Brax (10 page)

Chapter Twelve

I slept like the dead that night. Our normally light Tuesday
turned into something different when a busload of wrestlers on their way home
from the state tournament turned into the parking lot. After an entire season
of cutting weight, I had thirteen very hungry boys, their coaches, parents,
trainers and the town’s cheering section lined up for seconds and thirds. We
were out of Peanut Butter Fudge Brownie less than an hour into the dinner rush.
It was good though. Busy was just what I needed to keep my mind off Brax and
Doug and all of the swirling emotions that threatened to unsettle me. But when
I locked the door and flipped the open sign to closed, I felt spent and bone
tired. I had just enough energy to haul myself up the stairs to my apartment. I
went to sleep in my pink polyester dress with Cherry Razzie stains down the
front.

Later, I’d wonder why I didn’t hear the alarm beep from
downstairs alerting me to someone opening the back door. Or why I’d chosen that
night to turn my phone to silent. But it wasn’t until the first stab of
sunlight poked through the slats in my window blinds and fell across my eyes
that I finally woke up. It was an hour past when my alarm clock should have
woken me. I sat up in that panicked state you get when you can’t remember if
it’s night or day.

I’d forgotten something. Left the lights on downstairs? Forgot
to lock the front door? Whatever it was, that nagging feeling of something
unsettled seeped through my skin. I shook it off. Maybe it was just the fact
that for a few hours the day before, I’d actually forgotten to be worried. Brax
had allowed me that. If nothing else happened with him, maybe I could be
grateful for just that little bit.

Yawning, I showered quickly, put on a fresh uniform, twisted
my hair into a bun and headed downstairs.
This
time, I planned to get
the jump on Melinda. I didn’t want her to get the idea that I was off my game. Her,
I trusted. The rest of the employees were young and needed me to set a good
example. Having their boss show up late with sex hair as a routine wasn’t going
to be good for business.

I turned on the coffee pot and went to the ice cream case. We
usually pulled the containers from the front service cooler and stored them in
the back freezer. I wore a thin white cardigan and pulled it close around me,
not relishing the prospect of stepping into the cooler without at least a
steaming mug of coffee ready for me. But Melinda would be in any minute and I
wanted to get things going.

Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I tripped on something on the
floor near the cooler door. Three things registered at once but none of them
made sense until a second or two later. Pain in my ankle from hitting something
solid. A gap where the freezer door stood ajar. A blast of cold air. I looked
own.

“Oh my God!”

He was lying face down, his legs and torso were still inside
the walk-in freezer, his arms outstretched and hands an ominous shade of
purple.

“Doug!”

I dropped to my knees and tried to turn him. He was freezing.
Hot fingers of panic snaked their way up my spine. But he moaned. Thank God. He
moaned. I got him turned, pulled his head into my lap and then the ground
threatened to open up and swallow me.

His eyes were swollen shut and caked with blood. He had ugly,
blackening bruises around his neck and a split lip. His left ear hung off,
shredded at the base. Those were the injuries I
could
see. There was
more. There was worse. He screamed when I tried to pull him the rest of the way
out of the cooler.

“Doug? Doug. Wake up. What happened?”

He moaned and tried to say something but his lip was badly cut
and he shivered so bad I’m not sure he could have formed words if his muscles
were working properly. But I had to get him out of the freezer. He was so
heavy.

One second became an eternity as Doug looked up at me. Even
through all the gore he looked like he did when he was just a baby. In that
instant time melted and I saw him as I had the very first time. I’d held him
like this too, cradling his body in my lap as my mother gently placed him
there, cautioning me to be careful of his head. His head. Swollen. Mottled.
Misshapen. But he was still Doug. Baby Doug with his brilliant blue eyes and
bee-stung lips. A tuft of blond hair that never quite lay the way I wanted it
too. I took his hand in mine and clasped it to my chest. All his life I’d held
his hand. Crossing the street. Teaching him how to ice skate. Walking him to
school for his first day of kindergarten.

