Rules In Defiance. Nichole Severn

setup. Pinning his next-door neighbor as a murderer.

      “Okay. You had a meeting scheduled here,” he said. “You obviously got in your car and left the lab. Then what?”

      “I…don’t remember.” She wrapped long fingers around his arms. “Elliot, why can’t I remember?”

      “Sorry to be the one to tell you this, Doc, but I think you were drugged.” He pointed at the faint, angry puckering of the skin at the base of her throat to distract himself from the grip she had around his arms. “Hypodermic needle mark on the left side of your neck.”

      “There’re only a handful of sedatives that affect memory. Benzodiazepines mostly. We store them at the lab.” Hand automatically gravitating to the mark, she ran her fingertips over the abrasion. Her bottom lip parted from the top, homing his attention to her mouth. That wide gaze wandered back to the tub and absolutely destroyed her expression. Waylynn worked over sixty hours a week at the lab. Stood to reason her assistant did, too. They’d probably spent a lot of time together, gotten close. Shock smoothed the lines around her eyes. Her hands shook as she covered her mouth. “But drugging me doesn’t explain how Alexis… This can’t be happening. Not again.”

      Again? Alarm bells echoed in his head and his fight instinct clawed through him. “You know, that makes me think you killed somebody in a past life I don’t know about.”

      Movement registered from somewhere inside the apartment and Elliot reached for the gun on the counter. The metal warmed in his hand as he barricaded the door with his back.

      Voices thundered through the apartment. Then footsteps outside the bathroom door. “Anchorage PD! We received a disturbance call from one of your neighbors. Is anyone here?” a distinct feminine voice asked.

      “I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had this much excitement since getting shot at a few months ago.” This night was getting better by the minute, yet Waylynn hadn’t moved. “I don’t mean to alarm you, Doc, but I think the police are here. And they’re probably going to arrest you.”

      “Elliot, I think I killed her.” Waylynn’s fingernails dug into his arms harder. “I think I killed Alexis.”

      THIS COULDN’T BE HAPPENING. Not again. She couldn’t go through this again.

      Waylynn Hargraves pressed her elbow into the hard metal table, threading her fingers through her hair. Focus. She hadn’t been charged with anything. Yet. They’d taken her blood to run a tox screen, but if Anchorage PD believed she’d killed Alexis, wouldn’t they have put her in cuffs? She couldn’t have killed her lab tech. She’d never hurt Alexis. They were friends. Even if… No. She’d been drugged. She’d been forced. Framed. All she had to do was remember.

      Pain lightninged across her vision and she blinked against the onslaught of the fluorescent lighting above. A dull ache settled at the base of her skull. Whatever drug she’d been injected with still clung to the edges of her mind, kept her from accessing those memories. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t remember how she’d gotten to her own apartment, if she’d talked with Alexis, how she’d—

      Waylynn swallowed around the tightness in her throat and lifted her attention to the mirror taking up most of one wall in front of her. They’d left her alone in this room, but she doubted the room on the other side of that glass was unoccupied. The weight of being watched pressed her back against the chair. “Elliot?”

      The door to her right clicked open. A female uniformed officer set sights on her. Past memories overrode the present and, for a split second, Waylynn felt like the fifteen-year-old girl accused of murdering her father all over again. Scared. Alone. Pressured to confess.

      Tossing a manila file folder to the table, the officer brought Waylynn back into the moment. Long, curly brown hair had been pulled back in a tight ponytail, highlighting the sternness in the officer’s expression. “Dr. Hargraves, sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Officer Ramsey. I have a few questions for you about what happened tonight.”

      “I know how this works.” Waylynn shifted in the scratchy sweatshirt and sweatpants Officer Ramsey had lent her after crime scene technicians had taken her blood-soaked clothing as evidence. This time would be different. She wasn’t a scared teenager anymore. She’d left that girl behind, studied her way through school, worked multiple jobs to pay for it herself, graduated with a master of science, landed a job with the top genetics laboratories in the country as their lead research associate. The work she’d done over the last three years for Genism Corporation would save lives. But the research community wouldn’t see anything other than a murder charge attached to her name. “I’m not sure how much I can tell you.”

      “You do know how this works, don’t you?” Officer Ramsey took a seat, sliding the folder she’d placed on the table across its surface. Waylynn didn’t have to look at the contents to know what they contained. Her sealed records. “You’ve done this before. Are you sure you don’t want your attorney present?”

      Done this before. That wasn’t a question. That was an accusation.

      Her entire career—everything she’d worked for, everything she’d left behind—crashed down around her. A wave of dizziness closed in, but Waylynn fought against the all-consuming need to sink in the chair. No. This wasn’t happening. She didn’t kill her lab assistant.

      “I don’t have an attorney. Listen, my father wasn’t a very nice man. So if you’re looking for some sign of sympathy when it comes to his death, you’re not going to find it, but I didn’t kill Alexis.” She set her palms against the cold surface of the table to gain some composure. “If you read the file, then you know I was acquitted. There wasn’t enough evidence to convict me of my father’s murder.”

      She hadn’t been the one who’d killed him.

      “But there is now.” Light green eyes pinned Waylynn in place. At her words, another uniformed officer shouldered into the room, handing Ramsey a clear plastic evidence bag and another manila file. The policeman closed the door behind him, nothing but silence settling between her and the woman across the table. Officer Ramsey held up the evidence bag for her to see. “Do you recognize this?”

      A piece of paper? “No.”

      “Really?” Ramsey set the bag labeled “evidence” flat on the table and slid it closer. “Why don’t you take a closer look?”

      Picking up the bag, Waylynn studied the blank sheet of paper, not entirely sure what Officer Ramsey intended her to see. She flipped it over. A gasp lodged in her throat as a flash of memory broke through her drug-induced haze. Sharp pain as she held on to the pen. The barrel of a gun cutting into her scalp. The handwritten words fell from her mouth as she stared at the note. Her handwritten words. “Tell Matt Stover I’m sorry. I had to save the project.”

      What was this supposed to be? A confession? A suicide note?

      “Crime scene technicians discovered that note on your nightstand. That’s your handwriting, isn’t it?” Officer Ramsey collected the evidence bag, still holding it up. “Your supervisor, Dr. Matt Stover, who you mentioned in the note, was very helpful in providing us samples.”

      A flood of goose bumps pimpled along her arms. That was why they’d kept her contained in this room for so long. They’d been buying their time. Dread curdled in her stomach. If someone had forced her to write that note at gunpoint, what else had they forced her to do? What else would the crime scene technicians uncover? “Handwriting analysis can’t be used as evidence in court.”

      “Right. You’ve done this before. I keep forgetting.” A placating smile thinned Officer Ramsey’s lips, deepening the laugh lines around her mouth as she leaned back in her chair. She pointed toward Waylynn’s throat. “Tell me about that mark on your neck. What’d you do? Shoot yourself up with saline to make it look like you’d been drugged?”

      A pitiful laugh