Justice for Glennon (Six Paths to Justice #3)

Eleven Years Ago

Glennon

A soft vibration tickled her butt cheek, and it took a moment for it to register that it was her phone. A quick glance at her watch showed she was barely fifteen minutes into her psychology class. She resisted the impulse to groan. Who wanted what now?

By the end of class, her phone had vibrated six more times.

She barely avoided chucking it down the lecture hall stairs.

While the sounds of smashing plastic and metal would have given her great satisfaction, it would have been disrespectful to the other students and the professor to do so, not to mention childish.

As soon as the professor finished the lecture and excused the class, she checked her phone. Seven missed calls, all from her mother. This time, she did allow herself a soft groan. “Shit.”

She didn’t even bother to listen to the voicemail messages. Given the number of calls, she dialed straight to her mom.

The connection had barely been made before her mother shouted, “Why didn’t you answer?”

“I was in class, Mom. I can’t take calls during class.”

“You could have stepped out into the hall.”

“No, I’ve told you a hundred times. I will always answer my phone unless I’m in class or at work. Now, what’s wrong that you called me every five minutes?”

“Joey ran away!”

A headache birthed behind her eyeballs. Of course, this was about Joey. When wasn’t it about Joey?

Gathering up her books, she clamped her jaw to hold in the sigh. The eye roll started, but as soon as she realized, she stopped. It didn’t pay to allow that habit because someday she’d forget and do it in front of her mother, and then there’d be hell to pay.

“What happened?” She choked back the word “now” at the end. That would be an invitation for her mother to lecture her on how her sass was unwarranted, unnecessary, and unattractive.

“I was cleaning in Joey’s room, and I found a plastic bag with some of that candy in it. When I confronted him, he started yelling at me for going through his private things.”

Glennon hung her head in despair. “Mom. I’ve told you and told you. Stop referring to it as candy. It’s not candy.”

“It looks like candy. And when I questioned Joey, he said it was candy. So I told him what you shared with me, and he said you’re lying.”

This time, the sigh couldn’t be contained. “Mom. I’m not lying to you. I have no reason to lie to you. Those pieces of ‘candy’ are fentanyl made to look like candy. It’s how the dealers market that shit to kids.”

Her mother huffed. “Joey wouldn’t take that stuff. He knows how dangerous it is.”

Shaking her head, Glennon headed toward the campus library. “Mom. Joey is a dealer and an addict. We’ve discussed this. He will tell you anything you want to hear to avoid an argument.”

“He seemed so genuine,” her mother whined.

“Because he knows he can play you.”

“Glennon! Are you suggesting I can’t tell when one of you is lying to me?”

“We’re not getting into this argument, Mother. You’re never going to listen to me. What do you want?” She knew what her mother wanted, but she was going to force her to say it so that later she couldn’t claim her daughter misunderstood her, as she often did.

“After I told him what you said, he tried to leave. I told him he couldn’t, but he said that if I was going to always take your side, he was going to go somewhere he was appreciated. I begged him not to leave, but he stormed out of here, and I don’t know where he went. You need to go find him.”

“Mom. I have an exam in an hour. Joey is an adult. You need to let him fuck up so that maybe he learns from his mistakes.”

Her mother gasped. “Watch your language! Besides, it’s your fault he took off. If he didn’t know you lied about what I found—”

“For the love of God, Mother, I did not lie. Joey is the one who’s lying.”

This argument was a no-win situation for her.

Her mother and father were never going to listen.

Joey was the golden child. Even when he was in the wrong, he was in the right.

Joey knew this, and he played it to the hilt.

Even when he did something terrible, like stealing from his parents to buy drugs, they were still in his corner, constantly fretting about how to show him they loved him.

“Glennon, please. You have to find him. Your father’s at work, and I have a meeting that I’m already late for.”

She couldn’t do it anymore. When she learned to drive, it became her job to find him when he disappeared or to go collect him when he was stuck somewhere or in trouble.

From the moment Joey turned to drugs, it had always been her job to deal with him when he was “sick” or needed something.

