by Jessie Cooke
“I need a fucking cigarette.” Those were Finn’s first words when he woke up, head pounding and practically strapped down to the bed. He brought his arm up, laden with tubes of shit running into one of his veins, and pulled at the leather strap across his chest. “What the fuck is this?” Bubba was looking down at him.
“You got a little agitated last night. Beck told them about your...problem...so they were just giving you mild shit and you got a little out of control.”
“Fuck. Last night? I’ve been out since yesterday?”
“They said you were severely dehydrated or some shit.”
“Where’s Caitlin?”
Bubba shook his head, slowly, sending a bolt of panic through Finn’s heart. “She had surgery yesterday and they took her to ICU. She was stable, they said, but that’s the last I heard. Her family...well, they requested we stay away.”
“Fuck that. Get this shit off me!” Finn pulled at the leather strap and it wouldn’t budge.
“I should probably ask...”
“I swear to God, Bubba, if you don’t get me out of here right fucking now, that when I am out, I’ll kill you. Un-fucking-strap me, now!” Finn wrapped his free hand around the tubing in his arm and pulled. The tubes pulled loose and the little hole they left bled onto his tattoos and dripped down his arm. He pulled up the stark, white sheet and pressed it up against his bleeding arm. Bubba was bent under the bed and Finn could feel the strap holding him down getting looser. As soon as he felt slack, he grabbed it and tossed it off him and sat up. “Put the side down.” Bubba raised an eyebrow but he leaned down again and pushed something that made the railing drop. When Finn sat all the way up he realized that he was wearing a hospital gown. “Shit. I need some clothes.”
“I’m drawing the line at stripping for you.”
“Maybe this is better anyway,” he said. “Maybe I blend in.”
“Where are you going?”
“To ICU first, and if Caitlin’s not still there, I’m going wherever they took her.”
“They won’t let you in. The family has security at her door.”
“Fuck her family. Fuck security. I’m seeing her.”
With a sigh Bubba said, “Hang on a second. Let me make sure the coast is clear.”
“Give me a cigarette.”
“This is a fucking hospital. You can’t smoke in here.”
“Who the fuck are you? You burned down the gym at your school when you were twelve. You’ve spent more time in county jail since you became an adult than out. Give me a fucking cigarette!” Bubba narrowed his eyes at him, but he reached in his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Finn took a cigarette out of the pack with shaking hands and lit it. Bubba stood at the door while Finn took three or four puffs and then stubbed it out on the doorframe. “Let’s get moving.”
“You know, I’m just being nice because of the shit you’ve been through lately.”
“What the fuck ever, let’s go.”
Bubba stuck his head out the door and after several minutes he said, “Go right. If you go left you’ll have to pass the nurses’ station. There’s a door at the far end of the hall that leads to the stairwell; ICU is on the 10th floor.”
“Thanks, brother.”
“Mm-hmm, don’t get caught.”
Finn slipped out the door and Bubba stood in the middle of the hallway, providing a distraction. He found the stairwell and slipped into that. He had no idea what floor he was on until he started up the stairwell and saw the floor numbers in block letters on each door he reached. He started on the third floor. By the time he got to the 10th, he felt like he was going to pass out, again. Cursing himself for being weak, he sat down on the steps long enough to catch his breath. Once the dizziness had passed, he got back up and pushed open the door. He looked right. There was a long, shiny hallway and signs pointing toward NICU, which Finn thought had something to do with babies. He turned to his left and saw the sign for ICU.
There was a patient in the hallway, pushing an IV pole, taking a walk with someone who was holding onto a belt the patient had around his waist. There was an old couple sitting on a bench, looking out the big window, down into the gardens, and there was a young couple with two small children on the other bench. Finn stepped out of the stairwell, trying to appear as casual as possible as he made his way toward ICU. He needn’t have worried, however. Everyone in that hallway seemed so wrapped up in their own problems that he might as well have been invisible.
