Page 72 of Drilled

“It’s…it’s a fight club thing,” he said shiftily.

Nance grunted. “Okay. Carry on.”

“I was standing by the back exit of the venue, my gloves still in my gym bag. I wasn’t even taped yet. Four CPD uniforms burst through the fire doors. No announcement, no sweep of the crowd. They made a direct line straight for me,” he said.

That fact immediately stamped itself in my brain as odd. It not only went against protocol but strongly confirmed Dax’s claim that he was set up. If the cops didn’t even bother looking for him, it meant they knew exactly where he was down to where he’d be standing.

When I looked over at Nance, her expression told me she picked up on it too.

“The first cop slammed me against the brick and reached into my left jacket pocket. Pulled out a little plastic baggie with a gram of blow. I don’t use, Lane. Like I said, it was a setup.”

He’d been scribbling the crib notes onto the pad and he finished just in time to look up at me when he said my name.

“Did the cops say it was a raid?” I asked.

“Yeah. Afterwards. But that still doesn’t explain why they came for me immediately instead of searching the place first,” he pointed out. “They didn’t even touch anyone else.”

I looked him in the eye and this time he didn’t drop his gaze. He stared right back and I just had a feeling in my gut that he was telling the truth.

“We’ll need to wait for the prints to be processed. But if you’re telling the truth then your DNA shouldn’t be on the baggie,” I said. While the sentence was factual and objective, I could strain the hint of reassurance that coated the words. Dax gave a small, quick nod.

Nance excused herself to get a running start on the defense, leaving me and Dax alone. I jogged the files on the desk in front of me, clearing my throat.

“Thanks.”

My eyes slid up.

“For having my back,” Dax clarified, his voice sounding a little strangled.

“Don’t mention it,” I replied, jerking my thumb in the direction of the door. “I’m about to clock out, actually. I kind of wanna get ahead of the storm.”

I was being careful with my words, not wanting to make it obvious that Dax was most likely going to go home with me. That would certainly make being his self-appointed lawyer a little more complicated than I could deal with at the moment.

He pressed his lips together. We timed it realistically enough to not draw any suspicion and he left first, waiting for me at the station so we could take the L train back together.

It was a little strange to have someone join me on my commute. It had been my own personal little introspective bubble for such a long time that it took some getting used to. But Dax didn’t seem like he was much in the mood for talking, either. We just sat side by side, our arms brushing against each other every now and again.

“The conditions of my bail include not being in the vicinity of any fight, right?” His question caught me off-guard, and when I looked at him, he seemed pensive.

“Yes,” I answered.

“See, that’s what has me stressed out right now. Because if I can’t fight, then how the hell am I supposed to get the money together for my brother?” He framed it as a question.

But what could I say to that? What answers could I give him that he wouldn’t have thought of at least a million times over. So I did the only thing I could think of. I reached out and squeezed his hand, just once and very quickly.

He almost flinched in surprise.

“I know that you have many things you’re worried about right now. But you need to focus on your safety first. That’s the most important thing, Dax,” I said. We finished the rest of the ride in silence.

*

“Shit!” Dax exclaimed as we peeled out of the station and into the cascading rain. The sky had split open above us, and what had started as a gloom earlier was now a full-on storm. Dax grabbed my hand and tried moving me faster out of the downpour.

The moment we entered the house, I could already hear Bear barking out orders to Sy. My stomach sank as I feared the worst, and by the time Dax and I barrelled downstairs to the basement, those fears were confirmed.

There was already a thin layer of freezing stormwater creeping across the concrete floor, threatening the guest bedroom and my home office. The gutted subfloor of the master had turned into an active concrete pool, with muddy water collecting rapidly. Silas was frantically jamming industrial rags and a tarp into the foundation cracks to stop the pool from rising around the exposed pipes. Bear was dealing with the larger structural threat by throwing wet insulation out of the way to clear a path for the buckets.

Bear barely looked up to notice Dax and me before instantly calling us to action. He had to raise his voice over the sounds of the storm and rushing water. “Dax! Grab the shop vac behind the stairs! And Lane, start swapping out these buckets before the pit overflows!” He wiped a mixture of sweat and rain from his forehead as he wrenched a piece of waterlogged drywall free.