by Jasmine Walt
“Patches…” Brennan murmured. It was familiar.
“Now, get this,” Sam continued. “The pharmacy says they weren’t even aware of so many boxes of NicoClean being sold, and the financials match. Their profits only match for a fraction of what the record says was sold. And I bet you can guess who was working each time a large quantity of NicoClean was sold.”
“Zachariah Nettle.”
“Exactamundo!”
“Are NicoClean patches worth that much on the street?”
McCarthy faltered. “Well, that’s the thing…they aren’t. The mesh is a bit thicker, so it can hold more nicotine per patch, and it gets in the bloodstream faster than the generic stuff, but if you’re looking for a quick fix then you’d just light up the old-fashioned way.”
“And nobody would buy nicotine patches in dark alleys and on street corners.”
“Exactamundo,” Sam said, less enthusiastically. “We’ve got nothing.”
“No,” Brennan said. “This is too close to our victim, there has to be something here.”
McCarthy leaned against the counter, a mocking smile on his lips. “You know, as much fun as it is reading pharmaceutical records and looking at your ugly mug, I don’t do this work for free.”
Brennan grunted. “Bishop hired you this time. Look to her for money.”
Sam’s eyes lit up. “Ah, I see. Go collect from the lady for, ah, services rendered.” He winked. “Gotcha.”
“I want you to explain that to her using those exact words. Then we’ll see who has the ugly mug.”
Sam shook his head and hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “So, you going to explain your grievance with the table?”
Brennan frowned. The motion hurt, and he turned away from Sam as he grimaced. “Not yet,” he said. “Perhaps another time.”
Sam gave him a long stare. “Another time, partner.”
12
It was well into the afternoon when Jeremy heard the front door open noisily.
The sun was settling in among the mountains, and it would soon disappear from view. For now, light filtered in through the windows of Jeremy’s room, casting a golden hue on the whitewashed walls and solid wood beams. He was sitting up in bed, struggling with a book from his summer reading list, when a bass-like voice bellowed out a greeting from the kitchen.
“Hellooooo!” The absurdly loud roar could only belong to one man. “I brought presents and souvenirs, but I guess there aren’t any kids here.”
He was sixteen and hardly a kid anymore, but Jeremy leapt excitedly to his feet and raced to the kitchen. Ellie had already beaten him there, and she was scooped up by a pair of enormous hands, connected by beefy, hairy forearms to the largest man Jeremy had ever met. His naturally faded jeans were frayed around the ankles, and a spattering of mud stains clung to his pant legs. A weathered plaid shirt strained against his broad chest. A tuft of dark hair reached up through the neck of it, and he had an untrimmed beard of several months’ growth. Ellie writhed in his grasp as he tickled her under her arms and around the waist, and she was breathless when he finally released her.
“Jay!” he boomed. His voice was deep and rumbled through the room like thunder through the sky.
“Uncle Rick!” Jeremy ran into his uncle’s welcoming embrace.
The older man was rocked back on his heels. “Whoa there. When did my nephew get replaced by this giant? Last time I saw you, you were barely this high,” he said, holding a hand by his waist. He smiled as Jeremy laughed and pulled away.
“We weren’t expecting to see you,” Jeremy said.
Ellie grinned and shook her head emphatically. “Where have you been? Where’s Dad?”
“Carrying my little brother’s bags,” Nathaniel grunted as he crossed the threshold of the front door. He heaved a pair of heavy traveling backpacks through the doorway, one strap in each hand. “Because apparently I’m a pack mule. How in the world did you carry those things?”
Uncle Rick grinned and winked at Jeremy and Ellie. “It’s a secret. Only international men of mystery such as myself can know.”
“Fine,” Nathaniel grumbled. “My international brother of mystery can carry it the rest of the way to the guest room.”
“We can help!” Ellie volunteered, rushing over to one of the bags. Her reed-thin body bowed as she heaved at one of the straps, but the bag hardly moved. She settled down on the ground instead and started to unzip one of the larger pockets.
“Hold on there, little lady,” Uncle Rick said, casually lifting the bag away with one hand. “No presents until after dinner. That’s your mother’s rule.”
“And you’ll tell us all about where you’ve been?” Jeremy asked.
Uncle Rick let out his rumbling laugh again. “But of course! There will be jungles with temples, hidden treasure from the bottom of the ocean, bizarre rituals from secluded tribes—”
“You brought us treasure?!” Ellie bounced up and down, her hair flapping madly with each jump.
Uncle Rick winked. “You will see. After dinner.” He slung a bag over each massive shoulder and walked away to the ranch’s guest room.
“He’s hiding something good in those bags,” Ellie said greedily.
“After dinner,” Jeremy parroted, and he left her alone in the kitchen as he returned to his room. It was still warm, and red coals smoldered silently in the fireplace. Jeremy felt a sensation of unease that had nothing to do with the heat of the room. He had not expected Uncle Rick’s arrival, but these visits were always a surprise. His father was ordinarily frustrated by them, but he seemed perfectly aware of the arrangement today. Perhaps he had mentioned it in conversation and Jeremy had forgotten about it.
