“Just what we need, a human with a savior complex—”
“As opposed to you, who’re just sitting here as he—”
“This is not your business—”
“Enough,” the patient said with exhaustion.
Rio closed her eyes, and realized she was way out of line, speaking about how dire his circumstances were.
She cleared her throat. “Were you in a car accident?”
Again, the injuries appeared consistent with severe burns, and while she gathered her thoughts, she was trying to figure out what could have caused— Okay, she was stupid. A meth lab. Of course. Unless she thought they were making cookies here?
“We need to get you help,” she heard herself say.
The patient inhaled slowly. Then he spoke through an agonizingly slow exhale. “You are kind, but you are in enough trouble yourself. Does Lucan have a plan for getting you back where you belong?”
“I’ll get myself back.”
The chuckle from the douchebag on the chair was no doubt a chauvinistic commentary on her abilities—except like she hadn’t heard that before? Also, she might have a head injury, but at least she could stand on her own two feet—and, bonus, she had this cute little nine millimeter accessory that didn’t make her ass look fat and brought out the fuck-off that was never far below the surface of her baby browns.
“I should not underestimate her, Apex.”
That’s right, she thought at the patient.
Then she calmed herself and stared down at the bed.
“We have to do something for you,” she murmured as she noticed his hands for the first time. One was missing all its fingers.
When there wasn’t a response, she glanced up at that face. The lips had parted so he could breathe, and the shallow inhales came at a panting speed. And then there was a groan—after which, a slightly calmer rhythm.
He’d passed out, she was willing to bet.
“You’re in pain,” she whispered to him anyway. “Dear God, are they not treating your pain?”
“No, we’re deliberately letting him stew in it,” the other man—what was his name? Apex?—muttered. “Because we get off on a male of worth suffering.”
Rio closed her eyes. “I can’t imagine how much it hurts.”
“He is stronger than all of us combined.”
She looked over at the chair. Apex was sitting forward, his hand on the bed right next to the patient’s ruined one—but not touching it. Because that would have been unbearable, no doubt.
“Is there nothing here that can help him?”
“We’re lucky we have a bed for him,” the man gritted out. “Most of the medication here expired two decades ago and is degraded. There’s nothing we can do.”
“How much longer do you think he has?”
Eyes that were dark as the corners of Hell lashed over to her. “Will you get the fuck out of here. I’d kill you right now, but he won’t let me. I promise, though, if you’re still here the second his heart stops, I’m coming at you.”
“Aren’t you scary,” she said in a bored tone.
Ignoring the guy, Rio paced up and down inside the drapery—which is to say, she took three steps up and three steps back.
Wasn’t that a line in a Bruce Springsteen song? she thought.
As an image of her brother came to mind, she stopped at the foot of the bed—and tried not to get confused between the past and the present. But the stillness of the patient . . . reminded her of what she had seen when she had broken down the door to Luis’s bedroom. She would never forget the way her brother had been lying there on his back, against a pillow stained with his own vomit, his blue-tinged face . . . angled directly up at the ceiling, as if he had been watching the hand of death as it had come for him.
Rubbing her eyes, she stared at the patient again. Even when unconscious, he had a frown on his face and a tension in his body.
There was no relief for him. Anywhere.
She thought of her brother. And felt sick.
“We have drugs here,” she said roughly.
“What?” Apex snapped.
“This is a fucking drug factory, right? There are drugs here.”
Apex opened his mouth as if he had a tic that involved telling her to go fuck herself and was giving in to it again.
She shook her head at him and spoke quickly, even as between each blink, she saw her brother’s dead face. “There’s heroin. Here on-site. I’ve seen it on the streets marked with your iron cross symbol. You don’t just sell cocaine, and opiates are opiates—they make pain go away. If we can get him a small dose of heroin, he’ll at least be comfortable.”