Frenzy Read online

  “I can, and I will.”

  I fumed. He couldn’t keep me out of this. “If you don’t let me come along, I will never let you meet Professor X.”

  He sighed. “God damn it, Molly.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The beefy bouncer drew large black Xs on my hands, since I was under twenty-one. Levi and I entered a crowded sports pub in Renmawr. It was called Shamrock’s. An illustrated cheerful leprechaun decorated the sign. Inside, it was dark and smoky. Televisions at the front of the bar were showing a basketball game.

  As we walked in, something good must have happened, because a cheer went up from the crowded bar. Men high-fived and snatched dollar bills out of the other’s hands.

  Levi looked back at me. “Stay close.” He began weaving through bodies and tables, like he knew where he was headed. I went behind him.

  A waitress with a tray full of beer stepped into our path.

  Levi stopped. “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  She barely looked at him, just kept moving.

  Once she was past, Levi started working his way through the bar again.

  Someone touched my back. I looked back to see a man in a sports jacket, winking at me over his beer.

  I grabbed onto Levi’s shirt, not wanting to be separated from him.

  Within a few more feet, we reached a swinging door. Levi pushed through it.

  We emerged into a room with two billiard tables and a few slot machines along the wall. It was noticeably less crowded in here. There were only about ten people—most of them men, but there were two women. One, wearing a low-cut crop top, leaned over the pool table, lining up her shot. The other lounged against the wall, smoking a cigarette. She was wearing a lot of makeup and a very tight, short skirt.

  When we came in, everyone looked up at us, stopping what they were doing.

  Levi walked into the room, his movements casual.

  Everyone in the room regarded us with stony faces.

  A guy about our age leaned against a pool cue. He was hugely muscular, like one of those body builders on TV. He wore a wife beater tank top, that revealed heavily inked shoulders and biceps. He had a bandana tied around his head. “Levi Reed. You got some nerve showing your face here.”

  Levi adopted his typical stoner look, eyes half open, shoulders relaxed. “Hey hey, Pumbaa. What’s happening, man?”

  Pumbaa? That had to be a nickname. What about this guy made anyone want to call him Pumbaa?

  Pumbaa shook his head. “Don’t try even try that, dude.” He nodded at the door. “Get the fuck out.”

  Jesus. I was starting to get a little freaked. I glanced around the room, looking to see if there was another exit. If we had to make a run for it, I didn’t think that going back through that crowded bar was going to be that quick.

  “Oh come on.” Levi sauntered closer. “Why you gotta be like that? You know I got nothing but mad love for you, bro.”

  There was a door on the other side of the room. Over it, there was a framed picture of some rolling green hills. The Irish blessing was written over the picture.

  “What you looking at, girl?” asked Pumbaa.

  Oh, shit. Was he talking to me? I smiled at him. “Nothing.”

  “Who is she, anyway?” Pumbaa asked Levi. “Why’d you bring her here?”

  “She’s cool, she’s cool,” said Levi. “Everything’s cool, man.”

  “You looking at that picture?” said Pumbaa.

  I shrugged. “I’m not doing anything.”

  “You know what that is?” said Pumbaa.

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s the Irish blessing. ‘May the road rise to meet you, may the wind always be at your back,’ you know. In my house, we have like ten of them.”

  Pumbaa eyed me.

  I felt like an idiot. Why was I talking? I looked at my shoes. “My family’s Irish.”

  “Yeah, you look Irish. What’s a nice girl like you doing with an ass like Reed here?”

  God, why did my mouth keep making noise? Telling him my family was Irish? He was going to figure out who I was if I didn’t shut the fuck up.

  “Hey, I’m not an ass.” Levi slapped Pumbaa on the shoulder in a friendly way.

  Pumbaa’s nostrils flared. “Don’t touch me.”

  Levi made a hands-off gesture. “I don’t see what the big deal is, bro.”

  “Not your bro.”

