“Okay, rook,” I said. “It’s go time.”
I grabbed his body and pulled it over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Then bent my knees to support our combined weight and stood. Moved fast toward the flight of stairs that led to the parking lot, while Cassie flew into the space below me with her SUV.
Outside, I laid Richie on the back seat of the Tahoe, then jumped in on the opposite side, my door still ajar as Cassie peeled out of the lot.
I pulled Richie’s torso onto mine and examined his symptoms.
“His blood pressure is low,” I said, slapping at his cheeks but getting no response.
“Richie,” Cassie yelled from the front.
The rookie’s lips moved, but he didn’t speak. The car fishtailed as we came out of the hotel lot. Cassie hit the gas, and Richie’s body pressed against mine. I held him, keeping him from rolling onto the floor as the speed normalized.
“How’s he doing?” Cassie yelled.
“Not well,” I said, my eyes on his pupils, which were no bigger than three millimeters.
Cassie swerved around cars, her foot pressed hard on the pedal. We emerged into a commercial area, and my eyes scanned the road around us.
“There,” I yelled, and she jerked the steering wheel hard to the right, the Chevy Tahoe hopping a sidewalk as we sailed into the parking lot of a Navarro’s Discount Pharmacy. A sign over the left side of the building readMINUTE CLINIC, and Cassie aimed for the front door, slamming on her brakes and leaving me two feet from a set of glass sliders.
Inside, the place was covered inSALEandOFERTAsigns, screaming about deep discounts in two languages. I found the pharmacy and jumped the line, flashing my badge at a woman at the counter.
“Naloxone,” I said. “Narcan. Kloxxado. Have you got any of them?”
The woman blinked. She was a brunette in her late twenties and stood behind a sheet of glass. “Uhhh—” she stammered.
“I’ve got an unresponsive federal agent,” I raised my voice. “Narcan. Two boxes.”
“Sorry. Yeah, of course,” she said, hurrying over to a shelf. She returned with two boxes of the nasal spray used to counter the effects of certain drug overdoses, almost stumbling in her haste.
She turned to ring me up, but I took off and ran.
Outside the store, Cassie had the door to the Tahoe open and was beside the car, kneeling next to Richie. She turned to me. “You’re thinking opioids,” she asked, her eyes wide. “Heroin? Fentanyl? Methadone? Vicodin?”
We had almost no information, and anything was possible. Had an assailant done this? Had Richie shot himself up?
“There was no drug paraphernalia at the scene,” I said. “Shooter said she had just talked to him. And the symptoms match up.”
Cassie moved out of the way, and I inserted the spray into one of Richie’s nostrils.
“Four milligrams?” Cassie asked.
I nodded, spraying the pump up Richie’s nose. His body spasmed, and his mouth sputtered with saliva. But his lips were still tinged a blue shade, and his nostrils flared outward.
“Two minutes between doses,” Cassie said, and I tore open the second box.
Richie was struggling to breathe, and his skin, which was cold, felt sweaty at the same time.
The pharmacist was beside me now, and her eyes moved from Richie to me. “I’m gonna call an ambulance,” she said.
She left to go into the store, and I counted down the time, ignoring the crowd that was gathering, some of them holding up cell phones and filming us.
“You’re sure, right?” Cassie asked, motioning at the second box of Narcan. Her lips had faded from red to a pinkish white.
I was not sure. But the voice of my mother rang in my head.
For most of life’s big decisions, Gardy, you’ll need to act with eighty percent of the information.
