Tears slip from her eyes, and I choke on my sobs knowing my best friend is alive.
Sirens sound from down the street, and Erick clutches my shoulders. “Keep talking, babe. Don’t stop,” he says, before running from the room.
“I love you so much. I don’t know what I would ever do without you.”
My heart breaks and yet heals at the same time when Hazel tries to grip my hand. Her mouth moves slightly, but no sound comes out. She doesn’t need to tell me who did this, we all know who did this to her. As I cling to Hazel, I hope against hope that if she loses her strength she can draw from my own. I’d give her every bit of it with a prayer if she makes it through this to see tomorrow.
Seeing her beaten, broken, and covered in blood breaks something in me too. I never thought there would be a day in my life that I would enter a house to discover someone I loved brutalized and almost murdered. That shit is only supposed to happen in horror movies. I feel like I’m in a horror movie. My gut burns as my fear shifts to a hatred I’ve never known. Isqueeze Hazel’s hand as I hear the shouts of Erick and Bobby outside, waving down the ambulance and police.
“I’m going to find him, Hazel.” My resolve solidifies my voice. “And when I do, I promise you, I’m going to fucking kill him.”
Hazel’s eyelids flutter as footsteps sound in the hallway. She grips my hand and then whispers in broken words, “No. I will.”
Hands land on my shoulders and pull me away from Hazel. Her hand slips from mine as I fight to stay with her. The last thing I see as I’m wrestled from the room is a wall of paramedics and police, shouting orders as they converge on my best friend.
Everything is a blur as I fight my way back to her, but I’m roughly yanked from her apartment. Police tape off her porch as if it’s a murder scene, like they know she’s not going to make it through this. I spin around in circles, trying to understand what’s happening, but my brain isn’t processing it. It’s too much. She was alive goddamn it! Don’t they fucking see that?
There are too many people talking at once. Their words are incoherent, ricocheting around in my head like a jumbled mess of sounds. A sharp pain tears through my chest, making it hard to breath, and my knees go weak. I reach out, desperate to grab hold of anything to keep steady before I hit the ground, but I get knocked to the side. My arms are yanked behind my back, and I’m shoved against something hard, pushing what little air I had left out of my lungs.
Erick’s voice breaks through the haze in my mind. “Hey, don’t manhandle her like that!”
The hood of the police cruiser comes into focus as I get my breathing in check. I turn my head to see Erick fighting to get to me, but other officers are blocking his path and wrestle him to the ground. Bobby is nowhere in sight. The cop holding me against the car stands me up and turns me around as they wheel Hazel out on a stretcher.
Time seems frozen as everyone rushing about stops to watch the spectacle. A crime of this magnitude has never happened in Trinity. By the expressions on all their faces, this isn’t something they’ve encountered before.
The oxygen mask over Hazel’s face does little to hide the blood, swelling, and bruising as they rush her down the sidewalk to the ambulance. My feet surge forward instantly so I won’t be left behind, but the cop pulls me back by my wrists, jerking me to a halt. Metal bites into my skin making my teeth grit. At some point, while being shoved against the car, he had slapped handcuffs on me.
“I need to go with her.” The words rush urgently from my mouth as I pull my wrists apart, like the cuffs are just going to fall off on their own.
“You’re not going anywhere,” the cop states, jerking me back against the car. “There are questions that need answered.”
The paramedics lift Hazel into the back of theambulance and swing the doors closed. The driver runs to the front and jumps in, taking off like a bat out of Hell. Between my tears and the flashing lights, the letters on the vehicle blur as I watch it drive away.
CASH
I spent the entire day searching Hazel’s house for more clues that she was part of Phil’s plan. I found nothing, which made me feel better, but I couldn’t fight the doubts in the back of my mind. My gut says she’s innocent in all this. That she just got sucked into this mess by accident and is now trapped in Phil’s game.
When she got home from work last night, I wanted to come clean and just ask her about it. If anything, it would ease her mind knowing what was going on and why Phil tried to beat down her door. She would understand the seriousness of the situation. Hazel understands just how serious Phil is about getting to her, but she doesn’t understand all the why’s of it. If she knew, she’d have a better chance defending herself against him. But if I told her, I’d out myself, too, and it’s not the right time for that. Anxiety eats away at me as I go through different scenarios telling her the truth of it all. I don’t know how she will react, and that is what’s causing all the worry.
I walk through the plant toward my office and drop my bag inside as I continue to the secret door. As soon as I enter the hallway, I can hear Dale yelling. That’s all he does anymore. The man needs a vacation, and I’m going to make sure he gets one when this is all over.Both him and Joseph. They’ve taken on the entire company, plus the producing and selling of Snap. I wonder how much sleep they’ve had.
Dale sits in the meeting room, rubbing his hands over his face. He’s beyond tired, and it seems as though he hasn’t showered or shaved today, which is unlike him. Dale is always put together. He’s the epitome of a metro man. Sometimes I think he’s worse than a prissy woman.
His bloodshot eyes meet mine as I enter the room and take a seat across from him. I retrieve the pill from my shirt pocket and set it in the middle of the table. He looks down at it and sighs. Picking it up with his thumb and pointer finger, he examines the pill being passed off as Snap, but is so different from the one we make.
“There’s always some asshole trying to make things bigger and better than they were.” Dale sets the pill down on the table and calls Joseph to meet us.
I slip the folded-up paper from my back pocket and lay it next to the pill.
Dale’s brow furrows as he taps his finger on the table. “What’s that?” he asks, pointing at the paper.
“See for yourself,” I reply, gesturing to it.
Joseph walks into the room, seeming just as haggard as Dale. I point to the pill on the table, and he picks it up, examining it harder than Dale did. His eyes flicker over the tablet between his fingers as if he’s dissecting it.
“I’ll get started breaking it down,” he says as he turns toward the lab.
“Wait. I want you to see this before you go.”