  I swallowed. Maybe this had all been a very, very bad idea. Why hadn’t Levi told me that he wouldn’t be welcome here? Hadn’t he known?

  “All right,” said Levi, still wearing a huge, stupid, stoner grin. He laughed. “I just don’t get it. I thought we were cool.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I don’t remember doing anything to piss you off.”

  “You don’t?” Pumbaa folded his arms over his chest. “You don’t remember stealing our fucking territory along with that Donovan girl?”

  Levi took a step back. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about how you been selling at parties around Keene College, when you know that we own that place.”

  “Hey.” Levi spread his hands. “I never meant to step on anybody’s toes.”

  “You used to come sniffing around here last fall, trying to get in with us,” said Pumbaa. “And then suddenly, you turn tail and start working with her.”

  Levi shrugged. “She had better product. You have any idea why that was?”

  “Yeah, she’s a fucking bitch, that’s why,” said Pumbaa. “We were taking care of that problem, though. We were working on it. Then, out of nowhere, she up and died.”

  “Did you have anything to do with that?” I asked, the words coming out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

  Pumbaa turned to me.

  Fuck. Why couldn’t I stay quiet?

  He just smirked. “You’re a little spitfire, aren’t you?”

  “Wait a second,” said Levi. “Can we go back a little? When you say you were taking care of the problem, I assume you mean the product problem? Did Cori cut you out of the distribution with Professor X? How the fuck did she manage that?”

  Pumbaa was still looking at me. “Reed here thinks he’s so smart, doesn’t he? Sounds like he’s got it all figured out. Except he’s just a little bit wrong. He’s dying for some of that pure molly. He wants to swing that stuff out of the back of his car. Get real rich. Because Reed doesn’t care about anybody but himself. It’s just about him and him alone. That’s why we never let him work with us, you understand? He’s not a team player.”

  I gulped.

  “No, no, that’s not what I’m about, Pumbaa,” said Levi. “I’m only here because—”

  “Ooh, this should be interesting.” Pumbaa swung his gaze to Levi. “Why are you here?”

  “Cori,” said Levi. “I’m here about Cori. She dated your buddy Chase, right? Did Chase slap her around? Did Chase steal the E she was selling? Did Chase kill her?”

  “Those words did not just come out of your mouth,” said Pumbaa. He looked at me. “See, he’s not smart. He’s actually really dumb. So, what are you doing with him?”

  I looked at Levi. Somehow, I managed not to say anything for once.

  “You should try yourself a real man.” Pumbaa reached out and stroked my cheek with the back of his hand.

  I flinched.

  Levi moved fast. He was between Pumbaa and me in a flash. His hand was at Pumbaa’s throat. His voice was gravelly. “Don’t touch her.”

  “Levi,” I said. “Maybe you shouldn’t—”

  Pumbaa ripped Levi’s hand away from his throat. Pumbaa twisted Levi’s arm behind his back. He slammed Levi into the pool table, face first.

  Balls scattered.

  Levi winced, cheek against the green felt.

  “Let him go.” My voice sounded small and tinny, like I was a little girl.

  Pumbaa laughed. He gestured with his head to the six other guys in the room. “Teach him a lesson, boys.”

&
nbsp; The other guys started to move forward.

  My eyes widened.

  Pumbaa hauled Levi up.

  Levi grinned at him. He drove his head into Pumbaa’s face. There was a crunching noise as Levi’s skull connected with Pumbaa’s nose.

  Pumbaa howled. He let go of Levi, his hand going to his face, which was now gushing blood.

  The other guys ran for Levi.

  Levi got down in a crouch, sneering. His hands were balled up in fists.

  Then all six of them were on him.

  Levi got in a couple punches. He actually moved like someone who wasn’t a stranger to fighting.

  One guy backed up, doubled over in pain.

  Levi clocked another guy right on the chin.

  But there were too many of them.

  Within seconds, Levi was on the floor, and the six of them were crowded around him.