Jeremy reached up and gingerly touched his bandages. His head ached more strongly now, and the assigned reading would do little in the way of distracting him from his pain. He sighed, left the room again, and walked back to the kitchen. Ellie had disappeared, probably off playing with squirrels.
His mother entered as he was reaching for the medicine cabinet. She had a bushel of freshly picked pears from the orchard supported under one arm. “Jay, I saw the car out front. Where is your father?”
“He’s helping Uncle Rick with his bags,” Jeremy said off-hand, reaching for the bottle of painkillers.
His mother froze in place. She looked between the front door and the hall that led to the guest bedroom before settling back on Jeremy. Her face calmed and her features smoothed over. The change had been less than a second long, but he had seen it all the same.
“Is there something wrong?” he asked.
“Not at all,” she replied. “I just wasn’t expecting your uncle, that’s all.”
Jeremy shrugged. He let the tap fill a glass with water, then threw back two of the white tablets. “My head has been bothering me,” he explained, in response to his mother’s inquisitive stare.
She nodded and placed the fruit basket on the counter. “All right, well let me know if it gets worse. We might need to take you to the hospital for a scan.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” Jeremy said, forcing as much cheer into his voice as he could. He wasn’t sure what else they might find if they scanned his head. Whatever was going on with the memories freaked him out more than he cared to admit.
When his father’s hand had brushed against his during his recovery, Jeremy had thought the world was ending. His head had erupted in searing pain, and the memory came unexpectedly—and it was so vivid. He thought back on it and it came as clearly in his head as his own memories of venturing to the Tower, playing with Ellie in the garden, and picking fruit with his mother in summers past. They were more than just a part of his father—they were now a part of him. And there was so much to go through.
He left his mother and returned to his room. The infernal book from his summer reading list was still open to the first page, which was as far as he had managed to concentrate with the pain in his head. The painkillers would need more time to take effect, so he went to mo
ve it away. As he lifted it from the bed, however, a sudden realization came over him. He had not even passed the first page, but he already knew what was going to happen in this chapter. And the second, and third, and so on, all the way to the end of the book. It was a fuzzy memory, but it was there. He flipped to the last page of the book and read it, just to be sure.
He had read this book before.
But it was impossible. The price tag was still on the back cover; they had bought the books on his and Ellie’s summer reading lists at the beginning of summer, but this was the first time it had been opened. The crisp paper still crinkled as the spine flexed in his grip, and Jeremy understood where he had read it before.
It was his father’s memory.
Somehow, more than just that first flash of memory had made the trip into his head. As he thought about it, concentrating, the pain in his head increased tenfold. And he remembered so much more.
None of them were his memories, but they belonged to him all the same. Places he had never visited, people he had never met, all flashed through his mind. A rush came over him.
He flipped open a notebook and took a pen in his left hand. He was a righty, but his father was left-handed. He wrote out his signature—Nathaniel Scott—on the page. It was an exact copy, except for when he thought about it a little too consciously and marred the double-T at the end of ‘Scott’.
He looked down at the book again. The Picture of Dorian Gray—it had been years since he had read it. He opened it to the first page and read, “The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.” The words greeted him like old friends—the passage was made familiar again. He looked around at the changed room in which he found himself.
The cheap linoleum was cold beneath his feet. A foldout table was propped against one wall, with three low stools sitting around it. He held a worn book in his hands, a secondhand copy with a sticker on the back indicating the library’s ownership of it.
The room was small and dank. Mildew crept out from beneath the peeling wallpaper. He studiously ignored the shouting and sounds of crashing glass from the apartment next door. Beyond the mildew was the smell of something else, like warm beer left in the sun for too long. It was late, and he read by the light of the streetlamp filtering in through the dirty window. He didn’t know where his father was, but that was a good thing; better elsewhere than here. His brother was gone, too, which bothered him somewhat more.
“Derrick?” he asked. Empty silence answered him.
He got up and walked into the only other room in the cramped apartment. A queen-sized mattress and a bunk-bed dominated the room, and what little space remained was taken up by a dresser that held clothes for the three of them. The room was dark, and his eyes hadn’t adjusted yet.
“Rick?” he called again, but his words were swallowed in the black.
It wasn’t altogether surprising; Rick often strayed from home, especially when he knew their father wouldn’t find out. He was a wanderer by nature. But it always made it worse for the few times he was missing when their father stumbled home.
Somebody was calling out a name now, but it wasn’t his. The neighbors were still going at it.
He turned back and ducked into the tiny bathroom that he never considered a full room. The shower worked, but irregularly, and even then it ran only cold water. Here, too, the wallpaper was folding in on itself. He washed his hands under the frigid tap in the sink and ran wet fingers through his untidy hair.
His eyes were bright and blue—though he could have sworn they had always been dark gray—and shadows crept in beneath the lids. A messy rag of blond hair sat atop his head. Despite having eaten little for as long as he could remember, his cheeks held a youthful fullness that was unfamiliar to him. There was a gash on his temple, too, from some wound he didn’t remember. It oozed through the bandage he hadn’t felt before.
Somebody was calling his name.
