“You don’t fucking get it, do you?” he whispers just as harshly to me, his face turning red.
“I guess I don’t.”
“Why do you think I’m here? I was hooked on Sweet, still am. A nurse smuggles it to me, and I pay her big bucks to keep her mouth shut.”
“What?You’re taking up valuable space in a facility that could be helping someone who truly wants to be helped. What the actual fuck?” I’m so angry he disappears, and all I can see is red.
“Protection,” he says simply. “They can’t hurt me in here.”
“Who’s they?” I ask, though by now I should have known.
“Everett and Stevie. You’re a fucking idiot. When I was working for Mercer, I was so hooked, it was all I could think about. The sweet taste, the high. It was on my mind twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I drooled for it. Couldn’t sleep for wanting it. Stevie told Declan Everett who the dealer was I bought it from, and he offered me a deal. More Sweet, as much as I wanted, if I could stop the hotel from going up. That’s it. That’s all I had to do. We worked on that hotel for months before I could come up with a plan. Throw Tony Kelly under the bus, sure. Why the hell not? And it worked. Too well. I never meant to kill anyone. I never meant to hurt Mercer. Everett, though, he was happier than a pig in shit how all that went down. The score he had Stevie give me was so big, I was out of it for weeks. My wife left me, my kids don’t talk to me anymore. We lost the mortgage to the house. I was high and homeless.”
He stops and breathes, and his hands tremble on the table. They’re shaking as badly as mine are.
“Then if you’re best buddies, why are you in here hiding?”
“I told him I wanted out, but he said I was too useful, that one day Mercer would start the project up again, and he was going to use me to keep that from happening. So I hid. Checked myself in here.”
I scoff. “This won’t last much longer.”
“It’s bought me some time.”
“You really did give Tony the wrong manual, made him adjust the crane with the wrong counterweight.” I want to hear him say it.
“You bet, and it fucking worked better than I dreamed. I disabled the warning system in the crane cab myself. Easy. Tony’s too trusting, like you are. You shouldn’t have come back to the city, Miss Scott.”
“This is exactly what I came here for,” I say, standing and jamming my arms through my coat’s sleeves. “Maybe prison will sober you up.”
Neil laughs, and it twists his mouth into an ugly grimace. “You’re trapped, just like I am.”
I pick up my purse from the floor. “You’re wrong.”
“Am I? Who do you think I called when Tessa told me the notorious, the fuckinggreat,Devyn Scott was here to see me? Do you want to guess,sweetheart?”
Slowly, I back away from his leering grin. He could be bluffing, but I don’t think he is. Staying on Stevie’s good side is more important than keeping himself hidden. I turn and hurry from the visiting room, and I automatically head for the front doors before I skid to a stop. It’s the door most likely for me to use, and they’ll be watching for me to come out. I reach for my phone, but I change my mind. If Talia knows I’m trapped inside, she and Mack will want to help me.
That will only draw attention to them, and I can’t have Talia anywhere near this mess.
No, Neil’s right. I fucked up. I should never have talked to him alone.
I find a side door marked for staff and hurry through it, hoping Stevie hasn’t had enough time to find me, but I’m stupid as well as naïve. She never does her own dirty work. She won’t be the one to pick me up, and it’s not. Two of her thugs dressed in suits, their guns bulging under their coats, block me between them.
Trying to run would be futile.
One traps my arms behind my back so forcefully he threatens to rip them from their sockets while the other jams a syringe into the side of my neck.
The last thing that flutters through my mind is Rick’s face, and the last thing on my lips is a prayer that Talia will be okay without me.