Harris turns his Coke can around. It’s as if his brain is jammed shut, stuck like a faulty door.
“Answer me,” Zeke insists. “Tell me I’m off base, losing it, crazy—something!”
But Harris can’t. He can’t even look at Zeke. Can’t lie to the old man. Not again. But he can’t tell him the truth either.
The silence feels haunted by their past, the wealth of good memories they share.
Zeke says, “You’re not okay, are you, kid?” and his voice has gone soft now.
Harris’s throat closes. His eyes burn, and he pinches the bridge of his nose. He senses Zeke holding back, giving him space. When he’s able, Harris says, “That’s the first thing you ever said to me. Do you remember?”
“In the locker room. Your first day of Aggie baseball practice. You looked like a young man who’d lost his best pup.”
“‘You’re not okay, are you, kid?’ That’s what you asked me.” Zeke’s kindness that day nearly cost Harris his composure then too. It was as if Zeke could sense the secret Harris was protecting, the wound that still festered. How could he have hurt this man? How could he go on hurting him?
“You’re in deep shit, buying drugs off a minor, a student at the same damn high school where you’re the goddamn athletic director.” Zeke is angry now, but the note of compassion is still present, an underscore to his disappointment and alarm. “What the hell are you thinking?”
Harris lets the question hang, his shame so thick in his throat he can’t speak.
“Does Holly know? Kyle? My God, you don’t really think Kyle’s in on this crap with Gee? Dealing dope, busting into houses?”
“No. Not the drugs. I’m sure of that. And I’m nearly positive he doesn’t know anything about the break-ins, either, unless—”
“Unless?” Zeke prompts.
Harris flicks a glance at him. “Might be best if we leave it where it is. I don’t want you involved.”
“Involved? I’m already involved, man. Tell me what you know.”
“I think Gee’s girlfriend, Amber, might have found out that Gee’s dealing. Amber and Kyle’s girlfriend, Samantha, are best friends. It’s possible Amber has told Sam, and you can bet if that’s true, Sam has told Kyle.”
“Okay. But what’s that got to do with you?”
Harris shifts his feet. He drinks his Coke, sets down the can, keeping his gaze on it. “Sometimes, making a buy, I’ve texted Gee—we’ve texted back and forth. What if Amber has seen those texts on Gee’s phone? What if she told Sam, and Sam told Kyle his dad is buying drugs off Gee?”
“Jesus—”
“I think Gee might know about us”—Harris gestures between himself and Zeke—“that I’m getting stuff from you too. I think he stole your ring and planted it in Kyle’s dresser drawer as a warning to me to keep my mouth shut. But now he’s involved Kyle—”
“But if Gee wanted you to find it, why would he put it in Kyle’s room?”
“Because he wants Kyle implicated. He wants us all to go down. My gut says Gee’s planted other stuff throughout my house. Only God knows where. He told me once there wasn’t a house or a building he couldn’t get into. He can do whatever he wants, set me and Kyle up—or even Connor and Holly—any way he wants. Then all it’ll take is one call to the cops, one anonymous tip. They’ll get a warrant, and if they find anything—”
“They’ve got to have more than a tip, don’t they? That’s not enough to give them probable cause to come into your home.”
Harris shakes his head. He doesn’t know the answer.
The silence hovers and seems filled with Harris’s panic.
He breaks it. “What am I going to do?”
“What are you going to do? Get help, man.” Zeke abandons his chair, and going behind it, he grips it, gnarled fingers digging into the cushion.
The sun is behind him; his face is in shadow, but Harris doesn’t need to see his expression to know it is outraged, scathing.
“Tell the cops what you know about Gee,” Zeke says, “and check into a rehab. You can beat this, Harris.”
He doesn’t agree. Doesn’t really know how to define the this Zeke claims Harris can beat. It’s as if he’s walked into a swamp, and now he’s mired in the muck to his knees.
