Chapter 9

It was another sleepless night plagued with nightmares every time her body gave into the exhaustion. She spent the morning doing laundry and trying to air the house out since it still stunk of cigarette smoke. Unless she did a full deep cleaning including painting the walls the house was never going to be smoke free but she just didn't have the energy to put into it.

She had made the decision to stay in Haven knowing that as hard as it was going to be she would only regret it if she went back to New York. She had emailed her boss her resignation letter which meant she also had to now find employment in Haven.

Madison got in her car and was backing out of the driveway when she noticed the little red flag on the mailbox was sticking up. She sat in the car, confused because the only time it would be up would be if someone were trying to mail something and she was the only one that had been at the house.

She pulled up to the mailbox and carefully opened it a little nervous what she would find but when she opened it she found a plain manila envelope with nothing written on it. She closed the window of the car before opening the envelope, tilting upside down so its contents could spill out.

Jason's necklace fell onto her lap and she froze.

X-X-X

Madison immediately went to Haven Police Department and prayed she didn't run into Nathan because she was sure this was one thing she wouldn't be able to lie about. She didn't see his Bronco parked out front and thought she was in the clear until she ran into Audrey on the front steps.

"Hey, Madison," Audrey greeted, looking up from the message she had just received on her phone. "Are you looking for Nathan?"

Madison tried to tuck the envelope closer to her body, "Actually came to see Stan."

"Listen, since it's just the two of us," Audrey glanced around to make sure no one could overhear them. "I did a little digging and I think I might have found something. It may be nothing but at least it's a start. I'm going to check into it and then I will get back to you."

As much as Madison wanted to grill Audrey right that second for answers Jason's necklace was all but burning a hole in her pocket. It was the only thing she could think about. "That's great, Audrey," Madison smiled in what she hoped was coming across as grateful. "Please let me know if you find anything."

Audrey promised if she found out anything at all she would call Madison right away and they parted ways. Madison didn't even bother to stop and say hi to Stan as she made her way down to the morgue. She walked through the doors needing to talk to Gloria who happened to be in the middle of an autopsy.

"First of all," Madison stated, making her presence known, "Ew."

Gloria sighed as she handed her assistant and instrument she had been using to tear into the dead skin. "Maddie, you shouldn't be down here."

Madison turned around so that she couldn't see the dead body but she could hear the splat of an organ as Gloria placed it on a scale and had to swallow the bile rising in her throat.

"Honey, if you're going to hurl please do it in the waste basket I'm still trying to figure out how this guy died."

Madison shook her head, "I'm just going to go wait in the back."

"This might take a while," Gloria's assistant tried to warn her as she jotted down the weight of the organ.

Madison covered her eyes so that there was no chance of seeing the body again and made her way back to Gloria's office. "I'll wait. This is important."

Gloria's assistant was right about it taking a while and Madison had dozed off in Gloria's chair while she waited. A nightmare of the night of the accident woke her with a jolt and she almost fell out of the chair. Luckily, no one else was in the room and she had a second to get her bearings before Gloria joined her, Madison standing up so she could sit.

"Now what is it I can do for you?" Gloria questioned. Madison pulled out the envelope and dumped the necklace on the desk. She looked at black twine around a guitar pick and then back to Madison. "Not really my type." The expression on Madison's face caused Gloria to worry. "What is it, honey?"

"This was Jay's."

Gloria thought Madison was just taking a walk down memory lane, thinking back to the days before she left Haven when she would hold up in Gloria's office because no one would look for her there. "Need a place to stay for a bit?"

"No," Madison sighed, sitting down in the chair across from Gloria. "He was wearing this the night of the accident. Someone put this in my mailbox this morning. I need to figure out who it is." She paused and made eye contact with Gloria to make her understand how important this was. "I need you to help me figure out who sent this to me without it going in some evidence locker."

There wasn't much Gloria wouldn't do for the Wuornos children that she revered as her own. "You mean without telling your brother."

"Please, Gloria, I'll do anything," Madison pleaded with her.

Gloria promised she would call if she found out anything and it was the second person she was involving in her investigation into the storm. If she could have done it on her own she would have but as her dad would have said it was a necessary risk.

The rain started on her way to the Grey Gull and when she pulled in there was a crack of thunder that sent her into overdrive. Madison ran inside not bothering with an umbrella. Her eyes scanned the restaurant until she found Duke and she ran over, throwing her arms around him as if he had been missing at sea.

