Diversion 2 - Collusion (11 page)

Dark rings under Bo’s eyes spoke of exhaustion, but he appeared so peaceful. Lucky held him a few moments, memorizing the feel of the man in his arms. What he wouldn’t give to erase the worries plaguingBo’s mind.
Bladder pressure built. Lucky ignored it, settling on his side and bringing Bo against his chest. His bladder twinged again. Lucky shifted to a more comfortable position. Once more and…
All right already!
The chill of the bedroom provided an unwelcome contrast to the lump of warmth lying in bed. Lucky tossed a wistful gaze over his shoulder while padding to the bathroom.
While washing his hands, he stared at his reflection in the mirror. “You think you got all the damned answers,” he snapped. “What now, huh?”
He returned to the bed and wiped down Bo with a damp washcloth. Bo shivered. Lucky tucked him under the covers and settled on the side of the bed.
Something was very, very wrong here. Normally a ball of energy, now Bo resembled an extra for a zombie movie. Lucky lifted one eyelid. Bo let out a
Hnnnn
and jerked away. His pupils didn’t appear dilated or contracted, yet he lied about his whereabouts, seemed unconcerned with his appearance, and could spin his moods on a dime. Burnout? Addiction? They shared some of the same symptoms. And how did Bo’s combat-induced PTSD figure into the equation? Lucky snorted. Hell, if he’d been through half of what Bo had, he’d depend on chemicals, too.
You’re not helping here, Lucky.
Yeah, right.
On the one hand, he owed it to Bo to do everything in his power to help him. On the other hand, although he’d satisfied his legal obligation to Walter, paying back a moral debt meant he couldn’t keep secrets. His assignment, his career, and newfound self-worth all screamed at him to do the right thing. But what was the right thing? How in the hell could he ask, “Hey, you getting stoned?” without earning more “suspicious asshole” points.
Whatever the solution, it wasn’t likely to magically appear in the next few minutes. Lucky turned off the light and settled in beside Bo, clinging to his lover, for however long he kept the title.

Thwack!
What the fuck?
Thwack!
An arm smacked against Lucky’s head. He grabbed Bo’s arm before it connected again. “Bo! Bo! Wake up!”

Bo bolted upright. He blinked, eyes vacant until he woke enough to focus. “Oh my God! What time is it?”
Lucky aimed a blurry gaze at the clock. “Four thirty. Go back to sleep. We’ve got plenty of time.”
“No, we don’t!” Bo flipped on the light and jumped out of bed. He scrambled into his clothes, mismatching the buttons on his shirt.
“What are you talking about?” Lucky rubbed the side of his head.
That’ll leave a knot.
“You don’t have to be at work until nine. I can take you later, or you can call a cab.”
“You don’t understand! I have to be in the pharmacy before six.” Bo hopped up and down, wriggling into his pants.
Lucky shot to his feet. “You’re right, I don’t understand, and you’re not leaving this room until I do.” He dodged around Bo to block the exit. Stark naked and only five foot six against Bo’s six feet, he probably didn’t appear intimidating, but come hell or high water, Bo wasn’t leaving until he’d explained a few things.
“The drugs, Lucky! I gotta go get the drugs ready.”
Lucky caught Bo’s arm, hauling him back to the bed. “Sit!” He aimed a glare and a finger.
“I don’t have time…”
“I said, sit, damn it!”
Bo sat. “Don’t talk to me like a dog. And my name isn’t Damn It!”
Lucky wasn’t about to waste time with petty bickering. “For days now you’ve been staying late at the hospital, even lying— lying to
me—
about where you were. Now if you’ve had some kind of relapse, or are in some kind of trouble, I want to help you. But first, you gotta come clean. Why do you need to go to the pharmacy? Your office isn’t anywhere near there.”
“But I
am
a pharmacist.”
This was too important to let Bo off with a half-assed excuse. “Not anymore. You work for Walter Smith, and you do whatever the hell he tells you to keep from breaking whatever the hell agreement you’ve got going with him.”
“I’m not violating my probation.”
Lucky gripped Bo’s shoulders, holding him still when he tried to rise. “Then tell me what’s going on. Have you given in to temptation?”
Bo shrugged Lucky’s hands away. “Is that what you think? That I’d take medicine from those kids who so badly need it? Do you think I’d stoop that low?”
Stubbornly holding his ground, Lucky shot back, “Addiction blurs the lines between good people and bad behavior. While I don’t want to believe you’d do such a thing—”
They stared each other down. Bo glanced away first, bravado deflating under the force of a harsh exhale. He dragged his fingers through his already disheveled hair. “No, I wouldn’t, but I understand why you might think so. I guess I should have told you already, but I thought you might try to stop me, tell me it’s not my fight.”
Lucky tensed. He wasn’t going to like what came next, he’d lay money on it. “What’s not your fight?”
Bo collapsed in on himself, sitting stoop-shouldered on the bed. “You realize how short the center is on meds, right?”
“Yes.”
“And the hospital refuses to let us buy from the gray market?”
“Yes.” That wasn’t news.
“We…a few other pharmacists and I, have been working after hours, scrounging to get enough doses to go around. If we can’t get prefills, we buy liquid if we can and load the syringes in-house. We’ve filled capsules. As a last resort we snatch up raw materials and compound the drugs ourselves. We’re tired, Lucky, every last one of us, but if we stop, patients will die.” He stared at his twisted-together fingers where they lay in his lap.
“You’d take the gray market goods.” It wasn’t a question.
“In a flat minute. We’re desperate.”
Lucky hated to ask, but the words came unbidden from his mouth. “Is Danvers part of your little afterhours party?”
“No. He’s home with his wife and kids.”
Hmm…apparently Danvers’s humanitarian streak only existed to get him noticed, and didn’t extend to good works committed with no promise of glory.
Lucky grasped Bo’s chin, raising it until their eyes met. Bo Schollenberger was perhaps the best man Lucky had ever met, and far too good for the likes of an excon. But if Lucky weren’t around to save this man from himself, the world would chew him up and spit him out.
Suffering abuse at the hands of someone honor-bound to protect you changed a man. Walking down the street expecting gunfire from every civilian changed a man. Watching friends die changed a man. After dealing with all that, Bo was no weakling, and somewhere underneath that gentle exterior lurked a recovering warrior. With a little time and healing, the hard-edged Marine would return to kick ass and take names. Until that day came, Lucky was asshole enough for them both.
With the best of intentions, he opened his mouth to deliver a good, harsh dose of reality check, but in the end, with mournful eyes begging him for something he couldn’t figure out, he replied, “What can I do to help?”

