Wicked Things (Chaos & Ruin #3)

by Callie Hart

  The emails aren’t anything that exciting. Some kid wanting to come train and learn how to bulk so he can, and I quote, “severely beat the shit out of my nazi asshole brother.” Another girl, asking if we did women only classes (we do not), but then…

  “What the actual fuck?” Lowell? Lowell’s sent me an email? Well there’s a surprise. She’s been notably missing since Millie died, and Mason hasn’t mentioned her once since before the funeral. I click on the subject bar, and the message opens.

  Ernie’s shots are due, specifically Bordatella and rabies. Please make sure he gets them.

  She doesn’t use my name. But then again, I’m sure my name is like a stone in that back of her throat, toxic poison on the tip of her tongue. She probably couldn’t even bring herself to type out the four letters required to address me. I stare at the weird message, growing more and more annoyed by the second. With so few words she’s managed to make me feel like a complete asshole. Ernie’s been just fine with us since I decided we were going to rehome him. He’s been happy as fuck. The last thing we need is Lowell coming along, griping at us about his fucking shots. The last thing we need is any communication from Lowell, period.

  “What’s the problem?”

  I look up and Mason’s standing in the doorway. His head is hanging low, like it weighs a metric ton and there’s no way he can possibly hold it up on his own. “What’s the problem?” I ask.

  His eyes glint, filled with defiance as he meets my gaze. “Yeah. You’re all bent out of shape about something, I can tell.”

  I sit back in my chair, stacking my hands on my stomach, staring at him. I don’t reply. I just sit there and wait. Eventually his shoulders sag and the look of pure fire in his eyes gutters out. He drags himself across to the chair on the other side of my desk, and he sits himself down in it. Rather, he collapses in it. Leaning forward, he covers his face in his hands, breathing deeply. He speaks, his words are muffled. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, man. I’m just…”

  “You’re just…?”

  “I just want to fucking die.”

  “Fair enough.”

  His head whips up, eyes bloodshot and shocked. “So I should just kill myself, then? Is that it?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said fair enough. As in, I understand that you feel that way.”

  “Goddamn it, man. You’re supposed to try and cheer me up or something.”

  “Why the fuck would I do that? You just puked all over my canvas. Plus,” I narrow my eyes at him. “Your sister just died. There is no ‘cheering you up.’”

  I should know. When Lacey died, I was shrouded beneath a black cloud so dark and impenetrable I don’t think I even knew what was going on for a couple of days. Admittedly, I had to get my shit together because people were relying on me. That’s the problem here; Mason is used to having someone rely on him. Now that no one needs him to be strong, needs him to hold them up and support them, he’s just fucking adrift. Lost. Completely without cause or purpose.

  “You’re coming to work for me fulltime,” I inform him. “I’m gonna need you here at eight every morning. You’ll get thirty minutes for lunch, and you’ll clock off at six. You can have Sundays off.”

  Mason’s eyes widen. “No way, man. I can’t.”

  “Did I give you the impression your new job was voluntary?”

  “You can’t just make me work for you.”

  “If we’re talking, physical coercion, then I absolutely can make you. I can make you do anything if I hurt you enough. But that’s beside the point. You have rent, don’t you? You have bills to pay? You aren’t working across the street for Mac anymore, and I don’t see you hitting the streets looking for other work. So congratulations, Mason. You are now gainfully employed at the Blood & Roses gym. Don’t turn up fucking late. And if you arrive here drunk, for any fucking reason, I will make you wish you’d never been fucking born. Do you understand me?”

  I expect him to balk. At least kick up some kind of fuss. He just sits there for a second, mulling this over, and then he closes his eyes, relief washing over his tired features. “Okay. Okay, sure. I understand.”

