“Yeah? Because the gun in my face isn’t very reassuring.”
Jared lowered the gun but didn’t loosen his grip on it. “We just want to talk.”
“We’re looking for Tripp,” said Zira. “Someone told us you might know where he is. Have you seen him?”
“He came by here last night, probably around seven. We hung out for a little while, and then he left.”
“Did he buy anything from you?”
A muscle in Hector’s face twitched and he lowered his other hand. “No. Why would he?”
“Look, I don’t care, okay? I just need to know if you sold to him last night when he came by. Smack, dope, heroin—whatever you want to call it. Did he buy any?”
“What are you, cops?”
“No. Just answer the question.”
“I feel like this is a setup or something. You should go.”
Zira’s hands balled into fists and she started to take a step towards Hector. The dog snarled. Before the situation could escalate any further, Jared spoke up. “Can you at least tell us where he is now?”
Hector crossed his arms. “I don’t know. He might be over on Richwood Street. He stays in one of the condemned houses over there sometimes. 1756, 1758—something like that. The roof over the garage is caved in, and there’s a whole bunch of graffiti on the outside. You can’t miss it.”
Zira started to leave with Jared close behind her. Before stepping outside, she turned back around. “If you ever sell to him again, I swear we’ll be back, and the gun won’t be just for show.”
“Sure,” said Hector. “Nice meeting you, too.”
Zira slammed the door, walked down the steps, and turned to Jared. “How far is that address?”
He got a good look at her face in the light from Hector’s window just seconds before it went off. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her hair was disheveled, and her teeth chattered fiercely behind her frown. She needed to rest. They both did, preferably someplace with a working heater. But she wouldn’t even consider it until they found Tripp, even if that meant they had to search every house and talk to each of the neighborhood’s residents individually. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but at this point, all he could do was help her keep looking.
He tucked his pistol back into his coat and pulled up the map on his CL. Within seconds, he’d located 1756 and 1758 Richwood Street and showed her. “Not far.”
She looked at the map for a moment, nodded, and started walking. Jared kept pace beside her. For a few minutes, the only sound was the muffled crunch of their footfalls in the snow.
Jared could sense her tension in the silence. “We’ll find him,” he said.
“You don’t have to come,” she muttered. “I’m sure this seems ridiculous to you, running all over the city looking for a junkie who doesn’t even seem to care about his own life.”
“I want to help.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
She gave him a sidelong glance and frowned. “I’m serious. Why bother? Wasn’t it about this time last year you were trying to track him down to kill him?”
“Yeah, just about. I didn’t know he was your friend then.”
“It shouldn’t matter if he was my friend or not. He didn’t deserve to be targeted like that. He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know.”
“And you hunted him like an animal anyway.”
Her voice was harsh and accusatory, but Jared tried not to take it personally. “I guess I just never let myself doubt that I was doing the right thing.”
“I told you.”
She had, and for a long time, he just hadn’t listened, hadn’t even really heard her. He mulled over his response for several long seconds. He wanted her to understand. He wanted to explain himself, but in doing so, he didn’t want to make excuses for his actions. He didn’t want her to think he was trying to justify his choices when so many of them were indefensible.
“Do you remember when you first came back from Grayridge?” he said at last. “You tried to tell me about the food shortage and the riots, and you asked me if the Project was too controlling. You asked if the people we killed really deserved to be targets.”
“I remember. What about it?”
“I know I didn’t respond the way you hoped I would. I don’t think I even really understood what you were trying to tell me, or maybe I just didn’t want to.” He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and blew warm air across his fingers, then stuck them back in his pockets. “All the names Ryku gave me over the years—including Tripp’s—they all belonged to people who deserved to die. I didn’t just believe that, I knew it. I didn’t question. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t.”
“Not even after he killed the other chairmen?”
“A little, maybe. But he always had the answers I needed to hear.”
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Until he didn’t.”
“Until he didn’t.”
She didn’t say anything else, and even though Jared still had so much he needed to tell her, he let the silence fall. They kept walking. The snow continued to drift down all around them, burying their tracks under layers of fresh, white fluff.
CHAPTER TWO
The house Hector had described was nestled behind several trees and two huge snowdrifts, and they might have missed it entirely if not for the neon orange paint sprayed across the garage door. The caved-in roof was further evidence that they were in the right place, and Zira quickened her pace as they approached the front entrance.
She didn’t knock this time; she doubted they would receive any kind of response. The house looked uninhabited, but that didn’t mean Tripp wasn’t inside.
He had to be. They didn’t have any other leads.
Jared switched on the flashlight in his CL and held his arm out to illuminate the area as they stepped inside. Graffiti covered the walls, and piles of trash and leaves littered the floor. A table with two broken legs sloped against one wall, the only piece of furniture in sight.
Zira led the way through the ground floor, glancing inside each room just long enough to see if anyone was there. “Tripp?” she called out. “Are you in here?” No answer, no signs of life anywhere. She bounded up the stairs to the second level.