Finn made it to the ICU door and realized that there was a buzzer on it. He’d have to announce who he was and who he was there to see. He cursed and looked around. There was a sign for the restrooms just to his right, and the walker and his companion were headed down the hallway toward him. He ducked into the bathroom, realizing only when he saw the elderly woman washing her hands that he was in the wrong one.
“Sorry,” he told the woman, who was looking at him curiously.
“No worries, dear. I don’t judge. You be whoever you want to be and don’t apologize for it. What accent is that?”
“Irish, ma’am.”
“Oh! My husband Barney took me to Ireland for my fiftieth birthday. It was so beautiful there, and the people were so nice. What area are you from?”
Finn tried not to sound impatient as he said, “Dublin.”
“That was twenty years ago,” she said, looking like she got lost in her memories for a second. Finn started to sneak out and she said, “Please don’t go, dear, tend to your business. I’m really not judging. I believe in all genders and...”
Finn chuckled. “You have it wrong, ma’am. I just stepped into the wrong room.”
“Oh! Well then, please excuse me. I should have known by the facial hair I suppose...but, you’re so pretty. I just thought the beard got out of hand here in the hospital. Old people, huh?” Finn laughed again, but she did make him wonder if it was time for a haircut. He had definitely never been called pretty before.
“No worries,” he told her, turning back toward the door. “You have a good day, ma’am.”
“Well, I’m sure my chances of that are slim,” she said, sadly. “I have to decide whether or not to take Barney off the life support today. We’ve been together fifty-two years. I’m not sure what I’ll do without him. But I’m afraid I’ll have to go on. You have a good day too, dear.”
Finn’s heart hurt for her. He couldn’t imagine being with someone twice as long as he’d been alive. He thought about Caitlin. She was the first woman that made him even think about what he wanted tomorrow, or next week. While he was using, it was just about the next fix. Since he got clean, it had been just about getting through one day at a time. But now...now, he was actually looking into the future, with hope. Caitlin had to be okay. Life couldn’t be that cruel. “I’m sorry about your husband,” he told the old woman.
“It’s okay, dear. I’ll see him again soon, I hope. Do you have a girl or a guy?”
He chuckled again. “There’s a girl, she’s not mine yet...but I’m hopeful.”
The old woman put her hand on his arm and said, “Hope...that’s a powerful drug, isn’t it?”
20
Jace was woken up the next morning by a pounding on his door. At least he thought it was still morning. The past few days had been so fucked up, he couldn’t be sure. He stubbed his toe on the side of the bed on his way to answer it, cussing all the way. “What the fuck?” He pulled open the door to face the detective that he’d spent hours with the day before, a man named Armando Rodriguez. “What?” he barked at the middle-aged detective, who was just hardened enough that even Jace didn’t scare him.
“I have some more questions.”
“Fuck that! We were there until eight o’clock last night. If you forgot to ask something, that shit’s on you.” He started to slam the door shut and the cop said:
“We can do this at the station.”
“Fuck!” He pulled the door back open and said, “You got five minutes. Anythin
g else comes up, you can talk to my attorney.”
“Can I come in?”
“No. Let me get my pants, I’ll meet you on the front porch.” He slammed the door and went back to the bedroom. Beck was sitting up in bed, looking at her phone. She’d been taken into the station by the cop who chased her and Finn to the hospital as soon as she told him what happened. They would have taken Finn in as well, if he hadn’t collapsed in the waiting room and become a patient himself. “Fucking cop,” he grumbled as he searched on the floor for the pants he’d had on the night before. Beck looked up at him and said:
“Bubba says security escorted Finn back to his room twice. The third time they strapped him down, kicked Bubba out, and called the cops. They’re posted at his door now.”
“Shit. What’s he trying to do, leave?”
“Nope. Bubba says they were about ready to discharge him, but he won’t go. He’s trying to get into Caitlin’s ICU room. Her family has specifically said they don’t want him there.”
“Damn it! I don’t have time for his teenage bullshit.” Jace danced around, pulling his pants on, while Beck watched him with a smile. “What are you smiling about?”
