by Selena Kitt
“There’s no law against it in Michigan.” I rolled my eyes. California had a lot of restrictions, I’d noticed.
“Have you never heard of Bluetooth?”
“Are you kidding me?” I laughed. “This car was made before the millennium.”
Katie didn’t pick up. She didn’t pick up yesterday either—Easter Sunday. I even called both her parents—her Dad in California and her Mom, who lived in northern Michigan—but they said they hadn’t heard from her, even though she was expected at her mom’s, along with her brother, who was visiting with his new wife and baby from the East coast, for Easter dinner.
Katie didn’t show
Rob’s friend, Sarah, said she hadn’t been able to find her. She’d even put a GPS tracker on Katie’s car—a creepy sort of move that I was kind of grateful for—but the car had been left in a parking garage at Wayne State University. She could be anywhere, with anyone. We were supposed to meet Sarah at my place, but I was planning on taking a detour.
I left another message on Katie’s phone, imagining her deleting them without listening.
“Katie, it’s me. Pick up. I’m home. I’m coming over. You better pick up.”
“She’s not going to answer.”
“How do you know?”
He just gave me a look.
I drove by Katie’s place because it was on the way home from the airport. And because she wasn’t answering her phone. And because I had a bad, bad feeling. Rob came with me up to the door, waiting while I rang the buzzer. Her apartment was on the ground floor and I could see in her window—the blinds were open—but I didn’t see her. I pulled out my phone and dialed her number again, but it just went to message.
“She’s not here.” I sighed, leaning my forehead against the door. Of course, it was a long shot, but I thought we might catch her slipping home for some clothes or food or maybe more money. Her dad said she’d borrowed a thousand dollars from him mid-week for rent.
Yeah, if “rent” meant a jab of smack.
The thought of Katie doing heroin was making me nauseous. That and the fact I hadn’t been able to eat anything all day except Daisy’s ginger drink this morning. The nausea wasn’t the baby, I realized.
“We’ll find her.” Rob put a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you home and in a warm bath for a while.”
“I don’t want a bath. I want to—” My head came up fast, eyes wide. Oh my God! I could find her! I scanned the apps on my phone, looking for the one I needed. “I can find her, Rob! I know how to find her.”
He watched me open the app and click Katie’s name. When I’d installed it, it had been a joke—I’d told her I was going to track Rob around the country with it. We’d played around with it for a while and had connected her phone to mine to test it, just to see if it worked, but I’d never really checked it afterward.
Until now.
“Come on, come on,” I whispered, waiting while the GPS located her. “Where are you?”
“Sabrina?” Rob looked over my shoulder, waiting. “Where is she?”
“Downtown.” I looked back at him, my heart sinking.
“Downtown Detroit?”
I nodded. “We have to go, Rob. We have to go get her.”
He grabbed my phone, scanning the map. “I have a feeling that’s not a very good neighborhood.”
“I know.” I consoled myself that it was the middle of the afternoon on a Monday. I worked in Detroit, after all. I knew my way in and out—and my dad had been a Detroit cop. I knew where the good and not-so-good places were. And Katie was in a very, very not-so-good place right now, in so many ways.
“We have to go,” I urged, snagging my phone and shoving it into my jeans pocket.
“Let me go.” He grabbed my arm, holding onto me as I tried to continue down the sidewalk to the car. “I’ll call Sarah. We’ll go get Katie.”
“No.” I glared at him. “She won’t listen to you.”
“How do you know she’ll listen to you?”
“Because she answered the phone when I called.” It had only been once, but I’d gotten through. She’d picked it up and had talked to me, even in the middle of whatever fugue state she’d been in.
“All right,” Rob relented, following me to the car. He stopped, looking at me over the hood as he dialed his phone. “Let me call Sarah. She’s carrying a gun.”
A gun. A little shiver ran through me, but I knew it was right. It wasn’t smart to go where we were going without some sort of protection. My dad had been a Detroit detective for years and, back when there was a residency requirement, we lived on Cop Row—a city block full of cops everyone knew not to mess with them—and it was safe enough to hang out and play with my friends and ride my bike.