With no signs of letting go, Duke wrapped his arms around her. He could feel her heart beating against his chest and feared the worst but couldn't bring himself to ask, to break away from the very moment where they seemed to be the only two people in the world.

She finally relaxed, taking a small step back and grabbing his face with her hands before sliding them down his neck so that her palms rested on his chest. "You're okay."

It was a statement but Duke could now see the panic that clouded her eyes and he knew that panic was because she thought something had happened to him. "I'm okay."

Madison let out a sigh of relief and hugged him again, this time resting her head against his chest. She heard the thunder letting up and what she thought was going to be another freak storm had just been the weather.

X-X-X

Nathan's cell phone rang as he waited for the coffees he had ordered for Audrey and himself at the café. "Wuornos."

"Nathan, it's Gloria."

"Autopsy report in yet?"

"No, but..." she sighed, trying to remind herself that if anything happened to Madison she would never forgive herself.

"Is there something wrong?" Nathan questioned thinking she found something odd on the body and that maybe it was a trouble instead of a stroke.

"Your sister came to see me." That statement got Nathan's full attention and he stepped away from the counter. "She came to me in confidence and I promised her I wouldn't say anything but I don't have a good feeling about this. My gut is telling me something is off and that's the only reason I'm calling."

"Is she okay?"

"Physically. But Nathan I think someone is trying to mess with her and I hate to say it but it's working. They are getting in her head."

Nathan thought briefly of Duke and how close they had been getting again since her return. He would be his next phone call but Nathan needed more to go on. "What did she tell you?"

"Showed me, actually. She was sent Jason's necklace in an unmarked envelope."

"Then we need to find out from who. Send it down to the lab."

"That's part of the problem. I already checked, honey. There are no prints. No DNA. Not even Jason's. It's been professionally cleaned."

X-X-X

Duke's phone rang more than Nathan would have liked and he snapped at him when he finally answered. "Don't you ever answer your phone?"

"Not usually for you."

"Is Mads with you?"

Duke felt like he was back in high school being questioned on her whereabouts. "Why?"

"Duke," Nathan nearly growled into the phone.

"Not within hearing distance," he glanced in through the glass door to see Madison behind the counter of the bar. He had just finished taking the last umbrella down on the tables outside before the next wave of rain came through. "Now again, why?"

"Did she tell you about the necklace?"

"What necklace?"

"Jason's."

Duke thought back to the storm that rolled through briefly earlier and the panic in which Madison ran into the restaurant in. Now it was making a little more sense but the more answers he got the more questions arose as well. "Nathan, what are you talking about? What's going on?"

"That's what I'm going to find out. And Duke?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't let Maddie leave your sight." He paused not believing the words coming out of his own mouth. "I'm trusting you."

Duke tucked his cell phone back in his pocket and made his way up to the bar, needing answers. "You want to tell me what's going on?"

Madison looked down to the pineapple on cutting board in front of her and then back to Duke not understanding what he was talking about. "Ms. Parks' book club gets done in about ten minutes and they always want something fruity."

"I mean about Jason's necklace."

The knife slipped and Madison gasped as it sliced into her palm. Duke grabbed a nearby towel and wrapped her hand to stop the bleeding until they could get to the back to clean it up. Tracy graciously cleaned up the fruit and the cutting board as Duke took her to the backroom where she sat on an overturned crate. He pulled the towel away from her hand a poured some hydrogen peroxide on it.

Madison hissed in pain and he blew on the cut before putting a piece of gauze over the wound and taping it in place. Checking to make sure it would hold, he asked, "Since when do you keep secrets from me?"

"Since I'm trying to protect you."

Duke sighed, hating that Madison held the weight of the world on her shoulders. "You don't need to. I can take care of myself." He tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear. "I'm more worried about you but I can't help unless I know what's going on."

Madison bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. "I can't. I'm sorry."

Duke took her face in his hand and pulled her in for a kiss that he hoped would show her that he was going to be there no matter what.

Madison wanted so badly to give in. She wanted to tell him about every nightmare, about the article she had found, about the necklace that someone had sent her, and the fact that if he had answered his phone it could have been him in the accident with her all those years ago but this was the only way she knew how to protect him so she pulled away. "Duke, I can't. I should go."

