Recalled Page 11

  The rational part of me said I was being silly for getting so melty over a flower—a flower that technically he hadn’t really given me because I bought it, yet the gesture behind it got to me. No one had ever given me flowers before.

  I picked up a magazine, determined I wouldn’t sit here and stare at a flower for hours, and began to read. A few minutes later there was a knock on the door and when I answered I was greeted by a man in a fleece coat holding a huge bouquet of white daisies. The exact same kind I bought, except there were more and they were in a sculpted glass vase with a purple satin ribbon tied in a big bow.

  I gasped a little, wanting to reach out and take them, but I stopped myself, thinking maybe the man was at the wrong door.

  “Piper McCall?” he asked.

  “That’s me,”

  “Delivery for you,” he said and then the vase full of cheerful flowers was in my arms.

  “Wow, they’re…” My voice trailed away when the man smiled. “Oh, let me get you something,” I said, turning to go into the room.

  He held up his hand. “It’s already been taken care of. Have a nice day.”

  And then he was gone.

  I kicked the door closed and went over to the couch, sitting down, still holding onto the vase. I took a deep breath of the light floral scent and then carefully set the vase down on the table in front of me. The sheer size and volume completely hid the single flower I’d been staring at moments before.

  There was a simple white card stuck amongst the stems and I plucked it out carefully.

  Because you shouldn’t have to share. Dex

  If I’d been a bit melty before, now I was a puddle. I brought the card up to my lips, which curved into a secret smile, and I sat there with a goofy look on my face, staring at the gift. His words from the night he’d given me the single flower replayed through my head.

  I’m sure he wouldn’t mind sharing…

  Hugging the card against my chest, I got up from the couch and went over to the mirror to tuck the card with Dex’s message right above the picture of the beach scene. Both cards were about the same size. Then I went back to the vase and reached around to pull forward the glass with the single flower. After plucking it from the water, I used the mirror to tuck the stem into my hair above my right ear. My slightly curled hair looped around the flower and it looked right at home.

  I smiled some more. I just couldn’t stop.

  In that moment I didn’t think about bodies in the morgue or my allergy to peanuts. I didn’t think about what I did and didn’t know about Dex.

  In that moment, I was just a girl.

  A girl who got beautiful flowers from a boy.

  I went back over to the couch, sitting down but reaching out to finger the smooth satin of the large purple bow. I gave up on the magazine and sat there and stared at the flowers until I glanced at the clock and realized I still needed to go pick up dinner before Frankie arrived.

  I pulled on my coat, wound a white scarf around my neck, and grabbed up my keys. Then I gave the bouquet one last smile before walking out the door.

  * * *

  I settled on Chinese takeout for dinner—vegetable lo mein, beef and broccoli, hot and sour soup with wantons and egg rolls. Even though I ordered from this place a lot, I still made sure to double-check they didn’t use peanuts or peanut oil in any of my dishes. One reaction was more than enough for me, thank you very much. Before I left, the man at the counter added some extra fortune cookies to the bag. My stomach rumbled as I walked home and I realized it was because I’d forgotten to eat earlier.

  Had I really been so caught up in those flowers?

  Yes. Yes, I was.

  When I got to my apartment door, I placed the bag at my feet and pulled out my keys, but when I inserted it in the lock, I noticed the door wasn’t closed all the way. I didn’t put my keys away. Instead I shifted them, placing the largest key between the first two fingers on my hand, letting the sharp end poke out. It was simple, but it would be an effective enough weapon if someone was in my house.

  I pushed open the door, holding tight to the keys, all my muscles tense and ready to jump into action.

  “Who’s here?” I called into the room.

  I heard a sound from the kitchen and I was about to start yelling for help when Frankie appeared. She took in my raised arm and the key and the determined look on my face and she held up her hands.

  “Don’t stab me!” Then she began to laugh.

  My breath made a whooshing noise when I let it out and the keys fell from my grasp. “Holy crap, Frankie! You about gave me a heart attack!”

  “You’re the one that invited me to dinner then wasn’t even here when I arrived. You’re a very bad hostess.”

  I laughed and hauled the bag of food in and shut the door, throwing the locks. “I ran out to grab the food.”

  “I’m starving,” Frankie said, taking the bag from my hand and over to the coffee table, beginning to pull all the boxes out. “That witch I work for about drove me nuts today.”

  I went into the kitchen to get some plates, napkins, and silverware, and when I came out she had everything out and was already eating the lo mein.

  “Hey, save some for me!” I cried.

  “Ya snooze, ya lose.” Then around another mouthful, she said, “Where’d you get the flowers?”

