Wordlessly, he folded her into his arms, crushing her to his chest, stroking her hair, rocking back and forth, crooning something over and over again, but she couldn’t quite make out the muffled words. Finally, he held her at arm’s length, searching her face for … something.

“You’re all right,” he repeated. “Thank God, you’re all right.”

She managed a weary smile. “Well, thank God plus Corey and Jonah.” Now she was blinking back tears. “Dad, I’m okay. Really. I’m okay.”

He let out a long, exasperated sigh, running his hand through his hair. “Tell me the truth,” he said sternly. “Are you just saying that to get me off your back?”

“No!” she exclaimed.

His eyes held hers. “Drue, the doctor told us. You overdosed. On OxyContin. Honey, talk to me. Seriously, I’m not going to judge, but if you have a problem, you need to be honest with me, so I can get you help.”

“Dad! I swear. I promise you, I am not a pill head! It was Ben. He tried to kill me.”

“Ben? Our Ben? Ben Fentress?” Brice looked stricken. “That’s just nuts. It must be the pills talking.”

“It is not the damned Oxy!” she cried. “Ben came over this afternoon. He brought me a kale smoothie that he’d spiked with Oxy, which the doctor just told me was itself spiked with fentanyl. Only he didn’t know that I’m allergic, sort of, to drugs with codeine. It makes me violently ill. So I puked up most of it—before the fentanyl could kill me.”

Brice shook his head sadly. “Why would Ben do something like that? You’re friends. You’re colleagues, for God’s sake!”

Drue slid off the examining table, hurriedly pulling the hospital gown closed. She swayed slightly, grasping the edge of the table for balance.

“I figured it all out today. When Neesa came to my house, she admitted most of what we’d already guessed. That Byars made her help him after he killed Jazmin. And Dad, it was just like what I thought. He called Jazmin, just as she was going off shift, to tell her to come to that room. And when she got there, he was waiting. And there’s more—”

“I don’t care about that,” Brice interrupted. “Talk to me about Ben Fentress and why you think he would try to kill you.”

“I am so stupid,” Drue said, smacking her forehead. “Such a freakin’ idiot. I basically called Ben this afternoon and practically invited him over to try and kill me.”

She walked unsteadily over to a narrow locker in the corner of the room.

“What are you doing?”