He reached for the door handle but instead of opening the door like Madison thought he was going to; he clicked the lock. She should have felt trapped, or annoyed even that he hadn't listened to her, but that spark deep within herself had lit and she climbed onto his lap, capturing his lips with her own.

X-X-X

Madison was behind the bar at the Grey Gull letting Tracy leave early for the night so she could spend it with her kids. Luckily, it was a slow night with the rain keeping most of the customers away. Duke brought up another case of beer from the back and Madison took it from him, starting to refill the small refrigerator they had behind the bar.

The crack of thunder was enough to give Madison pause but when the power went out she automatically reached out and grabbed onto Duke's arm for dear life; the only light coming from the candles on the tables. She could hear the wind blowing the chairs across the patio. A few of the patrons left when the power went out but another came back inside when he saw it was starting to hail.

Duke went to move but was held back by the grip Madison had on his arm. Her nails were biting into his skin but it was easy to ignore when he saw the look on her face. "Maddie?"

"Duke," she whispered, her chest rising and falling along with her quickened heart rate.

He grabbed her by the shoulders, trying to get her attention, "Hey, what's going on?"

"I can't breathe," she started to hyperventilate, her hand going to her chest.

Duke snatched a paper bag from behind the counter and had her breath into it, guiding her to the floor in case she passed out she wouldn't be too far from the ground. He hated the thought of calling Nathan but Madison kept gasping for breath so he pulled out his cell phone and made the call.

X-X-X

"Mads," Nathan came through the door of the Grey Gull with Audrey and Madison ran right over and clung on to him. She almost knocked him over with the force and he had to reach out the support beam to balance himself. He wrapped his arms around her as she cried into his shoulder. He looked over his sister's head to Duke. "What happened?"

Duke shrugged, "It was a slow night. Tracy left a couple hours ago and Maddie was filling in as bartender. Storm rolled in and knocked the power out."

"Anyone in here tonight that stands out?" Audrey questioned.

Duke shook his head, still watching Madison, because they had been through a lot over the years together but he had never seen her as scared as she was tonight.

"It was the storm," Madison spoke up, pulling herself away from Nathan enough to be able to speak to the group but she still leaned into him for support. "It was the exact same thing that happened the night of the accident. The rain started, then thunder and lightning, the wind picked up strong enough that the saplings were bent in half. The hail came last and then…"

"You trying to tell me that whoever caused the storm that night was here? Tonight?" Duke asked, an anger flashing through his eyes.

"It's a good possibility," Audrey answered and shared a look with Madison who was pleading with her to keep her mouth shut but it had gone too far and Audrey said she would keep it to herself as long as no one was in danger. "Madison and I have been looking into what or who could have caused the storm."

"What?" Nathan looked down to his sister who had taken a step away from him and then to his partner.

"Being so many years ago there isn't much to go on," she tried to fill the men in briefly before locking eyes with Madison, "but that doesn't mean there isn't anything to find."

"Like Jason's necklace," Duke spoke up, giving Madison's hand a quick squeeze letting her know that he wasn't accusing her.

Madison withdrew her hand from his, "How did you know about the necklace?" Duke locked eyes with Nathan and Madison shook her head. She should have known Nathan would be poking around. "What did you do? Have me followed?"

"No," Nathan promised, the last thing he needed right now was for Madison to feel like she couldn't trust him. He wanted to help. He wanted to make this nightmare go away once and for all. "Gloria called me. She was worried about you. Said someone had been messing with your head."

Audrey pulled a chair out to sit down, "That's the real reason you were at the station earlier, wasn't it? You weren't there to see Stan you were there to see Gloria. Why didn't you just tell me? I told you I would help anyway I could."

"Because you may be a cop but Gloria could run her own tests without it going in some file," Madison answered truthfully.

"What does his necklace have anything to do with this?" Duke questioned, trying to wrap his head around the idea that Madison had been doing this all on her own.

Madison shrugged and Nathan replied, "We don't know yet. Someone delivered it to Mads. Gloria checked though, there wasn't anything on the necklace or the envelope. No prints or DNA. We have nothing to go on."

"I know this is hard," Audrey started as Madison paced around the restaurant. Everything she had been trying so hard to keep quiet was all coming out at once and if she didn't have any secrets than she couldn't protect the people she loved from whoever this troubled person was. "Is there anything special about that particular necklace besides that it was Jason's?"