“I should have seen it coming.” Zeke walks to the deck’s edge. He turns back to Harris. “I should have known. You’ve been asking me for meds too often lately. You haven’t been back to see Ben Cooper, have you?”
Harris’s lack of an answer is answer enough. His monumental failure doesn’t need the shape of his words.
“I wonder how much of what you’re taking has to do with actual pain.” It’s as if Zeke is talking to himself. He returns to the table, stands looking down at Harris. His gaze is kind and yet troubled with apprehension. “This is on me.”
“No—” Harris begins.
“I’ll go with you to the cops.” Zeke talks over Harris. “I’ll tell them my part, surrender my license, whatever it takes to get you back right.”
“No,” Harris says again, getting to his feet. “You’re not part of this. I’ll handle it.” He crosses the deck to the back door. He’s got to get out of here, can’t stand the look of Zeke’s heartbreak and disappointment a second longer.
Zeke follows him, arguing, but Harris’s brain fills with white noise, shutting out the words, deafening him to even the sound of Zeke’s voice.
The car, the dark sedan, is behind him again. The image hangs in Harris’s rearview some five or six car lengths distant, keeping pace. It’s been there since shortly after Harris left Zeke’s house. He’s westbound on a farm-to-market highway, headed toward Greeley, the Madrone County seat. Lots of folks drive this highway. Could be anybody back there. But Harris knows better. Somebody is targeting him. Could be Mackie or some other cop. Or Gee. Or Gee’s punk cousin.
Any other time someone tailing him might have scared him, but right now all he feels is his need. It throbs in his veins, hammers his temples. Not a mile away from Zeke’s he had to pull over to puke. He spent five minutes with his hands braced on his knees dry heaving into the roadside scrim, but nothing came up other than bile and the Coke he’d drunk.
Dope sick. That’s what it’s called.
Zeke and Holly are right. Harris has got a problem.
He knows it, but he can’t look at it yet. Not head-on. He can’t think about his family or the danger he’s brought to their door. He’s got to get right first, get something to help himself. Now. Pray to God Cal is home. Pray she hasn’t moved or OD’d or been arrested. Pray she still has a stash of something she’ll be willing to sell him.
Calliope McBride is it: Harris’s last hope.
He met her at Dr. Cooper’s office after his last back surgery two years ago. Cal was in recovery, too, and they fell into a conversation, vented their mutual angst over the brutality of rehab, lack of sleep, pain that was constant. Typical stuff you’d expect two people in such circumstances to talk about. Cooper was gradually backing them both off their meds, and they were both suffering. Cal was the first to say it: if Cooper insisted on cutting off her supply of oxycodone, she’d find an alternate source. Harris was all ears. Cal had connections, she confided. Selling dope provided her with a living. A woman on her own, of a certain age—sixtysomething, she said, but Harris figured she was closer to seventysomething—handicapped in the way she was, how else was she supposed to make a living? Becoming a Walmart greeter held little appeal. She couldn’t sit or stand for long periods anyway.
Harris couldn’t either. He’d tried reasoning with Cooper, pointing out that as a high school coach, he was more active than Cooper’s average patient. He’d assumed Cooper would cut him some slack, give him more than the usual leeway with the meds. But when he’d brought it up, Cooper had given him the same brusque shoulder he’d given Cal. Cooper had suggested Harris could get a different, less physically demanding job, as if changing jobs, changing professions, were easy to do in your forties. In Coo
per’s waiting room, seated next to Harris, Cal commiserated.
She patted Harris’s hand, and the half dozen or so rings on her fingers glimmered in the pale wash of institutional light. I’ve got what you need, sweetie, she said. But he hasn’t seen her in a while. Not since last August, the day Gee caught him puking out behind the field house before football practice. The team had just started two-a-days, and Harris was filling in for one of the assistant coaches, whose wife had just delivered their first child.
