I shift Abby in my arms as she’s dead weight. Dead weight. Fury and fear collide in my chest. “Someone call 911. Tell them she’s shot.”
They stand there, staring, understanding from the sirens that police are on their way, but I need them here. Right here. Right now.
“Now!” I scream with so much force that the word scrapes my throat.
People react then. On their phones. Falling out into the streets. Throwing their hands in the air, waving down the cops.
I drop to my knees. One arm hugs her tight. The other brushing the brown strands covering her face. Blood’s smeared over her cheeks. My gut cramps and twists. “Abby? Abby, please.”
I can’t lose her. I can’t.
Nothing. Silence and it kills me. I search for her pulse point and there’s blood. Too much blood and it’s pouring from her back, from her front. She’s been shot. They shot her. Rage rumbles through me and I kiss her forehead, not sure how so much wrath and terror and grief can exist at once.
“LMPD!” Their shouts are echoed, but still too far away.
“Here!” I shout. “She’s right here!”
I lower my head to Abby’s. My forehead touching her temple and I count her slowing heartbeats under my touch. “Breathe, Abby. Please breathe.”
Breathe. I suck in each breath as if it’s hers. Will her to stay with me as if I could force her soul to stay grounded.
“I don’t want to lose you. Please don’t make me lose you.”
I understand fear. Have tasted it too many times in my life and the worst type of fear is when the consequences of actions can never be undone. It’s the permanent type that can never be taken back.
“Just breathe.”
Abby
I’m drowning. Sound is muffled. So is emotion. My eyes flicker open, but there’s bright lights and people yelling. And pain. Pain in my back. Pain in my chest. Pain on my head. Pain that is blinding.
“Don’t struggle.” She has blond hair. Hovers over me. An angel in a blue shirt.
I swallow and choke. Fear rips through my body. I can’t breathe. There’s something in my mouth, down my throat. My hands shoot forward, over my mouth and my arms are caught and forced down.
“Abby! We’re helping you.” The angel appears in my line of sight again. “You have a tube down your throat. To help you to breathe. I need you to stay calm.”
I’m shaking my head. No, I’m shaking. My legs thrash. Dad. I want my dad. I’m scared. Tears burn my eyes. I want my dad. I want my... Thoughts jumble and crash and then they slow. Too slow. Logan. Stars. My father. The night sky. Warmth on my skin. The heat of night.
Then there’s a voice. It’s a calm voice. A reassuring voice.
Breathe...
Logan
There’s blood on my hands.
Blood.
Abby’s blood.
I’m trembling. My blood sugar’s low or high or I don’t know. There’s nurses and doctors and people all around. I slam my hands on the desk. “I don’t give a rat’s ass I’m not blood-related. Her friends are her family so tell me how she is!”
“If you don’t sit down, I’m calling security,” the woman behind the desk bellows.
A body sliding in front of me, a hand on my arm, and I jerk as I’m being pulled away. Isaiah’s best friend, Noah, has his back to me and is talking to the receptionist. “He’s calm. We got this. No need to bring in security.”
I called them. I called Isaiah. I said words. Words I don’t remember and Isaiah said he would be there. To hang tight. To not say a thing to anyone until he reached me.
Isaiah consumes my vision. His hand is the one clamped on my bicep. “Come with me. Now.” He turns me and I walk.
I glance over my shoulder and West is sauntering up to the counter. He flashes his cover-model smile and in his hand is folded cash. West’s a Young, son of the richest man in the state, and he’ll pay for the answers.
Isaiah grips my neck, forcing my attention forward, and Noah’s on my other side. It’s like I’m on a countdown and I don’t know what happens when the clock hits zero.
“Just keep walking, Logan.” Isaiah’s too damn calm. “We got you. Keep walking.”
I called Isaiah from my truck. The police took me there after my blood sugar tanked.
