Page 32 of Reacher
“Reacher, I told you that I want to. I just I can’t guarantee that shit won’t happen that I’ll have to deal with. I don’t want to bring any trouble to the club.”
“Did she say trouble?”
Shit. She did, didn’t she? “Stitch, I’m gonna call you back, but keep asking around, just in case. Three heads would be even better than two.”
I ended the call and set the phone down on the table.
“Come here, woman.”
Ally came over to sit beside me. “Don’t ask for details, because I won’t tell you, but I had other… Tori wasn’t the only one I was earning from. And if you think what she was doing was bad… just trust me that if this comes back on me, I’ll steer it away from the club.”
“Jesus, woman. What the fuck are you caught up in?”
“That would fall under the ‘asking for details’ category, Reacher. I can’t tell you, because if you don’t know, then you can’t get caught in the crossfire.”
“Now there’s crossfire? Jesus, I’m trying to make this club’s life less complicated, not more.”
“I know, and that’s why I don’t want you to know, because I’m going to keep it away from us.”
That wasn’t an answer, and she damn well knew it, but we also both knew I was gonna find out, one way or another.
Nine
Iwasinareallydifficult position, because of what Tori had told me. I didn’t want to keep any more secrets from Reacher than I already had to, and this was just another brick on the pile weighing me down.
She was right though; Ice shouldn’t be taking the blame for what they were doing. And that was why, when Reacher went off to meet with some of his brothers, I watched the infirmary for Doc to leave for the day, because he lived off-compound with his two kids, and then I sneaked in.
It wasn’t kept locked, because it was, after all, in a fucking biker compound, and the place was heavily guarded. I knew that what I was about to do would hit the fan in some way or another, but I had to do it. For Ice. For Ryder. And for Tori.
I went straight to a cabinet that looked like the biggest, so the most likely to hold medicines. It didn’t. It was packed with way more bandages and wound dressings than I thought any place should hold, but it wasn’t what I needed, so I moved on. There were some big wide drawers, that were unlocked, and when Ipulled them open, I saw creams, ointments, and painkillers. All standard stuff.
There was a stack of pills and cocaine in a box in another cupboard, clearly the stuff that Ice had been storing up, but the syringes Tori had described were not there.
Damn. I was running out of time and places to look. I rummaged carefully through the remaining cupboards, finding nothing. From there, there was just a desk in the corner that I guess Doc must use to sit at when he’s not treating people. Two drawers were locked. Crap. I looked around for anything I could use to force the locks, even though I knew it would definitely prove that he’d been broken into.
I found a letter opener on his desk and fiddled around for a while, before I tried just jamming it into the old drawer lock, and hit it with a paperweight I found there. The lock didn’t unlock though, it broke. It released, and partially dislodged. Shit. No way to hide that.
I pulled the drawer open, and was relieved to find a plastic bag, containing two large syringes filled with yellow liquid. I felt a chill creeping down my spine as I stared at them. At least the needles were capped, so wouldn’t pierce the bag. I took a breath as I reached for them. I didn’t really even want to touch them, but I had to. For Ice. For Tori and Ryder.
I pushed the drawer closed, trying to make the lock look less broken, but it was a lost cause. In the end, I gave up, and sneaked back out of the room, heading straight for Tori’s room, the bag tucked under my t-shirt, and uncomfortably pressed against my skin. It felt wrong. Unpleasant. Even though it couldn’t get at me through the cap on the needle, it felt like something bad that I wanted away from me.
I tapped on Tori’s door, relieved when she answered.
“You alone?”
She nodded, gesturing for me to step inside, but I didn’t move.
“Ryder’s on his way back, but he has to meet with Reacher first.”
I pulled the bag out from under my shirt and passed it to her with a grimace.
“Never ask me to touch this stuff again. I feel unbelievably creeped out that I even had to look at it.”
She nodded, moving the bag out of my sight instantly.
“Thank you so much. Honestly, you did the right thing.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I was just as sure that the alternative would have been no better.