  ******

  I’ve been putting off my flight to New York. I’ve been fucking dreading it, in fact. Leaving Sloane behind is such a bad idea, but fuck. What am I supposed to do? Take her with me to confront one of the biggest mafia crime bosses in the country? There’s no way. No way on earth I would ever put her in that kind of danger, especially now that she’s pregnant. I’ve avoided the trip for an entire month, but now the time has come for me to show my face over in Hell’s Kitchen. Torching my warehouse wasn’t a one-off event. If I don’t go and handle these motherfuckers and soon, they’ll come back and rain down even more chaos on my doorstep, and I will not have that. These bastards need to know. They need to fucking know that I won’t be strong-armed, pressured, bullied or threatened into doing what they want me to do. Comply with that sort of behavior and you’re setting a very bad precedent. The next time they want something from me, they’ll simply burn down the gym next time. Or Sloane’s house. Or the hospital.

  So. I book my flight, and I text Sloane. She’s not going to like this. Not one little bit. She’s going to beg me not to go, and I’m going to have to make her unhappy.

  Me: I’m going away for a few days. I won’t be long. Michael’s going to come stay at the house with you.

  The text bubble appears with three dots, meaning she’s replying. I wait for her response to come through, but then the bubble disappears along with the dots, and it appears that she’s stopped typing. Fucking great. I’ve made her that unhappy. Not ideal in the slightest.

  Michael shows up at the gym at around ten am, with a black duffel bag in his hand. He turns it over to me, and I take it, placing it on the table so I can unzip it and check inside. Knuckle-dusters. Duct tape. A set of pliers wrapped in clear plastic. A bowie knife in a heavy-duty black Kevlar sheath.

  “All TSA friendly items, I see.”

  Michael just shrugs. “You’ll be fine. Make sure you see Sandra Wilder when you check in. She’s going to take care of it.”

  Who the fuck is Sandra Wilder? Who fucking cares? If she can get my tools onto a flight without me being arrested, she’s my new best friend. It would be easy enough to go buy what I need once I land in New York, but I don’t plan on hitting up Home Depot. In and out. I’m not hanging around.

  “Don’t kill anyone,” Michael says.

  I remain focused on the bag in front of me, studiously ignoring him.

  “Zeth.”

  I throw the bag’s strap over my shoulder, turning and heading for the door.

  “All right,” he shouts after me. “If you do have to kill people, just make sure you don’t get caught!”

  ******

  Michael’s like that overweight eunuch guy from Game Of Thrones. He has spies and accomplices dotted all over Seattle (and the rest of the country, for that matter), ready and willing to lend assistance whenever he calls on them. They’re never who you’d expect them to be, either. Sandra Wilder isn’t a skinny, sexy twenty-three year old flight attendant. She’s not a drug addicted meth fiend, desperately trying to keep hold of her job, either. She’s a middle-aged mom with a plain, brown bob haircut and stylish pink glasses. There’s a picture of Jesus tacked to the corner of her computer screen; I see it when she turns the computer monitor around to show me which seats are still available on the flight.

  “Aisle or window, Mr. Mayfair?”

  “Aisle.”

  She nods sagely, as if this makes perfect sense. “I’ll put you at the very front of the plane. You’ll be able to disembark quickly that way. Sounds like you have important business to take care of in the Big Apple.” She laughs, as if her off-the-cuff comment means nothing, but I stare at her, wondering how much she knows. Michael wouldn’t have told her what’s in the duffel. He wouldn’t have.

  “You can go ahead and place your bag on the scale, Mr. Mayfair.” She smiles
broadly at me, gesturing to the conveyor belt to the right. “I’ll make sure this is delivered to you at the gate personally once we reach our destination.”

  There’s something a little off about Sandra. She’s a little too peppy. Is she medicated? Maybe she does have a drug problem after all. Nothing so pedestrian as meth or heroin, though. Coke, perhaps. More likely it’s pharmaceuticals. Clonopin. Percocet. Demerol. I’m usually really fucking good at picking up people’s tells and figuring out what their deal is, but Sandra’s confusing the shit out of me.

