“It’s going to be okay.” Nate’s voice was raspy with sleep, making me jump. Charlie lifted his head at the sound and wagged his tail. “We’ll get there. This whole town is rallying to help Josh get this treatment.”
I stared at him, unable to reply. He was so blind. We’d had a trickle of $5 and $10 donations, plus the $330 from Moira’s church’s bake sale, but that was it until the lump payment that Gabe had deposited. This town wasn’t doing anything. I was.
Nate was only inches from me. His hair was tousled from sleep. He needed a haircut. It had grown out from his usual short cut. It made him look younger, gave him a boyish air. If I wanted to, I could reach out and touch him with my fingertips, feel the warmth of his skin on mine. And yet I couldn’t. I was too separate from him, disconnected and alone, as if I were on a wooden raft floating out to sea.
“Why don’t you go upstairs and get some sleep?” I said. “I’m going to read for a bit. I can’t sleep.”
Nate’s eyes were unreadable. “Why didn’t you tell me you turned your brother in to the police?”
I went very still. “How did you know about that?”
“It came up in my investigation.”
“Ben came up in your murder investigation?”
He didn’t reply.
“I guess I figured you didn’t need to know,” I said finally. “I know I shouldn’t have turned him in, but I wanted to protect him. I thought jail was the safest place.”
“Where’d you get all the drugs you planted on him?”
“I—I—didn’t plant anything. He already had them. I just called it in.” I set the hospital bill down slowly, trying not to give away my shaking hands.
Nate’s mouth narrowed into a thin line. He didn’t believe me.
“You can’t understand!” I burst out. “You belong to a family that hasn’t been broken. Watching someone you love injecting himself and destroying his life, it’s not a happy place. I’d have done anything to keep him from dying.”
I thought of Ben the day I’d found him passed out in the alley. A teenager had approached me—dark, oil-slicked hair, pimply skin. He told me Ben owed his brother some money. A lot of money.
“He has to pay off those debts or…” he’d said. Not cruelly or anything. He actually sounded apologetic, a little regretful.
“What can I do to help him?” I asked.
He’d looked down at me, sitting cross-legged next to my brother on the filthy pavement. “You can’t help him. You are… helpless.”
He left then, telling me he’d be back soon to get the money Ben owed him.
After that, I knew I couldn’t just sit by and let him get killed. Not by the drugs, and not by that kid’s brother.
So I’d stolen needles and tourniquets from the hospital. I’d begged Gabe to get me a bag of heroin that I could sell to help me pay my bills. I told him I couldn’t make my student loan payments, that I was about to be evicted and hadn’t eaten in two days. I didn’t give up until he got it for me. The rest I got from a guy I’d never met before on the street. I went downtown and bought a couple of bags of heroin. It was easy to get drugs, I’d learned.
Too easy.
The opioid epidemic was, at its basest level, a case of supply and demand, and supply was never in doubt. So many others, just like Ben, had started on opioids. They’d had a bad back or had broken a leg or torn a tendon, and a doctor had prescribed OxyContin or Percodan. Then when their opioids were taken away, they turned to the streets. To heroin. To fentanyl. Sometimes to meth. It was a genie that couldn’t be put back in the bottle.
Ben had been passed out in the same alley when I found him the next time. I stuffed his pockets with everything I had. Then I called the police. I watched, stony-faced, from across the street as they arrested him.
“You know Ben was released from jail two years ago, right?” Nate said. “If he contacts you, you need to let me know. We’re looking for him. I can’t tell you why, but you need to know he’s out there. And if he knows you’re the one who turned him in, you could be in danger.”
A buzzing came from beside the couch. My eyes jumped to my purse. Nate looked at me, his gaze heavy and judgmental.
My phone.
One of my phones.
“Are you going to get that?” Nate’s voice was laser-sharp.
“No, we’re talking right now. It’s probably just Julia.”
He didn’t reply.
I stiffened. He knew I was hiding something. The girl at the clinic. The canvas bag of prescription pads. The pills I’d left for Julia. The briefcase at the back of our closet. Ben and Gabe waiting at the warehouse.