  I couldn’t see what was happening, not exactly, but I could hear the sickening thud of boots making impact with flesh.

  They were kicking him.

  Levi wasn’t making any noise. He wasn’t crying out. He wasn’t moaning. He wasn’t yelling. I started to worry that maybe he was unconscious. Or…

  Or worse.

  Then Pumbaa said. “All right, enough.”

  The guys backed off.

  Levi was curled into a ball on the floor. His face was mangled and bloody.

  His eyes were hard and glittering. He glared up at Pumbaa.

  Pumbaa laughed. “Get the fuck out, Reed. Don’t come back here.”

  I put a hand to my mouth. My hands were shaking.

  Pumbaa smiled at me. “You can stay if you want, sweetheart.”

  I ran to Levi and helped him to his feet.

  Levi grunted.

  His arm draped over my shoulders, we made our way out of the bar.

  When we were outside, the cheerful leprechaun grinning down on us, Levi said, “Well, I guess I burned that bridge.”

  * * *

  I helped Levi onto the couch in his apartment. “You should really go to the hospital,” I said.

  He shook his head, grimacing in pain. “No hospitals. I’m fine.”

  “Your face is like ground meat,” I said. “You’re not fine.”

  He lay back. “There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom. Bring it to me, and you can go.”

  I stood up. My heart was still pounding. Levi had a pretty nice apartment. It was on the edge of town, probably ten blocks from my dorm. The living room was clean and sparsely decorated, but the furniture all matched and looked new, not populated with cast-offs and hand-me-downs like most college apartments I’d been in. “You live here alone?”

  “Just me, myself, and I,” said Levi.

  The drug dealing must be pretty lucrative. It was interesting, though, because while everything here was nice, it wasn’t over the top. You’d think that if a guy was making bank selling drugs, he’d have all kinds of glitzy stuff—big TVs and a bunch of video game consoles or something. Levi’s apartment looked like it came out of an IKEA catalog.

  I spied the door to the bathroom and went there.

  The bathroom was mostly clean too. The sink was covered in whiskers from Levi’s shaving, but other than that, it was really nice.

  “It’s in the medicine cabinet,” called Levi.

  I opened the cabinet and saw the first aid kit. I brought it back to him.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

  “I’m not leaving you.” I sat down on the couch next to him and opened the first aid kit. I took out a few alcohol pads and ripped them open. Gingerly, I began to dab at his wounds.

  He winced. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, still dabbing.

  “Seriously, Molly.”

  “Seriously, why the hell didn’t you tell me that they hated you before we went?”

  He shut his eyes. “I didn’t know they hated me. I guess I suspected, but I thought it was worth a try, anyway.”

  His face was swelling up.

  “We should get you ice,” I said

  “Bandage it first,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, hunting through the first aid kid for gauze and Band-aids. I began to apply them. “Why’d you work him up like that? Asking all those questions about Cori?”

  “I could tell it was going south,” he said. “I figured I should go for broke and try to figure out what they knew.”

  “But we didn’t find anything out.”

  “We found out the O’Shaunessys weren’t fond of Cori. We found out they were trying to solve the problem. And I think it’s likely that they did it.”

  I smoothed a Band-aid over his eyebrow, where his skin was broken. “But that’s no good. If the O’Shaunessys did it, then there’s nothing we can do about it. We can’t go to the police. They’d be no good up against a big organized family like that.”

  He opened his eyes. “The police can take down a mafia family. They’ve done it before.”

  “Not really,” I said. “They get some people convicted sometimes, but it’s usually not the right people. The big guys get the flunkies to spend some time on the inside to get the heat off. Even when a boss goes in, it doesn’t mean that the business stops. It just means different people are running it. Hell, they can even run it from in jail.”

  “You know a lot about this.”

  “Not really. I watch movies.” I got up and went in search of the kitchen.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get ice.”

  “The kitchen’s over there.”

  “Oh.” I turned around.