  I place the bag onto the conveyor belt, and she laughs a little too manically. “Well, well! Fifty pounds for such a small duffel bag, Mr. Mayfair. What have you got in here? Bricks?”

  I flash her a grimace of a smile. “I left the bricks at home this time, Sandra.”

  She wags a finger at me. “Well, that’s probably for the best. I can just about manage with this. Don’t you worry now. Here’s your boarding pass. Your flight is leaving from gate 32 in fifty-five minutes. I hope you enjoy your trip.”

  I take the boarding pass she slides toward me, slipping it into my back pocket. “Oh, don’t you worry, sweetheart. I’m gonna have the time of my life.”

  FOUR

  SLOANE

  Zeth: I’m going away for a few days. I won’t be long, though. Michael’s going to come stay at the house with you.

  Zeth’s text is not the beginnings of a discussion. It’s a statement. He’s going away to finally deal with the Italians. He must be, or he would have been more specific about his destination. I close my eyes, trying not to freak the hell out. I wish he’d talked to me about this before just vanishing off this morning. I would have tried to talk some sense into him. We haven’t heard from the east coasters in over a month. I’ve been beginning to assume that torching the warehouse was their way of punishing Zeth, and that the loss of his property was enough for them. Zeth hasn’t said otherwise, but clearly he still considers them a threat. A very grave threat, if he’s willing to leave town right now.

  I start typing out a response to him, my finger hovering over the touch screen as I type one thing and then think better of it, deleting the text and starting over. There’s no point in being angry or disappointed with him. He’s doing what he thinks is right for me and the baby. I’d rather the three of us went and lived in a beach shack in Mexico than have him put himself in danger again, but he is the kind of man to ever turn tail and—

  “Dr. Romera? Dr. Romera! We have incoming!”

  Head nurse of St. Peter’s of Mercy hospital, Grace Miller, barrels around the corner, dragging a paper apron from her body and slamming it into a HAZMAT bin as she charges toward the ER entrance. I can already hear distant sirens wailing—more than one ambulance, which means more than one patient.

  Shit. I slide my phone into my pocket, and I take off after Grace, abandoning my coffee as well as Mikey the intern, who was waiting for me to delegate patients to him. I reach the drop off point out of the front of the building moments before the first emergency response vehicle arrives. An EMT opens the rear doors of the ambulance from the inside and jumps out, turning and sliding a gurney out behind her.

  “Partially de-gloved right hand. Severed ring finger. Metacarpal fractures. Analgesia administered in the field. Crush syndrome presented on the scene. Fluids have been hung. Patient is a twenty-eight year old woman, trapped in an elevator. She was trying to climb out and got pinned by her hand overnight.” The EMT hands Grace a bag of saline to hold as she pushes the gurney toward the hospital entrance.

  I catch sight of the woman’s hand at the same time as Grace, who pales significantly. “Jesus,” she hisses. “That’s…that’s got to hurt.” So much blood. So much bone. Shattered bone. Visibly crushed tendons.

  “Poor woman,” Grace hisses. “There’s no way we’ll be able to regain full mobility.”

  I look down at the hand, and I can’t help but agree. The damage is catastrophic. With the crush syndrome and the loss of the index finger, it’s a miracle the EMTs didn’t call ahead to ask permission for a field amputation. My stomach twists at the sight of the blood-soaked bandages that are wadded up at the end of the gurney. I begin a visual examination of the patient’s hand, trying to assess the true extent of the damage. “Give me a read out. What are her vitals looking like?”

  “Sloane?”

  My head snaps up.

  “Sloane. Oh my god. Sloane…” The woman on the gurney cries out, her voice choked with pain and fear.

  “Patien’s regaining consciousness!” Grace dumps the saline beside the woman on the gurney, leaning over her, checking her pupils. I follow suit, shock making my skin prickle, the hairs on my arms standing on end. She knows me. She said my name. And her voice…

  The second I look up at the patient’s face, it’s as though time stands still. Holy shit. It’s…

  Fuck…

  It’s Pippa.