“This is all so unfair.” My voice cracked. “I’ve lost my whole family. My parents. My brother. And now Josh is sick. What if I lose him too? And what if we lose our insurance and…?”
“I know.” Nate’s gaze softened and he put a hand on my knee. His eyes, when they met mine, were bloodshot. “I’m scared too. I’ve got this case living inside my head and only a few weeks to prove I can solve it. I feel so damn helpless.”
Nate dropped his head into his hands. It took me a minute to realize he was crying. I didn’t think I’d ever seen my husband cry. He was bulletproof. To see him fall apart terrified me.
I could tell he was reliving Josh’s life, just like I was. The newborn who’d had his days and nights mixed up. The giggly baby who’d loved to snuggle. The inquisitive toddler who’d gotten into everything he could get his hands on. The precocious little boy with a flair for the dramatic. The sunny kid who made everyone smile.
I touched a hand to my cheek and realized I too was crying.
“Nate, it isn’t all on you. Getting this promotion, becoming lieutenant, it’s all great, but it isn’t up to you to save Josh all by yourself.”
“What do we do?” he whispered.
“We make sure we can pay for the CAR T-cell therapy.”
“I’m going to solve this case,” he replied fiercely. “I’ll catch whoever murdered Santiago Martinez and I’ll find out who’s running these drugs. Once I get that promotion, we’ll have the money to pay off the bills. Josh will get better,” Nate said before I could speak, almost like he was trying to convince himself. “We’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine.”
An optimistic cop. Was that an oxymoron?
I sighed and stood, stretching my arms above my head, and just left the words there. Tension fizzled between us.
“I’m going to make myself some warm milk. Maybe that’ll make me sleepy. Want any?”
Nate shook his head, getting to his feet. “No thanks. I think I’ll head up to bed. Wake me if you need help with Josh.”
He kissed me on the lips, a soft, warm pressure. I melted, leaning forward, yearning for more of him even though I was irritated, but just as suddenly as it began, the kiss ended and Nate turned away. A moment later, he disappeared up the stairs.
CHAPTER 28
A HEAVY SNOW WAS falling by the time I left the house, fat flakes swirling in the orange streetlights. The world I walked into now was a completely different one from the one I’d inhabited just hours before. The shrubs were white-tipped, the ghostly evergreens dancing a choreographed ballet in the rising wind. My breath misted in the numbing air, snow kissing my eyelashes. Christmas lights flickered, still lit around my neighborhood, even at this time of night.
My own house, though, was sad and dark. I hadn’t yet been able to prepare for the holidays. We hadn’t bought a tree, no lights were strung outside, no stockings hung above the fireplace. I hadn’t gone shopping or chosen toys for Josh. How could I when he might—
The thought of losing Josh calcified inside of me, hard and razor-sharp, like I’d swallowed glass.
No. I cut the thought off.
Only yesterday Josh had asked if Santa would remember him if he was in the hospital. I couldn’t let him think Santa had forgotten him. I needed to make more of an effort, to keep things as normal as possible for him right now.
I
resolved to get the house decorated and buy presents tomorrow.
For Josh’s sake.
The drive to the warehouse should’ve been a quick ten-minute journey, but the snow turned it into a white-knuckle twenty. About halfway there, I noticed a car behind me. The headlights were high, beaming directly into my rear window.
The lights followed me around the loops and bends in the road. My knuckles ached from clenching the steering wheel so tightly. I ignored the turn to the mill warehouse and headed into town, pulling into the hospital parking lot. Behind me, illuminated in the glow of the streetlights, was a big, black truck with shiny chrome rims.
The same truck from Costco.
It drove past and disappeared down the road. I sat in the parking lot, shaking despite the heat blasting from the car’s vents. One of vitiligo girl’s friends had left in that black truck. Vitiligo girl had recognized me yesterday. They had to be connected in some way.
After a few moments, I left the hospital and continued driving up the mountainous road. I turned right to cross the bridge and parked about a quarter of a mile away from the warehouse on the shoulder, grabbing my hat and the flashlight from the glove compartment.
