Destiny my ass, Cristina thought but didn’t say.
She blinked back to the here and now, staring at the faces of Nikki and Claude.
“Get a load of her, will ya?” Claude said to Nikki. “Where’d you find this one, the old folks home?”
Cristina could see this was going to be quite the challenge.
29
Nikki ran her eyes up and down Cristina. “I’ve only known her a couple of days. She acts like she’s a…I don’t know, a fucking grandma or something.”
“You wearing grandma panties?” Claude laughed out loud.
It was time to go on the offensive. “Hello, fuckwads, I’m sitting right here. I want to have fun and all, I just don’t want to die in the process.”
Nikki snickered. “Just don’t be a prude bitch, will ya? That’s such a buzzkill.”
Cristina could have pointed out the fact that the seven others had already hightailed it back into San Antonio, and they hadn’t been labeled as prude bitches. They either had homework to get done or their parents had found out about their school-skipping escapade.
The air temperature had finally dipped below the century mark, but Nikki’s comments made her break out in a sweat. She almost chuckled at herself. It was easy to see she was still just seventeen. Perhaps when she got older, she wouldn’t be as quick to react to someone else’s words. But it wasn’t just that. She had put up with their shit all day, only to try to help Nikki, a girl who was lost and looking for…something. She had no clue.
And now Cristina sat just a few feet from some teenage tough guy who was mixing up a wicked brew of heroin. She knew she couldn’t just sit there and watch Nikki shoot up. And there was no way in hell she was going to stick a needle in her arm. She racked her brain trying to figure a way out of this mess without pissing off Claude to the point where he got physical. She could see he had it in him. Just beyond all of his joking and crass behavior, he had a switch. He’d crossed that line briefly when they were on the river. A girl wearing a revealing red, white, and blue bikini floated by in her tube. He was on her like flies on shit. In no more than thirty seconds, she pushed his tube away, called him a pervert, and threw a can of beer at his head. One of the other guys in their group proceeded to mock Claude. Cristina noticed how his jaw muscles had flinched a second before he jumped off his tube and punched the guy in the nose. Then they all drank more beer, and it was forgotten.
But not by her.
She’d already tried to send a text to Ivy, but the delivery failed. Not surprising, considering they were down in a canyon, about two miles east of Whispering Woods Trail. Only in Texas would there be a road called Whispering Woods Trail.
“Okay, just another minute for my brew to get to the right temperature.” Claude stirred the small kettle with a wooden spoon, part of a kit he kept in his backpack.
“You got any beer left? I’m not really in the shooting-up mood.”
Again, they turned their heads to Cristina.
“And I thought you liked to party,” Nikki said with disgust painted on her face.
Out of the corner of her eye, Cristina saw a flash of red cutting through the brush on the hill.
“Did you see that?” Claude jumped over the fire, bowing out his chest. But in the process, his flip-flop knocked over the small kettle, spilling the contents into the fire.
“Oh dammit, Claude, look what you just did.” Nikki draped an arm over her face in dramatic fashion, as if she’d just watched her dog get run over.
Claude ignored her for once, and Cristina moved up next to him. “You saw the same thing I did,” she said.
He shook his head while scratching what amounted to peach fuzz on his chin. “I’ve been hunting a few times in these hills, but I never saw anything red like that. It was red, right?”
She nodded, then looked back at Nikki, who was trying to use a spare beach towel to pluck the kettle from the fire. “Fuck!” She pulled her arm back. “I think I burned myself, Claude.”
He didn’t turn around. “I wish I’d brought my foster dad’s .45. That motherfucker will take down anything, especially with my aim.”
“What do you think it was?”
“Some animal that got a hold of a red towel, or maybe it was the way the sun hit the side of the hill. Could have been a deer or coyote. It’s probably gone by now. But we don’t want to be out here once it gets dark. No sir, not without my pistol.” He smacked his hand against his leg, flipped around on his heels, but Cristina kept an eye on the brush. She could have sworn whatever had moved looked human.
