Rosie’s head felt like mud. She couldn’t open her eyes, but an incessant ringing was splintering her sleep.

She groaned and rolled over, slapping the clock on her nightstand.

It didn’t shut up the damn noise, so she peeked one eye open and noticed the time.

Shit!

She lurched up, her head spinning as she scrambled to pick up the phone.

Eleanor from work.

Double shit!

Clearing her parched throat, she swiped the screen and said, “Hey, Elly.”

“Are you sick again? You know, I’d really appreciate it if you’d actually call in and let me know.”

“I’m sorry. I have a migraine and I should’ve called in before going back to sleep but it was too early. You wouldn’t have been at work yet.”

Elly huffed. “Okay, fine. I get it. Take the day. Rest up. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Elly. You’re the best.”

“Whatever.” Her boss hung up with another huff and Rosie winced.

She didn’t have a migraine.

A hangover headache, yes, but she probably could’ve found the strength for work. Truth was, she’d come home drunk way too late and had simply slept in. But she didn’t have the guts to admit that to her boss. She was sure the woman wanted to fire her anyway and was probably just looking for the perfect excuse.

Rosie frowned, flinging the covers back. “Who cares? You hate that job anyway,” she mumbled to herself.

Telemarketing was nothing but painful. Cold-calling people all day—it was a new kind of torture. But it was income she needed, and so she couldn’t quit just yet.

Damien had needed a loan, so her bank account was basically empty.

He told her he’d be paying her back by the end of the month, so maybe she could reassess her job situation then.

Shuffling to the edge of the bed, she rested her feet on the floor and yelped. It was freaking freezing! She grabbed a pair of thick socks off the floor and shoved them on before padding to the bathroom. The cold still seeped through the fabric, so she ran on her tiptoes to relieve herself.

As she sat on the toilet, she rested her pounding head in her hands and groaned. She needed water—lots of it—and some Advil.

She walked to the kitchen and gulped down a large glass of water. Wiping the droplets off her lip, she then turned to one of the kitchen cupboards and found the bottle of Advil empty.

“Seriously?” she whined, tossing the bottle in the trash and huffing back to the bathroom.

Hopefully Damien had an extra bottle somewhere.

She hunted through the drawers to no avail and then tried the cupboard under the sink. It was packed with so much stuff that she ended up pulling it all out, reading bottle labels and throwing them aside as she desperately hunted for pain relief.

She was close to accepting that she’d have to get dressed and head out to the drugstore when she noticed another box in the very back corner. It stuck when she tried to pull it out. It was carefully wedged behind the pipework. With a grunt, she wrestled it free, surprised by the weight of it.

Her forehead crinkled with a frown as she lifted the flap and pulled out a Ziploc bag of blue pills. A small pentagram was stamped on each one.

“What the hell are these?” she murmured.

The pinch in her gut told her they weren’t good.

She opened the bag and gave them a sniff. She smelled nothing, but something was off. The fact that her throat was swelling with unease told her she should put those little blue pills back where she found them and forget they existed.

Her insides roiled as questions attacked her from all sides.

Were they illegal drugs?

Why did Damien have so many of them?

He’d obviously been hiding them from her. What else didn’t she know about him?

A knock at the door made her jump. Her eyes bulged wide and then she flew into action, scrambling to put the cupboard back in order.

She did a haphazard job and the cupboard wouldn’t close properly, but the knocking at the door was growing faster and more persistent.

“Police! Open up!”

She jerked to a stop in the living room, her heart thundering in her chest. Wrapping her arms around her waist, she padded to the door and checked the peephole.

Sure enough, there was a man in a black trench coat with two uniformed officers standing behind him.

Rosie closed her eyes and swallowed, her mind reeling as she wondered if she’d somehow woken up in a parallel universe or something.

Drugs and a visit from the police?

Drugs!

Rosie held in her gasp and yanked the door open.

“Morning.” The detective flashed his ID.

His cool blue gaze assessed her before he introduced himself.

“I’m Detective Monroe from the Brookvale PD. Is your boyfriend home?”

“Um.” Rosie swallowed, then licked her lips. “No. I’m not sure where he is. I woke up after he left.”

“Okay. Well, I’m sorry to wake you, but we have a warrant to search this apartment.”

“A warrant?” Rosie took the white sheet of paper and quickly skimmed it, not understanding any of the legal jargon. “What for?”

“We believe Damien Swanson is involved in dealing illegal drugs, and we’d like to search his apartment for evidence.”

“What? Drugs?” Rosie tried to put on the best show she could, hoping he wouldn’t see through it. “Damien would never do that.” Her protective instincts kicked in, and she used them to bolster her performance. “Detective, I think you’re making a big mistake.”

“I’m sure you do, but maybe you don’t know your boyfriend as well as you think you do.”

“We live together. I’m pretty sure I know him better than you do.” She raised her chin. Her heart was beating so fast, he could probably see the pulse pounding through her neck vein.

