Killian
“She’s an addict?” I ask, holding up the needle and belt.
Hope nods as she rocks Dawn back and forth like a child. “She’s an addict,” she says.
“Okay, okay.” I turn back into the bedroom and turn it over, tipping over the mattress and rooting through drawers, searching like a madman. I find extra needles and pipes and aluminum foil strips and baggies and cotton balls. I find it all and then I pile it on the bed. I walk out of the bedroom into the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” Hope whispers, stroking Dawn’s forehead.
“I can’t be involved with someone who uses drugs, but I can help. I can help her kick it for good. I’ve done it before.”
“Really?” Hope’s voice is full of hope. “Dawn is tough, Killian. She won’t let anyone wrangle her for long.”
“Don’t forget, pretty lady, I’m pretty tough, too.”
I find a plastic bag and return to the bedroom. I stuff all of her paraphernalia into it then I shove it—carefully because of the needles—into my pants pocket. I return to the living room. Dawn is slack-jawed, collapsed into her sister’s arms and staring up at the ceiling with a spaced-out expression I know so well. I’ve detoxed members of the Satan’s Martyrs over the years, members we couldn’t afford to lose. Drugs are an absolute no, without question. Drugs are something I just can’t tolerate.
“What are we going to do?” Hope asks.
“I’m renting us a house, out near Sapphire Lake. We’ll take Dawn there and we’ll get her off the gear for good.”
“You don’t understand, Killian. She’s very—”
“You t’k’in’ ‘bout me?” Dawn sighs. “Don’t t’k ‘bout me l’k’ I’m not ‘ere!”
“Hush, sweet girl,” Hope says, wiping sweat from Dawn’s face. “Hush, it’s okay.”
“I’m fl’in’,” Dawn slurs.
“Where’s her cell?” I say.
“Her cell? Why?”
“Just tell me.” The words come out snappish, but there isn’t much I can do about that. Perhaps Dawn is a nice person. Perhaps she’s funny and smart. Perhaps she’s witty and bright and intelligent. When she’s sober. But the best person in this world is a fool when they’re high.
“If it’s not in her bedroom, it’s in her coat pocket, hanging on a hook near the door.”
“Okay.”
I find her coat—a long pale pink coat—and reach into the pocket. When I find it, I take it out and scroll through her contacts. When I find Shane—Dealer, I memorize the number. Then I drop it to the floor and stamp on it, again and again, until it is completely destroyed.
“What the hell?” Hope calls, and then quieter: “Hush, you’re safe. Quiet, love.”
“Get rid of the dealers’ numbers, that’s step one. Get rid of this crap.” I pat my pants pocket. “That’s step two.”
“And what’s step three?”
“I get us a car and a house to hold up in. Dawn is going to ride this out, Hope.”
Hope look down at Dawn sadly. “Do you really think you can help her?” she says.
“I know I can. But it’s going to be tough. She’s going to hurt, Hope. Hurt bad.”
“But you can help her?”
“Yes,” I say, without pause.
She nods. “Then let’s do it.”
And then Dawn begins to cry. Hope wraps her arms around her sister and holds her close, singing a lullaby.
I take out my cell and dial Gunny.
Hope is muttering fiercely to Dawn, quick whispers I only catch snippets of. “You can do this . . . you’re okay . . . strong . . . fight . . . please . . .”
I pace up and down at the other side of the room, the phone ringing in my ear, the plastic bag pressing into my thigh through my pants—the needles pointed away from me. Gunny answers after half a minute.
“Boss,” he says. “Something wrong?”
“I need you to rent me a house on Sapphire Lake,” I tell him. “It needs to be big, and peaceful. The kind of house they show on those billboards to attract tourists. You know the kind I mean?”
“Yeah, Boss, sure, but why?”
“Don’t worry about why, Gunny, just do it.”
“Yes, Boss. On it now.”
“I don’t care if the landlord or whoever is asleep. If you have to, ride over there and wake him up. I need it ready for tomorrow morning at sunrise. When you’ve booked it, you need to buy me a few things for it. Got a pen?”
“Yeah, wait a sec.” Gunny rustles around and then returns to the phone. “Okay, Boss, ready.”
“Okay, good. I need seven days’ worth of bottled water. Lots of clear soda. Ginger ale, Sprite, whatever . . . something you’d drink after throwing up. Energy drinks—find something that has electrolyte on the label. And survival food, fatty food and sugary food. White bread, peanut butter, crackers, eggs, yogurt, soup, bananas, stuff like that.”
“Anything else?” Gunny asks. The sound of his pen scratching the paper stops. I see him there, poised in a chair with the pen looking tiny in his huge hand, waiting for me to go on.
“Yeah. After that, go to the pharmacy. I need Imodium, Tagament, NyQuil, DayQuil, some allergy medicine . . . doesn’t matter which one but make sure it’s strong. Ask the guy what the strongest is. If he tells you it’s only for prescription or something foolish like that, let him know who you are.”
Gunny grunts out a chuckle. “That’s not a problem, Boss.”
“Okay, get some anti-diarrhea meds, anti-nausea capsules, and then get some painkillers. A fair amount of painkillers. Then all we need is some antibiotic cream, something you’d rub into a cut. Think we might have some of that hanging around the club. Ask Declan, the old man’s got his nose into everything.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Lastly, some vitamin tablets. Make sure they’ve got vitamin E in them. Oh, and cough drops.”
“Alright, Boss, do you want me to read it back to you?”
“Yes.”
I wait while he reads it back. He hasn’t missed a thing.
“Get the house, go shopping,” Gunny says. I can see him nodding to himself. “I’ll handle it, Boss.”