Now that she was in college, everything Joey-related was her responsibility.

It never mattered what she had going on in her life—an exam, work, a night out with friends, or even just sleep—if Joey needed something, she was expected to take care of it.

“Mom, no. I’m putting my foot down. It’s midterms.”

“Can’t you ask your professor for a retake?”

“No, Mom, that’s not how it works. I’ll get an F, which means I’ll get an F in the course. I’m not sacrificing my schoolwork to go look for him. He’ll come home when he’s ready.”

“But, Glennon—”

“Mom. Stop. No. For once, I’m looking out for me. He has to want to stop, and based on how much he’s still in denial about his addiction, he doesn’t want to. Maybe if you don’t cater to him and make him figure out his own problems, he’ll think about quitting.”

“But—”

“No! I cannot be driving all over the city looking for him. I’m nowhere near anywhere he might be. If you want him found before he’s ready to come home, then you or Dad will have to go look for him.”

She disconnected the call to the sounds of her mother sputtering on the other end.

If she didn’t hang up, her mother would just keep at her until, out of sheer self-preservation, Glennon agreed to go looking for him.

No. She was putting her foot down. She’d been putting Joey first for years now.

It was time for her to stop trying to save him when he didn’t want saving. It was time for all of them to stop.

Two hours later, midterm over, Glennon was headed to her car. When she got inside, she remembered that she’d turned off her phone after speaking to her mother because the woman would just keep calling if she didn’t.

When she checked her call log, there were ten more calls added to the original seven from her mother.

There were also a slew of texts, with her mother using every emotional blackmail move she could.

There was even one from her father, telling her how disappointed he was that she couldn’t think of her brother instead of herself for once. Seriously?

“Fuck me Friday to Thursday,” she mumbled.

Each call likely had a corresponding voicemail, and there was no way she was going to listen to those.

The texts also went unread. They could sit there forever, as far as she was concerned.

However, buried in the middle of her mother’s voicemails was one from Joey.

She wanted to just delete it, but the ingrained guilt got the best of her, and she broke down, deleting the messages from her mother, one at a time, until she got to his.

“Glennon, I know you’re pissed, but I’m in a lot of trouble right now, and I need your help. I’m not lying. Mom took something from me, and I need to deliver it tonight. I need you to get it from her and bring it to me.”

He rattled off an address in a not-so-great part of the city.

Fuck her to the following Thursday too. Not only was he in a part of town he had no business being in, but he was doing drug deals there.

To top that shit-cherry sundae, now he thought she was going to haul her ass to that same part of town to bail him out.

No. Fucking. Way. He could get the shit beat out of him for all she cared.

Maybe that would knock some sense into him.

His voice rushed, like he was moving quickly as he spoke, but then the tone changed, and her blood ran cold.

“Glennon… I’m serious. I’m not joking around.

It’s a lot of product, and if I don’t deliver, I’m a dead man.

I know I’ve fucked up. That’s on me. But I’m willing to make it right if you help me with this.

I’ll… I’ll go to that place you talked about.

I’ll go to rehab. Please. Just… just help me, sis, this one last time, and it’s done.

I’ll get clean. Text me when you get this message. ”

She sat in the car—the tail of her braid in her hand, brushing it back and forth across her lips.

What if he was really in danger? She couldn’t turn him down.

It was the first time he’d ever asked for help.

The first time he’d ever even mentioned rehab and a willingness to go.

He was her brother. What else could she do?

Letting go of her braid and exhaling a huge sigh, she started the car, then sent him a text. “I’m headed home to pick up the bag, then I’ll come to you. Be there in an hour.”

* * *

“Joey, I’m gonna kick your ass when I find you.”

After going home to collect the “candy” bag, she’d headed out to meet her brother at the address he’d given her. When she arrived, no one was there.

Now, she was pissed.

She was fucking scared.

This was not a good place for anyone to be, let alone a young, unarmed woman by herself.

Ghost-white knuckles gripped the steering wheel.

When she looked in the rearview mirror, her frightened eyes seemed to take up the whole glass, her pupils so dilated that almost no iris color showed.

