Page 87 of Cash

“What’s in your desk?”

“Okay, after whoever stabbed and drugged me, I tried to run back inside the funeral home. I know there is something in my desk, and it’s super important.” She groaned, slowly crumbling back into bed. “You’ve gotta tell them.” Her eyes were glazed over now, and her breathing was slowing down. “I don’t wanna forget, Brick. You can’t let me forget.”

“I won’t, I promise.” Brick patted her hand gently. “Something important in your desk. Got it.”

Trixie was clearly feeling the effects of the morphine now, but she was still fighting to stay awake. She stared at Brick, though her gaze was a bit unfocused. “The receipt. For the garden shop. Where we got your flamingo. That’s it. You… you gotta get that receipt. It’ll explain… everything. Just go get it, okay? It’s proof!”

Brick was confused, but he nodded quickly. “Yeah, yeah, totally. I’ll get it. I’ll talk to Ziggy or Noah the next time I see them, and…” He watched Trixie’s eyes flutter shut. “And I will handle that. Whatever that is.”

He waited a few moments before standing up and gently pulling the blankets back over Trixie. He had no idea what her morphine-addled brain was going on about that receipt, but maybe it was still worth checking out. He patted her shoulder farewell, and he poked his head outside the room to look for Cutter and Jules.

There were two nurses, a custodian, and a couple leaving another room, but no sign of them.

He didn’t see Erasmus either.

Well, shit.

Brick took a step out into the hallway.

Cutter and Jules couldn’t have gone too far, but Brick hesitated to leave the room. He looked up and down the hall, but again saw nothing. One way led back to the nurses’ station, and the other dead ended with a door to the stairwell. He leaned against the wall beside Trixie’s door.

Well, all he could do now was wait.

Brick grunted as something bit his neck. He swatted at it, expecting a horsefly or something else creepy and crawly had taken a nibble at him. Instead, he found something hard and plastic.

A syringe.

He squinted as the world around him began to spin, and he realized the contents of this syringe had previously been a blue liquid.

“Oh, motherfuck…”

He felt himself falling, and then everything went black.

Chapter Fifteen

Brick woke up on hard ground with an awful headache and the distinct smell of sewage in his nose. He snorted, tried to move, and figured out a few unfortunate things very quickly.

The first was that it was pitch black wherever he was. He couldn’t see anything at all.

The second, and probably the most alarming, was that his hands were tied behind his back.

And lastly, and also quite troubling, was that mixed in with the scent of sewage was the pungent odor of blood.

He had no idea if it was his own or not.

Brick was able to push himself into a sitting position, and he tried to take account of his various aches to deduce if he was seriously injured or not. His head was pounding, and there was a specific spot on the back of his skull that was throbbing rather cruelly. His right shoulder and arm hurt, but that could have been from how he was sprawled out on the ground. There was a tiny pinch in his neck and…

Oh, the syringe.

Oh, fuck, the syringe.

His memory was hazy, and he tried to piece together what had happened to him. He remembered going to the hospital, seeing Trixie with Jules, but then the rest was a blur.

Taking a few deep breaths, Brick tried not to panic. His heart disagreed with that decision, and it immediately burst into a frantic rhythm and sent adrenaline flying all throughout his body. He pulled desperately at whatever was holding his hands together, and he put everything he had into breaking it.

It was some sort of rope judging by how it cut into his wrists, and it would not snap.

He kept moving his hands, trying to loosen the binding somehow, and cautiously stood up. When his head didn’t hit anything, he tiptoed around trying to map out the space he was in. The floor was smooth, hard, probably concrete. He found one wall, and then another, and he quickly deduced that the room was on the small side.

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