Page 63 of Roses Are Dead
The alliance between those two was a mystery I couldn’t unravel with my head hammering so hard. But Wolf said there was more shit going down, so I focused on that. “What else did you need to talk to me about?”
“Carl.”
I didn’t have to close my eyes, because they’d fallen shut on their own. “Has he surfaced?”
Wolf laughed, short and bitterly. “Yeah.”
I didn’t like the look on his face. “Well?”
He inhaled and let the air out slowly. “Monica fingered the visiting club. And while we don’t normally just believe things on face value, Sprout, who— again, was pissed off because of Ma—went after the two who were bothering Roishin.”
I gritted my teeth, waiting for bad news. Sprout did not do heavy lifting like that. Especially when it was two against one.
“Don’t worry, Smoke backed him up.”
Thank the Gods. “And?”
“And they claimed to have gotten it from a dealer in Harrisburg who approached them.”
“Carl.”
“Bingo.”
“When did he do that?”
Wolf smiled. “The night he disappeared.”
I pieced together the timing. “Before or after midnight?” I had to know whether he’d gone there directly after being at Beth and John’s house or if there was a gap in there.
“Before.”
So, he’d planned on going to the drop from his sister’s. Or maybe he hadn’t.
I replayed Rose and John’s conversation in my memories. Rose was right to worry about the kids. If one pill could knock me out like it had, it would have killed a toddler.
But instead of doing that, Carl went to our feeder chapter, but only after confirming whether Roishin was with me or not, and testing John.
Even if he hadn’t planned it all out like I suspected he had, Carl visited his sister’s four kids while holding onto date rape drugs strong enough to knock me out. What a piece of work.
I laid out my concerns for Wolf. “Am I imagining things?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. I’d bet he’s not planning to let Roishin live once you return her. And, he’s using the situation to set us up, or to weaken us.”
“That’s what Jackson thinks, too.”
Wolf studied the wall for a moment. “We’re one ‘accident’ away from getting framed. We’ve gotta move her.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no? Dump her on Hagerstown. You said yourself that Betty Jo took a shine to her.”
“Even if we did that, and nothing happened, which I highly doubt would be the case, Walt would bitch to his boss, our old boss, and you know what would happen then, right?”
Oh yeah, Wolf knew. “Jackson would get involved.”
“Precisely.”
There was a sports drink near the mattress. “Is that mine?”