  I smiled and glanced at the centerpiece of the coffee table.

  “A fancy car and flowers… You don’t stand a chance.”

  “Are you implying I can be bought?” I said, slightly offended.

  She lowered the lo mein toward her lap. “I know better than that,” she replied. “But you have to admit it doesn’t hurt.”

  “I don’t like him for his money, Frankie.”

  “But you do like him.” It wasn’t a question.

  I shrugged and reached for the white carton in her hand. She held it out and my hand brushed against hers when I grabbed it.

  The vision came on fast, strong, and it took over everything else I was seeing and hearing.

  And then it was gone.

  But the devastation it left would stay with me forever.

  “Piper?” Frankie said, pulling me away from the assaulting vision.

  I pulled away and set the carton beside me on the table. “Sorry,” I mumbled, still caught in the pain of what I saw.

  “Did you have a vision?” Frankie asked, looking at me with curiosity on her face.

  I blinked and cleared my throat, forcing what I really felt down deep. “Yeah, but it wasn’t anything big.”

  “Well, what’d you see?”

  “You know I don’t like to talk about my visions.”

  “Yeah, but your reaction just now…” Her voice trailed off and she bit her lip nervously.

  I forced myself to smile. A real smile, not something fake. “It just caught me off guard like they do sometimes. I hadn’t been thinking about visions, just how hungry I am.”

  Frankie nodded. “So it wasn’t anything?”

  I shook my head and glanced at the daisies. They actually lessened the knot of panic in my gut. “Nope.” I looked back at my friend and grinned. “And don’t worry; you still look hot.”

  She smiled and fluffed her hair. “Of course I do.” She grabbed up the container of beef and broccoli. “Let’s eat.”

  I picked up the container of lo mein I’d been so hungry for just minutes before. But now, my appetite was gone. The truth was that vision hadn’t been nothing. It was something.

  Something very bad.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Nightshade - Any of several plants of the genus Solanum, such as the bittersweet nightshade, most of which have a poisonous juice.”

  Dex

  All through my typical breakfast of bacon, eggs, and coffee I thought about what Storm said. I did need a plan. Seeing Piper’s reaction to the peanut oil had given me an idea, but I wasn’t sure if it would work or not so I pulled out my laptop and typed the word nightshade into G
oogle.

  I smiled as I read. It was possible to die from ingesting the poisonous berry, and it could cause adverse effects like dizziness, trouble breathing, and nausea. If I acted fast I could somehow get it into her system and then say she was having complications from the anaphylaxis.

  Brilliant.

  Now that I had a plan, all I needed was a way to get the deadly nightshade. I could probably find it online, but that would take forever to get here and I needed it fast.

  There was one way…

  It was in a place I never planned to go again. A place I was all too happy to be rid of.

  I guess the old saying that history sometimes repeats itself was true. To get what I wanted I was going to have to go back… back to where I came from.

  Back to the streets.

  * * *

  I hadn’t been to this part of town since I died. The streets seemed dirtier, lonelier, and colder than ever. Probably because I’d been spending all my time in a spacious, heated townhouse cleaned by my butler.

  I shoved my hands deeper into my coat, wondering what I was thinking to wear such a nice leather coat. I was hoping maybe my ripped jeans and Converse sneakers would be enough to not mark me as some rich kid looking for some fun in the wrong part of town. Maybe to the watchful eyes of the people that lay in wait in the shadows, I would look like one of them who got lucky enough to steal a nice coat.

  The streets here were familiar to me, but I didn’t feel like I was coming home, because even though I once lived on the streets, they weren’t my home. I hadn’t had a real home in years.

  I looked at the sidewalks, which had patches of ice every couple feet. In this part of town no one bothered to lay salt. The city had long ago given up.

  It seemed there was a different set of rules on this street and the few that ran beside it. The people here weren’t governed by the same laws everyone else lived by. Here it was eat or be eaten, live or die, steal or be stolen from. Yes, the police still patrolled here, the city still wanted to claim they were doing all they could to keep every street in Fairbanks safe, but the truth was even they had given up.

  I passed a few places where I used to spend a lot of my time. The narrow alley between two rundown apartment buildings looked exactly the same with the shell of an old rusted out car sitting on blocks. It reminded me of all the nights that I’d climb into the front seat and use the frame to block the snow and what I could of the icy air.

  There were a few people hunched around a large barrel with flames glowing out the top. I heard a few laughs and the sound of something hitting the side as they threw it into the fire to keep it going. I ducked my head and kept walking, not wanting them to see me stare. That was considered a challenge in these parts.