Harris was dope sick that day, too, but by his own hand. He’d taken a silent pledge and been off the drugs for going on seventy-two hours. Gee came behind the building to pee. He asked if Harris was all right. He sounded concerned, said he’d go for help. They shared a look, and somehow Harris’s whole pathetic situation was laid bare between them. Gee knew in that moment who Harris was and what he needed. He pulled a small plastic sleeve, not much bigger than a postage stamp, from his jeans pocket and held it out to Harris so he could see them, the round, soft-yellow tabs.
Two Oxycontin tabs, forty milligrams each.
Salvation. A godsend, a lifesaver. Harris barely thought twice. How much? he asked.
For you? Hey, it’s on me, Gee answered, like any good salesman. This time, he added.
Because that understanding was present between them, too, that Harris was inherently weak and that Gee was preternaturally gifted in his ability to identify and exploit human weakness. Harris has wondered since if Gee followed him on purpose that day, if the punk somehow knew how bad Harris was hurting. Gee’s always around, lurking in some corner, always with a remedy handy in his pocket. Harris can’t deal with him anymore. That’s over.
Done.
He knows it’s like shutting the barn door after the cow has gotten out, but he’s sticking to it. Cal will help him out, no strings attached. Assuming she’s still in business.
In six months anything could have happened. The woman could have been busted, died of an overdose, been taken down by some other dealer. She’s regaled him with enough stories about her line of work that he knows it can be dangerous.
If it doesn’t work out with her, he’ll have to head north to Fort Worth or Dallas. He’s heard of a couple of locations up there. He hopes it doesn’t come to that.
He checks the rearview. Before he goes too much farther, he’s got to shake whomever’s on his tail.
15
Caroline—Saturday, January 13
Caroline left a note naming the location where she was going but not the person whom she was meeting. At least if she didn’t come back, her mother would know where to send the police. She arrived at the park fifteen minutes early and, leaving her car, found a good vantage point from which she could view the entrance. She wanted to see Jace before he saw her.
She’d been right at least about the park being crowded. It had warmed up considerably since this morning, and the air was packed with noise from a small horde of children and their winter-beleaguered parents.
Jace appeared at the park’s entrance at 1:55 p.m. Caroline watched him, breath paused, as he played his gaze over his surroundings. Several of the benches were unoccupied, and there were one or two that were half-concealed by playground equipment or shrubbery. She thought if he headed for one of those, she’d leave, and he’d be none the wiser. But he sat down on a bench near the entrance in plain sight of anyone who cared to look. Tipping his head back, he seemed to be reveling in the unseasonable warmth of the winter sun.
His eyes opened when her shadow fell over him. He jerked upright. “God, you scared me,” he said.
Good, she thought. Pulling her sweater tightly around her, she sat next to him. Despite her precautions, apprehension jumped in her brain. “So why did you want to see me, Jace?”
“I figure you got an earful from Tricia.” He sounded tentative.
“I think you know what I heard.” Caroline could be equally cagey, she thought.
“Yeah.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Pretty sad, huh, what our dads were up to.”
“What confuses me is why you sent me to see her. Tricia was surprised too. Did you honestly think Dad was there?”
“He could have been. Last I heard he was with her.” Jace raised his palm. “That’s the God’s honest truth.”
“Makes me wonder what isn’t.” Caroline couldn’t keep the edge from her voice any more than she could lower her guard.
“Tillman football doesn’t run like that now. Nobody pays our players.”
“Did you know when it was going on?”
“Hell no. I was just a kid, not much older than you.” He glanced sidelong at her. “Did you?” A note of challenge edged his voice.
She shook her head. “It’s hard for me to believe even now.”
Jace ran his palms over his head and, bending forward, braced his elbows on his knees. “My dad was my hero, you know? He was the guy I looked up to and trusted most. It kills me that he was basically buying players. Not building a team. Not bringing them together to work as a unit or instilling in them a system of values that would serve them throughout their lives like he preached. Just bribing them, paying them to play for him.”
It was Jace’s obvious disappointment in his dad that got to Caroline. She knew how he felt. She was let down and baffled in the same way. Maybe she had it all wrong and had no reason to be concerned about him. “When did you find out?”
