He didn’t bother ducking his head or even looking away when he passed the men on the sidewalk. Chances were slim any of them would recognize him. He grew up in L.A., but he hadn’t been a gangbanger until he went to prison. And thanks to tougher sentencing laws, he’d been dropped into the federal system, served his time in Arizona and then Colorado. Maybe a few of The Crew members he’d known had found their way to L.A. to live with the brothers and be a bigger part of the criminal empire, but acting suspicious would cause more of a ripple among this group than acting unafraid, as if he belonged right where he was.
The picture of Peyton hugging Brady that he’d put on the console stared up at him as he rounded the corner and parked. He was too anxious, didn’t want to wait for Mona. Peyton could go into labor anytime. He hated the thought of her being alone, especially now, while they were dealing with so much.
If she lost the baby…
He couldn’t even consider that. Neither could he get ahead of himself. Not if he hoped to see her again.
Taking the gun from the seat beside him, he checked the magazine while he called Laurel. He’d brought the prepaid cell phone he’d purchased so he’d have a safe way to communicate, something that wouldn’t contain all his contacts if it fell into the wrong hands. So he hated to dial her number. It meant he’d have to destroy the phone before he went in. But talking to her might get him new information and shore up his resolve. If he had to kill Horse, he hoped it would save her, too.
But her voice mail answered. “You’ve reached the Stewart residence…?.”
Where the hell was she? It was two in the morning. She should be at home.
Worry tightened his stomach muscles. Had Ink gotten to her? Was it too late?
If so, The Crew had no idea what was about to happen to them. Because once he unleashed his rage—
The beep sounded, signaling that it was time to leave a message. He didn’t really know what to tell her. What could he say after so much had happened?
Something. This could be his last chance to communicate with the sister, who’d stood by him through every problem and setback, even when the entire world, including their mother, seemed determined to break him.
“Hey, ah, it’s me,” he said into the phone. “I wanted to let you know that…that I’m sorry. I wish you’d never been dragged into any of this, wish I’d been able to find another way to manage my life so that there’d be no spillover on you. But…that doesn’t help much, does it? We are where we are. Just know this—I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
Another call came in as he was hanging up. After checking caller ID, he punched the Talk button. “Yeah?”
“It’s me. I’m a block away.”
Mona. The game was on. Either she’d give him the information he needed to kill Horse, or she’d give up the information Horse needed to kill him.
25
This wasn’t going to work. They were making him wait forever.
Already nervous when he’d arrived, Rex eyed the crowd hoping to see an emergency-room doctor. A mother holding a sick baby. A teenager nursing a swollen, probably broken, ankle. A toddler wiggling in the lap of some exhausted father who was trying to keep a cloth pressed to the cut on his head.
He wasn’t one of these people. He was here because he’d been stupid enough to get hooked on OxyContin, and he didn’t want to go crying to someone about it now. So what if he was sick? He couldn’t sit here while Virgil hunted down Horse, and Laurel faced Ink. What kind of friend would that make him? What kind of man?
He eyed the door. Peyton thought she’d done her duty. She wouldn’t worry if he left because she wouldn’t know about it. At his insistence, she’d gone to a motel with the kids. He could call her, tell her they were giving him clonidine, and that he was fine now, perfect and heading home to sleep. He wished he could get some clonidine. At least then he’d be able function in the short-term. It would stop the nausea, the coughing, the heart palpitations. His bones felt as if they were on fire, as if they were burning through his flesh. Clonidine should help that, but for how long? With a success rate of less than ten percent after one year of treatment, even a medical detox rarely worked. Either he quit, or he didn’t. He’d believed that from the start. So why was he here?
“Fuck this,” he muttered, and got up.
“Are you leaving?” The woman who’d sat next to him for the past two hours acted like he was committing a cardinal sin. She’d been staring at him as though there wasn’t a TV to entertain her five feet away. She creeped him out. Maybe she recognized him as a fellow addict, thought they could become friends or allies or share needles or some shit. She didn’t know he wasn’t going in the same direction anymore. No one did, because he looked and felt worse than he ever had in his life.
“Hey!” She tried again to get him to respond. He didn’t bother, but she’d spoken loudly enough to draw the attention of someone in authority.
“Sir? Excuse me, sir?” It was the nurse Peyton had spoken to when they first arrived. He didn’t want to acknowledge her, either, but she caught up with him before he could reach the doors.
“Would you give me the respect of an answer, please?” She sounded pissed, but she had no idea how hard it was just to walk. His head felt as if it’d been cleaved in two.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, marshaling all his strength to be polite.
“You could take a seat. I don’t think it’ll be much longer.”
He hung his head, took a few measured breaths. “What’d Peyton say to you?”
“Peyton who?”
She was playing dumb. He could read it on her face. “The woman I came in with. You remember her. Had a belly out to here?” He held his hand in front of his own stomach.
Her mouth flattened, became a mere slash in her face. “She said you probably wouldn’t stay. She was worried about it when she saw how crowded the waiting room was. She cares about you, so I’m doing my best to help her out.”
The nurse thought Peyton’s baby was his, that Peyton had to deal with an addict—that is, loser—for a husband.
“Come on, sit down,” she coaxed. “I’ll go see if I can get you in any sooner.”
Before all the kids who needed to be treated? No way. He wasn’t going to jump the line. He was a full-grown man who felt guilty for wasting resources that should go to other people, people who weren’t stupid enough to get themselves into such an unenviable position. He could buy a few pills on the street—any kind of painkiller if he couldn’t get OxyContin—enough so that he could be useful again. Then, after everything was over, he’d go clean.