Page 36 of Devil's Due: Sarge

Once it settles, I close my eyes and try to sleep. It’s an odd sensation to be too tired to sleep, but here I am. At least for a while. Eventually, I’m able to drift off.

When I wake up again, it’s to a rumbling stomach in the middle of the night. Who the hell even knows if there’s anything left in the stores, but I push up out of bed to go look. The pantry still has an array of canned foods and plastic bins full of dry Minute Rice, bags of dried white beans, mashed potato flakes, and powdered milk. Nic had us put all boxed foods in bins to keep out bugs and rodents.

But as I don’t have the energy to cook much, I pull a small pot from under the counter in the kitchen and fill it with water. After it begins to boil, I add rice. Lastly, I heat up a can of chili in the microwave—in a microwave-safe bowl, of course. I’m sure the can opener rested in the same drawer, but this brand has a pop top.

A full belly later, and after cleanup, I stumble back to my bed. I know I’m supposed to call Vlad. I don’t feel like talking to him and instead shoot him off a very short text. This phone doesn’t have a QWERTY keyboard, which means I have to text the old-school way pressing a button five times just to reach the letter H in Halfway. I’m eighty years old by the time I finish that damn text.

One of the few advancements my burner phone has is an alarm. I plug it in to charge and set the alarm. Exhaustion draws me back into a fitful slumber, meaning I wake up several times during the long, dark night, but I don’t get up until the next day, until I have to get ready to meet my family.

Why do I feel the need to dress up for him? Why? Drew hates me, yet the way people in our social circle—or, I should say,theirsocial circle—dress, I actually search through the closets to find a short sundress and a pair of flats. How stupid is that? I style my hair in an elegantly messy bun. Then at 11:30, I grab my backpack, my phone, and my courage, and drive into Halfway.

I park a block down from the bar, Halfway to Hell, and stare at the entrance. Of course, I don’t really see anything because I’m so stuck in my own thoughts that I more starepastthe door.

My mistake.

The knock on my window makes me jump. I turn to look out the window staring directly in the face ofDrew. Then I turn to glance down at the clock. It’snotnoon.

Pushing open the door pushes him backward enough for me to climb out.

“Greer,” he says by way of greeting

“Drew.” I greet him back. “It’s in the backseat.” From there, I open the back door, flick the latch, and fold down the seat, then lift it up to reveal the black artist bag. He reaches past me to take possession of it, opening it to make sure I wasn’t trying to pull a fast one.

Both my stepbrothers approach. Drew grips my upper arm harshly. “Now, my wayward daughter, let’s go home.”

I should’ve known.

14

Sarge

Beep… Beep…As my body begins to rouse, I become overly aware of the incessant, irritating noise and with the smell of antiseptic filling every breath, I know exactly where I am. When my body begins to shiver and I start to register the pain, I glide my hand over the side of the bed to find the button I knew would be there.

This isn’t my first stay in a hospital, not by a long shot. But fuck if I can remember how I got here. The nurse pops in the room. She’s older, dark curly hair with a few wisps of gray. She’s just a little plump, but there’s a twinkle in her eye and a smile on her face, and I’m convinced that despite the cut I wore when I arrived here and the nature and extent of my injuries, she doesn’t judge.

Good. I couldn’t take that right now.

“You’re awake,” she says with a smile. “I was beginning to worry about you.”

“Pain,” is all I manage to get out, although I have questions. Plenty of them. My tongue refuses to work and it has everything to do with the pain. She nods her head, pops back out of my room, and I close my eyes.

I don’t know how much time passes when I feel pressure in the form of a hand rest against my leg. Slowly, I open my eyes again. “My name’s Jeanie, by the way,” the nurse says. “And I’m gonna fix you right up.”

She sets to work injecting a syringe full of a cloudy liquid into my IV and I sigh when the warmth of the medication hits me.

“How long have I been out?” I ask.

“Day and a half. You’d lost a lot of blood.”

I nod and regret that decision because the movement hurts. The med hasn’t had time to reach full effect. There wasn’t a patch of skin on my body that didn’t sustain some sort of trauma. And that’s when I remember—everything. The beating. The stabbing— “Greer?” I ask in a shout.

“Greer?” she asks back, much softer.

“My woman. Where is she?”

“I don’t know about any woman, but there’s a waiting room full of bikers downstairs.”

My throat tightens and the emotion, along with the pain, causes me to pinch my eyes shut again. Nurse Jeanie stares at me in a motherly way when I open them again. She knows. She understands. The condition I came here in. No Greer. “Is there someone you want to speak to?”

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