Page 10 of All Wrong
He heard what she wasn’t saying. Education wasn’t free, and raising a fifteen-year-old brother was tough on the wallet. The heavy weight of responsibility passed over her young features, like a dark cloud skimming in an otherwise blue sky.
“Anyway, I gotta go. I just wanted to say thanks. He looks up to you, you know?”
“You’re welcome. I’ll do what I can.”
“I know.”
Candace let herself out. His coffee maker let out a strangled burble, signifying completion. Hepoured himself a cup, then went over to his jacket and extracted the small, clear bag he’d stuffed in the inside pocket.
The colorful tablets looked like candy to the casual observer, and some of them were. The rest were X—or Ecstasy, a potent stimulant and psychedelic. He examined one of the bags more closely, particularly the logo stamped into the pills. An incomplete circle, broken by a bisecting line down the center. It looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t reconcile it with any of the dealers he knew, and he knew a lot of them.
He’d spent the first twenty-plus years of his life immersed in that world, a good part of it as a runner for a major player before he wound up in Pine Ridge. If his sister hadn’t come to town when she had … well, chances were, he wouldn’t still be sucking air.
On the positive side, he was able to use his illicit knowledge and unfortunate life experiences to keep others from falling into the same soul-sucking black hole.
What worried him wasn’t so much the distributors. They were easy enough to handle. No, his bigger concern was whoever was supplying them. The source. That was where the true money andpower were.
The logo was the key to finding the fucker, like an identifying brand or a signature. That, and analyzing the product would go a long way in narrowing things down. He could do the footwork, skulk around in the sewers and chat up the rats, but a chemical analysis could be telling. That was where Nicki came in. She had access to resources he didn’t.
His plan: take the samples over to Nicki and fill her in. She’d pass them along to her brother-in-law Michael Callaghan, whose expertise lay in biochemistry. With luck, he’d be able to break down the components and come up with something tangible and targetable.
Nick was certain of one thing: Once they knew the who and where of it, the problem would go away. Quietly and thoroughly. Because that was how his sister and the Callaghans operated.
He didn’t ask questions. To be honest, he didn’t care. Whatever his sister and her in-laws did wasn’t public knowledge. They were like a magical black box. Toss in a problem, add some intel, and soon, no more problem. He didn’t have to know the details to appreciate the simple beauty of that.
Once adequately caffeinated, Nick pulled on some boots and a black T-shirt, then grabbed hisjacket and descended the steps from his second-floor apartment, the same space he’d been parking his ass for years. The rent was cheap, and his needs were few. Hot water. Plumbing. A place to lay his head.
He straddled his Harley and kicked the beast to life. The sun was shining, the temperature was warm, the air was clean. Perhaps after seeing Nicki, he’d go for a ride up into the mountains. A long one, to clear his head. He was overdue.
The ride to Callaghan Auto was a short one. The bays were open, as usual. The place wasn’t open for business on Sundays, but Nicki and her husband, Sean, were always working on something. Sure enough, a pair of female-sized steel-toed shitkickers were sticking out from beneath the rear end of a classic Plymouth.
“Yo,” he said, giving the mechanic’s creeper a tap with his boot.
It wasn’t Nicki who rolled out, but her daughter, Meghan. She had the blue-black hair of the Callaghans, and the clear, nearly colorless eyes of the Milligans. The effect was striking.
“Hey, Uncle Nick. What’s up?”
“Is your mom around?”
The kid smirked. “She and Dad are”—the kid made air quotes—“‘doing inventory’ in the back.”
Right. Knowing the two of them, that “inventory” could take hours.
Meghan’s brother, Connor, came out of the office with a can of Coke in one hand and a slip of paper in the other. “Meg, we got a tow call. Broken-down vehicle off Route 92. How much longer do you think they’re going to be? Oh, hey, Uncle Nick.”
Nick nodded to his nephew.
At sixteen, Connor took after his father’s side of the family. The kid was the spitting image of Sean and looked like he could bench-press a Buick. The varsity coaches had been drooling over him since junior high.
“I can handle it,” Meghan said, rising to her feet and wiping her hands on her coveralls.
“You lost your driving privileges, remember?” Connor reminded her with a smirk.
That was news to Nick. “What did you do?”
She shrugged. Her brother was only too glad to fill in the blanks. “She took the Nova out for a test drive.”
Nick’s eyebrows rose. The ’72 Nova was a project car they’d been working on for months. “You got it running?”