But there were boundaries I was never, ever allowed to cross, because Detroit had safe places and dangerous places, and I had lived my whole life with a man who wore a badge and carried a gun and knew just how dangerous those places could be. That’s why, when I’d decided to take a job teaching in the Detroit district, my father had purchased me a 9mm Glock 26 and told me to put it in my car. I wasn’t allowed to carry it in school, of course, but it was loaded and in my glove compartment.
“Damn it, she’s not answering.” Rob scowled at his phone.
“It doesn’t matter.” I opened the driver’s side door and got in. Rob got in the passenger’s side. “Open the glove compartment.”
Rob frowned but he did it, his eyebrows raising when he saw my gun tucked into its slot. My father had made sure it was secure, putting a special holder in. Rob pulled it out, checking the chamber and then pulling out the holster.
“You have a license for this?”
“I’m a cop’s daughter,” I reminded him. “I’ve had a conceal carry license since I was twenty-one.”
“I should have known.” He holstered the gun, grinning over at me. “I’m impressed. A girl who can handle a gun is kind of hot.”
“You obviously know your way around guns.” I glanced over as he untucked his t-shirt, so it hid the bulge. “Do you have a license to carry?”
“Yeah. Not that it matters. There’s no reciprocity between California and Michigan.” He closed the glove compartment. “But if I have to use it, I will.”
“Jesus, Rob,” I whispered. I had butterflies in my stomach. Yes, I knew how to handle a gun, yes, I kept one in my car just in case, but I had never, ever had to use it. “This is...”
“I know. Just get us there.” He put his phone to his ear, waiting. “Sarah? Hey. We found Katie... We’re on our way now. I want you to stay at Sabrina’s. There’s a key hidden in one of those fake rock things next to the porch.”
He waited, rolling his eyes, presumably while Sarah talked.
“Just do it. I’ll call you when we have her.”
I gave Rob my phone and asked him to navigate. The app didn’t give us an exact address, just a pulsing blue dot on Palmer Street. That was where Katie was—or at least, that’s where her phone was. I knew my way around Detroit well enough to follow Rob’s directions. I knew Palmer Street too. My mom had taught history at Wayne State for years and Palmer was a sort of back way to get to I-94. I’d gone this way hundreds of times while I was getting my teaching degree. It was an easy shortcut.
But I’d never really paid as close attention to it as I was now.
Much of it was just vacant lots, lots of brush. Some of the houses were lived in, gated, even nice. Detroit was such a strange mix of old, beautiful homes and empty ghost houses.
“Slow down.” Rob watched the phone, pointing at the stop sign. “It should be in this next block.”
I rolled slowly through the intersection, past an old hardware store with no windows, a gate on the door. It was tagged with graffiti and had fire damage, the roof blackened and caving in. Please don’t let it be here, I thought, glancing over at Rob.
“Up on the left.” He pointed, and I drove past a huge pile of old tires on the right side of the road, thrown aside like rubber donu
ts, stopping in front of a vacant home, the windows empty, dark eyes.
“Here?” There was an old white and tan Dodge Caravan parked alongside the house, indicating it might not be as unoccupied as it appeared.
“Stay here.” Rob checked the gun in its holster, opening the passenger door.
Stay here? Was he kidding? Katie was in there somewhere. I wasn’t staying in the damned car. I shoved the driver’s side door open and followed him, ignoring the glare he gave me as he went up the steps.
We didn’t knock. The door was falling off its hinges and practically open anyway. Rob’s hand stayed on the butt of the gun as we moved through the living room, littered with trash—beer cans, fast food wrappers, and old needles—all scattered around an old, stained twin mattress. But there was no one there.
“Katie!” I called, ignoring Rob’s look of warning over his shoulder.
I heard something over our heads and glanced up at the ceiling.
“Wait!” Rob called but I was already heading for the staircase. There was a hole straight down through the middle of them and I stepped around it, looking down as I passed, straight into the darkness of a basement or crawl space under the house.