When we were little the five-year age difference made me
bigger, stronger. More powerful. He tagged along, played dolls with me. Called
for
me
on the other side of our bedroom walls when we heard our mother
crying for reasons we couldn’t understand. And then he got older. Bigger. He
passed me in height when I was sixteen. One of my favorite pictures of us
together was me with my cheerleading uniform on looking up at him as he stood
next to me. It was his first day of junior high football practice. He’d grown
big, handsome. But he’d also outgrown hugs as adolescent boys tend to do.

I’d held him like this the night I came home after
he’d
found our mother when I was the one who should have. I remember thinking in all
the horror of that night, how strange it was that I could be glad of one thing.
He’d let me get near him again. Let me smooth that butter-blond hair away from
his face. He didn’t know but Mom and I used to sneak those kind of touches when
he was sleeping and wouldn’t flinch.

“Doug,” I whispered. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. Everything’s
going to be okay.”

The bell signaling the opening of the back door went off. One
of Doug’s eyes snapped open and he screamed, trying to move away.

“It’s okay. It’s just Mel. Mel! Oh God. Mel! Help!”

She came running then slipped on a small puddle of ice cream.
Peppermint Swirl. I must have dropped the scooper somewhere. Melinda screamed.

“Mel,” I shouted at her to bring her into the present, then
tried to make my voice as calm and even as I could. “Call 911. We need an
ambulance. I don’t know how bad he’s hurt.”

Then I turned back to Doug. His eyes had rolled back into his
head. He’d passed out.

***

Mel came with me to the hospital. I’d wanted her to stay at
the shop for me, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Her eyes filled with tears and
something else. She still loved him. I clasped her hand in mine as they gently
but forcefully heaved Doug onto a stretcher. She drove with me behind the
ambulance.

I answered the intake nurse’s questions as best I could. No,
he had no drug allergies. Yes, he was probably on something. God knows what it
was. Mel paced in the waiting room, chewing her thumbnail practically off.
She’d had the presence of mind to call Chris and tell him to close the shop for
the day. It was the first time we’d ever done it for something like this. My
father had never done it, not even the day after my mother died, I thought
bitterly. I think that was the day the worst of the rumors started about my
family. We weren’t so perfect after all.

Finally, a doctor came out. Melinda grabbed my hand and I held
the both of us up as we listened.

“We’ve got him stabilized but your brother’s lost a lot of
blood. He won’t say who did this to him or even much about what happened. But,
obviously, he’s been badly beaten. Broken ribs for sure. Collar bone too. Also
the occipital bone, the one around his eye socket. I’m going to take him down
for X-rays and a CAT scan to help us see what we’re dealing with. We need to
make sure he’s not bleeding internally.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Melinda practically tore the skin
from my wrist where she clung to me.

The doctor looked from her to me and back again trying to
assess which of us might lose it first. I knew it wouldn’t be me. Crisis is
what I do best. Tell me the worst that can happen and let me work my way back
from there.

“I don’t think any of his injuries are life threatening.”

He said more, but once I heard that I let out a breath and my
kaleidoscope of emotions stilled and the world came into focus again. But
Melinda started to sob. For an instant, I resented her for it. I didn’t have
the luxury of that. Now this was about getting Doug the care he needed, getting
the shop back open. Figuring out what else had to be done for my brother.

I signed consent forms for Doug’s testing and treatment while
Mel collapsed into a waiting room chair.

“Is there someone else we can call for you?” one of the nurses
asked me after the doctor left. She could see Melinda falling apart in the
background.

“No,” I said. “There’s no one. It’s just my brother and me.”

The nurse nodded. She was young. God,
so
young. When
did I start becoming the oldest person in the room? How does that happen?
People younger than me aren’t supposed to be the ones with the answers and
trying to give
me
comfort.

“Well, um. You know, the police are going to have some
questions. They’ll probably talk to you here, but if you want, you can ask them
if you can maybe meet them at the station. You know. If you need some more
time.”

It took me a second to fully understand what the nurse was
trying to say. But of course. My brother came into the E.R. beaten within an
inch of his life and loaded up with heroin and God knows what else. Never mind
his physical problems, he could have legal ones too.

“Oh. Thanks. I’ll handle everything.”

