Dre’s demands were not at all what I’d thought they’d be. She didn’t even ask for money, and I was so sure she would that I’d have bet my left nut on it. First, she wanted to use my phone to call her dad, which I handed her without hesitation, as a sign of trust.
“I need you to keep one of them alive. Conner,” she said, looking to her hands and fidgeting with her fingers.
“Why?” I asked, irritated by her request. “He your boyfriend or something.”
“No,” was all she said.
“Well, he had to do something to earn that kind of loyalty.”
“He didn’t. But I did. I owe him,” she said.
I didn’t push her for more because it didn’t matter. I helped her down from the tower, found her clothes, shoes, and retrieved her bus ticket from a tree. I even gave her a ride to the bus station to boot because I’m a chivalrous motherfucker.
Even if it was all bullshit.
The only place I was planning on letting her go to, was to lead me back to the other two douchebags. Asking for me to spare Conners life showed me that she had some sort of loyalty toward him, so when she said that they were probably heading to Coral Pines to meet with their dealer, it wasn’t exactly like I was going to take her word for it. She could’ve been sending me right into a trap.
The second we pulled up to the station, Dre opened the door before it was even in park. “Hey!” I said, thinking she was about to jump out and make a run for it, when she leaned over and puked onto the pavement.
H withdrawals are no joke.
When she was done heaving she sat up slowly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She got out, and I leaned over the seats to shut the door behind her. She turned around to me and flashed me a sad smile as she stood there clutching her only possession, her bus ticket, to her chest like it was a precious newborn baby.
“Is your dad a good guy?” I suddenly asked, surprising even myself. “A good dad? Like does he spend time with you and take you places? He put food on the table and send you to school?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“There are a lot of people out there whose dad’s don’t do any of that, or wouldn’t give a shit about getting their junkie daughter home, so when you get there, try and go easy on the guy,” I said, as if I really believed she was going home and not heading back to the male drugged-out-version of the Olsen Twins.
Maybe I did believe it. There was only one way to find out.
She smoothed her hair out of her eyes. “Maybe you’re Dr. Phil after all,” she said, before disappearing under the shadows of the awning, heading toward the empty bus benches.
If she felt as bad as she looked, and she really was getting on that bus, then it was going to be one fuck-of-a-long bus ride to wherever it was she was going.
“Not fucking likely,” I muttered as I pulled back onto the road, and as soon as I cleared the next block, I turned down the dirt road that used to act as the service entrance to the old motel. I parked in the back of the bus station which wasn’t really a station at all, just a small brick building with a flat roof and a ticket window facing the street with a few scattered benches. The light overhead where Dre was sitting was flickering on and off, casting the grassy area in spastic shadows.
Shit, maybe she really was getting on that bus. And for a second, I was happy that the kid was going to be reunited with her father. I wasn’t messing around when I told her that most people didn’t have dad’s that cared enough to give her an ultimatum like he did. I was about to pull back out when I saw the headlights of a bus pulling into the station. I’d just decided that I was going to wait for her to get on the bus before I headed to Coral Pines, when suddenly her feet stopped tapping and retracted back into the shadows.
Not like she stood up, not like she pulled them back.
Like she was being dragged.
I pulled my gun from my boot and got out of the car, shuffling to the side of the building, my eyes adjusting to focus in the dark, until I spotted Dre across the lot.
She was being dragged all right. By her hair, through the parking lot, toward the old motel where the neon sign was blinking between VACANCY and NO VACANCY. The man dragging her was almost as thin as she was, but you didn’t have to be big to overpower someone as small as Dre. One of the motion lights clicked on and gave me a better view of Dre, whose black eyes were open, but glazed over and unfocused, she was foaming out of the side of her mouth.
“You shouldn’t have left,” the man muttered, pulling Dre up and over a parking curb, her legs scraping against the ground as he huffed and grunted through his exertion. “You think you can just leave me? You owe me Dre. Remember that. You can’t just go home,” he said, to a semi-conscious Dre who looked a million miles away. “If I can’t go home, then you can’t go home. I’m sorry, I…I’m sorry I did that to you,” he said more quietly. “But I just gave you some of my new stash, so you should forgive me. It’s good shit, the best, and I saved it just for you.”
I crouched and ran through the shadows from the back of the bus station to the overhang of the motel. As much as I wanted to blow the motherfucker away just for dragging her, I had to wait, each second was like a decade with my hand already twitching against the trigger.
“I’m here, Dre. Conner is going to take good care of you like this from now on. I promise. You’ll see. You just can’t try and leave again because we are having such a great time and you’ll ruin everything!” he yelled. “But that’s what you do! You ruin things!”
This was Conner? The one she’d wanted me to keep alive?
He took a deep breath, fixing the awkward smile back onto his face. He wiped his forehead with the back of his ratty sleeve before hauling Dre up from underneath her arms, his hands against her tits so he could lift her awkwardly up over the curb. He opened the door of one of the rooms. “I mean, I’m so sorry, Dre.” Conner sniffled. “I mean, I think even though you were mad, that you really did like what we did to you. I think they were good screams. When Eric get’s back…” Conner’s voice faded abruptly as he kicked the door shut. The 9 marking the room number fell off one of its nails, becoming a swaying 6 before clambering to the sidewalk.
Maybe it was his words. Maybe it was the way he treated her, like he owned her. Maybe it was that this was the guy she’d wanted me to save, but all I knew was that I was going in.