Chapter 27

MARIAH

River had told her that he was going to call first thing in the morning, so she could set up the press conference. But it was almost noon, and River hadn’t called her or answered any of her text messages.

Mariah decided she couldn’t wait for River all day, and she made her way over to his house. She wasn’t exactly sure what she expected to find when she got there. Maybe he had stayed up all night drinking? Maybe Edward and River had partied all night long with strippers. Mariah had no idea why River wasn’t answering her calls.

When she pulled into River’s driveway, she noticed a car that wasn’t River’s. She assumed it had to be Edward’s, and that they had passed out or fallen asleep while watching whatever sports game they had decided to watch the previous night.

But as she walked up to the door, Mariah noticed that River’s front door was wide open. Now she knew he was lacking with his security measures, but completely leaving the door open did not seem like something even he would do.

As she walked up the steps, Mariah noticed what appeared to be blood just inside the doorway. She started to get scared. There was no reason that his door should be open, and there should not be blood in his entryway. Instead of going inside the door, Mariah dialed 911.

“911, what’s your emergency?” the operator said.

“I’m not quite sure; I came to check on my friend, and his front door is open and there is blood in the entryway.”

“The address?”

“1818 Golbert Way.”

There was a long pause, and it seemed like the operator had put Mariah on hold or mute or something like that. Mariah looked inside the main living room area to see if she noticed anything unusual. For all she knew it was a robbery and the people were still in the house.

“Hello!” Mariah hollered into the living room. “River, are you in there?”

“Ma’am, do you see your friend in there?”

“I haven’t gone in yet. I don’t know if he is alright.”

“The officers are on their way. You should step away from the house just in case the perpetrator is still inside.”

“What if my friend is hurt? I need to go in and see if I can help him.”

“Ma’am, it is an active crime scene; I cannot advise you to go in there.”

Mariah stood by the door. She always followed the rules, but something inside told her that she needed to push the door open and go into the house. She was scared out of her mind, though, and she froze as she waited for the operator to tell her it was alright to enter the house. She waited for the police to get there so they could enter the house.

“I have to go in. What if he’s hurt?” Mariah said as she gathered up all the nerve she could muster and pushed the front door wide open.

“Stay away from the blood. If you’re going in there, try not to step in any blood. It’s evidence,” the operator said.

Mariah appreciated that the 911 operator remained so calm on the phone with her. It was because of her calm voice that Mariah had gotten up the nerve to push into the house and see if she could find River.

As she walked toward the couch, Mariah looked over it and noticed what looked like a bloodied man lying in the middle of the broken glass table. He was face down on the table, and Mariah couldn’t tell who he was, but there was a large pool of blood all around him.

“There’s a man, he’s face down on the glass coffee table. There’s a lot of blood,” Mariah said as she continued walking toward the man. “Oh, my God! River,” Mariah screamed.

As she made it to the side of the couch, she saw River lying next to it. His face was all bloodied, and he appeared to be having trouble breathing. When he heard Mariah’s voice, he tried to move but then groaned out in pain. His nose also looked broken, and he had blood pooled up around the sides of his face.

“Is your friend dead? Check for a pulse,” the 911 operator suggested.

“My friend is alive. He’s hurt really badly. I’m not sure about the other man, though. River, who is that?” Mariah asked.

River tried to respond, but his words were coming out too slowly for Mariah, and she decided to go look at the man’s face and see if she knew who it was. He was tilted to the side so Mariah walked around the table to get a better look. She still had the phone up to her ear when she noticed who the man was.

“Shit,” Mariah said as she saw his face. “I think he’s dead. I think the governor is dead.”

“What?” the 911 operator asked, sure that she had misheard Mariah.

“It’s the governor; I don’t think he’s breathing, and he’s lost a lot of blood.”

The 911 operator was quiet again.

“You’re sure it’s the governor,” the operator asked.

“Yes, you should probably get an ambulance here right away. I’m afraid to move him. There is so much glass around him and a lot of really big pieces.”

“Can you check for a pulse?”

Mariah didn’t want to go anywhere near the body. If the governor was indeed dead in River’s home, Mariah didn’t want to be the last person who touched his body. She hesitated and just as she was about to reach down and check his pulse, she heard the sirens pulling up outside the house.

“They are here,” Mariah said with a huge sense of relief.”

Mariah got off the phone and stood still as the police officers made their way into the house. Shortly after they arrived, the ambulance arrived as well.

“Ma’am, what happened here?” one of the officers asked Mariah.

“I don’t know. I talked to my friend River last night. He said someone had just arrived at his house, and he would call me right away in the morning. When he didn’t call me and didn’t return my calls; I decided to come and check on him. This is how I found them.”

“So you know both of these men?”

“Yes.”

As the paramedics worked on River, another team came in and pulled the governor off of the table. When they moved him, the governor moaned out in pain, and Mariah felt a huge sense of relief almost instantly.

“Who are they?” the officer asked.

“That’s River Anders, and that’s the governor,” Mariah said without blinking at all.

The look of surprise on the officer’s face was priceless. He clearly had not expected she would say what she did. Mariah could only imagine what kind of protocol the police station and ambulance service were going to have to go through because of the high profile nature of both the victims.

“So you don’t know what happened?” the officer asked her.

“No idea.”

They moved the governor out of the house the quickest. He had lost a lot of blood, and when they took his vital signs, Mariah heard them say they couldn’t get a very strong pulse. It was scary to see just how weak and pale the governor looked. Mariah instantly thought that she needed to call Kimberly and tell her about what had happened.

River was certainly injured badly. His nose had bled plenty, and he looked like he was in pretty bad shape. But as the paramedics worked on River, at least he was able to answer their questions. His answers were sometimes really slow, and Mariah couldn’t understand them all of the time. But River was talking to the paramedics; that was a really good sign.

Mariah followed River’s ambulance to the hospital and watched as they brought him into the emergency room. She rushed in after them, but because she wasn’t a direct family member, the nurses wouldn’t let her get an update on River or even see how he was doing.

She didn’t know who else to call, so Mariah called Kimberly first. She told her everything she knew, and Kimberly started crying so hard that Mariah couldn’t even understand her. It was hard to get off the phone with Kimberly because she was crying so much. Finally, Mariah just had to hand up the phone.

Her next call was to April. If there was anyone in River’s life that could get in touch with his family or close friends, it had to be April. As Mariah explained the story of what was going on, April seemed very calm. Nothing about the story seemed to surprise her, and Mariah even started to speak up louder just in case April couldn’t hear her.

The final call Mariah made was to her father. By the time she made the call, Mariah felt like she was going to fall into a million little pieces. She was shaking and could hardly get the words out when she told her father what was going on.

Mariah had been deathly afraid of her father for most of her life. There wasn’t one particular thing that had Mariah afraid of him; it was more like the definitive way he always decided what was right and wrong. Mariah’s father was a man who was set in his ways, and Mariah feared him more than ever as she briefly told him what had been going on between her and River.

To her surprise, Mariah didn’t get a big explosion from her father. Instead, he simply asked her to call him as soon as she had any updates.

“Wait, Dad,” Mariah said before he could hang up. “They won’t let me see him. The nurse said only immediate family members can see him. What should I do?”

“Just walk up there and tell them you’re his wife, and you want to see him,” her father told her.

Normally, Mariah would have protested at the unusual nature of her father’s suggestion. But Mariah had broken the seal of her goodness. She no longer was going to listen to every single rule in the world. Mariah had her own ideas of what was right and wrong; it was time for her to follow her own rules.