Chapter Thirty-Two
Helios
Cursing to myself, hating that I left her alone in my bedroom, in my goddamn bed, I grabbed my fucking cell and dialed.
Cypher answered as I walked into the garage. “You’re not in the field.”
No fucking shit. Didn’t mean I wasn’t neck deep. Except this wasn’t an assignment, and I was about to lose my goddamn shit. “Find out who the fuck Raine’s supplier is.”
Silence.
I jerked the cell back from my ear to check that the call was still connected. It was. “Motherfucker, I know you hear me.”
“Never said I didn’t. Just trying to prioritize which fucked-up shit you demanded that I should process first.”
“Since when do you need to process shit?” Motherfucker needed to do his job and hack shit.
“Since this phone call. I’m assuming by Raine, you mean Ghost’s mother. That’s your first fucking issue. Second, looking into a quote-unquote supplier in a state that has legalized use is not worth the time it took to have this conversation. Third, said conversation is over.” Cypher hung up.
I called back.
He answered but didn’t speak.
Didn’t care. I didn’t need the motherfucker to say shit.
“No fucking way Raine is buying weed legally.” I’d met the woman.
Dealt with her psycho ass too many goddamn times.
Antigovernment, antiestablishment, anti-everything, the rail-thin woman was a fucking poster child for hippie counterculture.
For all I knew, she grew her own shit. Which, fuck.
I needed to know that shit too. “Wherever the fuck she’s getting her supply—street corner, backyard, a fucking dealer who makes house calls—find out and text me a goddamn name.
She dosed Feralyn. That shit’s not happening again. ”
“What are you going to do?” Cypher typed. “Go toe to toe with an aging hipster?”
This motherfucker. “I’m gonna do what I always fucking do.” Handle shit.
“Doesn’t sound like you’re one step ahead on this one.”
I hated the motherfucker for rubbing my personal creed in my face. I hated it more that he was right. “Fuck off.”
“Lenny,” he stated. “Twenty-year-old convenience store clerk, active MMUR card. Looks like he’s been hustling Raine’s old neighborhood going on four years.
Texting photo, cell number, and work and home addresses now.
You tell Ghost I gave you this intel, I will kill you. ” Cypher hung up a second time.
My cell pinged with a text.
I scanned the pertinent details, then I called Raine’s number.
Sounding like I’d woken her ass up, she answered on the sixth ring with an attitude. “Feralyn isn’t here, Helios.”
Normally, I didn’t fuck with Raine, and she didn’t fuck with me. We used to have a mutual understanding. She gave Haven attention, Haven clung to her, and I tolerated the old woman’s hippie antics.
Not any-goddamn-more.
“I know where the hell Feralyn is.” In my bed for all the wrong reasons.
“You fucking overdosed her.” So damn livid, I couldn’t see straight, I downloaded.
“Dead faint in the goddamn hot tub. If I hadn’t caught her, she would’ve drowned.
” And if that shit had happened, I would’ve suck-started my goddamn Glock—right after I killed Raine, that fucking dealer, and every other goddamn asshole who’d ever done Feralyn dirty, including her piece-of-shit father and her piece-of-shit half brother.
Especially that motherfucker Ghost.
I should’ve tortured the fuck out of Ghost eight years ago.
Done to him tenfold what’d been done to Haven, then dismembered his ass.
But Haven asked me not to kill him, so that motherfucker was still breathing.
Except she was terrified of him, his hippie-ass mother had somehow become Haven’s surrogate parent, and here we were—steeped in bullshit so goddamn deep, I was this close to shooting a way out for my Haven.
“Helios, I swear, nothing I would’ve—”
“Don’t fucking test me, Raine.” I was over her bullshit. “You give Feralyn so much as a fucking aspirin ever again, I don’t give a goddamn whose mother you are. I will bury your ass. You fucking hear me?”
For two seconds, Raine didn’t say shit.
Then the woman did exactly what I warned her not to.
She fucking tested me. “If Feralyn took what I gave her, then it was for a reason. Help her, Helios. Or let her live her life. Because what you’re doing now, this phone call, the threats, the toxic aura of guilt you exist in, it’s not helping her or yourself. ”
Seething, I shot the fucking messenger. “I’m not the one who OD’d her. Do not ever fuck with Feralyn again. You won’t get another warning from me.” I hung up.
Then I grabbed tools and supplies, went back into the house, and dumped the shit in front of the door I’d kicked in.
For half a second, I fucking thought about it.
Don’t fix this shit.
Leave it, and she wouldn’t be able to lock me out again. Not from this room.
Fuck.
Pivoting, I scanned. Then I did a quick mental count and added up the number of doors in this fucking house.
I looked back at my tools.
Motherfucking crossroads. That’s where I was at.
Hands on my hips, tipping my head back, I stared at the fucking ceiling and sighed.
“One step ahead,” I muttered, grabbing a goddamn screwdriver.