Lucky dropped Bo off at his apartment to shower and head to work. Throughout the day he considered the problem, wracking his brain to find a solution. Who was he kidding? If a smart guy like Bo couldn’t figure it out, Lucky didn’t stand a hope in hell. Given a few days to work out logistics, he’d gladly steal a whole truck of whatever Bo needed and deliver it to the center door. Ha! That’d earn him a black mark on his next annual review.

He scanned his way into the pharmacy.
“Hallelujah!” Ava exclaimed, eyeing the sealed totes on Lucky’s cart. “Eric! Get over here. Christmas done come early, baby. You gotta sign for these controls.”
“Christmas? It’s only a third of what we need,” Bo muttered. He avoided Lucky’s eyes while checking in the inventory and carting the drugs to the pharmacy’s restricted access area. So that’s how it worked. Martin signed in regular inventory, while buyers checked in the good stuff. Damn. The first “good stuff” shipment in a week? For a hospital this size?
Bo steadied himself against the cart while signing for the shipment. How far did he intend to push himself before he buckled? After he returned the empty totes, Lucky pushed the cart into the hallway.
Bo slipped past, shoulder skimming Lucky’s. “Another meeting,” he whispered in passing. He stopped outside the conference room, briefly meeting Lucky’s eyes before opening the door and disappearing into the room.
“Inside the heart of this whole damned mess,” Lucky huffed. “Hell of a place to be.” He entered the elevator and punched the basement button.
The door slid open, a woman stepped on, and Lucky stepped off, noticing too late the big red “3” on a garishly painted wall. A giraffe jumped rope while a lion pushed a cub in a swing on the hallway mural.
He turned too quickly to press the down arrow and nearly rammed his cart into a wheelchair. A little girl stared up at him, all big blue eyes and bald head. Standing, she wouldn’t have reached Lucky’s waist. An equally bald Barbie doll lay on the floor. The girl reached over the chair arm, fingers not quite long enough to grab hold.
“I’ll get it,” Lucky said, squatting down to retrieve the doll. When he glanced up to return the toy, adoring eyes stared at him, dimples showing in each cheek when the girl smiled.
“Thank you, mister. You’re new, aren’t you? My name’s Stephanie, but my friends call me Steph. What’s yours?
“Reg…” Lucky started to say. Gazing into the sweet face of an angel, he couldn’t bring himself to lie. “My friends call me Lucky,” he murmured.
“Lucky?” The girl giggled. “That’s not a man’s name, that’s my kitty’s name!”
Sammy probably waited downstairs with more packages, wondering where he’d gotten off to. Lucky couldn’t care less. “Oh yeah? What kind of cat you got?” No matter how the girl answered, Mrs. Griggs likely had one just like it.
“A tuxedo kitty. He’s black-and-white and sleeps on my bed when I’m home.”
Kneeling beside a wheelchair in a children’s ward at a cancer center, Lucky lost his heart. This sweet little girl likely went through hell and back on a regular basis, and yet she smiled at a stranger.
“How do you like my doll?” she asked. “My brother cut her hair off.” Steph didn’t sound a bit upset. Lucky did the same to one of Charlotte’s dolls once, but she wasn’t nearly as approving. “He said she was my doll, she should look like me.” She stoked her fingers over Barbie’s smooth head.
At a loss for what to say, Lucky tried, “Sounds like a good brother.”
“Oh he is! Know what my Aunt Karen did?”
He feigned surprise. “No! What?”
“She let her hair grow down to her butt.” She whispered, “Mom says butt’s a bad word. Daddy says it’s okay as long as I don’t say it in front of Nana. Anyway, Aunt Karen went and got all her hair chopped off! They’re gonna make a wig for me.” Her dimples appeared impossibly deep.
“That’s good,” Lucky said. What the hell could he say to that?
He stared at a girl he’d just met, picturing a younger version of his sister. An uncomfortable pressure grew in his chest. The elevator chimed and Lucky rose. “I gotta get back to work now.” The door opened. Lucky stood and watched the doors close. He’d catch the next one.