  “But I don’t think I have any ice anyway. There might be some frozen Stouffer’s meals.”

  In a few minutes, I returned with a box of macaroni and cheese wrapped in a towel. I sat down next to him again and placed it against his left eye, the one that seemed be swelling the most.

  He put his hand over the towel, holding it there, and sat up.

  “Do you think it was Chase?” I said. “Just Chase? Or do you think it was like an organized hit?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Could be either.” He looked at me with his right eye. It was swelling up too. “Molly, if anything, you’ve got to see now that this is too dangerous. We have to drop this.”

  I rubbed my face. “Maybe.”

  “Definitely.”

  “But what about Cori?”

  He sighed. “Much as I hate to say it, Cori’s dead. You’re not.”

  I looked away.

  “I’m sorry, Molly, but putting yourself in danger like this is batshit insane. If anything would have happened to you tonight…”

  I turned to him. “Your face is all mangled because of me. You were trying to protect me. That’s why you grabbed that Pumbaa guy.”

  “Yeah, I guess I could have handled that better.” He laughed ruefully. “I didn’t really think, I just moved.”

  “Well, I wish you hadn’t gotten hurt, but thanks.”

  “Whatever, I couldn’t let that dickwad put his hands on you.”

  “I was okay.”

  He shook his head. “A girl like you doesn’t belong in a place like that.”

  I twisted my fingers together. “What makes you think that? Maybe a place like that is exactly where I belong.”

  “No. People like that are bottom feeders. You’re better than they are.” He paused. “You’re, you know… motivated and brave and noble.”

  “Levi, you don’t know everything there is to know about me.”

  “I know enough. You’re amazing, Molly.”

  I raised my gaze to meet his.

  He lowered the frozen meal from his face. His gaze met mine.

  The intensity of his expression took my breath away. I swallowed. “No, you’re the one who’s amazing. What you did for me...”

  We watched each other, not speaking, for several minutes.

  He cleared his throat. “You know, Molly, maybe it’s not a good i
dea for us to, um…”

  His face was so fucked up. I reached out and ran my fingers over his chin, one place where he didn’t seem to be hurt. “I’m so sorry. You’re hurt because of me.”

  He took a shaky breath.

  My fingers lingered on his chin. “No one’s ever gotten beaten up for me before.”

  He smiled ruefully, then winced at the movement. “Well, ideally, I would have been the guy doing the beating up, not the one getting pummeled.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  His face moved closer to mine. “You’re welcome,” he murmured.

  My heart stuttered in my chest. My eyes slammed shut.

  And then his lips were on mine.

  Shocks of sweetness invaded my body.

  He deepened the kiss, his tongue pushing into my mouth like the first taste of an apple pie—sweet and warm and wonderful.

  I felt drowsy and tingly all over.

  And he pulled away.

  I opened my eyes.

  He slammed the towel-wrapped frozen meal back onto his face. “Damn it.”

  Damn it? What? Was I a terrible kisser or something?

  He got up off the couch. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “You shouldn’t have?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “It’s… not right.”

  “It isn’t?” I bit my lip. “Why not? I thought it was kind of—”

  “I’m older than you. I’m not the kind of guy that would be good for you to be…” He sucked in breath. “You need to go.”

  “You can’t be that much older than me,” I said. “And it’s not like I’m a child or something. I’m an adult. If I wanted to marry a guy in his seventies, no one could stop me. That’s just the silliest—”

  “You need to go.” His voice was flat. He walked over to the door and opened it.

  I let out a noisy breath. “I don’t understand.”

  “It would be better if we stopped spending so much time together.” He gestured at the door.

  I set my jaw. Really? “Fine.” I got up. I went to the door.

  “Take care of yourself,” he said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When I got back to my dorm after walking ten blocks in the freezing cold I was tired and annoyed. How dare he kick me out like that? How dare he say we shouldn’t see each other? How dare he kiss me like that and then say it was a mistake?