“Tripp?” she called again. She flung open one door, then another, but both rooms were empty. She sucked in a breath as she turned the knob on the last door. What were they going to do if he wasn’t here?
A human-sized heap lay in the middle of the room. She rushed over to it. “Tripp? Is that you?” As she crouched down, she glanced at the items that lay beside the person—a spoon and a needle attached to an empty syringe. Her stomach sank as she reached out to pull the figure towards her. Please don’t be dead.
The light from Jared’s CL fell across the man’s face. A knit hat covered his blond hair, and the scruff of a new beard grew on his cheeks and jaw, but Zira would have recognized him anywhere. She shook his shoulder. “Tripp. Wake up. Please wake up. It’s Zira. Come on, talk to me.”
His eyes fluttered open, and for an instant, she allowed relief to ease some of the dread she’d been carrying for the last several hours. “Zira?” he murmured. “You’re really here?”
“Yeah, I’m here. It’s going to be okay.”
He muttered something else, but his voice was soft and slurred. She only caught what sounded like, “prison.” A question, maybe, but it didn’t matter now.
She shook her head. “We’ll talk about it later.” She looked up at Jared, who stood behind her still holding the light. “I don’t know what to do.” She’d tried to learn what she could about heroin addiction and recovery in prison once she’d found out about Tripp’s relapse, but it all seemed so pitifully useless now. It was all jumbled up in her head, and she couldn’t even remember most of it.
“Let’s get him somewhere warm,” Jared suggested. “We passed a motel on the way here. We can get a room there and figure out what’s next.”
It was a good idea, but Zira
didn’t have any money. “I can’t pay for a motel room.”
“I can.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to. Come on, let’s get him to stand up.”
As much as she hated the idea of having to borrow money from Jared, she couldn’t come up with a better solution. She shook Tripp’s shoulder again. “Hey, come on. We’re going to go somewhere else.”
“I’m fine here,” he mumbled.
She hooked her arm under one of his while Jared walked around to his other side and did the same. Together, they hoisted Tripp up onto his feet.
“Stop,” he protested. “What are you doing?”
“We’re going someplace warm,” said Zira. “With a real bed to sleep in. Doesn’t that sound nice? It’s not far. Come on.”
Tripp looked around blearily through half-closed eyes. When his gaze fell on Jared, he backpedaled, nearly tripping over Zira. “I’m not going with you! Get away from me!”
She stepped around to face him. “Stop. It’s okay.”
“No! He tried to kill us. He’s going to take us back to Ryku and they’re going to kill us.”
Zira held her hands out and approached him slowly, speaking to him like he was a wild animal she didn’t want to spook. “It’s okay, Tripp. Ryku is in prison, remember? He can’t hurt you. And Jared has been helping me look for you, so we can help you. You have to let us help you.”
Tripp’s posture relaxed a little as he looked from Jared’s face to Zira’s and back again, but his eyes remained wary.
“Come on,” she said. “You know you can trust me.”
He nodded, and his features settled back into their prior lethargic repose as he shuffled forward.
A knot formed in Zira’s chest she followed him. The listless man descending the stairs in front of her seemed a mere husk of the friend she knew and loved. She would do everything in her power to get him back.
She glanced at Jared, who gave her a sympathetic if not quite reassuring smile. Together, the three of them headed back out into the cold.
* * *
Zira’s very bones felt frozen by the time they reached the motel, and she’d lost all feeling in her fingers and toes hours ago. Tripp had complained about the cold the entire time but seemed either unwilling or unable to walk at anything faster than a snail’s pace. Jared had remained silent except to occasionally coax Tripp along, but every now and then, he’d stopped clenching his jaw long enough that Zira could hear his teeth chatter.
He went into the office and paid for a room while she waited outside with Tripp, who leaned against her and the wall with his eyes closed and his head drooping. He’d nodded off a couple of times on the way here, but she wasn’t sure if that was a result of the drugs or the fact that it was the middle of the night. Probably both. She kept talking to him anyway, hoping it would help him just to know he wasn’t alone. “We’ll get you warmed up, and then in the morning, we can figure all of this out. We’re almost there. Just hold on.”
“You keep saying that, kid. But we’re still out here. Freezing.” His speech was still uncharacteristically soft and slurred, but the fact that he’d called her by his old nickname for her seemed like a good sign. At least, she wanted to believe it was.
“You know you could have made this a lot easier on both of us if you’d just stayed in that hospital a little while longer.”
“Didn’t know you were coming.”
“No one told you?”
“Don’t think so. Can’t remember. Who knows? Might’ve forgot. I’m just a stupid, worthless junkie.”
“No you’re not. Don’t say that.”
He didn’t respond.
Jared came back out a few seconds later and flashed a keycard. “It’s down at the end,” he said. Zira tugged on Tripp’s arm, and they followed him to the door.
