Page 9 of Drilled

Nance and I eventually parted at the station where I boarded the L train that would take me home. Sitting inside the blue line car at the end of the day had become a ritual over the course of the past few years since I started working at the Daley Center. The fluorescent, flickering lights overhead, scratched plastic seating and metallic screech of wheels on tracks had melded together into a sort of lullaby.

The air was thick with the smell of damp coats and ozone and worn-in rain and there was something oddly comforting about it all. Something homey and personal. I honestly enjoyed the commute, as stressful as it could be at times. I knew that certain people couldn’t understand why I, as a lawyer, chose to go into the least lucrative field possible because of course a Maserati or G-Wagon was the ultimate marker of success and happiness and if I didn’t have either of those, was I even really a lawyer?

Or something like that.

My phone buzzed with a new message and I had to silently chuckle at the irony. It was none other than Mommy Dearest herself. Speak of the devil and she will appear.

Rose: How could you? I’m so disappointed at the disrespect you’ve shown me. How could you take the house when you know better, Lane?

And delete. I was just tired, too tired to reply and too tired to block her. Just like that, all the happiness and contentment I’d felt from the day’s wins evaporated into thin air. I was over this. I’d been over this for years already. Maybe this was a sign that I needed to start manifesting. My thoughts seemed powerful enough to conjure up whatever they drifted to.

I walked the final stretch from the station to the house with a newfound heaviness that I tried hard to shed. But my eyes snagged on Dax outside, in a heated exchange with another man and what looked like an older woman. The closer I got, the more hostile the conversation seemed to be until eventually, Dax shoved a stuffed envelope into the guy’s hands before climbing on his bike and tearing away from the curb.

The two people he left behind didn’t wait for very long before getting into their shared car and driving off themselves. I frowned, watching the car disappear around the bend. I started thinking about Bear’s words, his apology over Dax’s attitude and insistence that despite his past, he was still a good guy.

But I didn’t know that, and I didn’t know Dax. I didn’t even know Bear, really, as much as I was starting to like him. There it was again, that feeling of being completely out of control on my own turf. I trudged the rest of the way home, my mood now entirely soured.

What the hell was Dax up to?

4

Bear

“I think that’s enough of that,” I said, switching the radio off just as we turned into Lane’s street. Silas made a sound of dismay.

“What, you don’t like Anastacia?” he asked.

“Sure I do, but you don’t have her pipes, man,” I pointed out. “The duet’s not really cutting it.”

“No need to be a jackass. Life’s too short to be worrying about what people think of you. Maybe if you started enjoying yourself you’d be less stressed all the time, Boss,” he shot back.

“I have things I do for fun that don’t involve catching a noise complaint,” I said.

“Can’t be that much fun then,” Silas replied.

I snorted, but before I could say anything else, our attention was redirected as Dax’s matte-black Streetfighter pulled up to the curb. I narrowed my eyes. “Didn’t know Miller was capable of showing up on time.”

“You still haven’t let him off the hook for Day One?” Silas asked.

I took a deep breath. I knew that Sy and Dax came a long way together, since they were kids and way before I met either of them. But we had a reputation to uphold and I wasn’t in the business of taking unnecessary risks. “I gave him a chance to prove himself. Maybe this is his way of turning over a new leaf.”

“He can be a real piece of work, but in all the years I’ve known him, he’s never gone back on his word,” Sy said.

I grunted, parking the company truck in the alleyway and cutting the engine. We filed out, meeting up with Dax on the walkway and I grimaced at the deep dull ache that echoed in my right leg, the feeling like a rusted iron rod clamped tight inside the bone. I hated winter.

Dax gave a quick nod, trying to duck into the house. I noticed that he had his hoodie and cap pulled right over his face, which wasn’t exactly usual.

“Running from the cops again, Miller?” I asked, half joking and hoping it really was only a joke. But Dax didn’t laugh, and when he tried walking past me to get to Lane’s door, I grabbed the back of his hood and yanked it down.

“Watch it,” he hissed, trying to turn his head away from me but I already saw it. Silas came to join us, looking confused for a moment until his eyes settled on Dax’s face.

“Oh come on, man,” he groaned, sounding like a disappointed older brother.

“It’s not what you think,” Dax insisted, his hand making half the journey to pull his hood back over until he gave up. “I swear.”

“Really? Because that split lip and blue eye tell me a different story,” I said, my voice frigid against the March wind. “Show me your knuckles.”

“What am I, a kid or something?” Dax seethed, defiantly putting his hands in his pockets.