he says, turning the pod over in his hand. “See here? It’s a different color than the rest.”
The other seals have darker, more industrial-looking aluminum, while the seal on the one Jack’s holding is a silvery-white color and looks thinner. They almost look more like a sticker than an actual part of the pod. “Only the caramel ones have the new seal. Dean was the only one who drank them because everyone else thought it tasted too artificial. After Dean passed, one of the other associates even offered to throw them away so I wouldn’t see the reminder. I wouldn’t let him.”
“Which explains why no one else has fallen over at work,” I say. “So this was clearly targeted at Dean—I mean, obviously. But it had to be someone with that knowledge of him and access to this office.”
“Most people who know Dean, even casually, know he had a sweet tooth. I mean, the man carried hard candies in his pocket like an old lady for god’s sake,” Jack says, sitting across from me. I snort a laugh so suddenly that it worsens the dull ache pounding through my skull.
“I resent being compared to an elderly woman,” Dean retorts, with an indignant sniff. “But, even if most people know I have a sweet tooth, it's a jump to assume that I’d be the only one who liked caramel flavored coffee. It’s a universally-liked flavor,” he insists.
I relay what he said to Jack and add, “Dean’s right. It had to be someone who knows his patterns and the rest of the office as well. They couldn’t risk drugging multiple people. If we hadn’t come back here, you wouldn’t have known the pods had GHB. They were banking on the fact that no one else would drink them.” I watch as Jack absorbs this, probably also realizing that this person has to be someone they all know and trust. “Jack, do you get the goods in the break room delivered through a service?”
He shakes his head slowly. “No, my wife is the unofficial office manager. She’s in charge of keeping the break room stocked, among other things. And she definitely wouldn’t have poisoned and killed our son. She’s—she’s not doing well.” He says this last bit through gritted teeth, as if her pain is his to bear as well. He briefly closes his eyes.
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I say, brushing the crumbs from the muffin off my fingers and placing a hand over Dean’s on my thigh.
“Thank you,” Jack murmurs. He seems to shake the moment off and says, “I’m going to get this tested and start a paper trail of evidence against the bastard that did this to my son. It’s going to be hard to stay under the radar in front of the others, but I have to assume it was one of ours.”
He gets up to deposit the pod in a plastic sandwich baggie. “The P.I. I hired is digging into Dean’s background right now, trying to figure out if he had any enemies that we didn’t know about. So far, he’s found nothing, but this might help narrow the search,” Jack states, sticking the sandwich baggie in his pocket.
He turns to wash his hands at the sink, and I check the time on the clock above the window. “Damn. I have to get to work,” I grumble, standing up when I see it’s almost seven. “Just text me if you find anything else, okay?”