“You’re cute.”
Jace growled. “Bullshit.” He leaned down and kissed her, though, and said, “Call that lawyer, what’s his name?”
“Riley.”
“Yeah, call him, just in case.”
“Will do. Good luck.”
Jace grumbled all the way back to the front porch. As he stepped out he said, “You could at least let a man have his morning coffee before you show up wanting to ask questions and shit.” The cop got right to it. He pulled an evidence bag out of his pocket. Inside there was a cracked syringe with a bent needle and a photograph of a very dead O’Reilly. He laid them both down on the little plastic table on the porch and then helped himself to a seat. Jace sat down too and said, “What am I looking at?”
“That syringe was found in O’Reilly’s arm.”
“So he’s a junkie on top of everything else--not surprising.”
The cop rolled his black eyes. “It was pretty obvious he didn’t put it there himself, especially since your boy Finn’s fingerprints were all over it.”
“The psycho kidnapped Finn and that girl, probably my other brother Punk and the Irishman too...both of whom you don’t seem to be doing too much to look for. If Finn put that needle in him, it was self-defense. Have you heard anything about Punk?”
Ignoring Jace’s question the cop said, “Regan O’Reilly also had a bullet in his head, execution style, close range. It didn’t come from his own gun...the one that Finn’s fingerprints are on. So, who shot him?”
“Fuck if I know. Things were a little crazy...like I told you a hundred times yesterday.”
“The thing is, we collected all the guns at the scene. ME is doing the autopsy on O’Reilly first and he called me first thing this morning to tell me that the bullet in O’Reilly’s head came from a 9mm Luger, semi-automatic. Funny thing is, that gun was not one of the ones we collected.”
“Hmm, strange,” Jace said. “Is that it?” Jace knew full well who that gun belonged to. They hadn’t collected it because Beck took it with her when she led Finn to the hospital. Once they were finally all home the night before, Jace had made one more trip out, and it had taken him hours. First, he had to go to the hospital, sweating all the way as he held out hope that the gun would still be where Beck left it. She’d parked her bike next to an enclosed dumpster and she told Jace that before Finn even stopped his bike, she’d tossed the gun over the gate in anticipation of dealing with the cop. Jace knew the hospital had security cameras, which he wasn’t fucking with, so he simply paid one of the custodians, whom he found outside on a smoke break, to open the gate for him. He had to wade through literal shit, but he found it and then he drove over an hour to Canyon Lake and tossed it. By the time he got back to the house and showered off the shit and got to bed, the sun was almost up. It was one of the reasons the cop’s intrusion pissed him off so badly.
The cop laughed. “In a hurry to get rid of me?”
“In a hurry to get some fucking sleep. It’s been a long week, and you still have work to do finding my other man, Punk.”
“When y’all moved in out here, you assured me we wouldn’t have any problems from you...remember that?” The grand opening of Jace’s shop had been sullied by the appearance of the local sheriff, and this detective. They had both asked too many questions and wanted assurances that the 1% patches on the club’s kuttes weren’t going to be a problem for them. Jace hadn’t been friendly or warm, but he’d told them they’d have no problems from the Phoenix Skulls.
“You know what I remember? I remember that cops are supposed to be here to protect their citizens. Four people were kidnapped recently and you didn’t find a trace of a single one of them. If we hadn’t been there yesterday, Finn and that girl would be dead and O’Reilly and the rest of those assholes would be on their way back to Ireland. You could clearly see that what happened out there was in self-defense. Finn was half-dead just from the captivity and Caitlin was shot. Instead of harassing me, you should be thanking me for us doing your job.”
“That’s not how it works,” the detective said, standing up. “You should have called us as soon as you found out where they were. You should have stood down and let us handle it. There are all kinds of charges the DA can bring against you all for this...and that bullet in O’Reilly’s head, especially considering he was gorked out on dope before he was shot...that could be seen as murder.”