Police showed. They yanked me back from Abby. They tried to ask questions, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Abby. EMS showed. They worked on Abby. My blood sugar tanked. The police officer freaked. I dropped the bomb I was diabetic and had what I needed in my truck, telling him I didn’t want the paramedics’ focus off of Abby.
He drove me there, but only after I watched them load Abby into the ambulance. The police officer wanted to call my parents, but I told him no. I’m eighteen. Had to prove it with my driver’s license. Eighteen.
Mom held me back in school, kept me from starting kindergarten when I should have. I’m eighteen. Older. Should be wiser.
Abby’s seventeen. She’s seventeen and a bullet tore through her body. A bullet I couldn’t stop. I have no idea if Abby has family to call.
Isaiah opens the door to a one-room bathroom, only releasing his grip once we’re in. Noah locks the door behind him. Isaiah snatches paper towel after paper towel out of the dispenser and Noah waves his hand near the motion sensor on the sink. I ignore the mirror as I wash my hands. Red runs down the drain and my lungs constrict.
Abby was shot, there was a gaping wound on her head and her blood is on my hands. I grab hold of the sink and lean over. Nausea races through me and I turn my head to suck in air.
Isaiah and Noah remain silent. Permit me the moment to get my shit together. I continue to breathe in and out. Just like I begged Abby to do. Just like when I tried to breathe for her. When I straighten, I find Noah leaning against the door and Isaiah next to me, offering the paper towels.
I take them, then wipe my face. “She wasn’t breathing right. Would take a breath then stop. Then breathe again.”
“She quit breathing at any point?” Noah asks.
I shake my head no, then needing the support, collapse against the cinder block wall. “Abby called. I was at the truck. I told her to stay put, but she didn’t. She knew they were coming. She told me things.”
An address. Directions of what to do. Isaiah. She said if I ran out of money to involve Isaiah. My thoughts don’t have a start. Don’t have a stop. “I went into the alley for Abby and there was a shot.” I didn’t get to her fast enough. I failed. “There were footsteps so I went against the wall. I hid.”
“You did right,” Noah says. “Did you get a good look at any of them?”
I scrub both hands over my face. I’ve tripped down a dark, deep hole.
“Logan,” Isaiah pushes in a low voice.
My arms drop to my sides. “Yeah. The guy who shot Abby. I saw him. And another guy. He went into the alley before I did, but he said he was with her. He took Abby’s phone, walked me to the street and disappeared.”
Isaiah and Noah share a long look then Isaiah tips his head to the door. “One of us needs to be in the dark and stay clear of problems. To protect what’s ours if it bleeds into our lives.”
Noah stares straight into my eyes. “I’m right outside.”
I nod to Noah and he leaves. Isaiah’s gray eyes search mine. “The guy you found hovering over Abby—was he our height? Midtwenties. Cold son-of-a-bitch.”
“Yeah. He could have shot me, but he didn’t.”
Isaiah rubs the tiger tattooed up his arm. “Because he needed you to get Abby out without him being involved, otherwise he would have. His name is Linus and he’s high up the food chain. You see him again, run in the opposite direction. It’s a problem he knows who you are and he’s not going to like you were a witness.”
“He w
as watching us at the bar.”
A muscle in Isaiah’s jaw jumps. If Isaiah knows his name, then he and Linus are aware of each other, and Isaiah’s real protective when it comes to keeping Rachel away from his days on the street. Isaiah has a legit job working on custom cars and he busted his ass to reach this point in his life.
“He asked if I saw who shot Abby and I told him no.”
“Good call. I’ll ask around. See if any of our names pop up. Did the person that shot Abby see you?”
“His instincts said I was there, but the two other guys he was with were on the move so he left.”
“What did he look like?”
“My height, leaner than me, jeans, winter hat on his head. It was shadowed so I can’t give too much description, but if I see him again, I’d know him.”
“What did you say to the cops?”
Exactly what Linus had told me to say. “That me and Abby were on a date, we got separated, she called me scared from the alley, that I went after her...” That’s when my blood sugar tanked and they stopped asking questions.
