When I finally made it to the apartment, I went straight to the shower. I rinsed the grime off of me, and with it went all my energy and adrenaline from tonight. I was limp as a noodle when I got out and finally joined Allie in bed.

I wrapped an arm around her still figure and held her for a while. She hadn’t stirred the entire time I was out. I’d never seen her so exhausted. I took in her smell, ran the tip of my nose along her shoulder and felt my heart explode the way it always did when I touched her.

I slept for two hours before the alarm went off.

*

It took two weeks before the house was discovered. Like the first time, I watched the chaos from afar. Only this time I didn’t pace around in nerves, expecting someone to come looking for me.

No.

This time I was confident. Nobody was after me. They were too busy pointing fingers at each other. The violence mostly struck at night, and bodies piled on top of bodies. The Syndicate tortured gang members from all different groups across Hedley; they tortured them for answers and then they were dumped like trash on the side of the road when they couldn’t offer any. The death toll kept rising, and the police made their lame statements, making promises about catching all those involved. Yet I hardly saw a change in police activity. They were probably waiting it out too.

I didn’t feel guilty or responsible. These were murderers. They were carbon copies of Ricardo, walking the streets alongside innocent people. People like Allie and Kayden. They were capable of all kinds of evil, and they didn’t deserve one shred of thought.

By meddling, Marko and I were destroying gangs. We were damaging ties and business deals. And it wasn’t long after that something began to dawn on me.

In order to fight the bad, one had to be bad too.

Five

Allie

Hooray to another shit day!

Not.

I stepped onto the rickety bus after classes. My head still pounded from all the lectures. Deciding to go into Psychology instead, I found myself mentally drained from so much studying. Despite my pounding head, I didn’t regret it. It was the right path for me, especially if it meant I could find work rehabilitating drug users after I did my degree. A lot of people questioned my sanity when I told them what I wanted to do, especially my guidance counsellor who warned me of the “scum” I’d be around. Yeah, very encouraging stuff like that was said to me all the time…

But after living in a town filled with gangs who distributed a shit load of drugs, it was clearly a pandemic, and it spread out everywhere. I knew leaving Hedley wouldn’t offer a better life. Access to drugs was becoming easier these days. Turning my back on the town I grew up in and leaving the kids that were vulnerable to this pattern felt wrong in every way. So I figured what better way to live my life than help people that were destroyed by their addictions and maybe even give awareness to a young mind approaching that lifestyle?

It was the only career path that stood out, even if the pessimistic side of me doubted I’d make any changes in a fucked up town so far off its moral compass.

Still. I was trying, and that was better than taking a backseat and watching hope drain from countless faces as their worlds plunged into darkness. And all over what? Something that gave them some kind of high for a short period of time and made them miserable the rest? It was bullshit.

So fuck the guidance counsellor calling people scum. She could take her advice and lodge it up a place where the sun don’t shine.

Taking a seat in the front – and making sure not to make eye contact with the creepy people in the back – I clutched my backpack to my chest and looked out the window. The bus was on route to Mom’s house, and while I dreaded being around her and her incessant criticisms about my parenting, it was nice that she had offered to look after Kayden when I was in class. Her ice cold heart thawed around him, and I was hopeful there was room yet for our own relationship to blossom. See? I was fighting my pessimism because nobody likes a Debbie Downer.

“Hey, pretty lady,” came a familiar voice.

Jumping, my head shot to the side just as a big frame slid into the empty seat next to me. I stared up at Matt’s smiling face and my body instantly relaxed.

“Jesus, you scared me,” I said with a relieved smile.

He shot me an apologetic look. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s not your fault. I was lost in thought.”

Eyeing the backpack, he asked, “Just come back from school?”

I nodded. “Yeah, a whole morning of classes. On my way to my mom’s now to pick up Kayden.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Wow, didn’t know you guys were cool after… you know.”

I shrugged. “Can’t say we’re perfect, but she offered to look after Kayden some days. Beats putting him in day care.”

“I take it day care is killer on the wallet, huh?”

“Yeah, but I also trust my mom to look after him more than I trust anyone else.”

“Trust is always an issue,” he agreed thoughtfully. My eyes jumped from his tired face and down his body. He wasn’t his usual pristine self. His clothes were dimpled and messy, like he’d been in them for a couple days. He didn’t smell bad, but that was probably because he’d drowned in cologne, concealing the smell of faint alcohol.

“What about Heath?” he then asked. “How’s he doing?”

“He’s good,” I answered. “He’s been doing a lot of overtime, so he’s pretty tired a lot of the time.”

“I’ve been meaning to catch up with him, but I haven’t seen him fight. The last one was him and Marko, and he was too concerned about getting out of there than stopping for a chat.”

His fight with Marko… That was a fortnight ago. “No,” I disagreed, “he fought last week too.”

Now Matt looked confused. “Last week? You sure?”

“Yeah, he won, too.”

“Huh, must have missed it or something. And of course he’d win. That guy’s unstoppable. Unless he’s against Marko, of course, then it’s hard to know for sure.”

I resisted rolling my eyes at the mention of Marko. I didn’t like the guy. He gave me the creeps. There was something very off about him, and I wished Heath stopped spending so much time with him outside of work and family time. They’d been inseparable, and I was paranoid Marko was going to bring Heath down in some way. Sometimes you could tell who the bad apples were, and my bet was he was a rotten one.