Off the Wagon (Users #2) by Stacy, Jennifer Buck Read Free Book Online Page B

doors, chasing down drug dealers, and punching out teeth. He was working his way up the food chain and was getting close to the top. He had hit the docks, night after night, following the lead he had gotten from the drug dealer who had shot Barber. From there he had gone to the Sodo district, Downtown, and finally a rundown apartment building up on Pill Hill. Each drug dealer leading him to another location and another dealer higher up the totem pole. Now he found himself watching and waiting outside an apartment building with boarded up windows, and a jagged crack running through the masonry from the bottom floor all the way to the top.
    He knew what he was looking for, a man named Jeb. A man, he was told after some brutal convincing, who had all the right connections. He had only a brief description of the man, crooked nose, black hair, and a pock marked face, but Carter figured that the combination was unique enough that he would spot this drug dealer relatively easy once presented with the man.
    Carter waited for hours, almost completely through the night and he was about to give up, when a man fitting the description finally emerged from within the crap-tacular fortress. A burning cigarette hung loosely from the man’s lips, a wisp of smoke rising from the hot end. The man strolled to a nearby parking garage and Carter crept as quiet as a ghost behind him. A long ramp led down into the underground parking structure. Inside, rows of cars lined both sides with a lane down the middle. The drug dealer was headed toward a cherry red Porsche. Of course, he was. Carter couldn’t help but take pleasure at just the thought of what this douche bag had coming.
    Carter ducked behind an SUV just as the man reached his car and looked around as if to check that he were alone. He then jumped into the driver seat. To the drug dealer, Carter must have come out of nowhere. One minute he was sitting alone in his car, the next the passenger door swung open and in hopped Carter, but the man with the pockmarked face didn’t have the look of surprise he should have. Instead he wore wiry grin.
    “What the fuck you smiling at?” Carter asked.
    The man merely looked down, drawing Carter’s eyes down to his. A gun, loaded and cocked, was aimed right at Carter’s gut.
    “So you’re the dead man who’s been hitting all my dealers,” he stated more than asked.
    “I’m not dead yet,” Carter said.
    “No, not yet, but soon.” The drug dealer put the gun to Carter’s forehead. “But first tell me something. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
    “I’m keeping scum like you from doing business,” Carter said. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
    “Yeah, but why?”
    “You answer a question for me first,” Carter said.
    “You’re not in any position to negotiate, but since you’re about to be dead anyway, sure go ahead.”
    “Who’s behind all these drugs? No one seems to know.”
    “The big man? He’s a User like you, operates out of an abandoned warehouse downtown,” the man said. “Oh yeah, I know you’re a Scorcher. Word on the street is you’re a nasty one too. Now tell me why you’re doing this.”
    “I could tell you its because I’ve got a teenage kid at home who broke a year long streak of sobriety by using your drugs, or I could tell you I’ve got some higher sense of morality or some hero like code that I follow, but the truth is…I’ve got demons, and demons need to be fed. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, and all that jazz. The truth is, I just don’t like you fucks and what you stand for.”
    Now it was Carter’s turn to smile as the look on the man’s face went blank, empty, and expressionless.
    “There’s something seriously wrong with you,” the drug dealer said.
    “No shit.”
    Carter burst into flames, igniting the inside of the car in an inferno of hellfire. The drug dealer pulled the trigger, but he was so blinded by fire and pain that the bullet went wide past Carter’s