Forty-Two
R eacher was edgy, and that made me edgy. Something was going wrong in the club again, and he wasn’t talking to me. When I tried to get up to force him to do so, he cursed and pushed me back down again.
“Dammit, Reacher, stop babying me!”
He recoiled from me like I’d just slapped him.
“Is that what I do? Is that why everyone is accusing me of that, all of a sudden?” Oh god . I reached for his hand.
“No. It’s just that I want to help you, and you’re fighting me. Let me help.”
He looked lost for a moment.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Sit with me. Talk. You know I won’t say anything to anyone.”
He sighed as he sat beside me. I still had his hand, so I squeezed it to encourage him.
“Jesus… uh… okay… so Rossi, the mobster guy? He wants me to force Tori and Ryder to get married for real, because apparently they’re ‘living in sin’ and ‘shaming the fucking family’.”
“Seriously? Are they living in the dark ages?”
“He reminded me how much they’ve helped us lately, like it’s now my duty to snoop into Ryder’s life, and force him to marry his old lady, like they both haven’t been forced into enough things already.”
Another nightmare added to the load on his shoulders. How much more could one man take?
“Do you want me to talk to Tori?”
His eyes finally came back to mine, and he looked stunned.
“Really? You’d do that?”
I moved closer, ignoring the twinge of pain from my stomach.
“Yes, of course. Leave that one with me. Okay, next problem?”
He snorted. “You gonna fix them all, woman?” He wasn’t being mean, in fact, he sounded relieved.
“Gonna try.”
“Ice is the other problem. I think we’re losing him.”
I shuffled closer again, letting him pull me into his side, his warm arm around me.
“In what way?”
He pondered that for a moment, trying to put it into words.
“He’s struggling with clean living. Says we’re making it harder for him by sharing his workload. That he needs to stay busy. Is that what we’re doing? Are we hurting him by trying to make life easier?”
“Honestly? Being busy will make it easier for him to fight the urge to use again, but possibly nothing will stop him going back there. What about counselling, or some kind of rehab program?”
His silence spoke volumes.
“You don’t want to broach that with him, do you? You’re worried that it’ll make it worse. Do you want me to speak to him too? Actually… will he find it easier to show me some of what he does, rather than his brothers for now? I at least have a starting understanding of some of it, so maybe I can help him train the others then?”
“Woman, you really are gonna try and fix all my problems, huh?”
“You don’t need to say it like it’s a shock. I love you, Reacher, and I want to be here with you. I want to be your old lady. I want to… oh shit …”
He shot me a worried look.
“Have you made yourself bleed again?” He started pulling at my t-shirt, well, yet another of his t-shirts that I’d commandeered.
“No. I just remembered something.”
He just raised his eyebrows at me.
“I still have a huge amount of heroin hidden away. What the hell are we going to do with it?”
He let out a long string of cursewords in response.
Reacher
F ucking heroin. Like there wasn’t enough crap going on, she still had a crapload of that shit sitting somewhere.
“You told Stitch where the shit was, right?”
She nodded, but I’d imagine he’d forgotten all about it too with his own issues.
“Is he okay?”
I pulled her closer for a moment, for my comfort, because every time I thought about him being ill, it sent waves of panic through me.
“He had a call from the hospital today, and they’ve booked him for scans and biopsies already. I feel like even though speed is important right now, their rush to get him in makes it seem like it’s the worst. Like they know it’s serious. Maybe know more than even he does.”
And the poor guy was terrified. He was doing his best to hide it, but I’d known him long enough to see the truth. He was certain he was gonna die from this. He was already talking about what I should do, if he’s not around much longer. It was devastating.
And the drugs couldn’t be his problem right now. Hell no. Actually…
“Do you know if he’s done anything about moving them?”
It took Ally a moment to catch up with my train of thought.
“Uh… no, I’m pretty sure nothing’s happened, but then would he tell me?” Probably not. Fair point.
I sent him a quick text to find out, and when he replied to say they were still in situ, I told him it was in hand. Is it? I have no fucking idea, but I did have a potential solution.
“Just so we’re clear, woman, you want them gone, right? You don’t have plans for them?”
She looked disgusted. “Like I want to be a drug dealer now? God no, of course not. That stuff wrecks lives.” Yeah, not just that stuff either.
I excused myself for a few minutes, and went to Ice’s room, tapping on his door.
He took a while to answer, which worried me, because what if he was hiding something he shouldn’t have?
“What?”
Ah there’s the Ice we all know and love.
“Got a job for you, but I need to know if you can handle this.”
He stepped back to let me in.
“Well, I’d say let me get straight to work, but some fucker moved all my equipment.”
“Ice… look… I know you’re having issues right now, and I know that drugs are a tough subject right now, but can you do me one favour. Go back through what you know of Rossi’s operations here, and outside the local area. I wanna know what drugs they might be into distributing.”
He frowned at me. “You looking to supply them?”
I shrugged, not wanting to commit to anything, and definitely not letting him know we have shitloads of a substance he might just be desperate enough to try.
“Just find out. Don’t let on to anyone what you’re doing. Is this gonna be the wrong thing to put you on straight away?”
He smirked at me, heading for the door already.
“Giving me something to do is just what I fucking need right now, Pres, and it’s not like investigating that prick is gonna make me desperate for coke, is it? Or do you think that’s what he deals?”
Shit. “I want intel, Ice. Nothing more. Can you just look into it, and let me know urgently?”
He shrugged. “Whatever. Keep shit from me. I’m just the grunt, right?”
I followed him out of his room, and watched him head for the room we’d set up for him. He’d been there to check it out already, and had found fault with everything we’d done, but that was just token Ice behaviour. We’d messed with his shit, so he had to show us he was pissed off.
An hour later, I had the answer I needed. Now onto Ally’s part of things.