“Come back and see me, okay?”
“Sure, Steph.” When the doors opened again Lucky stepped onto the elevator. His heart pounded a frantic beat, and his breath wouldn’t come. “Dear Lord in Heaven,” he prayed for the first time in recent memory. “If you’re up there, please save that little girl.” He wiped at his eyes. Damn, what kind of cleaner did they use that stung so badly?
That evening he called Walter. “Boss, you’ve told me time and again how we’re not supposed to get personally involved, but we need some help here.” He rattled off items from Bo’s shopping list, providing a few contacts from his old lawless days who’d been lawful enough at the time to escape prosecution.
“I see you’ve been talking to Bo. He sent in a list this morning. I’ll tell you the same thing I told him, Lucky. We’re not in the pharmaceutical brokering business. There’s a nationwide crisis going on. Hopefully, our efforts to put an end to the gray market will help. Beyond that, there’s not much we can do.” Walter paused before asking, “Is everything all right? It’s not like you to show an interest in anything besides finishing up your case.”
No, it wasn’t. It had to be Bo’s influence. “Mellowing in my old age, I guess.” Lucky rubbed his fingers against his temple. The neighbor’s stereo sent a throbbing pulse through his head. He gripped his cell phone to keep from hurling it against the wall. Fuckers wouldn’t even hear it hit.
Walter might have sighed. The music was too damned loud to tell. “If something comes up, I’ll keep you informed.”
Lucky hung up the phone and tossed it to the couch. What the fuck had he gotten himself into? He paced. He flumped down on the couch. He jumped up and paced some more. Nervous energy pulsed harder than the neighbor’s music. He dragged the coffee table into the kitchen and pushed the couch against the wall, leaving a few feet of empty space.
Ewww… That was some nasty-ass carpet, most likely trodden on by palmetto bugs or worse things. Towels. Lots of towels. It took four to give Lucky enough room to work. He sucked in a deep breath and squatted, dropped down for a pushup, then sprang to his feet, arms in the air. “One!”
He dropped again, keeping time with the
thud, thud, thud
from next door. The pounding threw his count off. He set his goal for lasting through the song. At least the tuneless shit might be good for something.
After roughly five minutes of burpees, he rolled into a side plank position, free hand to the back of his head. He raised his lower knee to upper elbow, repeating the process until he faltered. He took a five minute break and rolled to the other side, continuing until unable to lift his leg any more.
Worn out but still frustrated, he grabbed his apartment key, locked his door, and sprinted to the stairwell. Up, down, up, down, he jogged down seven flights and back again ten times, mindful only of his breathing, nothing more.
The sun had set before Lucky returned to his apartment. He wondered how late Bo planned to work, and if the man bothered to eat while pulling overtime. “Gotta watch out for my partner,” he told the empty room.
After a quick shower, he donned a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and slipped on his shoes before heading for the nearest pizza place.
Thirty minutes later Lucky dropped off two large Tony’s Pizza boxes at the main desk, pretending to be a delivery boy. In a hospital this size, he wasn’t likely to be recognized. “One veggie and one pepperoni, for the pharmacy,” he said. He didn’t explain he’d gotten an extra pizza for Bo’s coworkers only because of a buy one get one free sale. But hell, do-gooders had to eat too, right?
He returned home and spent the next few hours on his computer, checking for whatever Walter might have found. No matter how many times he looked, no messages appeared on his cell phone. A few minutes before he crawled into bed, his phone finally chirped. He snatched it off the nightstand to read,
“Thx.”