Falling to Pieces (15 page)

Fifteen

“Jade!”

I hissed as hot soup splashed over the edge of my bowl, burning my fingers.

“Open the damn door, Jade. I know you’re in there.”

I wouldn’t have to open it soon. Like everything else in the place, it wasn’t exactly the definition of sturdy. I doubted it would stand up much longer against the violent pounding whoever was out there was giving it.

“Hold on
. I’m coming.” Carefully depositing what was left of my dinner on the kitchen table, I hustled across the apartment before the neighbors could start banging on the walls. It was a surprise—and not of the pleasant variety—when I pulled open the door. “DJ?”

“Who’d you think it was? Santa Claus? Let me in.” It wasn’t a request, and he didn’t bother waiting for an invitation. Simply shoved past me and planted himself dead center in my living room. It was a small room to begin with, but with DJ glowering at me, it suddenly felt a hell of a lot smaller.

“What do you want?” My gaze drifted down the hall where mom had already retired for the night. God forbid all that banging woke her up and she came out to find
him
standing in her living room. She’d flip a lid.

“From you, Jade? So many things.” A smirk, nearly as greasy as his hair, spread over his face as he leered at me in my totally spectacular Hello Kitty pajamas. Yeah, I was badass. “But for tonight, I’m calling in that favor you owe me. Time to pay up, sweetness.”

A sick feeling took root in the pit of my stomach as some survival instinct I didn’t even know I possessed inched my feet backward toward the door. “Pay up?”

“I have a package I need delivered. Tonight.”

My head spun slightly out of relief. I have no idea what I expected him to say, but somehow that sounded better than anything I’d been imagining. That is until a box about the size of a brick was thrust into my hands and DJ headed for the door.

“The address is on the box. It needs to be there like now. And, Jade . . .” He paused halfway through the door, the look on his face sending shivers—again
, not the pleasant kind—straight up my spine. “Do
not
screw this up or you’ll pay for it.”

I didn’t even hear the door shut behind him. I just stood there staring at that box like it may bite me—and, for the life of me, I though it just might.

***

A crescent moon carved through the black velvet sky like a reaper’s sickle.
Appropriate, seeing as I’d crossed the border into hell somewhere along the way to the address printed on DJ’s package. Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm blared. Two dogs fought, snapping and snarling at each other, through a chain link fence. There wasn’t a soul in sight. The only sign of human presence: the nearly every inch of wall space tagged in graffiti. And I thought my part of town was bad. This was crazy stupid. Underline the
crazy
.

I wasn’t an idiot, or naïve. I knew how DJ made his living. The sort of things—
illegal
things—he delivered. And the sort of people who had those types of illegal things delivered to them. So, maybe the whole idiot concept wasn’t entirely off the table. Truthfully, I was in so far over my head, I could practically taste the clouds. They tasted a lot like fear.

Winter was coming on fast, fall being practically nonexistent in these parts. One day you’re soaking in the sunshine, and the next you
’re shoveling snow, the first potential coating of which had been forecast for that night. Lucky me. At the moment, the air was filled with only a mist. The kind that made your skin feel clammy and your hair plaster to your face. A pale haze coated the ground, just creepy enough to play right into my fantasy of what this night should be like. Cold, wet, and scary. That sounded about right.

18 Seventh Ave.
It took a few attempts and some serious squinting to decode the sloppy handwriting scrawled across the top of the sealed box. It also took a quick stop at the corner gas-mart for directions to find it. The walk wasn’t a short one, but there wasn’t a chance I was getting back behind the wheel of Mom’s car. Especially not for this. The odds of getting pulled over . . . Yeah, traveling on foot was definitely the safer option. Or so I’d convinced myself until I crossed into freaking slum central.

Light shone over the wet concrete, illuminating the darkened street corner ahead in flashes of blue and red. Across the street, a rusty number eighteen hung from a dented mailbox, the eight lying sideways to read more like an infinity symbol. Clearly symbolizing my infinite bad luck because, sure enough, the place was crawling with more cops than a do
ughnut factory.

DJ was going to be
pissed. He said if I messed this up, I’d pay for it, and somehow I doubted he was talking about dollars and cents. Not that I had enough of either to afford whatever the hell was in that damn box, anyway.
Shit. Shit. Super shit.
This sucked in a big, big way.

Cradling the package in one arm, I stuck a hand in my jacket pocket to fiddle with my cell phone. I didn’t want to. I
really
didn’t want to. But I was running perilously low on options.

“Hello?” His voice grumbled sleepily down the line and I wanted to kick myself. I hadn’t even checked what time it was before I’d dialed his number.

“Kiernan?”

“Jade? What’s going on?”

I took a deep breath and bit my lip. Here went nothing. “I need your help.”

“Are you okay?” Bedsprings groaned in the background as his voice grew more alert.

“Yes? Maybe? I don’t really know. There’s this guy, and this box, and the cops, and I can’t—”

“Whoa. Slow down. The police are there? At your place?”

“No. No, I’m not at home.” Though, I really wished I was. It was a strangely new experience.

“Where are you?”

I had to wipe away the raindrops clinging to my lashes—refusing to believe they may be something else—in order to read the crooked street sign on the corner. “Seventh and Main.”

“What are you doing in that part of town?”

“I was supposed to deliver this box, but when I got here . . . There are cops everywhere, Kiernan, and I’m pretty sure I’m not carrying a litter of kittens.”

“Shit.”

Now he was getting it. “Yeah.”

“Okay, listen to me. Stay put. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t talk to anyone. I’m coming to you.”