She hoped it didn’t give her away.

She may not know why Damien had drugs in the bathroom, but there was no doubt a good explanation, and she wanted to talk to him about it before giving him up to the police.

The detective snickered. “I have a warrant, so whether you know him or not doesn’t really make a difference now, does it?”

A chill ran through her as she stared into his cold blue eyes. She couldn’t win this one. The apartment would be searched, and if they found that bag of blue pills, Damien would be arrested. And she might be too.

She couldn’t let that happen, especially when she had done nothing wrong.

Rosie folded the warrant and handed it back to him. “So I have no say?”

He shook his head and her shoulders deflated. Fear was drumming through her in sick waves. They’d find the drugs. There was no way they wouldn’t.

Closing her eyes, she softly muttered, “Can I at least get dressed and use the bathroom first? After that, you can search every inch of this place. You’re not going to find anything.”

She swallowed, hoping they couldn’t smell her lie.

The man’s lips twitched and he gave her a short nod. “Okay, then. An officer will accompany you to your room.”

Rosie struggled to hide her annoyance. “He’s going to watch me undress?”

“If you’re uncomfortable with that, then you can stay as you are. If you need to pee, then you’ll just have to get over yourself, because we’re not letting you out of our sight. Got it?”

Her eyebrows dipped into a sharp frown.

The detective pointed at the officer behind him. “This is Officer Cole. He’ll go with you.”

She let out a noise of disgust and walked away from them.

“We’ll start in the living room,” Detective Monroe instructed the other officer.

Rosie tensed, hoping that Damien didn’t have any other hiding places she didn’t know about. Grabbing the sweater off the end of the bed, she threw it on and wrapped her arms around her waist.

Officer Cole’s footsteps were loud and intrusive behind her. She refused to look over her shoulder. She didn’t want him reading anything on her face, like the sheer panic that rushed through her every time she pictured them walking into that bathroom and finding those pills.

The idea was nauseating. She rubbed her roiling stomach. Fear was amplifying her hangover, and bile surged in her stomach like a tidal wave rising up her throat.

She slapped her hand over her mouth and barely managed to say, “I’m going to be sick.”

Racing for the bathroom, she flung the door shut behind her and quickly locked it. Her fingers were trembling as she slid the bolt across and then dropped to her knees. She only just made it to the toilet before her body convulsed and she threw up.

“Hey!” The officer pounded on the wood. “Open this door!”

She ignored him, unable to do anything else as she emptied the remnants of the previous night’s alcohol from her body.

“You open this door right now!”

She wiped the spittle off her lower lip with the back of her hand and reached up to flush the foul-smelling vomit away.

But then a thought hit her.

Flush it away.

“Flush it away,” she whispered, crawling to the cupboard and wrenching out the drugs. An earthquake tore through her body as she wrestled to open the box and yank out the bag.

“Hey!” The pounding increased as the detective joined in the party. “You open this door right now or I’ll arrest you for obstruction of justice.”

Rosie didn’t know what the hell that meant, but she managed a feeble “Let me just clean up. I’ll be out in a second.”

“No. You come out now or I will force this door open!”

With a frantic whimper, she tore open the bag of blue pills and tipped them into the toilet. Thanks to their insistent hammering on the door, they hopefully couldn’t hear it.

As soon as the bag was empty, she held her breath and flushed. She nearly cried with relief as she watched the damning evidence disappear. Scrunching up the bag, she shoved it in her pocket, flattening it out so it wouldn’t make a bulge and then covering it with her sweater.

“This is your last chance!”

She washed her hands and quickly put the cupboard back together before pulling in a breath and unlocking the door.

The second it was open, Detective Monroe grabbed her and roughly walked her through to the dining room table. His grip on her arm was painful and unrelenting to the point that she actually cried out in pain.

He was unmoved.

Forcibly shoving her toward a dining room chair, he didn’t bother to catch her when she tripped and stumbled forward. Her hands slapped against the table and he wrenched her around to face him.

“Sit.” He pushed hard on her shoulders until she toppled into a chair.

Leaning forward, he got in her face, his blue eyes bright with rage.

“If I found out you’ve pulled some kind of stunt in there, I’m taking you in.”

“No stunt.” She swallowed. “I’m hungover and it got the better of me.”

His glare narrowed, his laser eyes trying to drill a hole through her forehead.

She licked her bottom lip and whispered, “Can I have a glass of water, please?”

His sharp narrow nostrils flared with annoyance before he finally turned to Officer Cole and nodded.

A glass of water was slammed down on the table beside her.

“You stay put.” Officer Cole pointed at her, his dark gaze sizing her up before turning to search the kitchen.

Rosie did as she was told, resisting the urge to bite her nails and look like the nervous wreck she felt.

She’d hopefully just saved Damien from a whole heap of trouble.