ELEVEN DAYS LATER
IVY
“Today, while high on what police are calling the Cocktail, a batch of heroin that was mixed with various drugs, a middle-aged man walked into oncoming traffic naked and—”
Click.
“The Cocktail, the highly deadly drug sweeping the city claimed the life of an innocent pizza man who arrived at the house of two users, only to be beaten to death—”
Click.
“This drug contains only about 2 percent of actual heroin, giving users that similar high but causing them to crash much faster. When they do they often get very violent—”
Click.
“What is the government doing? Where is the police? People are dying out here! The bus driver who drove into a local McDonald’s was the last straw. My kids and I are staying home. You don’t know who’s on that trash—”
Click. Ethan pressed the button on the remote once more, as I lay on top of him, listening to his heartbeat. He wasn’t even watching the screen. His eyes were closed, his hand with the remote dangling off the couch lazily.
“Doctors across the city have reached out to other states for the drug naloxone, commonly used to reverse the effects of an overdose due to heroin or other various types of painkillers, such as morphine, oxycodone, methadone, and fentanyl. However, many states have refused, due to a growing fear this is just the beginning and the deadly cocktails will spread to other parts of the country—”
Click.
“Police say they have a lead on the drug dealers behind the Cocktail, though no other details can be shared at the—”
Click.
“How much longer?” I asked him.
“As long as it takes,” he replied.
I sighed, sitting up. “Ethan, Rory waved at me today. She waved. And I wanted to break her little hand. You told me to wait and I’ve waited. However, she’s not getting punished by this. I need to do it.”
His eyelids lifted slowly and he glanced up at the ceiling. “You’re right.”
“I am?”
“Yes. Now let’s go grocery shopping,” he said, beginning to sit up, and I moved so he could.
“Is that code for something—”
“It’s code for the fridge is empty and we can’t live on kettle corn, alcohol, and sex,” he said, pulling me off the couch.
I smiled. “Then we can talk over what we’re going to do.”
Before he could reply the doorbell rang. The first time since we’d moved in.
“Stay here,” he said to me as he walked out to the living room. But being the nosey person I was, I stuck my head out to see. At the front door he slid the panel beside it, opening the camera, then relaxed. He opened the door and stepped aside, allowing Wyatt, who was still dressed in his burgundy scrubs, into the house. Wyatt stepped inside, his hair disheveled, circles around his eyes.
“Where is the alcohol?” he asked us.
“Kitchen.” I pointed, and he walked there, helping himself.
Ethan started heading back toward the living room when I got in front of him. “What are you doing?”
“Going to listen to the news—”
“Your brother is in there and he looks like shit.”
“And?” he asked.
I wanted to kick him.
“And he obviously came because he wanted to talk—”
“I doubt it.”
Again I stepped in front of him. “If you don’t open that door, I swear, no sex, no alcohol, no kettle corn.”
“Is that a code for something?” he mocked me, so I punched his arm.
“Go—” I stopped when Wyatt walked out holding a bottle of scotch, Ethan’s scotch, drinking from the bottle with one hand and holding the bag of kettle corn in the other. Ignoring us, he walked into the living room, slipped out of his scrubs, and sat his ass on the couch comfortably. Reaching for the remote, he switched to a random movie and just watched, eating and drinking quietly.
“I think he’s broken,” I whispered to Ethan.
“He’s hiding,” Ethan corrected, moving to the living room, pushing Wyatt down to the floor to lie back down on the couch. Wyatt didn’t even argue. He just kept eating.
Nope, not doing this shit.
Picking up the remote, I turned off the television, causing them both to look at me.
“Wyatt, your brother and I were about to talk about something important until your Gollum ass came over. So unless you have a good reason to be here I’m going to ask you to leave—”
“My girlfriend died today,” he said blankly, staring at me, and I froze. “Some high lunatic stabbed her. I tried to help her. He slashed my arm. I wanted to blame Ethan. But what was I going to say? Why did you stop supplying drugs to the city? It sounded senseless even to me.”
I looked at Ethan, but he was still just playing dead.
“Wyatt, I’m so sorry—”
“I need a place to stay for a few hours.” He went on, holding his hand up for the remote. When I gave it to him Ethan asked.
“Why not your own place?”
“Because people would come to check up on me. That is what happens when people like you,” he said, stuffing popcorn into his mouth. “Anyway, I really don’t have the energy to pretend to be sad in front of them, thanks to the crazy shifts I’ve been pulling.”
Wait, what?
“Pretend to be sad?” I repeated. “She was your girlfriend.”
“I slept with her a few times, we went out when I was bored, but I didn’t love her or even know her. Everyone else called her my girlfriend, so it would seem a little cruel to deny it now that she’s gone,” he replied, and I just stared at him as he drank and ate. “I came here because no one would find me and no one is dying here, so I can rest in peace, while I get the chance.”
“You aren’t even a little sad?”
He finally tore his brown eyes from the television to me. “Kind of. Like in a way you watch a deer get hit by a car sad. But that’s not sad enough. I think they expect me to be bawling or something. And if we must cry, we cry for family.”
“And if we must cry, we cry for family,” Ethan said, perfectly in sync with him.
Okay then. Walking over to him and lying back on Ethan’s chest, I just watched the movie with them.
“When are you going to kill the Finnegan brothers and get out of my city?” Wyatt took another long gulp of the scotch.
“If it’s your city, why the fuck are you asking me to save it? Why don’t you kill them yourself?” Ethan said under his breath.
“The Hippocratic oath,” Wyatt replied, and Ethan smacked the back of his head.
Wyatt paused for a moment and turned back. However, seeing me on his chest just smiling, he faced front again.
“The great Ethan Callahan, a man so dangerous people die even when he does nothing,” Wyatt muttered.
“Wyatt Callahan, a man so cunning he’s convinced the world he is an angel,” Ethan shot back.
“I—”
“Everyone but his siblings, of course. We know what you did in Boston,” Ethan said, and Wyatt froze, the bottle just at his lips. “I’m sure you did it for a good reason. Doesn’t change the fact that you did it, now, does it? That you’re just like the rest of us…both hero and villain. Savior and destroyer.”
Wyatt put the drink on the table, picking himself off the floor. “I’m going to sleep in the guest room.”
With that he walked away, but Ethan being who he was, needed to give the final blow. “One day, brother, you’re going to find out that you are much more villain than hero. Where will you hide then?”
Wyatt didn’t answer.
“You’re relentless,” I said to him when Wyatt was out of earshot.
“Someone has to be.”