She gave me a nervous smile, cleared her throat, then
awkwardly backed up and went back to the safety of her colleagues. Mel sat in
one of the waiting room chairs sobbing into her hands. I knew I should probably
go to her. Or tell her she could go home if she wanted to. I had this. This was
my
life, not hers.

I didn’t though. Instead, I found the quietest place I could.
A small alcove hidden behind a fake potted plant near the elevators. Then I did
something I hadn’t done since I was eighteen years old on a rainy night after a
football game. I pulled my phone out of my purse and asked for help.

Chapter Thirteen

Brax

She looked so small sitting there in that pink dress again. It
reminded me a hell of a lot of the cheerleading outfit from all those years
ago. She sat with her hands folded in her lap as she sat next to some dark-haired
girl heaving with tears. Nicole looked up at me with her wide, gray eyes, her
hair spilling out of the bun piled on her head. She patted the girl on the back
and slowly rose.

She stiffened for a fraction of a second when I went to her. I
put my hands on her shoulders and pulled her into my arms. I knew she hated it.
Not that I touched her, but that she needed me to.

“Come on,” I said, kissing the top of her head. “Let’s go
somewhere we can talk. Do they know how to find you if there’s any news?”

The brunette looked up at us. Her eyes widened and she wiped
her mascara-stained cheeks. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ll stay right here.”

“Thanks,” Nicole said. “Brax, this is Melinda. She’s Doug’s .
. . uh . . . she’s a friend.”

Melinda smiled and shrugged. She held out a hand and laughed a
little realizing I’d just seen her use the same one to wipe her nose. I gave
her a wink and a nod. “Nice to meet you, Melinda. Thanks for sticking with
Nicole. We won’t be far away.”

Then I wrapped my arm around Nicole’s shoulder and took her to
the closest, quietest place I could find. A little chapel down the hall.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I probably shouldn’t have called you.”

She slid into the pew at the back of the room. I squatted down
on my knee so I met her at eye level.

“What do you know? And what has he told you?”

She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “He hasn’t said
anything. God. He didn’t even want me to call 911. I never realized I could be
so mad at someone and worried about them at the same time.”

I laughed. “Yeah. I think that’s what they call family.”

She smiled. “Yeah? Well, be happy you don’t have one anymore.”

I laughed too. For a minute. Then I knew it was time for the
harder questions.

“Do you know how he got to the shop? Was it on his own steam
or did someone bring him there?”

Her posture stiffened. That expressive face of hers told me
just about everything I needed. Her brows went up and the color drained from
her cheeks.

“I don’t know for sure. But he was on the floor, half in the
walk-in freezer. I mean, his legs were
in
the freezer. Oh God, Brax. I
think he was trying to crawl out of it.”

My own blood ran cold. Nicole worked it out for herself the
same way I did. It made not a damn lick of sense why Doug would be in the
fucking freezer unless he was hiding from someone or someone forced him into
it. Which meant there was a very good chance someone else might have been in
Nicole’s shop last night or this morning. Anger rumbled through me, making my
muscles tight and my fists clench. But I couldn’t let her see that side of me.
Not yet. I needed her calm and I needed more facts.

“I think we need to have a conversation with your brother as
soon as he’s able. And I don’t want you at that parlor by yourself for the
foreseeable future.”

I expected her to protest. I was starting to learn how much it
cost her to ask for help or let anyone in. But I wasn’t about to give her a
choice this time. Not until I had a better handle on what we were dealing with.
And it meant I was going to have to bring this shit to the table sooner rather
than later.

“You didn’t hear anything? Do you have an alarm system or
security cameras?”

She shook her head. “No cameras. God. I was so dead to the
world after we closed last night. There is an alarm but Doug knows the code to
it. All I would have heard was a single beep when the back door opened. If
someone tried to force entry, I
definitely
would have heard that.”

I had an idea about how it might have gone down. An idea that
made new rage simmer inside of me. If Doug recovered from his injuries, I had
the strong fucking urge to kick the shit out of him myself.

For now though, it wasn’t going to do Nicole any good to freak
her out with my theories. Plus, we ran out of time. Her friend Melinda poked
her head inside the chapel door.

“He’s awake,” she said looking at Nicole. “And he’s asking for
you.”