Lazarus (The Henchmen MC 7)

Where had he been?

What had he done?

They were questions we had no answers to still.

I didn't even know if Reign did for that matter.

But all that being said, he was a steady brother. He didn't question orders. He never complained. He always stepped up if you needed him to. Almost always, without questions.

"I need you to go to my apartment and check on Bethany." I didn't need to tell him where a key was hidden or how he could get in without one. For those of us who had residences elsewhere, Reign demanded spare sets of keys for emergencies. They were hidden in a floor panel in the common room under the coffee table.

"Is she sick?" He wasn't prying. That wasn't his style. If anything, I figured he might have been wondering if he should bring anything with him in case she was.

"She's detoxing and she's newly clean and I'm worried she might use and OD."

There. It was out.

The silence on the other end of the phone was deafening and long enough for me to pull the phone away to make sure we hadn't disconnected somehow.

We hadn't.

"If she has?"

I could hear the slam of a door and the crank of the engine. He was wasting no time. Thank God.

"If she is, make her throw up and call the cops."

"Wouldn't it be faster to..."

"Cops carry Narcan shots in our area. It's faster."

Cops would make it to an overdose call in under two minutes in our town and, thanks to an increasing number of heroin deaths in the area, the police force started carrying Narcan shots to reverse the effects of an overdose.

It could save her life if she was in trouble.

"On it. I will call you as soon as I know what is going on."

With that, he ended the call.

"I'm no doctor here," Pagan interrupted the tense silence a minute later, "but I'm pretty sure you should be breathing. You know, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Won't be helping anyone if you pass out."

Maybe Reign was right about him after all.

I was a laid-back kind of guy.

So was Edison.

But both of us were tense. It was a palpable tension in the air around us, in the very stiffness of our stances.

Meanwhile Pagan was calm as could be.

He wasn't a dick. He would give a shit if Bethany overdosed. Underneath it all, he was a decent guy all said and done. But he was keeping his head on straight. He was refusing to worry until he knew there was something to worry about.

It was a good quality for our line of work.

"How'd you find this girl?" Edison asked suddenly, jerking me out of my thoughts- each worse than the last.

"That last night I took a walk. I was short-cutting it back to the compound and I saw her OD'ing outside of Chaz's."

Edison nodded but stayed silent.

The same could almost never be said of Pagan.

"So when you guys get married and she squeezes out a litter of brats for you, you're going to have to come up with a better meet-cute than that. I don't think the kids will want to hear that you held mommy's hair while she puked up pills. I'm no expert but I could see that scarring a kid. You know, maybe pep it up. You two locked eyes at a Blockbuster video and you were fucking done for. Then they'll ask what the fuck a Blockbuster is and you can move on to other subjects."

"Frate," Edison said, brows raised like he thought the man was out of his fucking mind. Which he was, so it was a valid thought. "Who the fuck did you trade your balls into for the information about what a meet-cute is? First fucking Cyrus with his Michael Bublé, now this fuck with his rom-com comments? We're a sad excuse for bikers at this point."

My phone rang, surprising me enough to almost drop it as I pulled it up and swiped the screen. "Reeve..."

"She's not here."

Maybe those words should have been a relief.

They were infinitely better than hearing she was dead on the floor and cold and not savable.

But they were no comfort.

Because if she wasn't there, if she was out on the street somewhere, what were the chances of finding her if she was OD'ing?

The answer was simple- slim to none.

"Talk to me," I demanded through a jaw clenched so tight I could barely separate my teeth to get sounds out.

"She made food. Got a pot soaking in the sink and... soup in the fridge. She has clothes piled in the bedroom and bathroom. Towel is wet. Bed is rumpled. NA book is on the table in the living room."

"Is there a burner anywhere?"

There was a pause then, "Yeah, on the nightstand."

Fuck.

"Maybe she got sick of your shitty apartment and went home," Pagan offered, making my head jerk to him, finding him shrugging.