Fallen (7 page)

“How? When did you speak to her?” I ask the questions way too quickly, like some fucking school kid quizzing his friends about his fucking crush. I need to get a grip. “You didn’t mention anything to her in the car.”

Lacey reaches into her pocket and pulls out her cell phone. She raps me with it right between the eyes. I think about killing her. “I used this. She’s pretty good at responding. But first you actually need to text her first. You can use mine if yours is broken.” She slaps the phone into my hand and then hustles down the hallway toward her room, kicking along the errant clothes that escape her pile as she goes.

******

“Hey, man, what’s up?”

“Just calling to let you know I found Rick.”

I haven’t called Sloane. I’ve pounded the shit out of my heavy bag, swearing with each and every hit, using the extra anger to smash my fist into the worn fabric just that little bit harder. It’s one a.m. when Michael calls.

“Yeah?” I wipe sweat from my face, stopping it from running into my eyes. “Where was he? What did he have to say for himself?”

“He was in three pieces in a dumpster a block away from Disneyland. And he wasn’t really in a talkative mood.”

I take one final, furious swipe at the heavy bag. The impact jars all the way up my arm, ringing bells inside my head. “Fuck.
Fuck.
”

“Yeah, boss. It was pretty bad. And when I say bad, I’m talking internal organs.”

Shit. Yeah, so I didn’t really like Rick, but
I
put him in Anaheim. I told him to wait there for me. And it was my stupid admission to Julio that sent his boys down there to investigate. I might as well have just shot him in the head back on the docks when he met with those bikers. Would have been a far more pleasant demise by the sounds of things.

“Where are you now?” I ask Michael.

“Already back at the other place. I’m just doing some…housekeeping.”

The other place. My crazy sex pad, as Sloane calls it. She’s the last girl I fucked inside those four walls; no further gatherings will ever be hosted there. It’s just a ridiculous suck on my funds now that it doesn’t serve a purpose. I should sell it.

“Okay, when you’re done there, do me a favor and slip by the girl’s place. Make sure everything’s quiet over there?”

“Sure thing.”

“Let me know as soon as you’ve got eyes on the building.” I end the call, and I quit on the heavy bag. I start on the chin-ups instead. I’m bench-pressing when Michael calls back an hour later.

“Got eyes, boss.”

Weirdly it feels like a weight’s been lifted from me as soon as he tells me this. That weightless, light feeling lasts all of five seconds, though. Michael continues. “I’ve got eyes on the place and it’s totally empty. She’s not here. The place is sealed up tight. No lights. No car. No Sloane.”

No lights. No car. No Sloane
.

Each one of those statements feels like a huge hit to the stomach. “Well, where the fuck is she then?”

Michael makes a brief, strangled sound on the other end of the phone. For all of the world, it sounds as if the motherfucker just laughed. “There was a note under a rock on the front doorstep, boss. It’s not addressed to anyone, but I’m pretty sure it’s for you.”

“Tell me,” I grind out.

Another strangled coughing sound on the other end of the line. “It says,
serve you right if I were dead, asshole.
”

Pippa is the most unbearable person on the face of the planet. I literally want to shoot her in the face. I drove my car to her apartment last night, thought better of leaving it anywhere near her building, drove it eight blocks away in an underground parking lot, and then walked a mile in the pouring rain to turn up on her doorstep at midnight, soaked to the bone.

“Ridden hard and put up wet, I see,” is what she’d said to me.
Those
were the first words she chose to speak when seeing me for the first time after I’ve been shot at, threatened¸ faced off with a horde of Mexican gang members, and then confronted with the harsh reality that my sister is now some motorcycle club president’s old lady. I guess I shouldn’t expect much else from her, realistically. I did tell her I was sitting on a beach drinking mai tais in Hawaii. Her grim mood as she let me into her apartment last night indicated that she was more than a little pissed that I hadn’t asked her along. Her mood doesn’t seem to have improved with a good night’s rest, either.

“I’m assuming Lacey will be accompanied by your good friend Mr. Mayfair this morning?” She stirs at her tea so viciously that it’s a surprise any of the liquid remains inside the cup.

“Probably. Which is why I’m going to make sure I’m
not.
”

“What’s the matter with you? I thought you liked this guy? What happened to the whole,
what if I don’t want anyone else
crap you were texting me two nights ago?”

Of course she would bring that up. The truth is…since Zeth drove me away from my sister back in the hospital, away from my parents’ place, and back into my old life, I’ve wanted…I’ve wanted my old life. The whole thing. All of it. The boring, mundane routine of going to work, eating, sleeping, going back to work. I can hardly lie to myself; of course I know that I’m developing ridiculously strong feelings for a man who can surely be nothing but bad news for me, but for a moment, just a couple of days, it would be nice to feel like my largest concern in life is deciphering the other doctors’ handwriting so I can make sure I don’t double dose any of the patients.

“Just because I don’t want anyone else doesn’t mean that I do want
him
, Pip. Not in the way you’re thinking, anyway.” I cram toast into my mouth, trying to cut the conversation short. Pippa’s not the sort of person to let a full mouth get in the way of a confrontation, though. And that’s what this is: a confrontation. She’s been itching to have this out with me for a while now, I just know it.

“Remember that time when you asked me for Valium and I wrote you a script? No questions asked?” she asks quietly. It feels like the blood in my veins has just turned to ice water. Do I remember that? Do I remember clasping hold of that bottle in my fist and staring at it for a full hour before I had to leave my house and travel across Seattle, houses and buildings whipping past me in a blur, as I journeyed to meet Zeth for the first time?

