Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 113272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
“It’s like as soon as your father died, you became of little interest to him,” Jake said.
“Either that or something happened to him as well,” Kellan added.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Why did you say ‘as well’? My father jumped off that bridge.”
“Did he ever show signs of being suicidal?” Eli asked her.
“Well, no. I never thought he would do something like that. He always thought he would come out on top. Why?”
“Are you trying to say that something else happened to her father?” Jake asked.
“It can’t have. There were two witnesses that said the same thing,” she said. “That he jumped. And that no one else was there. Also, he left a note saying that he was under tremendous pressure and couldn’t take it anymore.”
“And he wasn’t acting strange before his death?” Eli asked. “He hadn’t given any sign that he was taking anything?”
She straightened. “Like drugs, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think so. I mean, wouldn’t I be able to tell? Wouldn’t he have highs and lows? Or how would he get them? The governor couldn’t risk getting caught buying drugs.”
“What if someone he trusted got them for him?” Eli asked.
“Someone like Lee?” she asked. “I guess that’s possible. But why? And . . . wait, no. I’m pretty sure that there was a toxicology report done after his death. The coroner wanted to ensure that he wasn’t under the influence of anything. All he had in his system was a small amount of alcohol. But honestly, that was pretty normal for him. He was a fairly heavy drinker.”
“So he was just acting like normal?” Eli asked.
She frowned, thinking back. “I think so? There seemed to be something going on. He was actually in a pretty good mood. He was going to announce the engagement soon and he said he had another big announcement. I don’t know what that was. But yeah, if anything he seemed happier than normal?”
“Do you think it’s possible?” Kellan asked.
Huh? Did she think what was possible? Then she realized he was looking at Eli, not her.
“What?” she asked.
“I think it is. But the governor . . .”
“We need to find this guy, Lee,” Jake said. “But that’s out of my jurisdiction unless I can find anything to tie him to the break-in.”
“But it’s not out of ours,” Eli said. “Not if we suspect he might have had something to do with giving Arabella’s father the drugs.”
“You think that Lee gave my father drugs?” she asked. “I really don’t know about that. Lee didn’t seem like a drug dealer. Why would my father be seen with him if he was? That could have ruined his career. And I have a feeling that his big announcement . . . well, that maybe he was running for senator or something.”
“Perhaps someone didn’t want him running for senator,” Kellan said.
“We need a way to test for these drugs, there’s probably no way of knowing if he took them or not,” Eli said with frustration.
“And if nothing was found on him or at his house, that’s probably a dead end too,” Kellan said. “And you got rid of everything?”
“Well, yes. I don’t understand what you’re talking about, though,” she said with frustration. “What drugs? Why do you think he was on them? And that Lee might have had something to do with giving them to him?”
She’d told them all of this because she thought that Lee had likely trashed her house looking for her.
“There’s a new drug that we’ve just become aware of,” Eli explained. “This is very confidential by the way.”
She nodded. Who would she tell?
“This drug makes people feel euphoric. It gives them a high but without the real low. At the moment it’s also undetectable in the blood stream. We have people working on a way to test for it but that’s not going to happen immediately. But the thing with this drug is that it can make people feel invincible,” Eli explained. “They think they can outrun trains or walk on water or fly.”
She thought about that for a long moment. “As in they might jump off a bridge thinking they could fly?”
“Yeah. That’s right,” Eli said.
“I still don’t understand why he’d take a drug like that,” she said.
“Maybe he didn’t know about the risk,” Jake said.
“It’s only something we’ve discovered recently due to the number of odd deaths in Texas where people seemed to think they could do extraordinary things,” El told her. “Some family members of the deceased said that they were taking a new drug. We even managed to get a sample of some from one of the family members.”
“Just in Texas?” she asked.
“That we can tell,” Eli told her.
“That’s weird, right?” she asked.
“It likely means the epicentre is somewhere here in Texas. That they are making it or distributing it from somewhere around here,” Eli told her.