His name. He remembered all of a sudden that he was Jeremy. Jeremy Scott. Blue eyes, light-blond hair, bleeding head. Bleeding head. There was something important about that.
“Jay, hold still,” he heard a woman saying. Annabelle, his memory supplied.
“Anna…”
“Jeremy, sweetie, it’s going to be all right.”
“What happened?” It was his brother—no—his uncle, Rick.
“I don’t know. I was coming to get him for dinner and he was lying on the floor.”
“How long was he like that?”
“I don’t know,” Annabelle said, an edge to her voice. “Here, help me get him up.”
Jeremy felt himself being lifted up by strong arms and cradled against a solid chest, and a moment later he was back in his bed with a whumph. They covered him with a heavy comforter that smothered him and he felt like he was in a furnace, but lying on his bed again was like resting on a cloud. He stopped trying to keep his eyes open; it was just too difficult. He fell unconscious.
13
The shuttle carried Brennan around the city rim to the far side of Odols.
He disembarked a short distance from the pharmacy where Zachariah Nettle had worked. The store was a few blocks from Nettle’s apartment, still part of the same rough neighborhood. Unsavory types leaned against rundown buildings and eyed him suspiciously as he passed, but he walked with purpose and kept his head down, and he felt their attention wane and shift away. Brennan soon arrived at his destination, a brightly lit building with glass double doors.
It was one of the chain convenience stores with a pharmacy in the rear corner. He entered and walked straight to the back, approaching the assistant at the counter.
“What can I do for you, sir?”
“Hey, I’m gonna need a patch of NicoClean.”
“One patch?” the young pharmacist asked. “We only provide them in packs of fifteen and thirty.”
“Fine,” Brennan said. “Give me a fifteen-pack.”
“I’ll need your prescription first.”
Brennan made a show of patting his pockets. “I don’t have one of those.” His hand slapped the wallet in his pocket and his eyes widened in mock surprise. He flipped it open and smacked it down on the counter, his silver badge showing prominently. “But hey, I’ve got this. Police business. Go get me a box.”
“I—I don’t know if I can do that,” the pharmacist stammered.
“I’m a detective,” Brennan said solemnly. “And you’re about to be brought in for obstructing a police investigation.”
“We have generic brands that you—” He was silenced by Brennan’s glare. The young man gulped visibly, then turned and disappeared behind a shelf. A moment later, he returned with a box of NicoClean, one with thirty patches.
“Here you go,” he said. “I’m not in any trouble, am I?”
“Not if you keep your nose clean and your head down.” Brennan held his stare for a moment more, then retrieved his badge from the counter and stalked out of the pharmacy.
Once he was outside again, he stepped under the light of a streetlamp and looked critically at the box. It was standard in every way, with a Surgeon General’s warning on the back. He broke the seal and took a single patch from the box; it was square-shaped, about the thickness of a credit card, and wrapped in clear plastic. It looked like any other patch.
So who would buy them in bulk? Brennan wondered. And why kill the supplier?
He put the patch in one of his pockets, then carried the box in one hand as he walked back toward the shuttle station. It was a quiet night; the moon was full and low on the horizon, and it inched its way over the city’s towering skyline. A pair of cats were getting it on in an alley; he didn’t care to look, and he quickened his pace a bit.
He wasn’t paying attention when a lead pipe slammed him from behind.
It didn’t quite hit his neck—the blo
w landed across his broad shoulders—but it hurt enough to stun him. He staggered forward and fell to the ground, his arms only partially absorbing the damage. A moment passed where he was kicked in the ribs and the box was ripped from his grasp, then he rolled to the side and lurched to his feet.
The lead pipe was wielded by a younger man with a red and white Badgers cap, maybe in his late twenties. His partner, holding the box of NicoClean, circled around Brennan to flank him. Badgercap swung the lead pipe in his hand and lunged at Brennan with a savage cry.
Brennan took a glancing blow to the arm and spun with the swing of the pipe, grabbing the man by the wrist and hurling him bodily at his partner. The throw was poorly aimed, and the other man dodged as Badgercap flailed and nearly brained him with the lead pipe. He dropped the box of patches and brought his fists up to bear. His punches were direct and connected, but Brennan was a much larger man, and the blows caused bruises instead of broken bones. Brennan covered his head as the boxer tried to break through the defense, his fists landing on hard flesh and layered muscle.
Meanwhile, Brennan edged toward the rising moon.
If he could put himself between his attackers and the shuttle station, he could make a run for it. His size meant that fights tended to go in his favor, but he didn’t like his chances going toe-to-toe with two prepared assailants. The lead pipe gave them a distinct advantage, too. His shoulders twinged painfully, and he couldn’t raise his arms any higher than his face. He had to end this fight while Badgercap was still out of it.
He focused on the boxer and closed the distance. There was almost a rhythm to the punches, and he tried to gauge their timing. He took a blow high on his shoulder and closed to within inches, too close to be hit effectively. Brennan drove a knee into the man’s groin, and the boxer’s face twisted in agony. As he bent over protectively, Brennan brought his elbow down upon the man’s neck, knocking him to the ground.