Madison's hand went to her scar, "He was wearing it the night of the accident. I was the one who gave it to him."

"All his belongings were returned to the family," Nathan met Duke's eyes before watching his sister try to keep herself together.

"We'll check it out in the morning," Audrey agreed that it was a definite possibility.

Madison shook her head, still pacing the length of the room as her hands shook with nervous energy. "No, it wasn't her. Mrs. Clark wants me out of Haven and away from anything having to do with Jay. She wouldn't give me his necklace."

She made her way over and sat on Duke's lap, ignoring the look she was getting from her brother because at that very moment she wanted to feel as safe as she did when they were locked away in the back room.

"We'll figure this out," Duke promised, a hand resting on her hip to keep her where she was.

Nathan nodded, treading lightly because he wasn't sure how much more Madison could take before it was all too much. "Duke's right we will figure this out, Mads, but it would be easier to do if we had all the information. What else did you find out?"

"There are a handful of people I'd still like to question," Audrey started, claiming the attention of her partner. "There was one other freak storm that was reported about three months before the accident. No one was hurt but the damage done to the surrounding properties were extensive."

"It could have been that's when their trouble activated," Nathan leaned against the bar.

Madison wanted to leave it at that but with everything else out in the open she figured it couldn't hurt. "I paid the Haven Herald a visit and went through the old archives for any articles that were written around the time of the accident."

"Vince and Dave let you go through their files?" Audrey was surprised because as much as Madison had her ways of being coy the Teagues weren't exactly forth coming with any information they have.

She smirked, "It's all about the tumblers, Parker."

Duke immediately knew what she meant, "You broke into the Herald."

"Madison," Nathan sighed.

She held up her wrists in mock surrender, "What are you going to do? Arrest me?"

"What did you find?" Audrey tried to get them back on topic before the conversation turned to how the sister of the chief shouldn't be breaking into places.

"There was someone else on the road that night."

Duke tightened his hold on her, silently vowing to protect her anyway he could. Nathan shook his head, "No, I remember that night too. There was no one around for miles. That's why it took us so long to get to you."

"Nate, I know Vince and Dave like to put people's mind at ease and cover up the troubles but why would they write an article about a car getting into an accident just five miles down the road on the same night. What does that help them cover up? I'm telling you there was someone else there that night and I'd bet everything I have that it is the same person that put Jay's necklace in the mailbox."

X-X-X

No one wanted Madison to be alone that night and she had no objections when they voiced their opinions. She had gone upstairs with Audrey to borrow some clothes to change into and to splash some water on her face to try to calm down a little now that the storm had passed.

Duke was behind the bar finishing closing for the night as Nathan sat on one of the stools. Now was their opportunity to talk without Madison being around but neither wanted to start what they knew would be an awkward conversation.

"Mrs. Clark had Maddie served with a restraining order," Duke finally blurted out because if they didn't have this conversation soon they weren't going to be able to have it at all.

Nathan sighed, running a tired hand over his face. "I'll talk to her." He turned to make sure they were still alone before continuing. "I know she's trying to put on a brave face…"

"But she's not doing so good," Duke agreed.

Nathan's eyes landed on a picture of Madison, Jason, Leah, and Duke behind the counter. The happiness of the picture could almost be felt in the room as Madison held up a fish that she caught even if it were only four inches long. He'd give anything for his sister to be so carefree again. "I think she should go back to New York."

Duke slammed the cash register shut, his temper almost getting the best of him. "Excuse me?"

"It's all getting too much for her here and I'd rather she be as far away from the troubles. Do you really want to see her get hurt more than she already has been? More than she already is?"

"Of course not," Duke glared at Nathan for the insinuation. There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for Madison. Not then and most definitely not now. "That's why I think she should stay. Do you think it's a good idea to send her back to New York all by herself? At least here she has the two of us."

Madison and Audrey rejoined the men in the restaurant and if either could sense the tension nothing was mentioned.

Duke came out from behind the bar, "You ready to go?"

Madison thanked Audrey again for the change of clothes and gave Nathan a hug before following Duke out to his truck. She stopped short and looked up at the clear night's sky that didn't have a cloud in sight. Duke slipped a hand in hers and without a single word being spoken gave her the courage she needed to move forward.