Preppy: The Life & Death of Samuel Clearwater, Part One (King #5)(5)

“Who?” I asked, turning around.

“Samuel,” she offered, like it was a name I should know. She picked up her cup and crossed her legs, settling back into the sofa and turning to stare out the front window into the yard.

Pinkie back in the air.

I turned and raced down the hall, pushing open the back bedroom door. I almost fell over at the sight before me. What used to be a guest bedroom and doubled as Mirna’s scrapbooking room, was now filled with rows of green plants. And not just any plants.

Weed.

Mirna was growing weed out of her guest bedroom.

Green leaves jutted out in every direction over a complicated web of clear tubes and glass planters hanging from the ceiling, and the walls creating several aisles of stacked plants.

Stumbling around the room, shoving as much of it into garbage bags, and sending the glass planters and tubing crashing to the floor as they went, were the two men the bus ticket in my bra was going to get me far, far away from.

“What the f*ck is all this?” I asked, my mouth gaping as I took it all in. “And why is it here?” Eric and Conner both looked as if they’d won the weed lottery, yellow toothed grins plastered on their gaunt faces. Eric’s ripped t-shirt hung like an old potato sack off of his thin frame. His cheeks were sunken in. His sneakers were mismatched, both in color, one black and one white, and in condition, one had a hole with his toes poking out the top and the other had the sole coming loose on the side. Conner didn’t look any better, although his shoes were the same color. “Tell me what the f*ck is going on?” I demanded, wishing that sober didn’t feel so god damned awful.

“You’re a dumb bitch, you know that?” Eric snapped. “This…” he said, holding up one of the plants, shaking it in the air, “…is exactly the reason why we came here. Did you really think we came all the way down to this shit town to lift shitty cheap jewelry from your Granny?” He shook his head in disbelief and continued to fill his bag. “Dumb, f*cking bitch,” he muttered.

Conner chimed in. “When we heard what was here we thought it was just a rumor, but we hit the mother load. You know how much this shit is worth on the street?” He crossed the room and shoved a bag into my hand. Just him being near me made me more disgusted than any withdrawal ever could. “Help load this up. That shit you like to shoot up with isn’t f*cking free, you know.”

I know, because I’ve paid the price.

No more.

“You knew all this was here?” I asked, dropping the bag and taking a step back.

“Fuck yeah, we did,” Eric said, holding up his hand for Conner to high-five him. Conner shot him the bird instead and continued his destruction of the room, knocking over equipment and pulling tubes from the wall. Water from those tubes sprayed around the room like a sprinkler, soaking everything within, including Conner and Eric, who either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “We were watching when your Granny opened the door. That bitch has no clue who you f*cking are, does she?” Eric asked. “Maybe I should go see if she can take a pounding as good as her granddaughter can,” he said, grabbing the crotch of his sagging sweatpants.

Conner, someone who used to be the first to come to my defense, was now laughing at my humiliation. At the sick joke Eric had made about something not even remotely f*cking funny.

“Who knew that an old lady could do all this?” Conner said, kicking over some sort of machine by the window, splitting it open to reveal it’s red and blue wirey guts.

Which was when it hit me.

Conner was actually right. Mirna couldn’t have done all this. Not even at her best. Mirna was the kind of person who refused to take aspirin when she had a headache so drugs of any kind weren’t exactly on her radar. And as far as botanical skills went, hers didn’t go any further than the small flower box under the front window.

“Look around you, you f*cking idiots!” My words came slower than my mouth could move, and with my head throbbing like I’d been clubbed, it was a wonder I could speak at all. “This is high-tech shit. Whoever you’re really stealing from, it’s not my grandmother, and I’m pretty sure that you’ve seen enough movies to know that stealing drugs from someone who deals it never ends well, so chances are that they aren’t going to forget this. They’ll be coming for you.”

Conner laughed and pointed between the three of us. “Yeah, when he finds out what WE did. The three of us. As much as you like to think you’re better than us you’re not. This is as much you as it is us.”

“He? So you know whose stuff this is?”

Conner rolled his eyes at me. Eyes that used to contain kindness and sympathy had grown to hold nothing but hatred and contempt. “Stop asking so many f*cking questions and help us carry this shit out.” His smirk twisted into a sick, knowing smile. “Or don’t. But then I can’t promise that we’re going to be as gentle with you tonight as we were last night.”

I’d never liked guns. Even my dad’s hunting gun that he kept on display in his office made me uncomfortable.

But then Conner said something that reminded me that if I had a gun, I could never pull the trigger. “Or maybe I’ll call Mellie and she can ride my cock for a while,” Conner said, stepping up into my space, glaring down at me with all the hatred in his soul. “Oh, that’s right. I can’t. Because she’s dead.”