Page 30 of Lone Star

An uncharitable, bitter thought, and it struck an angry chord in his voice when he said, “Pacer, get up.”

No reaction, which only stoked the anger.

“Pacer.” Candy crossed to the bed and laid a heavy hand on Pacer’s shoulder. It didn’t even twitch beneath him. “You can’t do this. You gotta get up.”

There was nothing like warmth in the shoulder under his hand; he couldn’t even feel the vibrations that suggested movement was to follow. The air tasted heavy on his tongue, and for one awful moment, he thought Pacer might be dead. His gaze flicked to the prescription bottles on the nightstand – when had Pacer become less than hale? Someone whose body didn’t function like it used to – and he wondered if this was a heart attack, or something purposeful? A fistful of pain killers chased with whiskey.

But then Pacer took an audible breath and rolled toward him.

Candy stepped back – farther than he needed to; he snatched his hand back like it had been burned, a reaction he wasn’t proud of.

Pacer looked terrible: unshaven, face puffy and creased from the pillow. He squinted like the meager bit of filtered sunlight behind Candy was too bright to look at, whole face screwed up with the gesture. He moved sluggishly, like his body ached, and huffed and grunted until he was flat on his back, one trembling hand held up to shield his slitted eyes. “Derek?” he asked, unsteadily.

Candy understood now why Melanie had driven all the way to the bar in search of him.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said, tone softening. He believed in tough love, but this was…not the time for it. Not in its purest form. “What are you doing in here? Sleeping during the middle of the day?”

“I…” Pacer blinked a few times, and turned his head slow, wincing like his neck hurt. He surveyed the room, eyes widening by only the barest fraction. “I’m in bed,” he said, his voice blurry, dreamy, laced with disbelief. “Am I…?”

“Yeah, you’re in bed. You feeling alright? Are you sick?”

With effort, Pacer sat up. He grimaced, and pushed himself up with both hands, arms quaking from the effort. Candy took his shoulder again and helped, startled by the nearly-dead weight of him, like his body was too heavy to move around – or his muscles were too weak. “Head hurts,” he gritted out, exhaling shakily. “I don’t…”

Depression, Candy thought. It had the power to cripple people. When the brain chemistry got screwed up, flooded with too much bad stuff after too many bad occurrences, depression could drive you to drink; drive you to bed; drive every bit of actual drive right out of you, until something as simple as brushing your teeth took a monumental effort.

Was this depression? Or something more sinister?

He’d been an outlaw too long to go for the usual, mundane explanation for most things.

“Pace,” Candy said, in a firm voice, hoping it might focus him. He earned a squinted, watery gaze. “Did you take something?”

“Take…what?” A few more blinks. “Just my meds.” He reached to touch his chest. “Gotta keep healthy,” he murmured.

Candy hadn’t known that, and felt a twinge of guilt. He rounded the bed and plucked the prescription bottles up one by one. Something for cholesterol; something for blood pressure; something he was pretty sure, based on a few commercials, was supposed to work in conjunction with the cholesterol meds. No sedatives or pain killers.

He went back around to the other side. Pacer looked a little more alert, scrubbing a hand through his rumpled hair, now.

Everything Candy wanted to ask would have to wait. With an internal sigh, he went to the dresser and found a pair of freshly-laundered, knotted socks in the top drawer. He carried them to the bed. “Here. Let’s see about getting up. Mel’s making you some lunch.”

“Mel’s here?”

It was going to be a long afternoon.

~*~

Over the course of her life, Michelle had learned that little quirks she’d thought entirely her own were actually family traits. And, despite the unlikeliness of it, those traits must have stemmed from the infamous Devin Green – the deadbeat-iest of all deadbeat dads – because they were traits shared by all nine of his offspring.

(Ten, she reminded herself. She had yet to meet her latest, youngest uncle. Fox had called him that, too, Ten, because of course he had, unsentimental to the last.)

She liked to make sense of things, and so did her father and her uncles and aunts. They liked facts; quantifiable, controllable facts. Her father brought all his logic to bear on the running of the London chapter of the club. Albie had his furniture; Walsh had his economics; Raven could capitalize on anything, but especially her own beauty and style; Fox had approached the business of killing with a mathematician’s exactness. Miles had computers, and Tommy could execute a plan down to the nanosecond. Shane liked pleasing people, making them happy, lending a hand when he could; he’d managed to weaponize that. No one was as accommodating as him. Cassandra was young, still, the youngest, and still finding her way – but Michelle had seen her art online, and knew that, for Cass, pigments and pencils were the chosen weapons of precision. Art was the thing that brought her a pleasant calmness of thought.

A place for everything and everything in its place.

She’d always enjoyed inventory. It was a chore for most people, was one now for the employees lugging boxes around the storeroom because she didn’t like the way laundered napkins and paper napkins had been stacked on opposite ends of the room. But for Michelle, there was a lovely kind of calm that came with knowing she had all her ducks in a row.

“Thank you, Hank,” she said, putting a green circle sticker on the box he’d just set down and making a mark on her clipboard. “That should be it.”

He nodded. “You’re welcome.” His voice was full of relief. He stepped aside to chug down a water bottle.

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