“They didn’t ask if you saw anything?”
“Things were bad. If I talk to the cops again maybe I could work with one of those sketch artists—”
“You’re going to need to be careful with that,” Isaiah cuts me off.
“What?”
“Talking to the cops—make sure you watch what you say.”
Pure anger pumps into my bloodstream. “Abby’s lying on some table bleeding and you’re concerned about what I say to the cops?”
“She’s a drug dealer, Logan. You say the wrong thing, she’ll be the one in handcuffs, not the guy who shot her. She’s not innocent. Who she is, what she was doing, why she was there... You bring up Linus and you might as well be the one who locks her cell. Whatever story you tell, keep it simple, keep it straight, and make sure you tell Abby and you two tell the same story over and over again.”
“Abby wants more than this life,” I say, and I’m not sure why. “Maybe she’ll talk to the police and cut some sort of deal.”
Isaiah pulls on his earring and he sucks in a breath like he’s trying to keep his ass from plowing into me. “Abby doesn’t know normal. Drug dealing—that’s her life.”
“You don’t know that.” My posture straightens, acting as if he’s the one attacking her. “None of us, not even you, know what’s going on behind the closed curtain.”
Isaiah reads my body language and pushes off the wall, his muscles tightening like we’re about to go to war. “Her father’s a drug dealer serving a life sentence in a prison downstate. Does that sound real enough for you? Want to know how I know? I’ve driven her there for family visitation weekend...twice. Abby doesn’t have a mother. Abby doesn’t have a father. Abby has Abby. We became friends because we understood each other. She fed me when she had extra food when I was in a bad foster home and I had her back when she wasn’t strong enough to handle herself on the streets.
“We used each other to survive, and in order to survive, Abby became what she understood. She’s a dealer. Abby won’t walk away from this life—it’s in her blood. What you see when she’s flirting with you, when she’s laughing with Rachel, it’s a part in a play. Abby’s pretending, she’s lying, and I’ve let the game go on too long with all of you. The real Abby would scare the shit out of you.”
“So that’s it? Abby’s a dealer?” Her voice circles in my brain. What? Am I not worthy of her friendship? Of yours? “She’s dirt and you’ve washed your hands of her? I thought you were a better man than that. A better friend.”
Isaiah closes the distance between us and I brace myself for impact. “You better shut the fuck up, Logan. You’re my friend, but I love her like she’s my sister. I’m protecting Abby the only way I know how. You say the wrong thing, she goes to jail. If the police act on what you say and her employer thinks she’s the one that snitched, her throat will be slit by sunrise. This ain’t your world. It’s her world and there’s a different set of rules.”
I whip away from Isaiah, searching for something to hit, someone to blame, circling the tiny room and it grows smaller with each pass. “So I keep my mouth shut? I refuse to talk to the police?”
“You can talk,” says Isaiah, “but you only offer what will help them find the bastard that shot Abby, but if they start asking about drugs...you gotta make a choice and that choice is between obeying the law and living in Abby’s world. I’m telling you to be careful. It’s a slippery slope and once you start down Abby’s path, it’s easy as fuck to trip and fall.”
I kick at the trash can. “I want to protect her.”
“So do I.” Isaiah jams his hands into his pockets. “But you can’t protect someone who decides to play with live explosives. If you want me to be honest, I’d be impressed if the cops find who did it. If this is a war between Abby’s employer and Eric, odds are it’ll be taken care of internally.”
“Eric.” I spit out his name. Isaiah and Rachel had problems with him last winter. I helped the two of them out as much as I could, but an accident laid me up for a few weeks.
“You don’t want to hear this,” says Isaiah. “But Abby’s not going to leave this life.”
“Bullets change things.”
Isaiah shakes his head like I’m a kid not understanding simple addition. “Not for Abby. What reason does Abby have to sell drugs? Her dad’s gone and he’s not coming back. She never had a mom. She had a grandmother who died a few years back. Abby’s got no ties to drugs, yet she chooses this life.”
