“The car. We were so caught up in everything-”
“Slow down. What are you talking about?”
“He was there to sell drugs, right? But he wasn’t carrying anything.” He cocked his head. “So where would they be?”
She felt a moment of panic, then a cool revelation. “In his-”
“Car. Exactly.” He ran his hands up through his hair, slicked it back. “I think maybe we better take a look before we get it stolen, eh?”
“ALL RIGHT. Just look normal, like this is our car.”
“It is our car.”
Her morbid joke surprised him, and he laughed through his nose, then opened the door of the Eldorado.
The seats were leather, and the interior spotless. How did people do that? He never meant for his Honda to look like a rolling junk heap, filled with printed directions and crushed soda cans and a tattered map. It just sort of happened.
“Anything in the glove box?”
She opened it, dug around. “Owner’s manual, sunglasses. Registration.”
“Let me see.”
The name on the form was David Crooch. As he stared at it, the letters machine-printed, he had a weird sensation, guilt and fear mixed together. David Crooch. That was the name of the man he had-
Push it down.
He folded the paper, stuck it in his pocket. It was getting easier and easier to ignore the things that tried to claim him. Mitch spun, looked in the backseat. An umbrella on the floor. Other than that, nothing. “Let’s try the trunk.”
A milk crate with emergency supplies: a bottle of tire-repair spray, a coil of rope, and a blanket. A lug wrench. And a black duffel bag, about the size to take to the gym. He’d gone his whole life without giving two thoughts to duffel bags, and now they were popping up everywhere. He started to unzip it.
“Maybe we should do this subtly?” She nodded to a mother pushing a stroller past them.
“Right.” He hoisted it to his shoulder. It was neither heavy nor light, and something plastic clanked inside it. Mitch shut the trunk, and the two of them climbed back into the Cadillac. The silence that fell seemed to radiate from the bag.
“Let’s see what a quarter-million dollars in drugs looks like.” He unzipped the bag and split it open.
Inside were four bottles. He reached in, pulled one out. It was rigid plastic and felt like it might crack if dropped. It was filled with a thick, dark liquid. He passed it to her, took out another. The same. Mitch fumbled around in the bag, but that was it, just the four bottles. “Huh.”
“What is it?” She leaned toward the window, holding it toward the sunlight. “Looks like motor oil.”
“Liquid heroin? Some kind of designer drug?”
“What was that club drug that was really big a couple of years ago? One of the alphabet drugs, not E or K.”
“K is ketamine. Horse tranquilizer. I don’t think it’s a liquid.”
“G, that was it. GHB? Something like that. I remember reading an article that said it was the new roofie.” She rolled the bottle, and the liquid inside moved sluggishly, leaving a trail around the side. “But it doesn’t seem like there’s enough here to be worth that much.”
“Maybe it’s something they use to process drugs?” He unscrewed the top of one bottle. Cautiously, he leaned forward and took an experimental sniff. It had a sharp chemical odor, nothing he recognized. He held it out to her, and she took a tentative whiff. “Any idea-”
Something exploded behind his eyeballs. The pain was sudden and fierce, a slamming migraine that made him clench the armrest. He fought to keep the bottle from slipping from shaking hands. The pain spread, sending tendrils down his neck, his shoulders. His muscles seemed to be tensing, fighting against themselves.
“Shit!” Jenn had her hand to her face, covering her eyes, fingers white. “Shit, oh shit.”
Whatever it was, it was bad. He reached for the top he’d tossed on the dashboard, the sunlight painting his arm in a glowing haze. Scraps of rusty metal tore through the tender meat of his brain. Jenn moaned, the sounds muffled by her fingers.
He concentrated on fumbling for the lid, trying not to breathe. His fingers trembled as Mitch forced himself to take hold of the plastic. He wanted to rush, to jam it down and run away, but whatever this shit was, he didn’t dare spill it. He slotted the lid on carefully and turned until it stopped, then gripped the bottle and gave it a last crank hard enough his forearms jumped.
“Got it. Get out!” Without waiting for her, he opened the driver’s-side door. The fresh air seemed to cut his nostrils. “Come on.”
“What?”
“Come on.” He hurried around the side of the car, slid an arm under her shoulders, began to half support, half drag her along. The block seemed endless, the sunlight sparkling in shards, the world gone watery. They passed a woman who said something concerned, but he ignored her, just hurried along.
“Where-”
“Hurry.”
They stumbled across the intersection, a horn shrieking as a cab passed. He couldn’t tell how much of what he was experiencing was from the drug and how much from the pain, whether his vision was blurry because his pupils had dilated or because he was squinting so hard. It didn’t matter. All that mattered now was getting back.
When they reached her porch, it took more effort than he would have expected to haul his legs up the stairs, the muscles strangely tight and unresponsive. His lungs felt like something was squeezing them. She fumbled with her keys, finally popped the dead bolt.
“We need to wash.” He started for the sink, thought better of it. Pulling her with him, he headed through the bedroom and into her bath. He twisted the water to hot and started to strip off his clothing.
“I can’t.” She clenched her teeth, her hands fumbling behind her back. “My fingers.”
Mitch spun her around and undid the clasp of her bra, yanked her skirt and panties down. Then he opened the shower door and stepped in, held out a hand to help her. They got under the water, the two of them huddling close. A week ago he’d have cut off a finger for this kind of situation, but now he had no thought at all for her nudity. “Soap.” He cursed, fumbling through her stuff. Grabbed the same bottle of coconut crap he’d found before, squirted it into her hands and then his. He lathered hard and scrubbed his hands and face, alternating turns under the water with her.
It might have been the water or the soap or just time, but slowly, very slowly, the muscles in his back and shoulders began to relax. The headache didn’t go away, but at least it stopped getting worse. He let out a long breath. “Are you OK?”
She looked up at him. “Is that a trick question?’
“WE SHOULD GET RID OF IT.”
“How?” They sat at opposite ends of her couch, him back in his robbery clothes, her in a soft bathrobe, knees tucked to her chin. “I don’t think we should just throw it in the garbage.”
“Why not? I mean, whatever it is, it will end up at the dump. Kill some seagulls. Big deal.”
“Maybe someone will get into it first. Maybe a kid.”
She bit her thumbnail. With her hair damp and the robe, the gesture made her look like a little girl, and he had the strongest urge to move to her, wrap his arms around her shoulders.
“Besides,” he said, “this is what Johnny was buying. If something does go wrong-”
“You said it wouldn’t.”
“I don’t think it will. But if it does, this could be valuable. It must be some sort of concentrated chemical. Something for processing serious quantities of drugs.”
“It looked so normal.”
She was right. He could still see them in his mind’s eye, the bottles ordinary, the liquid like thick, strong coffee.
Very damn strong. “We need to hang on to it, at least for a while. If everything goes as planned, we can figure out a safe way to get rid of it then. Maybe, I don’t know, put it in a box, pour concrete around it.”