“Well, I’d best get back to work. I need to call my patient now.” I waved my phone in the air, hoping she’d take the hint. But of course she didn’t. She just kept right on talking, so I slowly, ever so slowly, reached for the button to roll up my window, and pushed it.

The window rolled up, cutting off Jessica’s words. She looked surprised, but I smiled and pressed my phone to my ear, speaking into it as if I were really on the phone to someone.

After a moment, she walked away.

Meanwhile, Ben was plucking at his eyebrows as he listened to Ponytail speak. After a minute, he threw down his cigarette and crushed it with his boot. He turned, rapped on the van door. It opened and one of the girls got out. She was small, dark-haired, with pocked skin and terrified eyes. She was shivering, her threadbare jacket too thin in the cold morning air.

Tattoo Face grabbed her wrist and yanked her toward the truck, shoved her inside. He looked at Gabe and Ben, and there was something in his gaze. It was too watchful, his eyes too black. Tattoo Face and Ponytail climbed in the truck and drove away.

Ben moved toward the van. I didn’t hesitate this time.

I threw myself out of my car and jogged in his direction.

CHAPTER 22

“BEN!”

The icicle air stabbed at my skin. A sharp wind whipped my hair into a frenzy around my face, stinging as it lashed my eyes. I wanted to throw myself into my brother’s arms, to have him scoop me up and twirl me around the way he used to when we were kids. But his hands stayed motionless at his sides, the only sign he recognized me the twitchy blink of his eyes.

Up close, I could see that his eyebrows were thin and uneven. His nose was crooked, likely broken a time or two. A jagged scar cut down his right temple.

What had happened to him in the years since I’d last seen him?

The last time I’d seen my brother, he’d been disheveled and unshaven in an alley near Pioneer Square. He’d just shot up. His eyes were glassy, his stare dull. It was impossible to tell if he even recognized me. I took him to the nearest rehab center and checked him in, maxed out my credit card to pay for treatment.

Everybody blamed Ben’s addiction on our parents’ deaths, but it started before that. He fell into drugs the way a lot of people do: he experimented with his friends in high school. The more he did, the more he wanted to do.