"Aside from literally every-fucking-one I deal to?" he asked, making a good point.
Addicts were a desperate sort. If they saw that Bry always had a large supply of drugs on him and followed him even casually, they would find that our apartment building was a constant stop of his.
And Dusty, well she couldn't have been an easier target, could she?
"You love Dusty, don't you?" I asked, making him jerk guiltily.
"She's been my best friend since we were kids," he hedged.
"How the fuck could you leave her so unprotected?" I asked, anger out of my voice, just a deep kind of sadness there instead. When you loved someone, you watched out for them. Even if you were involved with dark shit, like me and my family, you made sure that never touched your women or kids.
Bry shook his head again, looking down at his empty glass. "She's so fucking stubborn, man," he said and I almost wanted to smile. I did get a peek of that over the dishes, but it was hard to imagine her being so stubborn that you couldn't force a security system or a guard or a nasty looking dog on her if you needed it for her safety. "I never wanted her involved in the first place. She was never meant to touch this shit."
Well, that was the damn truth. And I had to give him at least a little bit of begrudging respect for knowing that.
"Then why is she?"
"I see that it's easy to judge from the outside, man. But you weren't here to watch her crumble. You didn't see the panic attacks and the way she started shutting herself off. You didn't have to stand by and watch every person in her life but me and her uncle give up on her. Her own mother said she was a goddamn overreacter and refuses to come here. Says if Dusty wants to see her, she has to come out to lunch somewhere. Don't like calling women bitches, but she's a bitch," he added, looking up at me. "She had to quit her job. She had to move out of her old apartment. She only had so much cash. I knew she was almost through it all and I stupidly talked about needing a safe place to keep my supply. It fucking spiraled from there. I mean, I could have just gotten a locker somewhere, y'know? But she was so desperate and she wouldn't take 'handouts'."
So he didn't actually need to pay her... whatever the hell he paid her to hold the stuff. He was just, in his twisted sort of way, being a good guy.
"Alright," I said, deciding to check my accusations, agreeing that I hadn't been there; I didn't know what they had gone through as friends; I had no idea how it felt to sit by and watch someone you love lose their life because of some invisible monster inside of them. I imagined I would have done whatever I needed to help her too. And Bry didn't have the advantages I did. He did what he could. It was useless to rag on him about it. "Let's try to narrow this the fuck down before it all blows up in our faces."
He nodded at that, agreeing. "What did they look like?"
"Two guys. Both were average height, maybe five-ten. Wide, but not fat. Stocky. Dark hair, dark eyes. Thirties, but early or mid. Not trained fighters. It was pure street. Goes without saying they're the kind of scum who would put their hands on women."
"Unfortunately, that little part doesn't really cut it down much, does it?" he asked, proving again he was decent. What the hell had happened in his life to lead him into drug dealing? "Scars? Tattoos? Accents?"
I squinted a little, trying to think back, trying to work through the red my vision had been clouded in at the moment. "The one who hurt her, he had a scar through his eyebrow, completely cut it into two parts. The other one, I didn't get that close a look at him. But the one with the eyebrow scar, his face is resembling mincemeat right about now."
His eyes went to mine and held for a minute, searching for something. He must have found it too because his lips went into a firm line, his eyes went more guarded, and he gave me a small nod.
Accepting, maybe, that Dusty was mine.
"I can work with that," he said, nodding.
"You don't have much time," I warned. If they had that big a stash, they would be trying to move it, get the cash. But if he could recover the bulk of the pills, things wouldn't go to shit.
"I won't need it," he said with a sort of fierceness I admired in someone, regardless of their profession.
"Good," I said with a nod. "If you need any motivation," I added, reaching for my phone and opening the text Eli had sent not only to me but my entire goddamn family in his attempt to show that we all had to be in on her situation, I guess, and holding out the picture of Dusty.
Bry's face fell as he reached for the phone, holding it and looking down at her for a long goddamn time before handing it back and letting his gaze meet mine. What did I find there? Fucking rage. And the kind of determination that said he would find the fucks who did it, no matter what it took. Not to save his own skin, but as payback.
"Just so we're clear, I want to know who they are," I added, slipping my phone away.
"Yeah," Bry said, pulling out his own cell and typing, asking for my number then having me add it under the contact named "Eddie's Pizza".
"Be smart," I added as he tucked his phone away. "Don't give your boss any reason to look closer because you're being a fucking lunatic."
He nodded, moving past me but not going to the door, going down the hall in her apartment instead, making my brows draw together as I heard some slamming in the bathroom.
"You got a tub?" he asked oddly, his voice carrying.
"Ah... yeah," I said, even more curious as there was another slam and then he walked out with a green and white paisley decorative box in his hands. He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a small Christmas-wrapped package and slipped it inside the box too before handing the whole of it over to me. "What's this?" I asked, pulling off the lid and seeing a ton of little round balls filled with what looked like herbs and dried flowers.
"Bath bombs," he supplied, shrugging. "She gets stressed out, she needs a bath. Sometimes five times a day on a bad day. She likes these things. And you're going to want to get her her computer over at your place if she's not coming back here."
"Why?" I asked, putting the top back on the box, knowing that the little package he got her was more of her bomb things, pointing again to how well he knew her. Another little inexplicable surge of envy coursed through me and I actually had to remind myself that I would know her that well eventually.
And better.
At least I hoped.
"She has appointments with her shrink for one," he said, nodding to the computer in the corner. "Video chats. Though, I imagine she will be cancelling until her face is somewhat better. And, on top of that, she needs to be able to write and order the shit she needs. Since, you know, she can't leave."
"Right," I agreed, nodding slightly.
"She's afraid to come back, isn't she?" he asked, motioning around.
"I think so," I said, not entirely sure.
"It's all tainted. This stuff, it's her stuff. It was all perfect and how she needed it. Now it's all fucked. When this shit blows over, I'll make it up to her and pay to redo every last goddamn decorative thing," he said with fierceness, wanting to make it right so badly.
I bit my tongue to keep myself from saying that when it blew over, I was hoping she would be with me in a more permanent way. Because that shit was nuts.
He moved to walk toward the door, had his hand on the knob, but then turned back to me. "Mallick," he said, head tilted to the side. "Loanshark."
"Enforcer," I said, shrugging. Technically, my father was the actual loanshark.
"She deserves better," he said, and I knew he meant better than both of us, since he wanted her too.
"My dirt will never touch her," I said with so much conviction, it was practically a vow.
"Better not. 'Cause like it or not, I'm a part of her life and if I get even an inkling that you aren't treating her right, you and me... we're going to have a problem."
I nodded at that, respecting that stance more than he would know. "Understood," I said with a nod.
He went to turn away, but then turned back again. "Don't push her," he added and, on that, was gone.
I looked at the closed door for a long minute, hearing the elevator ding and knowing he was gone.
Don't push her.
I got that.
Mostly, I understood that.
But I didn't really agree with it either.
I couldn't pretend to understand what Dusty was going through and what Bry had dealt with at her side over the years, but I did know that simply accepting the condition as it was didn't help. You didn't need to push, but you needed to encourage change.
If he had stood beside her every day, bringing her whatever she needed and never trying to help her come back out of her shell, her apartment, her little personal prison, then he had, in a way, done more harm than good.
I didn't want to push her.
But I wanted to see her progress.
Not for me. Not because I wanted to bring her with me everywhere I went or that I wouldn't be content with seeing her at my place when I came home.
But for her. Because she deserved to have a life that didn't make her feel like she was constantly trapped, like she was surrounded by wolves that would consume her if she tried to step even a foot outside of her comfort zone.