Long pause. "Passed out. Drunk. Couldn't remember anything."

No. That was wrong. Very wrong. "Elizabeth. Jeremy doesn't drink."

"That's what he told the cops, but they arrested him anyway."

"Why? On what charges?" No, this couldn't be happening. Could Jeremy have been lying? Had he fooled us all into believing he was someone he wasn't? It was like I was listening to a soap opera in another language, one that made no sense.

"AJ, if he was drunk and caused Flora's accident, then it's a criminal matter."

"No. You have to get him out. This is all wrong. Make them do a blood alcohol and a tox screen." I twisted the phone's cord around my thumb so tight it went white. Didn't feel any pain. "I'll talk to Grandel. I'm coming home."

"What good would that do?" Worst thing about having a lawyer as your friend-they'd argue the sky was fuchsia if you said it was blue, just for the hell of it. "All you'd do is get the cops mad and make things worse. I can take care of Jeremy. David's fine. Flora's fine. You have much more important things to do there."

More important than my family? Never.

But the work I was doing here would secure my family's future.

I paced until the cord stretched to its limit. The future has always been a murky, intimidating concept for me, uncertain, filled with spooky shadows and too many chances to get things wrong. I much prefer the clarity of the here and now.

Only right this instant, my here and now wasn't so very clear. I twisted in a circle, eyes darting from corner to corner, searching for an answer in the dingy motel room. I knew what I wanted to do-but I also knew what I needed to do if I wanted to protect my family.

Elizabeth broke the silence. "AJ. You know I'm right."

I blew my breath out, aiming away from the speaker so she wouldn't hear. There was nothing worse than being trapped here, so far away, helpless to do anything. Except for maybe being right there, back home, helpless to do anything.

"You're right. Did you call Ty?" Ty would straighten all this out. He was good at that, making sense of chaos-probably why we were such good friends; the chaos that was my constant companion didn't seem to faze him.

"He's headed into the station to check on Jeremy. Everything will be all right. I promise."

"David," Elizabeth called out. "It's your mom. She wants to talk to you."

David wheeled himself in from the front porch, wishing he could be riding in the ambulance with Gram Flora-lights and sirens and getting all the cars out of the way.

One of the paramedics had given him a shiny plastic fake Junior Firefighter badge. Like David was some kind of kid standing around watching instead of the person who had just saved Flora's life. Not even Elizabeth had known what to do, but he had.

Not that anyone gave him any credit for acting like an adult.

He sighed as he took the phone from Elizabeth. No matter what he did everyone still treated him like a little kid-and Mom was worst of all. "Yeah."

"Are you okay?" Her voice had that high-pitched sound it got when she was really upset and trying to hold it all together. Putting on a brave face, she called it, but she never looked very brave when she got like that. More like she was gonna cry.

"Mom. I'm fine. I wasn't the one who got sick."

"Right. Of course not." A pause as she took in a breath. "I heard you did good-Elizabeth said you knew just what to do."

"All I did was what Jeremy taught me. How come they arrested him?"

A longer pause and he knew she was deciding whether or not to lie to him. His mom almost never lied to him-or anyone, for that matter-it was one of the reasons he put up with her and her constant questions about what he thought and felt and was doing.

"They think he got Flora's medicine mixed up and that's what made her sick."

No duh. He wasn't six. "You mean the Lantus and the regular Humulin. But Jeremy wouldn't have done that-"

"He might have if he wasn't thinking straight."

"Mom. Stop treating me like a baby and start using your brain. Jeremy doesn't drink. And Elizabeth and I were here for dinner only around an hour before this happened-is it even possible to drink that much that fast? Plus, regular insulin starts acting around fifteen minutes after you take it, so that means Jeremy would have had to be drunk before he gave her the insulin-and Flora never noticed? Gram Flora notices everything. So, if he was drunk, why didn't she just come down to the summerhouse? It doesn't make any sense."

This time the silence went on so long that he wondered if she'd hung up and he'd missed the click. "Mom?"

"Have I ever told you how proud I am of you?"

What the heck did that have to do with anything? He rolled his eyes, glad she wasn't there to see him. They needed to help Jeremy now.

She continued, "Did you tell anyone about all this?"

"I never had a chance. The police took Jeremy away and the ambulance guys were working on Flora and-"

"You need to tell Elizabeth. Everything. I'll call Ty and make sure he has someone watching the house."

"I don't want to stay here. I want to go to the hospital, keep an eye on Flora." He looked over his shoulder, thought he saw movement, but it was just the curtain waving in the breeze. "Mom, why would someone want to hurt Gram Flora?"

"It could be that they wanted to hurt Jeremy."

He liked that she didn't try to convince him that he was wrong. "Why? Because he's gay?"

"Some folks have a hard time with that. Did you see anyone around the house today?"

"No. But Jeremy did tell me a few guys tried to beat him up last week when he was over in Beckley."

"Really? Why didn't he tell me?"

"Because you'd try to do something about it and it would only get folks riled up and make things worse. Like the time those guys ran into his truck with their SUV when you were at the Tractor Supply in Smithfield. You almost got arrested; terrorist threats, remember?"

"They were the terrorists. Red-neck thugs-forget I said that," she added hastily. "Okay, you and Elizabeth go to the hospital and stay the night there-or at Elizabeth's house. I don't want you out of her sight, you understand?"

There she went, treating him like a baby. Again. "Mom-"

"Don't 'mom' me. Please. Don't make me come all the way home just to babysit you-"

"C'mon. You're not serious." Now he was getting angry. Again.