“Dad told me a couple of years ago. I think he just wanted to get it off his chest.”
“After he retired?”
“Yeah. I’d been named head coach by then. Believe me, it was one hell of a shock. You know who Brick Coleman is, top football recruit at quarterback back in the day?”
“I know he was given a condo and a car—”
“Pretty much whatever he wanted. Your dad recruited him, but it was his uncle, Farley Dade, who made it happen. Dade and his bankroll.”
Caroline could have said she’d heard about Farley from Kip, but she didn’t want to stop Jace. She had to hear what he would say. “Your dad went along with Farley?”
“It wasn’t like he was given a choice. It was that or lose his job. And you know how it was with him. Coaching at Tillman was Dad’s life.”
“Was he ever threatened?”
“Not overtly. It was implied.”
Caroline’s pulse fluttered.
Jace shook his head. “Farley Dade.” The way he said the name made it a curse. “That guy is a piece of work.”
“In what way?” Caroline asked.
Jace shifted his glance. A child’s laughter broke around them, sounding incongruous. A woman called out: “Cory, don’t.” A horn honked.
“Answer me, Jace. I need to know—the truth, not some story.”
“The truth is I’m the one who ran you off the road in Omaha last week.”
Jace brought his gaze around, and for a moment all Caroline could do was stare at him.
“I’m sick about it, Caro. Sick and sorry as hell.”
“I thought it was you,” she said faintly. She saw again the blinding glare of headlights that were too close, felt the jolt when her car was rear-ended, and the remembrance of her fear when the car began to slide was visceral, too real. “You bastard! I could have been killed!” She was on her feet now, backing away from him. People were staring. Caroline didn’t care. She turned to go.
Jace took her elbow.
She jerked it from his grasp and kept walking.
“Please hear me out,” he said. “Please, I want to apologize—explain. It could help you find your dad. For real this time.”
She stopped. Turning to him, she said, “Why should I believe you?”
“Give me five minutes, okay? We’ll sit down again in front of all these folks—what can happen?”
Against her better judgment, Caroline followed him back to the bench.
Jace scrubbed a hand down his thigh. “When I came after you that night—”
“What made you do it?”
&
nbsp; “Not what—who.”
“Who?”
“Farley. Brick’s uncle. You remember talking to Alexa—”
“The trainer at TSU.”
“Yeah. I guess she ran into Dade right after that and mentioned you were looking for Hoff. The son of a bitch called me and went ballistic. He’s scared you’re going to find Hoff, and all the shit that went on back in the day with the recruits is going to come out. If that happens, he basically let me know my dad can kiss his Hall of Fame nomination goodbye. Dade’s got the influence to do it, Caro, and all I could think was how it would kill Dad, losing that honor—”
“Even though he cheated to get it. And don’t tell me you’re not worried about your own job and reputation if folks find out you’ve known all these years.” Disgust burned through Caroline’s apprehension. Jace seemed pathetic now, and forlorn. “Why did you come to the car afterward and say my name?” Her confusion was genuine. If he’d lingered a moment longer, she would have come to herself enough to recognize him, to be certain of his presence.
“I know it won’t make sense,” Jace said, “but the second it was done, all I could think was I had to help you. I was—I don’t know how to explain it. The whole thing was surreal. It was like I was outside myself.”
“Why are you telling me now? You realize there’s an accident report, an ongoing investigation—”
“I haven’t slept worth shit since it happened, Caro. I’m not the kind of person who resorts to violence. Or I never thought I was.” He curled his hands into fists. “Goddammit, I’m a dad and a coach, but I did it. I ran you the fuck off the road!” He wiped his hands down his face. “If you want to, turn me in. I deserve it. And I want to reimburse you. Your medical bills, damage to the car, whatever.”
“It’s not necessary.” Caroline didn’t want his money. She didn’t want to be beholden to him. “I’m surprised the security guard who was there, the police officer who came—I guess they didn’t see you?”
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