“Damn it, Sabrina,” Rob hissed as we reached the top of the stairs. “Let me go f—”
A low moan reached my ears and I launched down the hall, following the sound. Rob was right, I knew I should be cautious, but I was sure it was Katie. And I was right.
“Oh Katie,” I breathed, kneeling next to the filthy mattress she was drooling on.
She moaned softly when I touched her shoulder, brushing honey hair away from her face, but she didn’t open her eyes. Rob moved around the room, opening a door—a bathroom—looking for more people, but she was alone.
“Stay with her, I’ll be right back.”
He didn’t have to say it. I wasn’t leaving her.
“Katie, Katie,” I murmured, turning her from her side to her back. Her eyelids fluttered but that was all. There was no doubt she’d been shooting up and it wasn’t the first time. She had track marks up and down her arms. I was kneeling next to a spoon, a needle, a lighter, a big rubber band. But who had brought her here? Her car, according to Sarah, was in the Wayne State University parking structure.
“Can you hear me?” I spoke loudly, hoping she might stir, my fingers finding the pulse at her neck. It was slow but steady. “We’re going to take you home, Katie.”
She moaned, her head moving side to side, but any words she tried to speak were unintelligible.
“Okay, let’s go.” Rob appeared in the doorway behind me. “There’s a guy passed out in a room down the hall. I think it’s empty otherwise, but we need to get her out of here.”
“She’s out.”
Rob came over and did just what I had—he called her name, shook her a little, checked her pulse. Nothing but murmurs, moans, meaningless attempts at words.
“I’ll carry her,” he said.
I stood, watching Rob lift Katie in his arms. Her head lolled back, eyes opening slightly, showing just the whites.
“Get her stuff.” Rob negotiated the door sideways.
I grabbed Katie’s purse from next to the mattress and followed, warning Rob about the hole in the stairs, but he remembered.
“I’ll drive.” He slid Katie in my back seat. “You stay with her.”
It was easy to get back to the freeway and I sat with Katie’s head in my lap, trying not to cry, wanting to both hug and slap her simultaneously. Rob was on the phone, talking to Sarah, but I wasn’t listening.
I stroked Katie’s hair and thought about the sleepovers we’d had as kids, staying up and painting our nails and faces, practicing kissing our pillows. I thought about Katie the day we graduated from high school, a huge yellow smiley face pasted to the top of her mortarboard. I thought about all the Trouble concerts we’d been to. We’d both been super-fans, forever, but neither of us could have imagined those little rock and roll fantasies we’d dreamed of could possibly come true.
How had it come to this? Our dreams had turned to very real nightmares, with real world consequences.
“Shouldn’t we take her to a hospital?” I asked as Rob pulled up at my little yellow house.
I saw someone peering out my window and there was a Taurus—clearly a rental—parked in front of my house. Sarah, of course. This was the same Sarah who roomed with Tyler and Rob, the one who was attending UCLA. They were apparently on spring break too.
“No. She’ll be in rehab by tonight.” Rob opened the door and helped me out. I stepped back, watching while he carefully lifted Katie, shutting the car door with his hip before heading for the house.
Sarah opened the door for us. I barely registered her presence as Rob put Katie on my sofa and started telling Sarah to do things. Everything he asked for, she already had for him. Somehow, she knew the drill. I knelt beside the sofa and just watched, my heart caught in my throat, fighting angry tears.
“She’s going to be okay?” I finally asked.
Sarah rang out a cloth and put it on Katie’s forehead. Sarah, I noticed for the first time, was both young and beautiful. She had long, thick dark hair, dark eyes, a heart-shaped face, a little dimple in her chin. She was quite petite and maybe that’s why she looked so young, but I was betting she was years younger than us. She looked like she was barely out of high school. Why in the world had Rob asked her to do this?
“She will,” Sarah assured me, her voice soft. “This time.”
“She’s so out of it.” I frowned, not quite believing Sarah’s words. I was a cop’s daughter, which meant I knew a hell of a lot, but I’d been strangely sheltered and protected.
