Page 19 of Patch

Surge caught me before I got inside. He pushed his glasses up into his hair when he saw my face.

“The shooters are still nobody,” he said. “Vehicle’s clean. Rear plate off, front plate mudded. Two men, dark clothes, no colors. That’s not a couple of local shitheads, Patch. That’s professional.”

“Professional over a pallet of antibiotics.”

“That’s the part that’s been bothering me since four this morning.” He tucked the laptop under his arm. “I’ve been watching that Rolla account since spring because the volume was wrong. I figured somebody there was skimming and selling cheap on the side, which is why I let Freak buy off it. Cheap and stupid, not cheap and dangerous.”

“And now?”

“Now I’ve run it out past Rolla.” He shook his head. “It isn’t one crooked clerk. Antibiotics moving through counties with no outbreak. Pain management hitting little independent pharmacies at ten times what the population can account for. Anesthesia going to feed stores. Somebody built a whole distribution arm out of the same paperwork Freak was using to save us four hundred dollars, and Freak walked into the middle of it on a Friday night with a truck and no backup.”

“Where?”

“Arkansas, Tennessee, north Mississippi. Rural clinics, independent pharmacies, routes that dodge every weigh station on the interstate. Somebody’s been careful a long damn time.”

“Names?”

“Not yet.”

“Keep pulling.”

“Already am.”

He turned, and I let him go. Surge stopped talking the second the information changed hands. Always had.

Inside, the common room was half empty. Fire pit going somewhere out back, woodsmoke coming through the windows. Leo behind the bar pulling a draft.

I took the far end and set the folder on the stool beside me.

“You want something?” Leo asked.

“No.”

“Okay.” Leo wiped the bar in front of me that didn’t need wiping. “It’s just you came in and sat down and didn’t order anything. Which for most people, means they want something and for you it means…” He stopped. “Never mind.”

“Leo.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir.”

“Right.” He paused for half a beat. “Is Freak going to be all right? Nobody tells me anything.”

“He’s going to be fine.”

“Everybody keeps saying that in a voice like he isn’t.”

“He’s going to be a pain in the ass about it for six weeks, and then he’s going to be fine.”

Leo grinned and went back to his draft, and I sat there with a manila folder I didn’t open for another hour. When I finally did, it was exactly what he’d said. Addresses. Numbers.

I closed it and put it in my cut.

She was mine.

* * *

Monday evening I got Freak into the truck, which took twenty minutes and most of my patience.