  ******

  How long has it been since I’ve spoken to her? Weeks? God, no. It’s been months. At least two months. There was a time not too long ago when I wouldn’t go a day without speaking to her, even if it was just a text or an incredibly brief phone call. When I met Zeth, though, everything changed. It was shitty of me to cut her out of my life so thoroughly, but the way she reacted to my relationship with him was violent to say the least. She did what any good friend would have done. She worried on my behalf. She lost sleep, wondering if I was okay. I could understand all of that, even though it was frustrating, but when she called Lowell in…

  I’ll admit, that has been a hard betrayal to forgive.

  Now, she’s looking up at me with sheer terror strewn across her face, and I feel like my heart is being forcibly ripped from my chest cavity and stomped on over and over again. I go to take her hand, to tell her everything is okay, but I quickly realize that would be a bad idea.

  I’ve given her more pain meds, and she doesn’t seem as on edge as she was when she first arrived. She’s very spaced out, though. It’s hard to get a straight story from her.

  “So, you were working? What were you doing in that building so late at night on your own?”

  Pippa blinks hazily at me, her pupils contracting and dilating like the shutter of a camera lens. She shakes her head, closing her eyes. “I had a meeting. I was on my up to see my client, and...” She frowns, deep lines of confusion marking her brown. She has tiny flecks of blood all over her face, like delicate freckles. “The lights went out,” she says. “The elevator just…stopped. I couldn’t…I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t breathe. It was stifling in there. Everything was pitch black.” She opens her eyes, suddenly alert. “Wait, where’s Teddy?”

  “Teddy?”

  “There…there was another man in the elevator with me. The janitor for the building. He only had one more floor to clean and...then he was going to go home to his wife and…his little baby boy.”

  The EMTs are long gone, so I can’t ask them about a guy called Teddy. Another ambulance did pull up after Pippa’s EMTs went back out, but I wasn’t hanging around to ask them questions about their patient. I was too worried about Pippa to be paying attention to anything else. Now that I’ve cleaned and wrapped her hand, given her more fluids, raised her body temp and gotten her comfortable while we wait for ortho and plastics to come down and see her, I’m feeling a little less fried. My emotions are all over the place. Pregnancy has turned me into some sort of emotional train wreck.

  Oh, shit. Pregnancy. The baby. I haven’t even told Pippa about the baby yet. I’ve been meaning to for weeks, but it’s always better to wait until you know the pregnancy is safe before you start shouting the news from the rooftops. Still… Pippa and I have been as close as sisters since before we attended medical school. She’s going to be incomprehensibly hurt if I don’t tell her before one of my colleagues mentions something in front of her.

  Pippa sighs heavily, tears overflowing from her eyes, down the sides of her face to wet the pillow underneath her head. �
�I started learning piano,” she says. “Last month. I always wanted to play, but I never had the time. I put it off and I put it off… It’s typical, isn’t it? I finally get around to doing something for myself, and boom! I’m going to lose my hand.”

  I brush a stray strand of hair back out of her face. “You’re not going to lose your hand, Pip.” I’m surprised how convincing I sound. I don’t even know if the guys upstairs are going to be able to save it yet, but I’m relieved by how calm I sound. The panic in Pippa’s eyes dissipates a little.

  “De-gloved. It’s such a fucked up term. I never once thought about it happening to me when we studied it during residency. It fucking sucks, Sloane. I mean it. It really fucking sucks.”

  Brushing her hair more to comfort her than anything else now, I shhhh her.

  “I know, babe. I know. It’s all going to be okay, though. The guys who work here are some of the finest surgeons in the country. If anyone can fix this and make it right, it’s them.”

  Pippa blinks; her eyes look a little vacant. The latest round of morphine seems to be doing the trick quite nicely. “But my handwriting’s probably never going to be legible again, is it?” she slurs.

  I smile. “Your handwriting was never legible to begin with, so no great change there.”