“Was he conscious?”
Jamie bit his chapped bottom lip. “For a while. He wasn’t when they took him away, though. They said they had to operate or he’d die.”
“Jesus.” Liam shook his head to clear it, swerving around a slow-moving people carrier. “When did this happen?”
“Yesterday. I’ve been hanging around the hospital all day, but they won’t let me near him. Said they’d get the police to kick me out if I kept asking.”
Jamie’s voice wavered, and his fear was palpable. Liam let him be for a few miles while he mulled over what he knew so far. Liam was no doctor, but he had enough general knowledge to know a wound to a major artery was bad news. What if he got to the hospital to find Zac dead? He gripped the steering wheel tighter, turning his knuckles white. No. Fuck that. He couldn’t go through that again.
He cast a glance at Jamie, who appeared to have fallen asleep. “Wake up. You’re not done.”
Jamie opened his eyes. “What else do you want to know?”
“I want to know why he got stabbed. What went down? And where the hell were you?”
The guilt in Jamie’s expression deepened, exposing anguish almost as painful as Liam’s own. “They didn’t see me. I rolled under the bed and let them go for Zac, because I thought once they realised he wasn’t me, they’d leave him alone.”
“Who would?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why were they after for you?”
Jamie tore his broken stare from Liam’s and stared out the window, his eyes fixed on the light rain that had begun to fall. “Because I stole their gear.”
“Gear?” And then the penny dropped. Gear meant drugs and even without Liam’s propensity to assume the worst, Jamie couldn’t have looked more like a junkie if he’d tattooed it on his damned head. “What was it? Heroin?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Does it matter?”
“Probably not.” Liam steeled himself for the next question. “How was Zac involved in this? Is he a junkie too?”
“Fuck no.” The vehemence in Jamie’s tone was unnaturally loud in the cramped van. “I mean . . . he used to be, but he’s been clean since we moved from London. Six months.”
Clean. Somewhere in the terrified chaos that Liam’s mind had become, he knew what that meant. “He doesn’t take drugs anymore?”
“No. And the syringe you found in his pocket was mine.”
Liam couldn’t speak for the rest of the journey. Rosa’s prophecy was playing on a loop in his brain and he was so angry with himself he could barely breathe.
He threw the van into a space in the hospital car park and jumped out, dashing for the front entrance, leaving Jamie to shuffle behind him. The information desk was straight ahead, manned by a young woman who seemed engrossed in her computer screen. Liam slowed and pulled Jamie to one side. “What’s his name?”
“What?”
“Zac. Is that his real name?”
“Of course it is. We’re hookers, not MI5.”
So Jamie was a hooker too. A dim memory of Zac mentioning a “colleague” flashed into Liam’s mind, but they didn’t have time for specifics. “Tell me everything you know about him, and leave the rest to me. If they ask you anything, just agree with what I’ve said.”
Jamie rambled off a barrage of information, most of it useless. Liam stopped him. “Okay, okay.” He shrugged out of his jacket. “Put this on and tell me Zac’s name and date of birth.”
Jamie obeyed, and once he appeared a little less like a tramp, they approached the front desk, Liam sporting his best impression of Cory in full charm mode.
The receptionist glanced up with a yawn. “Can I help you?”