“Oh, fuck me,” Claude said, standing over the fire. “I gotta start the batch over. But it’s party time, and when it’s party time, you can’t just wish things to happen. You gotta make things happen.”
Nikki reached up gave Claude a fist bump. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
Cristina had to change the vibe, and quick.
“While we wait, how about that beer?” she said, opening the lid on the cooler.
“Sure, I’ll take one,” Claude said, sifting through his backpack. It appeared he had another heroin kit ready to go. He was a regular survivalist.
Nikki glanced at Claude, then said, “Okay, I guess.”
Cristina pulled out three cans of Miller Lite, handed one to Nikki and one to Claude.
“Set it down there. I’ll get to it.” His eyes narrowed, as he began to measure ingredients and mix them into another bowl.
“How long have you been in your foster home?” Cristina asked.
He kept his sights focused on the task while saying, “Too long. They’re not the worst in the world, but it kind of sucks being away from my brothers.” He lifted his eyes to Cristina, then wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. “Never thought I’d admit to missing those little shitheads.”
“How many brothers?”
“Three.”
“Are they with another family?”
“All four of us are with different families. Can you believe that crap?”
“Wow,” she said, taking a sip of her beer. It tasted awful, but the alternative—a syringe full of Brown Sugar—would be far worse. “I don’t live with my parents either.”
“Oh yeah?”
She blew out a breath, not really wanting to open up about her private life, but realizing it was necessary. “I ran away after one of my mom’s friends, uh, roughed me up. Then she comes waltzing back into my life a few months back and…well, let’s just say she’s about to do prison time for manslaughter.”
“You kidding me? My mom’s in prison right now. Maybe they can be roomies.” He rolled his eyes, stopped for a moment, and then tipped back his beer.
She turned to see Nikki with her knees pulled to her chest as she chugged her beer. “You guys have no idea how good you have it.”
Cristina feigned ignorance. “Yeah, it’s a blast living on the street, wondering where I’m going to spend the night, where my next meal might come from.”
Nikki looked up, tears pooling in her eyes. “My parents were killed. Fucking car crash. So I can’t wait for them to get out of prison. I can’t have any hope that they’ll turn their lives around. They’re just dead. Forever.” She began to sob, her shoulders bouncing.
Cristina walked over and rubbed Nikki’s back, but the sobbing continued as tears streamed down her face. Nikki’s pain was deep, from a place Cristina knew all too well. The kind of pain that made your bones ache; the kind that made you want to wither away into nothing. She didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. She just continued gently rubbing Nikki’s back, knowing it couldn’t mend a crushed heart. Nothing could.
Taking in a breath, she could feel Claude’s eyes on them. She wondered what he was thinking. Was there any way he was realizing that by supplying—actually, more like spoon-feeding—Nikki highly addictive drugs, he was making things worse? It wasn’t acting as a bandage to her pain, it was only creating deeper scars. If Nikki was hooked on this Brown Sugar, her curre
nt emotional train wreck would seem like a hiccup in comparison to the mental and physical torment she’d suffer while trying to overcome a heroin addiction. Cristina had seen it with her own mother.
A moment passed, and an owl hooted from a nearby tree. Nikki wiped her eyes. She looked spent, emotionally drained. Cristina knew Nikki couldn’t handle a dose of heroin. Who knew how her brain would respond to that shit flowing through her bloodstream? She had to get her away from Claude, away from the drugs.
“The sun’s setting. It’s getting late,” Cristina said, hoping that would signal to Claude to close up camp. Once they got back, she would need to share what she knew about Claude and his drug operation to Leo, Ivy, and most likely Stan too. Claude’s life would likely go through another change, and this one would be far more emotional and restrictive than being separated from his brothers. But maybe he’d get the chance to straighten out his life before he killed someone, or himself.
Four brothers, all living in different foster homes. The revelation hit her suddenly, almost taking her breath away. Could it be possible?