“See it however you want,” Jace said. “And when you have any more questions, talk to my attorney...oh, look, here he is now.” Beck must have told Riley to double-time it. The attorney always looked like he just stepped off the cover of GQ Magazine, even now. He had been referred to them by the Westside Skulls attorney in California, the first time Finn got into trouble after they came to Arizona. Riley stepped out of his black BMW, shoes shining, suit pressed, briefcase in hand, and a smile on his face. Jace was more than happy to hand this shit over to him.
“Took the time to call the attorney, huh? So maybe you do have something to hide?”
“I don’t have shit to hide. I just don’t have time to mess with you.” Jace turned toward the house to leave the cop there with Vic and the cop said:
“Just one more. Where is the 9mm Luger semi-automatic that’s registered to Rebekah Golden?” Jace’s stomach and chest both tightened up. He reached for the doorknob and twisted it. At the same time, without looking back he said:
“I haven’t seen that gun since we left California. Vic, if you don’t mind showing the good detective off my property? I need to get some fucking sleep.”
“Mr. McGregor, we’ve given you almost two full days to recover because believe it or not, I do appreciate the stress of what you’ve been through. But if you don’t want to talk to me voluntarily, I will arrest you and have you taken down to the station.” The detective had come in just as the doctor was signing Finn’s discharge paperwork. The fucking cop at the door of his room must have called him. He’d had his fill of cops already, strapping him to the bed like he was a fucking animal. He needed a damned cigarette. He needed to see Caitlin. What he didn’t need was to get hauled down to the police station and thrown in a cell where there was no hope of either.
“Fine. What is it I can tell you that you don’t already know? I know you’ve spoken with the other members of my club who were there. I know you know I was kidnapped...”
“I’d like you to start from the beginning.”
Finn sighed. “I was at Galt Contracting...”
“No sir, the very beginning. What’s your history with Regan O’Reilly?”
Fuck. Jace had called earlier. The nurse had brought Finn a phone and held it to his ear since he was completely strapped down by that time. Jace told him that the cops would probably be by to see him soon and he told him what he’d been told about O’Reilly. Jace didn’t
come out and tell him not to tell the cop that he saw Beck kill O’Reilly, but he didn’t have to. Finn would never. But Jace hadn’t told him what, if anything, he wanted him to say about his “life” in Ireland, or his “relationship” with O’Reilly. His saving grace was that O’Reilly wasn’t there any longer to tell his side of things.
He started talking, telling the story of his life, or “Finn’s” life, anyway. Once he was out of high school, their lives mimicked each other a lot anyway; it was why the Chosen Few had picked him. He switched gears when he got to the point where he started dealing for O’Reilly in exchange for his drugs. He told his own story, even about the torture, only leaving out the part where he was helped by the Chosen Few. He told the detective he had a “friend” in Dublin who helped him get out of the country, and that this episode with O’Reilly and the kidnapping had all been prompted by O’Hare’s recognizing him and letting O’Reilly know where he was. It took over an hour for him to tell his story with the detective asking questions as they went. When he finished, Detective Rodriguez said, “Tell me about the needle in O’Reilly’s arm.”
Finn breathed in and out and told himself to stay calm. He was repeating that in his head as he said, “Well, first off, he’d left one in the tunnel, hoping I’d use it. I didn’t...so he handed me that one when we got out and told me he wanted to watch me kill myself with it. I didn’t know what was in it for sure, but I guessed it was some kind of opiates. Anyway, he had a gun; the needle was my only weapon. He grabbed for Caitlin and I stabbed him with it. That weakened him enough that we wrestled for his gun...and it also started all the gunfire from his men who were watching.”
“Who shot O’Reilly?”
“No idea. I was shooting back at the Irish guys and I told Caitlin to hide behind him because I figured...hoped, at least...that his own men wouldn’t shoot him. When I came back and saw Caitlin was shot, I panicked and took her to the hospital. I don’t think I even looked at O’Reilly again.”