Cori flinched but didn’t argue.
With her hair down, she looked somewhat better, but those fancy clothes and clean sneakers weren’t gonna work. I couldn’t do anything about the shoes, but I could fix the rest. I grabbed one of my work hoodies from the back seat and handed it to her.
She slipped it over her head, no questions asked, drowning in the dingy gray size L with the J&D Construction logo on it. It did the trick, covering up her curves and masking the quality of her jeans.
“That’s good,” I said. “Stay by my side and try not to look at anyone too close, okay?”
“Yeah, Deck. I know.” I sensed the fear in her voice, but also the careful attention. She understood the rules here.
There were no sidewalks. Cars hugged every inch of the curb, so we walked side by side in the street. All the windows had their curtains drawn tight. The only evidence these houses were occupied were the cars, the bikes tossed haphazardly near theporches, and a few yards with faded Little Tikes slides out front. Cori and I spoke quietly in the unnerving stillness.
“How did you know about this place?” she asked.
“My brother Emilio. You remember that do-gooder mothereffer is a cop? About a year ago, he mentioned he’d seen Johnny here, on the job. That’s how your brother and I reconnected.”
It had been dangerous engaging with Johnny because I hadn’t wanted to run into Cori. I’d known since I was a teenager that the best thing I could do for her was stay away. But her brother was a different story. I’d put Johnny in this situation. I owed it to him to try to fix it.
As we walked by a gray house with a makeshift wheelchair ramp out front, two enormous Dobermans came rushing at us, jumping up on the fence and barking viciously. Cori launched herself against my side. My arm came around her shoulders instinctively. After we passed the dogs, I attempted to remove it, but she grabbed on, locking me next to her.
“It might make more sense if we look like we’re, you know, together,” she said.
I didn’t want to have my arm around her. A dozen years on, I still remembered how good she felt there. But she had a point. I nodded and lifted the hinge on the gate. We walked up the path to the door.
My stomach churned as I tapped on the solid wood—memories of Chi-chi’s parties threatened to make their way to the surface—but I didn’t have a choice. Johnny could be in there.
I raised my fist to the door again, noticing it wasn’t fully shut. Eventually, I knocked hard enough that it opened.
Into a nightmare.
The door creaked wide, and we found ourselves on the edge of a putrid-smelling living room. Navy blue sheets were duct-taped to the walls, covering the windows and back door slider. Coriand I squinted, adjusting to the abrupt darkness, and I barely pulled her back from stepping in a puddle of something—vomit, probably, hopefully not piss—as we ventured in farther.
At least five couches were shoved into the room, all with people in various states of awareness on them. A dilapidated coffee table covered in drug paraphernalia held a place of honor in the center. I saw Cori’s eyes widen at the sight of burned foil and spoons, lighters and pipes. Needles. One needle stuck up from the carpet, perfectly embedded.
“Watch where you step,” I whispered. Her reply was a slight nod.
A couple looked up at us with curiosity, but no one seemed to mind that two random people had walked into the house. It was strangely quiet, just the sounds of breathing, snoring, and a squeak of pleather as someone moved around on a sofa. I imagined this room looked a lot different a few hours ago. Still a nightmare, but one with music and talking. Again, I pushed down the memories that nagged me.
Shuffling on the carpet echoed from our left. A woman came out from the hallway, the straps of her tank top falling off her shoulders and two stringy braids unraveling down her back. She gave us an upnod as she walked by and went through the open doorway of the kitchen, passing close enough that I could make out her blown pupils and the track marks near her elbow. Cori noticed too, gasping a teeny bit before catching herself. At least it was a sign of life. Everyone else looked half dead.
I pulled Cori against the wall, hugging her to me—not that anyone was paying attention—and used that vantage point to check out the people on the couches. None of them looked like Johnny. The guy slumped in the corner was too big. The man on the far cushion was Black. Another couple was on one end of a ’70s-era paisley couch, and I realized with disgust that they weremore awake than the others, the woman lazily rubbing her hand against the man’s crotch while he humped up against it.
Leaning down to Cori’s ear, I said, “I don’t see him here. I’m pretty sure thatmujerwho just passed us is the only one in the kitchen. We need to check the bedrooms.”
She trembled slightly as I rested my hand on her lower back, keeping close as we made our way down the hall. The first bedroom door was wide open. Four people were on the bed—three women who might have been teenagers, and one man who looked like he was in his thirties, all naked. I assumed they were passed out until the man glared up at me and shouted, “Shut the fuckin’ door, bitch!”
I shut the fucking door.
His loud roar reverberated like an earthquake after the quiet we’d walked into. Cori and I held up for a tense moment, worried his yelling might have alerted someone who would object to our presence.
Nothing happened.
“Shit, that was close,” I breathed out.
Next up was a bathroom, the door cracked open. I checked quickly and saw just one man, lying in the bathtub, needle still in his forearm. The oppressively sour smell radiating from the pool of vomit in the sink of the unvented space almost made me throw up, but I choked it down in time. “Nothing in here,” I said to Cori, shutting the door quickly.
It was a small house, two bedrooms, so there was only one door left to try. Had I brought Cori into this hellhole to come up empty on finding her brother?
Pushing open the last door, I registered that this room was darker than the other. A double coverage of sheets blocked the light from its one window. A beat-up dresser missing two drawers took up almost half the real estate in the tiny space. Atop it was a bunch of pipes, needles, spoons and foil, a rubberband—the same stuff that had been on the table in the living room. I could barely make anything out with only the dim light of the hallway as my guide.