My breath misted as I ducked through the gap in the chain-link fence. I stepped carefully over the white ground. Footprints had turned the snow to mush. Gabe and Ben must be inside—I guessed they were the ones who’d boarded up the windows on the bottom floor since I was last here.
When I reached the back door, Gabe and Ben were speaking in low tones. Ben pointed at a page in the red notebook from his van. Gabe leaned in to look. He had a nail gun in one hand, a stack of cardboard panels, and a few pieces of wooden two-by-fours on the floor next to him.
“I don’t know, Vi usually did this part.” Ben’s voice floated toward me. I paused, hearing the anguish in it.
Gabe replied softly, and Ben said, “I’m sorry, I’m just tired, man. I mean, you knew her, she was fucking crazy, but she was smart.” Pause. “I miss her. Lucas misses her. He won’t stop crying. I don’t know what to say. How do you have that conversation with your kid? ‘Your mom’s dead. I think someone murdered her.’ ”
Ben’s voice broke a little, and Gabe looked horrified. I decided it was time to break up their little chat before he said something we both regretted.
“Hello!” I called loudly.
They both fell silent.
“Hey,” Gabe said.
He looked terrible. His eyes were rimmed with black shadows, a few days of stubble on his jaw. He’d lost weight in the last few weeks. I wondered if his sleep was broken with nightmares too. If he still heard the sound of Violeta’s body as it thunked against the rocks before splashing into the river.
I pointed at the two-by-fours. “You guys trying to keep it warm in here?”
“We didn’t want anybody seeing in,” Gabe explained. “How’s Josh?”
I dusted snow from my coat. “A little better. Just two more days of chemo. Once he’s feeling better, you can come meet him.”
“So you had Gabe’s kid, huh?” Ben raised his sparse eyebrows at me, blinking too fast. “And you let another man raise him.” He whistled. “That’s pretty low.”
I flinched, remembering the day I’d found out I was pregnant, hurrying to order a prenatal paternity test, my surprise at the results.
“I don’t think you can judge me for wanting the best for my child when you’re raising yours in a drug den,” I said coolly.
I stormed over to the wooden table tucked under the stairs and threw my purse and canvas bag on it.
Ben opened his mouth, but Gabe moved between us, hands up, the odd peacemaker in our twisted little trio. “It’s fine. I’m sure Emma wishes some things were different. I know I do.”
That wasn’t true. I didn’t regret a thing. I’d made the best decisions for my baby then, and now. But I tossed him a grateful smile anyway.
I needed him on my side.
I wasn’t sure why it surprised me that Ben was so angry at me. Our relationship had been strained for a long time. He was jealous and resentful before our parents died, angry and hateful after. When I was a girl, he was my hero, but somewhere along the way he decided I was spoiled, a princess with daddy wrapped around her little finger.
Once, when Ben was about thirteen, Dad came home late very drunk and very angry. He’d lost a lot of money at the casino. He went to the kitchen to make himself some toast and found crumbs in the butter. Dad lost it, blaming Ben and raging about what a loser he was.
“Can’t you do anything right?” he’d snarled.
Ben had just sat there plucking at his eyebrows. He didn’t bother telling Dad that I’d been the last one to use the butter.
Later, I asked him why. “What would’ve been the point?” he’d said, stony-faced. “You can do no wrong with him. He would’ve turned it around to be my fault anyway.”
He was probably right. Mom used to joke that I was Dad’s Mini-Me. And Dad loved that I was so much like him. Even as a kid I liked to jump higher, run faster, go farther than others.
Maybe Ben got a little lost in my wake.
“I think someone was following me,” I said.
Ben straightened. “Shit! Who?”
“It was a big black truck. Chrome wheels. Double cab. It looked like the one that was at Costco. You know, the one that guy who took the girl out of your van was driving? Like that.”
“Why’d you come here then?”
“Relax, Ben. I’m not stupid. I went to the hospital first. Nobody followed me here. Who is it?”
