My chest is pounding. Shallow breaths that don't add up to enough air, that keep coming faster the more I try to slow them. I count inhales. The numbers won't line up with my body. The hallway tilts and stretches at the edges of my vision.
I press the back of my head against the door and focus on the cold metal at my spine. Find something solid. Stay in it.
When I can stand up straight again I cross to the window and lift the curtain just enough.
A patrol car. Parked near mine.
"What the fuck," I say, to no one.
I drop the curtain. Go to my bedroom. Yank the blinds shut and lock the door and lie down on top of the covers and wait for my heart rate to decide it's done with me.
It isn't. Not for a long time.
I flip the pillow. Change positions. Close my eyes and open them again. The ceiling tilts. My stomach lurches. I push myself upright aiming for the bathroom and my knees hit the floor instead, dry heaves tearing through me in waves, violent and completely useless. Nothing comes up. There's nothing left to give.
Please stop. Please.
At some point the pain blurs out.
When I come back to myself, my cheek is pressed against plastic. The rim of my trash can, imprinted into my face. The light through the blinds has shifted. Hours, then.
I reach for the half-empty water bottle on my nightstand and the first sip hits my empty stomach like a fist. I gasp and force down another one anyway.
My head weighs too much to lift properly. Everything feels dense and waterlogged, like my body has been packed with wet sand while I was unconscious. I am profoundly, embarrassingly weak.
I lie there and try to account for myself.
This has to be the worst hangover of my life. Except the timeline is wrong. This is Monday. Friday was three days ago.
I take another sip of water and don't let myself finish the thought.
CHAPTER 19
DIEGO
She's pale when she comes out of the office, moving fast and not quite steady. I pull out behind her and keep my distance, watching her drift slightly in the lane ahead of me, more than she probably realizes. The kind of swerving that comes from a body still fighting something it hasn't named yet.
She turns into her apartment complex. I slow, let a few seconds open between us, then follow through the gate.
A squad car comes in behind me.
I don't react. I turn away from her building and coast behind the dumpster enclosure, cut the engine, kill the lights.
Police don't arrive at apartment complexes by accident. The question is whether he's here for her or whether he followed me. I settle in and watch from the shadow of the enclosure and wait for the answer.
Hours pass. He doesn't move.
Neither do I, but I have reasons. What are his?
The setup has the particular stillness of surveillance. No movement from her apartment since she went in, no lights changing, nothing. She was drugged three nights ago anddepending on what that guy used, the withdrawal can linger for days. I've seen it. She looked rough this morning and she looked worse leaving just now, and I can't go check on her with a cop parked thirty feet from her door.
Fine.
I ease out of the truck and scan the ground until I find a rock with some weight to it. I circle to the far side, keep low, pulse easy. Then I throw it hard toward the other end of the complex.
Glass shatters. Car alarms ignite in a chain reaction.
The squad car lurches forward and accelerates toward the noise.