I run a hand through my hair and I stop pacing as I realize how exhausted I am. “Maybe she does it for money.”
Isaiah shrugs. “Could. I already told you everything I know on Abby. Beyond that, she’s a blank page.”
Could. “Who does she live with? Where does she live?”
“I don’t know. Abby doesn’t like sharing, not even with me.” His mouth firms up like he’s weighing his words, then starts again. “We all have choices. I hated foster care. Ended up in some homes and group homes that would make a serial killer shudder. At any time, I could have left. Ran away. Made the choices Abby’s making, but I didn’t. I stuck it out because there are devils even I don’t want to meet.”
Abby and I play. We play and I asked her to leave with me earlier, and she didn’t. We could have been in Bullitt County by now. We could be miles from here and from pain.
But she didn’t leave with me when I first asked and tonight I could have gotten killed over a girl who chose selling drugs over me. “What are you saying that I’m not hearing?”
Isaiah’s head falls back and hits the wall. He stares at the ceiling like it has the answer. “I’m saying you’ve seen too much. You know too much. You’re a good guy that doesn’t mind coloring outside the lines, but you’ve stumbled into areas that are off your page. You need to decide if not being fully honest to the police—lying—is that your thing?”
Drugs aren’t my thing. Yeah, I know people who’ve smoked pot a few times. They aren’t evil—just guys searching for a good time, just like my need for an adrenaline rush. I can’t smoke—can’t drink—it would mess with my blood sugar and I’ve got enough problems there without adding more. But selling? Getting shot at? There’s a difference between crazy and wrong.
“I’m saying,” Isaiah continues, “You need to figure out what you can live with. Each man has his own code—molded and decided by him. I know mine. So does Noah. West recently discovered his. You’re strong, Logan—mentally, physically. Can handle more than most. It’s why you hang so easily with us—but this is critical mass. Can you care about someone, protect someone, lie for someone who’s moral code stands in the face of what you believe?”
My temples pound like Isaiah just pulled the rug out from underneath me and I banged my skull against the floor. “When did you b
ecome a shrink?”
A slight tilt of his lips, but it fades. “I lived life on the streets and I’m pulling myself out. Once I’m completely out, I don’t plan on going back.”
“You and Noah rose above the streets,” I say. “Abby can, too.”
“Noah and I never went down the path that Abby was born in.” He hesitates. “Here’s the truth. If Abby isn’t willing to walk in your direction then maybe you should walk away and you should do it starting now.”
A lethal snake slithers through my veins. “Are you telling me to leave?”
Conversation—for me and Isaiah—doesn’t happen. Neither of us says a lot. Only talk when we have something worth saying and it makes me on edge that he’s pushing me so hard.
“Why stay? You don’t know Abby and she will never let you in.”
“You stick around.”
Isaiah lifts his head and stares straight into my eyes. “I owe her and it’s the type of debt I can never repay. I care for her, but she and I understand my boundaries. I can show up at a hospital, I can listen when she needs to talk, but even I know she can’t be saved and because of the choices she makes, she knows I won’t try. I don’t believe in suicide missions and that’s what Abby is. I’m glad you went after her in the alley, and I will owe you for that, but because we’re friends, I can’t watch you drive a car over a broken bridge without waving a red flag.”
My head spins and I end up where I started, crashed against the wall opposite of Isaiah.
“I’m not doing this because it’s fun,” he says. “I’m doing this because I like you. Let’s cut the bullshit. You’re into her and she’s into you—more than friends. Ask yourself, do you want to be with the person who deals drugs for a living? Do you want to be with the person who gets shot for doing their job? Do you want to be with the person who puts the people they care about in danger in return? I’m not busting your balls. If you can take that shit without flinching then I’ll be the best man at your wedding, but if you can’t, that’s fine, too.”