The phone went dead before I could say another word, and I did what I was told. I stayed put. My heart threatening to tap dance right out of my chest, I pressed as far into the shadows as I could and watched as three scary looking guys were led out of the house in cuffs. A fourth followed, escorted by two officers, fighting and screaming the whole way. At one point he almost broke loose, but they managed to wrestle him into the backseat of a squad car, while I tried my best not to pee my pants.

I was so captivated/horrified by the entire spectacle that I nearly jumped
out of my skin when a car door slammed shut beside me.

“Hey. It’s just us.” Kiernan stepped out and the pressure squeezing my chest like a vice eased.

Then my brain caught up. “Us?”

He nodded back toward the car, where
Caulder sat, buckled into the passenger seat, watching us through the side window.
Perfect.
The guy already thought I was trailer trash. Now he was going to think I was some kind of criminal to boot.

“Why did you bring him?”

“I thought we might need some back up.”

What did I expect? That Kiernan would come along at my beck and call, and solve all of my
problems, all by himself? That was ludicrous, and selfish, and—

“Give me that.” Prying the package from the death grip I had on it was no easy feat, but Kiernan managed. With his free hand at the small of my back, he ushered me toward the backseat. “Let’s get out of here.”

I’d never heard a better idea in my entire life. Kiernan made an illegal U-turn in the middle of the deserted street, and a tense silence filled the car as we drove, leaving the lights, sirens, and terrifying bad guys behind us.

Minutes passed before Kiernan asked where we were going. I wasn’t exactly sure I had an answer to that. Mexico, maybe?

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.” My hands started shaking in my lap and, hard as I tried, I couldn’t keep the panic out of my voice. “DJ said if I screwed this up, he’d make me pay. But I can’t deliver it. And I can’t get rid of it. And I can’t—”

“
Rewind. Who’s DJ?” We rolled up to a red light and Kiernan shifted in his seat to look back at me between the seats.

“
The guy I was delivering the box for. He lives in my complex. He doesn’t have a super great reputation.”

“So we’ve gathered.” It was the first time
Caulder opened his mouth and he sounded every bit as pissed as I’d assumed he’d be.

“I owed him a favor. He called it in tonight. But I can’t do what he asked and I don’t know what to do about it. Or with that.” I glanced at the box sitting on the seat beside me, shifting farther away from it until my shoulder hit the door.

“Simple. We give it back.” Kiernan and I both looked at Caulder like he was crazy, but then Kiernan threw on his blinker and made the right toward Halfmoon Park.

“So I just
knock on his door and hand it back to him?” Why did that not sound . . . healthy?

“No.
We
knock on his door and hand it back to him. And we make sure he never bothers you again.”

I wasn’t exactly sure how
we
were going to accomplish all of that, but Caulder didn’t sound like he had any doubt. I didn’t ask. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was going on inside that head of his. We drove in silence the rest of the way until we reached the complex and I directed Kiernan to the row of open spots in front of DJ’s building.

If Kiernan hadn’t offered me a hand out, I probably never would have left that backseat for as long as I lived. It was soft and roomy. I could hide out there for the next century
, or so. But instead, I was leading Kiernan and Caulder to the very last place on Earth I wanted to be.

“Go ahead.”
Caulder nudged me forward when my feet froze outside the door. A chunk of wood had never looked so intimidating.

“It’ll be alright.” Kiernan’s hand in mine gave me the courage to knock. Not the
full scale assault DJ had laid on my door earlier, but loud enough that I hoped he’d hear.

Of course, when he answered I realized what a dumb thing that was to hope for.
“What the hell are you doing here? And who the hell are they?”

“Friends. Listen, DJ, I did what you asked. I tried to deliver the package, but when I got there, the place was crawling with cops. I couldn’t just
walk in there. So I brought it back to you.” I was obscenely proud of the fact that my voice was
almost
steady.

“You brought it back. And you brought them with you?” The look on DJ’s face said he wasn’t pleased with my decisive thinking.
Suddenly, my voice wasn’t the only thing shaking. “You fucked up, Jade. You fucked up, royally. You know what those people are going to do, they don’t get the shit they bought? You know who’s going to pay for that?”

I had a pretty good idea.

“Hey!” I barely saw DJ move toward me and Caulder step into his path before I was safely tucked away behind him and Kiernan. “The girl did what you asked. It’s not her fault it went to hell. You’re done now. You and her? It’s done. Over. You don’t talk to her again. You don’t even look at her. You do and I swear, they’ll have to mop up what’s left of you. We clear?”

Caulder’s
presence alone should have been enough to dissuade any sane person. DJ was not one of those. He shifted to catch sight of me, and the ice in his eyes chilled me to the core. “You live in my world, Jade. You can tell yourself different all you want with your books, and your studying, and your ‘
friends’
, but you’re a sewer rat just like the rest of us. And sewer rats stick together. They might be here to protect you now, but sooner or later, you’re going to need my help again. It’s only a matter of time. And when you do . . . the favor I have in mind . . . it’s a little bit different.”

“Son of a—
” Caulder’s fist slammed into DJ’s face just as Kiernan turned me away.

Painful sounds followed us as h
e herded me out of the building, careful to block my view of whatever was going down behind us. Outside, the cold wind wrapped around me as I tried to get my brain to stop racing long enough to settle on any one thought. DJ was pissed, Caulder was pissed, Kiernan was probably pissed—not that he’d ever admit it. It was like everything I touched turned to crap. I really was a sewer rat. Maybe it was time I accepted that and stopped dragging other people down with me.

“That guy’s an asshole, Jade. Don’t you listen to him for one
second.” Sometimes I could swear there was a neon thought bubble floating over my head that only Kiernan could see. “You got dealt a crap hand and that sucks out loud. It isn’t fair. But don’t you ever think that you deserve it. That you belong here. That you are
anything
like that dirtbag. You hear me?”