Ben scowled. “His name’s Carlos Martinez. I shared a cell with his brother, Santiago, in prison.”
The world tilted around me. “Santiago Martinez?”
“Yeah.”
Santiago Martinez was the murder investigation Nate was working on. Ben had been in prison with Santiago. That’s why Nate had been asking me about my brother. He was investigating Ben for murder.
I stepped away from my brother. Fear trickled ice-cold down my spine. I didn’t know this man anymore. What had I gotten myself into?
Nate’s words replayed in my head.
If he knows you’re the one who turned him in, you could be in danger.
“Are you close with Santiago?” I strained to keep my voice neutral.
“I told you, we shared a cell. After we got out, we worked together. But he and Vi never really got along. Vi was pretty suspicious of people, and Santiago was a cagey fucker.”
Ben sat on the bottom step and rubbed a hand through his hair. He looked sad and drained. The loss of his girlfriend, the mother of his child, was wearing on him. He didn’t look like a man capable of murder, but what did I know?
“A few weeks ago, she told me she thought he was sharing information with the feds,” Ben said. “I didn’t believe her. I told her there was no way he’d do that to me. She was pissed, and we had a huge fight about it. And then he turned up dead, and a few days later so did she.” Ben blinked hard, that twitchy blink, and lifted his shoulders. “I think Vi killed Santiago, but who killed her?”
“Maybe Carlos?” Gabe suggested. I glanced at him leaning against the damp stairs, but his face was completely blank.
“Maybe,” Ben said. “He thinks I had something to do with Santiago.”
“You need to lie low,” I warned. “Stay away from him for a while.”
“Thanks, Mom. I know.”
“That girl in your van with the patches of lighter skin on her face and hands,” I said. “Does she work for Carlos too?”
“No. She was working for both of us. I wouldn’t have allowed it if I’d known. But Bea—Beatrice Flores—she only works for me now.”
“She came into my clinic this morning and recognized me. She knows I’m the doctor writing the prescriptions.”
Ben plucked at his eyebrows and frowned. “You don’t need to worry about her.”
“If she tells anybody—”
Ben got to his feet. “I’ll talk
to her. She came up as a drug mule last year. Swallowed fifty balloons of coke. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to do that again.”
I let it go for now, but I didn’t believe that she’d stay quiet.
Ben waved for me to follow him. “Come here. I’ll show you what we’re doing.”
He strode quickly to the other end of the warehouse, his boots echoing loudly, and disappeared into a darkened doorway.
I peeked my head inside. The room was gloomy and dull, enclosed in crumbling brick and lit only by a lantern Ben was holding. It looked like an old boiler room. A smokestack had been bricked off years ago. A series of metal tables, rusted pipes, and broken hoses rimmed the wall, along with giant cylinders and ancient, rusting generators blackened from years of disuse and covered with dust. The thick mustiness clawed at my throat, claustrophobia folding around me like wrapping paper.
“Check this out.” Ben motioned me to a metal table at the back.
Scattered across it were a handful of small baggies filled with powder, along with a number of bottles of prescription pills. I picked one up. Oxy.
“What’s this?” I pointed at an odd-looking contraption.
“A pill press,” Ben said.
“Why do you need that?”
“This is what Vi and I were working on. People love oxy, right? We figured, if we cut the oxy with this”—he held up one of the baggies—“it’ll go further and cost less. Plus, by cutting it we vary the drug’s molecular fingerprint. It’ll look like there’s more than one gang supplying the drugs.”
“What’s that powder you’re cutting it with?” I asked.
“Fentanyl. It’s cheap and powerful. Plus I add in a little pinch of MDMA to keep people happy.”
“Have you lost your mind?” I exclaimed. I looked between Gabe and Ben. They looked pleased with themselves. I wanted to smack their stupid faces. “Do you have any idea how dangerous fentanyl is?”
Gabe looked contrite; he’d seen Violeta die, after all. But Ben just shrugged.
“Where did you get it?”
“It’s all over the dark web. Easy.”
“You know the DEA can track that shit, right? They can track you!”
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