“Ah, yeah. Of course.” The memory is seared like a brand inside my brain. The moment changed me forever. Pippa doesn’t know this, though. Or she shouldn’t. That she’s even mentioning it now seems to be hitting a little close to home. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I wasn’t worried about you then, Sloane. You were asking me for under-the-table meds, really strong, addictive ones, and you were acting like a fucking crazy person at the time, too. And yet the whole time I was never worried about you. Not enough to demand to know what was going on in your life. You were stressed out over your sister. We had Boards. Whatever. I knew all of that and I didn’t wanna give you a hard time. So instead I gave you the script, and I never said another word about it. But now, it’s like…I feel like this guy is ten times worse for you than taking a bunch of Valium. Even if you were addicted, I would still think this guy is worse for you than the drugs.”

I can feel the blood draining from my face. She’s never spoken to me like this before; true, she’s always been a bit of a hardass and more than a little over protective, but seriously, this is the first time she’s spoken to me like I’m an idiot who can’t be trusted to make their own decisions. “What do you mean by that?” I ask.

Pippa puts her tea down on the kitchen counter, walks around it and takes both of my hands in hers. Her eyes are peaked with worry, her brows banked together in a frown. “I love you, Sloane. You’re like a sister to me. I know that’s no consolation to you—that you’ve been terrified for your
actual
sister, and that’s been a main priority for you—but you have to know I’m always going to look out for you. This guy…” She shakes her head. “This guy is bad news. The kind of guy you avoid like the ever-loving plague. And you’re not doing that right now. I’ve seen this all before, Sloane. This attraction you’re feeling, it’s like being pulled into the shadows, and I also know that that probably feels really good. It’s almost undeniable, probably. You’ve fought for so long and so hard to keep your head above water that sinking now seems like the best possible option. But trust me, it’s not. Giving in to someone like that, to a controlling guy who refuses to let anyone else hold any power over him, it won’t end well. He’ll break you. He’ll take everything you’ve built and tear it down, and coming back from something like that is so much harder than recovering from any regular addiction.”

I’ve been so still as she’s said this to me. I’ve blinked maybe twice, but apart from that I’ve sat frozen in dumb silence, trying to understand the words coming out of her mouth. I can’t sit still any longer. “You say you love me like a sister, Pip?”

“Yeah.” She nods, and her eyes are bright and a little too shiny—she looks like she’s on the verge of tears. “I do, Sloane.”

I squeeze her hands back, leaning forward and feeling my heart break just a little. “Then how can you not know me at all?”

Her lips part, her mouth falling open, and I know how this will go. We’re both volatile people. We’re about to have
the
fight. The fight that changes our friendship, maybe for good. Maybe irreparably. She pulls her hands out of mine.

“I
do
know you. I know that you—”

BRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNN.

The robotic buzz of her intercom shuts down whatever she was about to tell me. My jaw is beginning to ache, and I realize I’ve been clenching my teeth. For a second we just remain frozen in silence, looking at one another. When the buzzer goes again, Pippa blinks and looks away, smoothing a hand over her immaculate hair. “That’ll be Lacey,” she says.

“Yeah,” I reply. “It will.” I get up and grab my coat, which is still slightly damp from last night’s rain. “Tell her to call me later if she wants to grab a coffee or something, yeah?”

“You’re not staying for the session?”

I’m already at the door, my palm feeling the press of the cool metal handle beneath it. “Not really standard for a civilian to be present during a patient’s treatment, is it?”

Pippa gives me a hard look. “She might not talk if you’re not here.”

“She’ll talk. She set up the appointment.” I hit the access button on the intercom by the door, then I open it and I hurry down the stairwell before Lacey—and probably Zeth—can make it up to her floor in the elevator.

******

In my book, running down flights of stairs are just as hard as running up them. My thighs and ass are killing me by the time I reach the ground floor. The fresh air hits me like a wall of ice, shocking the oxygen right out of my lungs. It’s cold. Way colder than it usually is in autumn, but for once the wind is absent, leaving the day still and calm. I’m waiting to cross into the park when my cell phone rings. Damn it. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Lacey won’t talk unless I’m there. I don’t see why my presence would be so important, though. I mean, she has Zeth. He’s been her be-all and end-all for months now. I’m about to pick up the call and tell Pippa that Lacey will just have to make do with her brother, when I see the number.

It’s an out-of-state number. Not one I recognize. I’m not in the habit of answering calls from strange numbers, but the source of the call this time has me breaking rules. Maybe…just maybe…

“Hello?”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, and then an entertained and altogether male voice says, “What’s up, Doc?”

A jolt passes through me. A deeply violent and unpleasant one. “What the hell do
you
want?” I demand. I know perfectly well who it is—it’s the man I recently discovered is married to my sister. I’d thought that perhaps it was Alexis calling me to, I don’t know, apologize for everything she’s put me and Mom and Dad through. But no. It’s not her; it’s her motorcycle-riding, tattoo-covered, smug-grinned husband.

“Well, hello to you, too, precious. Raining up there? Weather got you in a shitty mood?”

“The sound of your voice has me in a shitty mood,” I retort. I want to head north through the park, but I can’t. I can’t concentrate on anything but gripping hold of this phone and listening intensely to the asshole on the other end of it. I collapse onto the bench at the entrance to the park and commence in burning holes with my eyeballs into the concrete at my feet. “Is it Lexi? Is she okay?”

“Sure. She’s out now. We’re on our way back to New Mexico.”

“She’s already out? She needs rest! You can’t have her discharged yet. She should be—”

“You think I want her up and hustling before she’s ready, Doc? I couldn’t chain the girl to the bed. She’s got legs, y’know? She used them. Got up and walked out of there before anyone knew about it. So yeah. Maybe calm your ass down.”

I hate his tone. I hate that I’m even having to listen to him right now. “So why are you calling, then, Rebel?”

“Because you need to come to New Mexico,” he answers. “You need to come make sure she gets better properly.”