  I walked past a small convenience store where I used to loiter, picking pockets of the unfortunate people who had to be in this part of town and hadn’t thought to get gas before they came. It smelled the same—burnt coffee and stale cigarettes with a hint of gasoline.

  I saw some people I knew, people who weren’t quite my friends but might’ve wondered what happened to me when I disappeared and never came back. Not that they would’ve cared. They knew I was always looking for the next big score, my ticket out of here, and maybe they assumed I found it. That or I died trying. By now, my minimal stash of clothes and personal items had been found and raided, probably fought over and won.

  The truth was I hadn’t thought once about anything I left behind. I didn’t miss it here and having to come back only reminded me why I so desperately wanted out.

  I came to an abandoned brick building, a building probably considered condemned by the city. For the people here on the street, it was a refuge. A refuge from the harsh temperatures Alaska was famous for.

  I flicked my gaze around the sidewalk in front of the building and looked across the street. No one seemed to care what I was doing so I ducked into the building through two loosened boards that were hammered over a broken window.

  It was dark on the very bottom floor of the building, completely stripped of whatever it used to be. Bare concrete floors, empty cracked, yellowed walls, and crumpled trash made up the inside of this refuge. It wasn’t much, but there weren’t many windows so most of the snow and wind didn’t make it in. There was a room in the center that was pretty much what most of us considered a suite because it blocked out all the elements and housed a small heater that ran on batteries. But most of us were never permitted entrance.

  No, it belonged to a guy who staked his claim on this street years ago. He was essentially the boss around here. Nothing happened without him knowing about it, and the bigger deals that would bring in the most cash were always run by him. If you tried to run a big deal without him knowing he killed you, plain and simple.

  I’d run a few deals, earned a few dollars, but mostly I tried to stay out of his way. He was the kind of guy who lived by his own rules and expected you to live by them too. When one of his rules inconvenienced him, he changed it and that left the other person out in the cold. Literally.

  But he was the guy who would get me what I wanted. And he would get it now.

  As I approached the room in the center of the building, someone came out to meet me. A very big someone. I knew he would. Joey Malone, AKA The Bouncer was the boss’s right-hand man. He did exactly what his name implied—bounced people that weren’t supposed to be around.

  “Who the hell are you?” he said, narrowing his eyes.

  I pulled my hands slowly out of my pockets and dropped them to my sides. “I heard this was the place to come when you needed something fast,” I said.

  “Yeah? Where’d you hear that?”

  I shrugged, keeping my cool. “Around.”

  “I’ve never seen you around,” The Bouncer said.

  “That’s because you wouldn’t see me unless I wanted you to,” I replied, injecting enough attitude for him to know I wasn’t a stranger to the streets and he wouldn’t intimidate me.

  He made a grunting sound and said, “Wait here.”

  I stood there, appearing casual but really ready for any kind of fight. I just hoped this new body had reflexes and skills like my old one did because if not, Mr. Burns might not like the condition in which this body is returned to him.

  The Bouncer appeared and gestured for me to follow him. He led me into the room we all used to covet. Now, as I looked around, all I saw was a place in the middle of the ghetto that was no better than the rooms I’d just walked through, except maybe it was warmer.

  The little heater was running and there were two metal chairs set up in the center. Off to the right there was a bare mattress pushed up against the wall with a blanket that was rumpled and dirty.

  “What’s a guy like you doing in this part of town?” the boss asked, looking me over.

  I guess my beat-up jeans and Converse sneakers weren’t enough to give the new me a street approved look. “I want something. I heard you can get it.”

  The boss lifted an eyebrow and proceeded to light a cigarette. “Yeah? What do you want?”

  “Nightshade,” I said, trying not to make a face at the smoke. Smoking was one thing I never did. It was nasty.

  He coughed a little and then squinted up at me through the smoke. “Nightshade?”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t bother to define it further. He knew full well it was a poison. Insulting his knowledge of lethal substances would only tell him I didn’t belong on the streets. But I did. He might usually deal the hard stuff, but I knew he could get this. Anyone who could get kilos of cocaine could get me a little bag of nightshade.

  “What do you want that for?”

  “Does it matter?” I retorted.

  “Are you a narc?” he asked, and I wanted to laugh. He thought I was a narc? I was the furthest thing from a tattletale he would ever see.

  “If I was a narc I wouldn’t be trying to get nightshade from you,” I replied, flat.

  “I don’t have any.”

  I reached into
my pocket, noting how The Bouncer stiffened, expecting me to pull out a weapon, and pulled out a fat wad of cash. “I got something here that says you do.”

  The boss ground out his cigarette on the floor and then stood. I counted out quite a few crisp hundred-dollar bills and held them out. “How about you suddenly find some?”