Tripp all but collapsed onto the nearest bed as soon as they were inside. The room was noticeably warmer than the frigid outdoor air, but not by much. Zira found the thermostat and cranked it all the way up, then turned back around and surveyed the room. It was barely big enough to accommodate the two twin beds, lamp, and small couch that occupied the space. A door in the far corner was propped open to reveal a bathroom. No pictures adorned the walls, which were the same boring shade of tan as the carpet. Not the most cheerful place, but better than the concrete walls of the cell that had been her home for the past eight months.
Zira walked over to Tripp and tugged off his shoes. Too exhausted to talk him into crawling under the covers, she yanked up the corner of the side he wasn’t laying on and threw it over his legs.
His eyes fluttered open as she removed his hat. Despite the room’s minimal light, his pupils were tightly constricted black dots in the center of dull, hazel irises. He found her gaze and held it. “I’m sorry, Zira.”
Her throat tightened. “It’s okay.”
“I don’t know why I did this. Six years clean, and I threw it all away. Stupid. So stupid. I’m sorry.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “Shhh, stop that. It’s okay. We’ll get through this. You did six years already. You can do it again.”
He closed his eyes, and Zira fought the tears she’d been holding back all day. This was her fault. Maybe not completely, but on some level, she was responsible. She should have been there for him, but instead, she’d gotten herself locked up in prison and left him alone during an extremely difficult and uncertain time. He’d isolated himself from everyone else who might have been able to support him, and they’d all let him do it because they had other responsibilities to worry about.
Zira never would have done that. She would have been there for him, supported him. If she’d known this was going to happen…she glanced over at Jared, who had slumped into the couch with his head down, his face hidden under the brim of his hat.
If she’d known what would happen to Tripp when she couldn’t be there for him, would she still have stepped in to save Jared’s life? When she’d seen him standing there at the compound guardhouse, would she still have turned on her rebel comrades to prevent them from shooting him? Had she made the right decision?
Maybe not. But speculation was useless. They all had to deal with the consequences of their choices now, whether they’d made the correct ones or not.
She sat down at the end of the other bed and took a few deep breaths to get her emotions in check. Jared leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and looked at her. “You okay?”
The question was so absurd that Zira almost laughed, but instead, she had to fight to keep her voice from shaking. “Oh, I’m great. I just got out of prison. My best friend overdosed last week and almost died. He clearly needs help, and I don’t know how to help him or who to go to. And to top it all off, I’m sitting here with a wanted fugitive—the same fugitive I helped escape, which was why I ended up in prison in the first place.”
Jared’s brows furrowed, and Zira immediately wished she’d kept that last part to herself. He stood up. “Maybe I should go. I’m just putting you at risk. If someone recognizes me—”
“No, stop. That’s not what I meant. I’m just…it’s been a rough day.”
He sat back down. “I know.”
Zira let the silence linger for a few moments, then asked the question that had been nagging at her since she first saw him at the prison bus stop. “Why did you come?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to see you.”
“Why?”
“To make sure you were all right. And to thank you for saving my life.” His eyes darted to the floor. “I’m sorry about how it turned out. I thought about turning myself in, but I didn’t think it would do much good.”
“Yeah, probably not.”
“They shouldn’t have done that to you.”
Zira shrugged. She’d already made her peace with the whole situation—or tried to—and going back to being bitter and frustrated about it wasn’t going to help her. She had more important things to worry about.
/> It was getting warm. She unzipped her jacket and laid it on the ground, then pulled her legs up to sit cross-legged on the bed facing Jared. His eyes went to the blue pendant hanging from the chain around her neck, the necklace he had given her when they were dating. Zira’s cheeks grew hot as she silently pleaded with him not to say anything about it, but of course, he did.
“You still have it.”
She looked down at her hands. “It’s one of the few things I still own anymore.” She’d meant for it to sound dismissive, but somehow the comment just seemed to give more significance to the fact that she was still wearing the necklace. She shouldn’t have said anything at all. But, since they now seemed to be heading into the territory of uncomfortable conversations, she might as well get straight to the point. “What the hell are we doing here?”
Jared shook his head. “What do you mean?”
“Let’s just cut the crap and be honest with each other, okay? We’ve been through enough together that we can at least do that, right? And I’m too tired and frustrated right now to sift through all the bullshit.”
“Okay.”
The caution in his voice annoyed her. “See, that’s what I’m talking about. Stop being so damn nice, tiptoeing around me like you’re afraid to hurt my feelings or say anything that might remind me of everything we’ve been through. Just tell me what you want from me.”
He nodded slowly. “I want another chance.”
“Another chance at what?”
“With you.”
She rolled her eyes.
Jared hurried to correct himself. “No—not like that. Not with you. I just want to prove that I’ve changed. I want a chance to make up for what I did.”
It wasn’t exactly the answer she’d been expecting. Then again, she wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Something less rational, maybe. She considered what he was asking for a few moments before responding. “I know you’ve changed. It took you long enough, but I understand what you meant earlier about not letting yourself doubt you were doing the right thing. And I know I was partly to blame for everything that happened. I think I even forgive you.”
Survivors of PEACE Page 2