“Good man. Gunny, you’ll be paid well for this. Very well. You’re a good man.”
Gunny laughs. “None of us are good men, Boss, but we do our best, don’t we?”
“That we do.”
I’m about to hang up when I sense that Gunny has more to say. He hovers on the other end of the line, breathing down it.
“Something wrong?” I ask.
“I know these meds, Boss,” Gunny sighs. “I know what they mean. Is it one of ours?”
“No,” I tell him. “We’re clean. It’s someone else. But I have to help her.”
I’m glad he doesn’t ask me why, because then I’d have to explain. And what reason is there other than I feel something for Hope? I feel something for her which is not just lust or animal attraction? I feel something for her which might be—
But I won’t think about that now.
I walk back across the room to where Hope and Dawn kneel.
“That was quite the list,” Hope says, continually stroking Dawn’s head.
Dawn’s eyes are half-closed, only the whites showing, and her lips are pursed. She lolls in her sister’s arms, drooping herself like a sleepy child. Every so often she lets out a wordless murmur. She’s far gone, floating somewhere in her own head, seeing things we can’t even guess at. She’s high, damn high, flying high.
“It has to be,” I reply, kneeling down next to them and look at Hope, her elfin face red, her eyes watery, but her eyebrows lowered and her lips set into a straight line. She’s a fighter, make no mistake. “She’s going to ride this out, Hope. She’ll be okay.”
“She’s tried going cold turkey before,” Hope whispers. “It didn’t go so well. She ended up stealing a car so she could drive to her dealer’s house and get some drugs. Right now she’s manageable, but what about when she wakes up and she wants more?”
“She won’t be able to do anything like that for the rest of the night. I know that look. She’s gone. And tomorrow morning she’ll be in the house.”
Hope shakes her head slowly. “Ever since Mom and Dad died, I’ve taken care of her. A family of addicts, Killian, and I’m the only one who’s never touched drugs.”
I reach out and touch her face, touch her soft cheek with my rough biker’s finger. “You’re a great woman, Hope. A fine woman. You can get through this.”
“I know I can, but can she?”
I look down at Dawn, sweat sticking to every part of her, her lips trembling, eyelids fluttering. “Is she strong?”
“Yes, she’s strong,” Hope replies.
“Then she’ll get through it.” I stand up and roll my head from side to side, stretching my neck out. “Tomorrow morning, you’ll drive her to the house. Wait, do you have a car?”
“No,” Hope says. “Too expensive.”
“Okay, okay, in the morning there will be a car waiting outside for you. The keys will be in your mailbox.” I’ll call Craig or one of the others and get them to sort it, I think. “I’ll text you the address of the house once I know it. We’ll work in shifts, me and you and some of the Numb. We’ll get her through it. Your job tonight is to stay with her and make sure she’s okay. You need to make sure she doesn’t choke on her vomit or—”
“I know all about that,” Hope says tiredly. “I understand it all.”
“Okay, good.”
I swagger to the door.
“Wait, where are you going?” Hope calls after me.
“I have a meeting,” I grunt back.
I sit in the car park opposite the Gourmet, where I first waited for Hope. Man, that seems like a long time ago now. I feel closer to her, much closer. I feel like we’re much more than just casual fuck buddies, much more than the women I’ve been with before.
Focus, I tell myself.
I take out my cell and dial in Shane the Dealer’s phone number. It rings three times, and then he answers. Music blares in the background, club music thumping, pounding through the cell’s speakers.
“Who is this?” Shane the Dealer shouts. “Hello?”
The only nightclub near the Cove is called The Loft, a converted warehouse two miles south. “You in the Loft?” I shout, making my voice casual.
“Yeah, who are you? You a customer, man?”
I hang up the phone, kick away the stand on my bike, and rev it into life.
Soon I’m going south, toward The Loft and the man who sold my woman’s sister drugs.
My woman, I think forcefully. My goddamn woman.
It’s a quiet night at The Loft.
Ten or so people mill around on the dance floor and a scattering of men and women stand at the bar. They’re mostly teenagers or college kids, which makes finding Shane the Dealer no problem at all.
He stands next to the toilets, one hand in his pocket, the other fiddling with a clear plastic bag. As I watch, a kid no older than seventeen hands him a note, and Shane hands back one of those plastic bags. Weed, coke, heroine—I don’t care.
Rage fills me, boiling hot lava filling every part of me.
Shane is a tall, wide man. His arms are muscular beneath his shirt. A chain dangles from his jeans and I see the outline of a pistol bulging from his shirtfront. He’s wearing an armpit holster.
I don’t care.
I pace across the dance floor, clenching my fists, clenching my jaw, my body trembling with rage.
Give my woman’s sister drugs?
Make my woman’s life more difficult?
Make my woman cry?
Shane looks up at the last moment.
“The fuck is your problem?” he shouts over the music.
“You are,” I growl.
Then I hook him across the cheek. He stumbles, cracks his head on the wall, and falls to the ground. His hand darts into his shirt, for the pistol. I step on his wrist and lay into him. Punch, punch, punch. Until his face is a bloody patchwork.
Then I lean into his, my lips near his ear. “Sell to Dawn Jackson again, the whole goddamn Numb will be with me next time. We’ll leave you for fucking dead.”
I punch him once more in the belly. Tears spring to his eyes.
“Do you hear me?” I grunt.
“I hear you, man!” he weeps. “I hear you! I hear you!”
“Good boy.” I reach into his shirt and take out his pistol. “I’ll keep this.”
Then I stand up, put the pistol into the inner pocket of my vest, and walk out of the club, around thirty people gawping at me.
Now I get to spend a few days with Hope at a lakeside house. Is that really so bad?