AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Aren’t you scary,” she said in a bored tone.
Ignoring the guy, Rio paced up and down inside the drapery—which is to say, she took three steps up and three steps back.
Wasn’t that a line in a Bruce Springsteen song? she thought.
As an image of her brother came to mind, she stopped at the foot of the bed—and tried not to get confused between the past and the present. But the stillness of the patient . . . reminded her of what she had seen when she had broken down the door to Luis’s bedroom. She would never forget the way her brother had been lying there on his back, against a pillow stained with his own vomit, his blue-tinged face . . . angled directly up at the ceiling, as if he had been watching the hand of death as it had come for him.
Rubbing her eyes, she stared at the patient again. Even when unconscious, he had a frown on his face and a tension in his body.
There was no relief for him. Anywhere.
She thought of her brother. And felt sick.
“We have drugs here,” she said roughly.
“What?” Apex snapped.
“This is a fucking drug factory, right? There are drugs here.”
Apex opened his mouth as if he had a tic that involved telling her to go fuck herself and was giving in to it again.
She shook her head at him and spoke quickly, even as between each blink, she saw her brother’s dead face. “There’s heroin. Here on-site. I’ve seen it on the streets marked with your iron cross symbol. You don’t just sell cocaine, and opiates are opiates—they make pain go away. If we can get him a small dose of heroin, he’ll at least be comfortable.”
Blink. Her brother. Blink. Her brother—
“That shit kills people.”
No kidding, she thought.
“Only if you give him too much,” she said. “And I know . . . how to titrate it. I won’t let him have too much.” Rio went around the foot of the bed and stood in front of the man. “Take me to where it’s cut. I can test it. Then we come back here and help your friend. Partner. Husband, whoever he is to you.”
Apex slowly rose to his feet. God, he was huge, a living, breathing billboard for a beatdown.
He jabbed her in the shoulder. “I don’t need shit from you.”
Why am I doing this? Rio asked herself.
Well . . . because she could see more of the building. He would know how to get around, where the drugs were processed. Helping the patient would help her.
“You don’t need me?” she demanded. “Really? Well, for one, you’re sitting how many rooms away from the solution to his suffering and you clearly haven’t considered it. Two, do you know the dose? Enough to give him relief but not kill him? His respiration is already compromised, and I’m guessing his blood pressure is low. You don’t know where that line is, do you.”
“Are you a nurse?”
She thought back to all the conversations with ER docs immediately after, and since, her brother’s death. She’d had to know exactly what had happened, down to the molecular level, from his body weight to the cut of the drug, to what else had been in his system. She’d had to . . .
“No, but I know a lot about overdoses.”
The man stared down at the patient.
“He is never not in pain,” she said hoarsely, picturing her brother’s face whenever he’d thought no one was looking at him.
Apex passed a palm over his eyes. “Never. He suffers constantly.”
“Show me where the drugs are. I’ll take it from there.”
There was a long silence. Then Apex shook his head. “You don’t need to come with me. I’ll bring it back—what do you need?”
As he stared at her, there was a blank look in his eyes.
Rio frowned. “Do you know the difference between the heroin, any cocaine or meth, and the cutting product? And what about fentanyl?”
“Of course. So what do you need?”
He was lying, she thought.
“You know this with enough certainty you’re willing to risk killing him?”
“And how are you such an expert.”
“I’m betting my life on my knowledge, aren’t I,” she said. “If he dies, you’re offing me, right.”
As she just leveled a stare at him, he shrugged. “So tell me what you need.”
A drug dealer who didn’t know his wares. Unbelievable.
“What do you do around here other than look after your partner,” she murmured.
“He’s not my partner.”
“Brother.”
“No.”
“Friend, then.”
The patient coughed a little. And as they both turned toward the man, a slight smile marked the distorted mouth.
“You must excuse him,” the patient said. “He doesn’t know what a friend is.”
Rio leaned over the bed. “We’re going to get you something to help with the pain.”
There was a shuddering breath. “I do my best to bear up. I am weary, though . . . and growing wearier.”
