The Wolf (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp #2)(68)

“I should not underestimate her, Apex.”

That’s right, she thought at the patient.

Then she calmed herself and stared down at the bed.

“We have to do something for you,” she murmured as she noticed his hands for the first time. One was missing all its fingers.

When there wasn’t a response, she glanced up at that face. The lips had parted so he could breathe, and the shallow inhales came at a panting speed. And then there was a groan—after which, a slightly calmer rhythm.

He’d passed out, she was willing to bet.

“You’re in pain,” she whispered to him anyway. “Dear God, are they not treating your pain?”

“No, we’re deliberately letting him stew in it,” the other man—what was his name? Apex?—muttered. “Because we get off on a male of worth suffering.”

Rio closed her eyes. “I can’t imagine how much it hurts.”

“He is stronger than all of us combined.”

She looked over at the chair. Apex was sitting forward, his hand on the bed right next to the patient’s ruined one—but not touching it. Because that would have been unbearable, no doubt.

“Is there nothing here that can help him?”

“We’re lucky we have a bed for him,” the man gritted out. “Most of the medication here expired two decades ago and is degraded. There’s nothing we can do.”

“How much longer do you think he has?”

Eyes that were dark as the corners of Hell lashed over to her. “Will you get the fuck out of here. I’d kill you right now, but he won’t let me. I promise, though, if you’re still here the second his heart stops, I’m coming at you.”

“Aren’t you scary,” she said in a bored tone.

Ignoring the guy, Rio paced up and down inside the drapery—which is to say, she took three steps up and three steps back.

Wasn’t that a line in a Bruce Springsteen song? she thought.

As an image of her brother came to mind, she stopped at the foot of the bed—and tried not to get confused between the past and the present. But the stillness of the patient . . . reminded her of what she had seen when she had broken down the door to Luis’s bedroom. She would never forget the way her brother had been lying there on his back, against a pillow stained with his own vomit, his blue-tinged face . . . angled directly up at the ceiling, as if he had been watching the hand of death as it had come for him.

Rubbing her eyes, she stared at the patient again. Even when unconscious, he had a frown on his face and a tension in his body.

There was no relief for him. Anywhere.

She thought of her brother. And felt sick.

“We have drugs here,” she said roughly.

“What?” Apex snapped.

“This is a fucking drug factory, right? There are drugs here.”

Apex opened his mouth as if he had a tic that involved telling her to go fuck herself and was giving in to it again.

She shook her head at him and spoke quickly, even as between each blink, she saw her brother’s dead face. “There’s heroin. Here on-site. I’ve seen it on the streets marked with your iron cross symbol. You don’t just sell cocaine, and opiates are opiates—they make pain go away. If we can get him a small dose of heroin, he’ll at least be comfortable.”

Blink. Her brother. Blink. Her brother—

“That shit kills people.”

No kidding, she thought.

“Only if you give him too much,” she said. “And I know . . . how to titrate it. I won’t let him have too much.” Rio went around the foot of the bed and stood in front of the man. “Take me to where it’s cut. I can test it. Then we come back here and help your friend. Partner. Husband, whoever he is to you.”

Apex slowly rose to his feet. God, he was huge, a living, breathing billboard for a beatdown.

He jabbed her in the shoulder. “I don’t need shit from you.”

Why am I doing this? Rio asked herself.

Well . . . because she could see more of the building. He would know how to get around, where the drugs were processed. Helping the patient would help her.

“You don’t need me?” she demanded. “Really? Well, for one, you’re sitting how many rooms away from the solution to his suffering and you clearly haven’t considered it. Two, do you know the dose? Enough to give him relief but not kill him? His respiration is already compromised, and I’m guessing his blood pressure is low. You don’t know where that line is, do you.”

“Are you a nurse?”

She thought back to all the conversations with ER docs immediately after, and since, her brother’s death. She’d had to know exactly what had happened, down to the molecular level, from his body weight to the cut of the drug, to what else had been in his system. She’d had to . . .

“No, but I know a lot about overdoses.”

The man stared down at the patient.

“He is never not in pain,” she said hoarsely, picturing her brother’s face whenever he’d thought no one was looking at him.

Apex passed a palm over his eyes. “Never. He suffers constantly.”

“Show me where the drugs are. I’ll take it from there.”

There was a long silence. Then Apex shook his head. “You don’t need to come with me. I’ll bring it back—what do you need?”