When We Go Back Again (Mason Brothers Book #1)

Chapter 24

FLETCHER

I got as much sleep as I could, but I found myself waking up so often to check on Eden. The doctor said she was fine, but I still thought she was going to wake up needing something or get sick. I don’t know, I had a hard time sleeping. When she finally woke up, I decided to give her and Alice some time to talk.

While in the cafeteria with a coffee, Cade approaches me with the police officer from the night before. I stand up and shake his hand. “Hi Mr. Mason, how are you doing this morning? My name is Lieutenant Keith Larson”

“Please call me Fletch. I’m doing good, just tired.”

“I’m sorry to hear about what happened at your bar last night, especially to your girlfriend.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. It has been a really rough night. I’m hoping you’re here because you had some news for me.”

The three of us sit down at the cafeteria table and Cade pulls out a laptop and powers it on. Once his laptop is up and running, he pulls up the security program that we use and narrows the date to play just last night. Cade walked me through what he had been working on with the lieutenant. “So we already know that it was Jacob, so we went ahead and only pulled footage that had him in it. We figured if we didn’t see anything we could work backward.”

“Okay. Keep going,” I’m not in the mood to play around, I want to get to what they found right away.

Cade pointed back at the screen, “So we have him here at the bar getting a glass of wine.” 

“Yeah, I served it to him. He said it was for his date.”

Cade pressed play and Keith talks me through what I’m looking at. “So as you can see, he walks over to this table and drinks some of the wine. He’s alone, but he’s clearly looking over at Miss Carter. Right here.”

Cade stops the recording and Keith takes control and rewinds it a bit. “You can see that he puts something into his drink.”

“Why would he put something into his own drink?” The question became apparent as we continued to watch the feed.

“Because when Miss Carter was alone he walks over to that table and puts the drink down next to hers.”

“His red wine next to her red wine.” My heart sank because I knew exactly what happened. I run my hands over my face and groan.

“I think you may be able to see where this is going.”

“Unfortunately.” I don’t want to watch what happens next, but I also need to see it with my own eyes. 

“They speak briefly and when he leaves he takes his glass and leaves. However, if you really pay attention you can see what he did.”

My hands ball into fists, “He took her drink and left his.”

“Exactly. She didn’t leave her drink or anything. He waited for her to finish her drink, which didn’t actually take long and it was only a matter of time.” Cade starts to close the laptop, but I reach over and grab the computer.

“Can I see the rest?” 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Fletch.”

“Why the hell not? She’s my girlfriend and this was my bar that he did this at and I want to see the whole thing.”

Keith looks at Cade and he just shrugs his shoulders. I reach over and press the play button and watch the rest of the video feed that they cut and pasted together. I watched in horror as Eden stumbled to the back of the bar. It killed me knowing that she was looking for me, she wanted to come to see me.