“She’s high.” Sarah gave me a sad little smile. “This is what a heroin high looks like.”
It didn’t make sense to me. If you were going to get “high,” shouldn’t it be fun? This didn’t look like any fun to me at all. Was that initial rush so amazing, so compelling, that it was worth passing out for hours afterward?
“Hope she’s enjoying it.” Rob glared. “Because if I have anything to say about it, it’s going to be her last.”
Katie moaned and thrashed, rolling to her back. Sarah moved to shift her back to her side, glancing at my puzzled look as she shoved a pillow behind her to keep it from happening again.
“She could vomit,” Sarah explained, covering Katie up to her shoulders with a blanket from the back of my couch. “And choke on it.”
“Nice.” I made a face, glancing at the bowl on the floor. They’d thought of everything. Sarah had done this before. She was quite a pro.
“Thank you,” I said, touching Sarah’s shoulder as she bent to adjust the pillow behind Katie’s back. “For what you’ve done, what you’re doing for Katie. You don’t even know her.”
“I know heroin. That’s all I need to know.” Sarah pulled my chair closer to the sofa and sat, looking up at me with sad, knowing eyes. “And it’s not over yet... but you’re welcome.”
“What do you mean?” I frowned. Katie was home, safe. She was coming down from this high, hadn’t overdosed. She would be okay. Wouldn’t she?
I felt Rob’s hand on my shoulder and glanced up at him as Sarah answered my question.
“We still have to get her to sign the admission papers, or she’ll just keeping doing this.”
I shook my head, looking at Katie’s inert form. I was determined to get her into rehab, to get her help, no matter what it took.
“She’ll sleep it off. It’s going to be a while. Sarah, keep an eye on Katie, would you?” Rob squeezed my shoulder as he bent to help me stand. I looked at Sarah, standing guard. She wasn’t going to leave her post.
“Sabrina, come with me.”
“What are you doing?” I protested as he pressed me down the hall and I twisted to try to see Katie, still passed out of the couch. I knew Sarah was there, and that was a comfort, but I wanted to be there too. She didn’t know Sarah, and Sarah didn’t know her, not like I did.
>
“I’m getting you into a bath.” Rob shut the bathroom door behind us, locking it.
“I don’t want a bath!” I cried, but he was already running the water and stripping me down. I continued to protest, but weakly, as he stripped down too and got into the tub, pulling me with him.
“We can’t both fit,” I complained, but I was wrong. We did fit. Just.
I couldn’t get my mind off Katie. Her body was out there on my couch, but she was gone, far away, flying above us all.
“Sabrina.” Rob whispered my name, wrapping his arms around me, the water warm, steam rising around us. It was vastly different from his big tub, but somehow it felt safer, womb-like, enveloping us both in comfort. “I love you so much. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t want this to happen.”
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against his chest, feeling the tears I’d been holding back start to fall. Some part of me wanted to blame him, but that wasn’t fair. Katie was a big girl. She’d made the decision to go along, she’d made the decision to follow Tyler down this rabbit hole. Just like I’d made the decision to stay home.
But what if I hadn’t? What if I’d gone on tour? Would I have been able to see the warning signs, to stop this?
A sob escaped my throat and Rob’s arms tightened around me, his lips moving against my ear, whispering words of comfort about it being okay, all right, over now, except it wasn’t and wouldn’t ever be, not ever.
“I love you,” I whispered back. It was all I could think of to say, the only truth I knew anymore.
And I did. I loved Rob, more than I could ever say.
But I loathed the world he lived in.
Chapter Seven
“She’s going to be okay, Sabrina,” Rob assured me.
Everyone kept saying that. Sarah said it before we put her on a plane back to California. Tyler said it when I talked to him on the phone, part of his fourth step, something about making amends. Rob had pleaded for me to take that call and I’d grudgingly agreed. Ultimately, I’d been glad. I’d been able to let Tyler have it, and he took it all, every word, and still apologized in the end. We’d both cried.