She heard the crunch of an empty can, and she quickly turned to see Claude flipping his empty over his shoulder. He’d downed the rest of his beer in mere seconds. His appetite for alcohol appeared unquenchable. And the diligence and planning he’d shown to prepare the Brown Sugar was disturbing.
“Seems like we’re all fucked up in some way,” he said, looking into the fire, two hands at his waist.
Nikki sniffled, her arms wrapped around her legs like a security blanket. She seemed lost in her thoughts.
Cristina stood up. “I can’t disagree with you, Claude. But I learned a while back that as long as we have hope, there’s still a reason to get up every day and give life another shot.” Where the hell had that profound statement come from? It had to be Ivy, although Cristina would never admit it to her.
“I should be grateful, actually,” he said, raising his eyes for a moment. Cristina noticed that the fire had grown in size. Shadows from the flames flickered on his chest, covered only by a thin tank top. His gene pool had been good to him. He had one of those physiques that made you look. He was solid, with that little dip in his arm under his deltoid. But it was what went on between the ears that made Cristina think he was a walking firecracker. He would blow up eventually. She only hoped that it wouldn’t be one of those epic endings to a fireworks show.
But what event or word would light his fuse? And would it be possible to escape the collateral damage?
Maybe there was a way out of this. They’d all chill out, hop back into his truck, drive back into the city. They could stop and pick up a burger, laugh a little bit at some of the day’s near-death experiences. Doing normal teenage things. She tried to encourage the positive mindset. “That’s cool. What about?” She couldn’t let on that she suspected he was the older brother of Billy and Drew.
“My two youngest brothers. They were kidnapped. Can you fucking believe it?”
Cristina pursed her lips and closed her eyes. Talk about a small world.
Nikki came out of her self-pity for a moment and put a hand to her mouth. “Are they okay?”
“Yeah, they’re good. Kind of unbelievable from what I was told. Usually, those types of things end up with the kid being killed or no one finds them for like ten or fifteen years, and then they just find a bunch of bones in the woods somewhere.” He glanced around. “A place like this. I can see some twisted fuck killing a kid and just dumping the body out here.”
Well, that turned dark quickly. “It’s cool that they’re safe though,” Cristina said. “You guys get to hang out much?”
“Not really. Gramps has been trying to get us to live with him. But my foster mom says he’s a drunk loser and doesn’t really care about anyone except himself.”
Cristina knew the grandfather had his demons, but from what Ivy had said, his one saving grace was that he loved his grandkids more than his own life. And that was worth something. The foster mom probably had an agenda: build herself up by cutting others down, in this case Claude’s one remaining family member who could take him away. But Claude wasn’t as innocent as the younger kids. Far from it. Why would the foster mom care about hanging on to him?
Oh wait. She knew. It was all about the money the foster parents received from the state.
“I know this person, and she was in seventeen foster homes,” Cristina said. “She might have had a couple of decent ones in there somewhere, but most were complete freaks.”
“Seventeen. Damn.” He turned his sights to the drug paraphernalia on the ground next to his backpack. “They think this one guy was behind both kidnappings. Some computer genius who somehow fooled everyone and ran off with a million bucks.”
“A million?”
He nodded, then looked off into the distance. “They were actually worried about me and my other brother, thinking they might come after us too.”
“Why?”
“Who the hell knows? But the kidnapper has the money, so no worries on that front.”
“Are your foster parents concerned?”
“Kind of. They told me to come straight home from school. My cell phone has been lighting up the last few hours. I finally just turned it off. They don’t understand that I gotta have my party time. It’s the only thing that keeps me going.”
He turned away for a moment, and Cristina could swear that he was wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.
Then he reached into his backpack and jumped back to the task of creating another batch of Brown Sugar. Nothing would alter his intended course. He was determined to cook up his magic batch and shoot himself up, taking Nikki with him. Cristina crouched down. “Nikki, I think we need to get out of here. What do you say?”