"David. You are a very smart and very capable boy. But you need to promise me that you'll let the grownups handle this, okay?"

No, it wasn't okay. What would it take to prove to them that he could take care of himself? But as always, he knew better than to argue.

"Okay. I'll tell Elizabeth."

"Thank you. Tell her to call me as soon as the doctors say anything."

"I will."

"I love you."

He hung up wanting to repeat it back to her, but he just couldn't. Saying stuff like that was for babies.

I stared at the phone. David had hung up on me. The little brat. If I wasn't so worried that I'd shout at him or say the wrong thing, I'd have called him right back and taught him a lesson about manners. Especially after scaring me half to death. Of course, he was probably scared as well, even though he refused to show it.

Which didn't make me feel any better. Instead it made me feel worse, trapped here like a caged animal, sweltering in a box, unable to breathe or move or do anything to help my family.

Instead of hurling the phone out the window like I wanted, I forced myself to dial another number.

"AJ, give me a second," Ty's voice came along with the sound of a car's engine. Then the sound of four-way blinkers, and I knew he'd pulled off the road to talk to me. Ty liked to play by the rules-law and order and all that. "Everyone's okay."

I loved how his simple statement wove its way through the airwaves to engrave itself on my heart as the truth. Like I'd only half believed until I heard Ty-someone I could trust with everyone dear to me-say it.

Yet, I still questioned him. "Are you sure?"

I felt his shrug and eye roll. What can I say? I'm stubborn and skeptical and can't help but question everything. Which he knew and understood without arguing. Unlike my own son.

"I'm sure."

"Jeremy can't have done this."

He made a noncommittal grunt-one of his cop noises.

"What are the police doing to investigate?" I persisted, determined that they wouldn't make Jeremy into a scapegoat. If he was innocent, I couldn't help but add. I liked Jeremy, but how much did I actually know about him? Could I trust my gut instincts about him?

"The guys took a sample of his stomach contents and they're taking him to the hospital for lab work before they book him. But it will all take time before we know anything."

"He was set up."

"Any ideas who would want to hurt him?"

I told Ty about the encounter we'd had in Smithfield and what David had said about the men in Beckley.

"Why didn't you report it?"

"Jeremy wouldn't let me." I hesitated, then confessed, "He wanted to walk away and if we had, everything would have been fine. I'm the one who got pissed off and escalated things. There were witnesses. He was afraid I'd end up in trouble."

"Good to know one of you has some common sense."

"Are you going to check them out or not?"

"I am. But going from a parking lot brawl to framing Jeremy for hurting Flora, switching meds, knowing how to incapacitate him without raising an alarm that Elizabeth or David would have heard-that's pretty darn sophisticated."

He was right. "It doesn't make sense."

"Targeting Jeremy this way-it feels personal. Has he had any recent relationships that have ended badly?"

"There was one earlier this summer that had him upset. But I don't know any names. He's very discreet."

"This case you and Elizabeth are working on. Would she have left anything sensitive at Flora's or at the summerhouse? Maybe this was all a ruse to get her out of the way while she dealt with Flora and everything."

"No. Everything is public knowledge. Except the plans for Grandel's plant-but he's kept those with him at all times, would only let us look at them, not copy them."

"But they'd be worth stealing?"

I thought about it. Grandel had convinced the government that his-or rather Morris's-design was good enough that they'd invested millions of dollars in it, and now he had foreign partners ready to invest. "Yeah, they'd be worth a lot. Millions or more."

He made a small noise. His thinking noise. "It's a long shot, but I'll talk to Elizabeth about it. Any other cases you two are working that might have anything to do with this?"

"Nothing that Jeremy or Flora have anything to do with." Our only other case was Masterson's request for visitation rights. There's no way sending Jeremy to jail or making Flora sick could affect whether or not he saw David on weekends.

"Okay. I'll let you know if I learn anything."

"Ty-"

"As soon as my shift is over, I'll pick up David."

I loved how he didn't make me ask. Just talking to him made me feel calmer. "Do you think I should come home? You didn't think I should come down here in the first place."

"I think I can't tell you what to do. Other than to trust us to take care of things here. Including David."

"Did you hear what he did? How he saved Flora?"

"He's a pretty resourceful young man." The pride in his voice matched my own.

"He thinks I'm over protective and treat him like a baby."

No answer. Then, "Maybe he's right. Give him some space."

"Right now he's got about five hundred miles of it. And it's driving me crazy."

That made him chuckle. A warm noise, like the sound of a trout jumping in the river catching the sun as it leapt. "You'd be just as upset if you were here, only you'd be driving us crazy as well. Relax. We've got it covered."

"Call me-"

"I will." Another pause. This one felt awkward, like neither of us wanted to be the first to break the connection. The sound of the police radio crackled in the background. "I have to go. Bye."

He was gone. Suddenly five hundred miles felt like the other end of the universe. And I was all alone.

Hutton watched from the shadows on the porch. The kitchen windows were open, so it was easy to eavesdrop. The woman, the lawyer, she seemed more in control finally. But the boy-he was impressive. The way he'd handled the two downed victims, the way he pieced everything together so quickly.

Bright kid. No wonder Masterson wanted him under his control instead of ditzy AJ Palladino's.

Hutton remembered AJ from way back when. She'd been a wild child, hanging around with one of the Stillwater boys and Masterson's son-the son she'd gotten killed a few months ago when she returned to Scotia. He hadn't liked her then and he hadn't liked her when she was splashed all over the news as a champion of the people when she'd won that big case against Capitol Power.

There was a price to pay for being cocky. AJ had fallen hard. Come crawling back home.