Her lower lip was chapped and bloody from her tongue and teeth waging war as she tried to decide what to do.

“Screw this,” she said with shaky resolve. Projecting strength to herself was no longer an option. She was done. Finished. Going home, going to bed. Her brother could get himself out of his own mess.

What did she do with the drugs though? She could take them to the police station and turn them in.

That’s what she should do, but she knew it wouldn’t be as simple as, “Hey, my mom found these in my brother’s room, and we’d like you to destroy them.

Thanks. Bye!” She’d probably be pulled into an interrogation room, where she’d spend hours answering the same questions over and over.

Her parents would get called in, and that would be her fault, even if everything she’d told them was true.

Nothing but shittier and shittier options.

As she contemplated what to do, a figure appeared at her passenger window and knocked on the glass. She shot straight up in her seat, a hand to her chest. Joey. She clicked the automatic lock to allow him entrance. “Jesus, Joey!”

He slunk into the seat, closing the door behind him. “Sorry, sis. You got the bag?”

“Under the seat.”

He reached between his legs, grabbed the bag of fentanyl, and inspected it in the moonlight. “Yes!” He leaned over the console and gave her a rapid peck on the cheek. “You’ve just saved my life.”

“Where do you need to go?”

“I’m where I need to be. Now get out of here.”

“We’ll talk about rehab when you get home?”

He didn’t answer. His eyes were on the end of the block ahead of him, then he turned and checked the end of the block behind them.

“Right, Joey? You promised you’d go if I brought you that shit. Said you’d be done. Said you wanted to get clean.”

His knee bounced as he scanned the area around the car. Vague and distracted, he replied, “Yeah. Right. When I get home, we’ll talk about it.”

She stared at him. “You have no intention of going, do you? You just said that so I’d bring you your drugs. Goddammit, Joey! It’s bad enough you made me complicit in your dealing. Do you have any idea what this could do to me if we’re caught?”

“Nothing’s going to touch you, Glennon. Not if you get out of here.”

A car pulled in at the end of the block behind them and began to slow roll toward them.

“Go on. Go home,” he urged.

Another car turned onto the block in front of them.

“Shit! You need to get out of here. Now!”

He pitched himself out of the car and made a mad dash for the house they were parked in front of, but it was too late.

Before Glennon could even turn the engine over, shots rang out, a barrage of bullets coming from three directions.

Several bodies poured out of both cars, shooting as they ran toward her brother, and windows of the house broke as residents inside rained down return fire.

Glennon watched in horror as Joey’s body was hit, pinwheeled, and went down. More bodies hit the lawn, road, and sidewalk. Without thinking, she scrambled out her door and ran around the car. “Joey!”

The bullets had stopped now, and the two cars sped away down the street, leaving their passengers dead or bleeding out. Except for her panting breaths and sobs as she sped to the still form of her brother on the sidewalk of the house he’d been running toward, silence reigned.

She gathered his dead weight into her arms, struggling to turn him over in her lap.

Joey’s eyes were already turning glassy, and his bloody hand grabbed her arm. He tried to speak, but his mouth only opened and closed like a fish drowning on dry land. A faint wheezing sound was all he could manage.

A quick survey of his body showed his chest littered with bullet wounds, blood soaking through his shirt.

His fingers made one last desperate attempt to grab her arm, briefly gripping the upper sleeve of her thin sweater, then dropped slack in the crook of it, a series of bright-red streaks marring the material.

His eyes were open, but there was no life in them.

Sobs wrenched from her body. “Joey, oh my god, no! No! No! No!”

She had no idea how long she sat there, rocking back and forth, but at some point, a figure ran into the yard, grabbed the bag Joey had flung to the ground when he’d been gunned down, then took off running toward the backyard.

Time had no meaning as she continued to hold him. This neighborhood would be used to gunfire. More than likely, people would hide until they were sure the danger had passed before thinking to call the police.

Rain began to fall, mixing with the tears on her face. That was how the police finally found her thirty minutes later.