I patted the bag between my feet. “Five grand junkie-finder fee, in cash.”
He whistled. “Is it traceable?”
“Nope. I earned it all.”
“Good. Buying the house was risky.” He cut his eyes sideways at me.
“I’m not going to spend my life scared,” I fired back.
He cracked a smile. “Good.”
I rubbed my hands over my face, trying to wake up. He handed me a Red Bull from his cooler compartment, and I accepted gratefully.
“So you AWOL or something?”
I shook my head, swallowing the energy drink. “Emergency leave.” Major Davidson had been anything but happy when I’d called him on a Thursday night, but he’d met with me. One look at my face and he’d signed the leave form. I had a week. Just enough time to get her taken care of.
Just enough time to royally fuck myself in class. I’d take a hit on every assignment, pretty much knocking myself out of first place.
I pushed flight school out of my head. It was thousands of miles and a world—a life—away. That wasn’t even who I was right now. No, right now I was nothing outside of Anna. Please let this be her. We pulled into a neighborhood I only wanted to see from the air. “Damn,” I muttered, taking in the broken streetlights and rusted-out cars with busted windows.
“Oh, yeah. It’s a gem,” Paul answered. “Sometimes working for you makes me wish I’d just stayed your bodyguard. At least we didn’t end up in places like this.”
“Now if we could only keep her out of them.”
“That’s my prayer,” he answered.
I gritted my teeth against my usual answer, that in order for a prayer to work, someone had to be listening.
He parked the SUV outside a dilapidated house that definitely wasn’t setting the high end of market value around here. “Ready?”
Paul took the small leather pouch from me, slipping it inside his jacket as I zipped mine up. The Chicago air froze the snot in my nose as we walked to the front door. I hated this part, and it didn’t disappoint. My stomach clenched as Paul knocked on the torn screen door.
The wooden door swung open. “Can I help you?” a voice slurred from inside.
I sidestepped him to get a look, and cringed. The guy was rail thin and pale, wearing dirty jeans and a ragged henley, but it was his face that jarred me. His cheekbones protruded, and there were open sores along his cracked lips and up one side of his face. “Are you Steve?” I asked.
“You the guy looking for Anna?” He blinked his droopy eye slowly.
“Yes.” My pulse pounded.
“You got the money?”
I nodded, but Paul answered. “You get it when we get her.”
He rocked on his heels a couple of times, his eyes darting between us. “Swear you aren’t cops?”
“We’re not fucking cops!” I snapped. Each second stripped a little more of my civility away, but spooking this guy was detrimental to the goal. “We brought you a nice little present for finding Anna, that’s all.”
He looked between us again and then opened the screen door, backing away as we walked inside. The living room was empty except for a threadbare couch, the three people passed out on it, and a coffee table cluttered with contents I didn’t want to examine too closely.
Paul took up position behind me as I followed Steve through a small hallway to a bedroom. He opened the door and flicked the light switch on and off a few times before muttering, “Damn light.” Instead he pulled the string inside the open closet, lighting the room enough to see the huddled mass in the corner, the whiskey-colored hair I knew so well.
“Anna.”
The carpet felt spongy beneath my feet as I stumbled toward the mattress and fell to my knees next to her. Her hair was a stringy, limp mass as I brushed it from her face. It had been a year since we’d done this last, and though it showed, she was still Anna. Her Van Morrison–worthy brown eyes were open, unfocused, but her breathing was steady. “I’m here, Anna, I’m here.”
“Do I get the money?” Steve asked, bobbing unsteadily in my peripheral vision.
I nodded, keeping my eyes locked onto Anna. A roach scurried out from the coarse blanket she was under, and I choked back vomit. “Shit!” I ripped the blanket from her and flung it across the room. Her emaciated frame was covered in a barely there pink tank top and a pair of black sweat pants, and her arm—fuck, her arm had a tourniquet banded just above her elbow. I snapped it apart and skimmed my thumb over the track marks that marred her arm. How the hell did she have any usable veins left? “Get my bag,” I ordered Paul—how easily my voice reverted to that tone.
“You gonna take her?” Steve asked, fingering through the money in the package.
“Yes.” I couldn’t keep my hands off her face, stroking her hair, feeling the steady thrum of her pulse beneath my fingers.
“Bag,” Paul said, putting my duffel next to me on the floor. I took out a pair of my socks and put them on her bare feet, cursing that I hadn’t thought to bring her anything. I should be better at this by now.
I rummaged through the bag for a shirt and grabbed a fist full of maroon—Paisley’s zip-up hoodie. I lifted it to my nose, closed my eyes, and breathed her scent in, clinging to the knowledge that I had someone, something that hadn’t been tainted by this. Paisley. How would someone as good, as sweet as she was, come close to understanding this?