Page 65 of Hunt

“The canister, isn’t that your father’s?” he reiterated, sitting in the leather chair.

“Yeah, Mom gave it to me when I was forced to visit her in Larsson,” I replied, swigging back the last of the whiskey inside.

“You never mentioned it before?” he asserted.

“Yeah, I forgot about it until I found it later in my bag,” I explained, trying hard not to slur, only to sound worse.

“Give it to me,” Mikky demanded, reaching for the canister.

“There’s nothing in it. I finished it, so if this is a widdle intervention, you’re too late,” I stated sarcastically.

“I have no interest in awiddleintervention, but I just want to look at the cannister,” he replied, so I handed it to him.

“So, are you going to tell me why you’re slumped here on my couch at 2 AM?” he asked as he tipped the canister upside down and, to my surprise, unscrewed the bottom. Then, I took out a tiny plastic bag containing two pink tablets.

“What the fuck? What are they?” I queried, reaching out so he could hand them to me, but instead, he crushed them.

“Your father’s widdle secret kept from your mother. They’re uppers for when he’s working late,” Mikky informed me, “but we’re not having them tonight or any night.” He stood up, walked to the kitchen, and chucked them down the sink.

“I thought he was against drug consumption, unless he’s importing them across the state, of course,” I mumbled the last part. “But they weren’t for his benefit. Fuck, he was always ranting about having a clean club and shit there he was fucking swallowing back uppers.”

Mikky sat back down again and screwed the bottom of the cannister back on, then handed it back to me free of the drugs. “Yeah, well, there were many things you didn’t know about your father,” Mikky asserted, gazing out at the view. “You were a little kid who needed protection, not exposure to the business.”

“Tell me what other secrets he had?” I demanded.

Mikky snorted, amused. “The list is too long.”

“C’mon, give me one thing. Just one,” I argued.

He slid down in the seat as if giving himself time to think of something. “Alright, first tell me why you’re here on my couch drinking your blues away.”

With the aggravated knot in my stomach came the need to drink or smoke it away, so I unscrewed the silver canister, only to remember that it’s empty. “I went for a swim, a night swim, earlier,” I finally said after tossing the empty canister on the couch beside me.

“Where? Did you break into the local community center?” he questioned, probably wondering where this was going.

“No. Wild swimming.” I paused to collect my thoughts as I didn’t want to divulge what happened tonight because it would get Ronan, Riley, and me in trouble.

Due to the lengthened time for me to say more, Mikky lost patience and stood up again, and I thought he was heading back to bed or into the bathroom when he said, “I’ll put the coffee machine on, because I think you need sobering up. So, wild swimming where?”

“Out of town in an isolated location. Anyway, it’s not the point. " Again, I was at a crossroads, wondering how to tell him what I needed to say without telling him that I was with Riley at night in the waterhole.

“I’m struggling to figure out if you have a point,” he yelled over the coffee machine as it ground the coffee beans.

I waited until he sat back down before I confessed, “It’s Annika.”

He grunted, smiling. “You’ve made that claim before.”

“I know it’s her. I saw it in her eyes,” I asserted to convince him. “She had her glasses broken-”

“And what did you do about it? Beat the shit out of the guy who broke them,” Mikky accused me.

“No, I didn’t touch him. This time. Because he revealed that her phone was bugged and all that.” He’s up to date on that saga, so there’s no need to go down that road. “The light shone on her new pair of glasses, and no lenses were in them. I mean…it’s plain glass. I noticed that with the last pair, but her behavior in her room indicated that she needed the glasses to see properly. It’s like it’s all an act. Even when I looked into her eyes tonight, I saw Annika.”

“Tonight? You were with her tonight?” he hit accusingly. “When? She left work late after her shift and ah…caught the bus or did you pick her up?”

“No. I mean…” I trailed off as my words slurred together. “Not tonight.” I had to backtrack when I forgot I wasn’t supposed to be with her.

“Okay, Gunner, you need to speak clearly here.” Mikky found a cigar in the wooden box on the coffee table and lit the end. “You’re not making sense. You think her glasses are fake, but she acts like they’re real in her room even when no one is watching.”

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