Nikki took in a long breath, wiped her nose, then looked up at Cristina. “I guess so,” she said, crinkling her eyes.
It sounded more like a question, but Cristina didn’t ask for clarification. She helped Nikki to her feet. Nikki took a single step, but her leg buckled, and she grabbed Cristina’s arm for support. She glanced up, gave Cristina a smile that appeared to actually increase her emotional pain the more her lips turned upward.
“Little Miss Nikkieee.” Claude held the last note of his singing jingle, sounding like the host of a toddler TV game show.
The girls looked at Claude. He held a syringe in one hand and a thin piece of rubber in the other.
“You want to go first, or do you want me to have the honors?”
Nikki took a hard swallow, her gaze not leaving Claude, or, more likely, what was contained in the needle.
“She’s not interested, Claude. Neither am I. It’s been a helluva day, and we’re beat. Let’s just head back to town and get some sleep.”
He splayed his arms as a wild look washed over his face. She thought he might stick himself, but he handled the needle like he’d used one often.
“We float down that shithole all afternoon, deal with the heat and bugs to get to this point, and now you want to just pack up and go home?” His voice went falsetto for a quick moment.
Cristina just stared at him, afraid any verbal response might ignite his fuse.
He stepped in their direction. “Come on, Nikki. It’s what we live for. You know it as much as me. It’s who we are, right?”
An energy seemed to flow through Nikki, her face more alive. She let go of Cristina’s arm, her eyes following the syringe like she was some type of trained animal.
Crap.
“Nikki.” Cristina got in her face. “This doesn’t have to be you. Do you hear me? You need to talk to someone. Someone who can help you get through your problems.”
“What are you talking about?” Nikki brought her hands to her face. “This is just insane. I don’t even know you, and here I am letting you make decisions for me. What was I thinking?” She brushed by Cristina and walked over to Claude.
“Welcome back, Nikki.” Claude grinned. He looked over her shoulder at Cristina. “Just to
let you know that I’m still cool, I’m willing to look past you trying to brainwash Nikki here, and I’ll let you take a pump of Brown Sugar. What do you say?”
“Brainwashing. That’s what she was doing all right.” Nikki seemed eager to say anything to deflect the attention off her issues.
“This isn’t right, Nikki, and you know it.” Cristina’s voice bounced off the hills, her eyes boring into Nikki’s. Nikki looked away, refusing to give even a hint of changing her position.
Claude set the needle on a stone, then used the piece of rubber to tie off Nikki’s arm. “Damn, you’re antsy. Stop moving so much.”
Nikki couldn’t contain her excitement for what she was about to experience. And that made Cristina sick to her stomach.
“It’s not too late, Cristina.” Claude double-clutched his eyebrows. “I could set you up, and you girls could blast away at the same time. And after, if you’re up for it, maybe the three of us could…you know.”
Cristina pulled her chin in and scowled. Was he suggesting…? Her vision began to blur at the edges she was so pissed.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “You look like you might shoot daggers into me. I’m chill. Are you chill?”
With her mind racing on what she could do—and should do—she blinked. Her eyes found the syringe. She didn’t ponder the risk; she only took action. She dove on the ground, reaching for the needle.
“What the hell, bitch?” Claude moved so quickly he slipped. His elbow slammed into a rock. It sounded like the crack of an egg. He moaned, but still managed to reach his good hand, taking hold of Cristina’s ankle just as she gripped the syringe.
She tried to kick his hand off, but it felt like a shackle had been attached to her ankle.
“Who do you think you are?” It had taken a moment, but Nikki suddenly caught on and began to scratch and claw at Cristina’s face. “Give me that damn syringe. Now!”
Cristina tried to fend off Nikki with one arm while stretching her opposite hand above her head. “No, Nikki. You’re not going to poison your body. You could kill yourself.”
The Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 4-6: Redemption Thriller Series 10-12 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set) Page 15
