Page 38 of Reacher
I helped her back into her clothes, not wanting to risk a single second longer, in case some idiot barged into my office. It wouldn’t exactly be the first time. Speaking of idiots, it was time to go see what Ryder said when I confronted him about the missing drugs.
I left Alicia to go and reorder whatever the hell we were going to eat in the bar, and I headed up to Ryder’s room. It had been a hell of a day so far, and somehow we’d slipped into early evening, and I’d barely achieved anything.
I stopped outside the door, hearing a voice.
“You did what?”
Ryder sounded pissed, so I hovered for a moment, unable to keep from listening.
“I didn’t want Ice to get in trouble.”Tori sounded upset.
“No? Do you realise how much fucking trouble I’ll be in for this? Reacher is pissed at me already.”
She cursed, and then they were quiet for a moment.
“You sneaked in there? What if you’d been caught?”
Tori mumbled something, and then Ryder yelled fuck, and something slammed.
“You need to leave her out of our fucking business! How do you think Reacher’s gonna feel when he knows she fucking betrayed him? Tori, Jesus, I was okay with this shit when it was only me at risk, but this is starting to fuck up other people’s lives too!”
I leaned against the wall, my mind whirling over what they were saying. There was only one other ‘she’ here, and she’d just looked me in the eye. She’d asked me what was wrong. She’d acted like nothing was untoward, and yet she’d clearly been the one to sneak into the damn infirmary.
I slammed my fist against the wall, letting out a curse, and the room fell deathly silent, and then rapid footsteps preceded the door being wrenched open. Ryder looked horrified.
“Jesus, Pres. You better come in.”
I followed him into his room, feeling a little numb as the realisation of Alicia’s betrayal hit me. It wasn’t just that she stole the drugs for them. It even made sense, to a degree.
It was the fact that she’d just lied to me. To my face. She sat there, all innocent like, asking me what was wrong, and she fucking knew. She knew. Did she suck my dick out of pure guilt? Was it an attempt to try and make it right?
“I’m sorry you heard all that,” Ryder’s voice was low, and I felt him pressing a glass of something into my hand. Vodka. Of course. The only damn drink the bastard kept in his room.
Tori was sitting on a chair, her head in her hands.
“I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”
I couldn’t argue with her, because so much of what had happened here lately had been.
“Pres, I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have let… I would have… Jesus, I don’t know.” Ryder was at as much of a loss as I was.
Tori was watching us, her hands twisting in her lap.
“She didn’t want to do it, Reacher.”
I sighed, downing the vodka and setting the glass aside, my hands pressing on the counter.
“But she did, and then she lied.To. My. Face.”
Ryder topped up the glass.
“Pres, she was trying to help a friend, but Tori’s right. It put her in a really difficult position. She doesn’t want to lie to you, and we forced that on her.”
“You mean I did,” Tori snapped, pushing up from the seat. She went to a drawer by their bed, and grabbed something. Crossing the room, she slammed it onto the counter in front of me. A plastic bag with those creepy ass syringes in it. I was gonna end up seeing those fucking things in my nightmares.
“Jesus.”
“This is what all of this is about, because I’m too fucked up and weak to be with the man I love. Too pathetic to let him touch me without freaking out. It was the only way that I could give him that part of me. So yeah, maybe I was selfish, but I’d do anything for Ryder.”
