Chapter Seventeen

 

DAVIS

 

I look Ryan Beauchamp in the face, and for the second time in as many days, I'm seeing a side of him that in all the time we investigated him, I never knew existed.

He looks down, almost depressed. A week ago, I wouldn't have been able to say for certain that he had feelings.

My mother never had. As long as she had a needle, she was happy. Nothing else mattered. Not the man she'd made a child with. Certainly not the daughter she'd given birth to.

The only thing that had ever mattered was that God damned needle and what it could do for her. What any of the people around her could do for her. How they could get her more of that powder.

Every time I look in the mirror, I can't help wondering what she would have looked like without it. I never saw any family resemblance, not in her face.

But eventually I guess Gran and Poppa felt sufficiently bad for their single-parent daughter. They finally agreed to meet me when I got into high school, not that it mattered by then. Not in terms of anything that was really going to have a long-term effect.

I don't blame them. Especially not when I saw the pictures they had, the ones that they'd managed to get before my mom started popping those needles into her skin.

We might have been twins. Now that I'm getting older, I can't help wondering. She looked, all the time I knew her, like she'd been hit by a bus.

Would I look like that, if I had stayed? What was it that was different between her and me, that made it so she was always on that stuff, and I never even needed to try it?

People like Beauchamp were the ones who did that to my mother, and it's people like me who save her. That's the only difference that I can figure out.

But now, more than my mother ever did, he seemed to be upset. He almost seemed human. The others drank in silence, but I could see the others watching him.

Even Hawkins had stopped trying to talk to me, after the bomb went. He froze up, like really froze up. It was at that point I figured out that he wasn't going to be much use to me. Not any more.

He was fried. He wasn't even much use to himself, not any more. I made a mental note to call Danny and get him the hell out of here before he hurt himself.

Spider, the person Hawkins had pretended to be for almost a year now, would have to figure out his own way out, but it wouldn't be hard. Not the way he was taking that biker's death.

Nobody dared to speak. I pulled down my third glass and reached behind the counter to grab the beer dispenser. Nobody tried to stop me.

The elder Beauchamp stepped back, pushed himself away from the bar, and went over to Ryan. He clapped his brother on the shoulder.

"You gonna be alright? I ought to get back home."

"You go ahead, I'll clean up here," Ryan said.

Even I could hear the distraction in his voice. He was a million miles away, thinking about other places, other things. Questions that he couldn't answer, or something.

Logan took a long minute looking at his brother. Worry was easy to read in his face, but it was his own problem. Nobody else was going to try to save him from it.

Hawkins finished his drink. It was only his first, I thought. He had been nursing it. Not like me or Ryan.

"Boss, I—"

His eyes shifted over to me, looking for a message or something. I didn't give him anything.

"Go on, Spider. Get out of here."

Every time I saw him, every time my eyes slipped away, Beauchamp seemed to age. Like the death of his members was sapping his own life.

I reached over and filled his glass. Ryan took a drink from it like he hadn't even noticed that it had ever been getting low.

Hawkins looked at me again, and again I acted like I didn't see it. He scurried off, not wanting to get himself embroiled back in something when he had the chance to leave. Even if it meant he hadn't delivered the resignation he'd hoped for.

"Ryan, I'm—"

"He was doing what I told him to do."

"It's not your fault, Ryan."

"Yeah," he breathed. He didn't look like he believed it. "I guess not."

"You didn't know, did you?"

"I should've known. Should've seen it coming. Shouldn't have let myself get caught."

"It's not something that you can control."

"That's easy for you to say." He seemed like he had something else to say, something more, but then he stopped himself. Put his hands back on the glass in front of him, feeling the cold beer.

He took a drink and that was the end of whatever his thought was going to be.

"You can't save them all, Wes."

"That's rich, coming from a cop."

"You just—man, you look like hell."

"Well, that's fine."

I don't know when I started leaning in on him, but I noticed the smell, warm and heady and pleasant, of his scent. A cologne that I didn't recognize.

It went to my head, more intoxicating than the beer that half-filled both the glasses left on the bar. I pushed myself back upright, but the scent was in my head, now, and I could smell it from all the way over here.

The scent set my skin on edge, stood my hair on end. I wanted it to stop, but more than that, I just wanted it to keep going.

"Ryan," I said softly.

He looked at me, and before I could stop myself I pressed my lips into his.