Page 1 of Tough Justice

Prologue

As if the day couldn’t suck any worse. His parents were home. Both of them.

Tyler pushed open the front door and wrinkled his nose. The smell of fish stunk up the air. His mom didn’t care how much he hated fish. Brain food, she called it. Yeah, that would really bring his grades up. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the math or dissect a frog or whatever. He just didn’t care.

He hefted the duffle over his shoulder, grimacing when the heavy bag scraped noisily against the door. If he didn’t want to be interrogated about school or practice or whatever else they decided he’d done wrong now, he was going to have to make it upstairs undetected. He slipped past the living room where his dad sat in his favorite leather recliner, drinking a beer and watching the news, then headed up the stairs.

When he hit the top step, the floor creaked, and he cringed. Holding his breath, Tyler waited for his dad to bellow up the stairs. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. If his dad realized he was home, he’d insist on talking about how practice was going. And if he got Tyler talking, he’d know something was up. His mom might be clueless, but his dad always seemed to know everything.

He stood there, listening to the sounds of his mom banging around pots and pans in the kitchen, and felt…empty.

His chest, his entire body, felt hollowed out, like the pumpkins he and his dad carved when he was a kid. Every minute. Every hour. Every day of his life, and nothing helped. Not even the beer he’d been swiping from his dad’s stash. Sure, he felt great for the first twenty minutes, but then the high wore off and left him feeling even worse.

Depression. Social anxiety. Chronic stress. Terms the shrink had used to describe what was happening in his head. He could still remember that crappy day. He’d broken down in front of Mrs. Finelli, the guidance counselor. Fuck, he’d even cried, and he just couldn’t seem to stop. Talk about embarrassing. The high school quarterback shouldn’t be crying. If Coach or any of his teammates ever found out… Shit.

Naturally, Mrs. Finelli had ratted him out to his parents, and he’d been forced to go to Dr. Vernon. That hadn’t done any good. Dr. Vernon couldn’t tell him why he felt empty all the time and had for as long as he could remember. Dr. Vernon prescribed an antidepressant, but the only thing it did was make his mouth dry. His brain was just wired differently. His parents didn’t know it, but he’d stopped taking the pills only days after they’d been prescribed.

No one could help him, so he was going to help himself. Or at least try.

Seconds ticked by, and all he heard downstairs was the TV blaring out something about driving carefully because schools were back in session. He let a full minute go by, soaking in the sounds, hoping to feel something, before giving up and continuing down the hall.

When he made it to his bedroom, he locked the door and dropped his bag on the floor. A huge breath of relief gushed from his lungs.

Twenty bucks was all it had taken, snagged from his mother’s purse when she wasn’t looking. Now, the stuff was burning a hole in his pocket. It might not make him happy, but it was supposed to help him relax and forget about all the shit that was bugging him. Most importantly, it would make him not care.

He tugged the small plastic bag from his pocket, dropped it on his bedside table, and stared at it. Part of him was a little scared. Aside from a few hits of pot here and there, he’d never done any drugs before. The only thing pot ever did was give him the munchies, and if he started reeking of the stuff, everyone would know. His parents. His coach. Everyone.

Gray death had no smell. It was supposed to be strong and kick in fast. He’d been looking to buy heroin, but the guy he bought this from said it was better, like supercharged heroin. He couldn’t wait to disappear into a world where no one would yell at him about how much his grades sucked, force him to eat fish, or make him cry in front of the school guidance counselor. And the stress. The stress was killing him.

He dragged a hand down his face. Being the high school hero should have been a dream come true. At first, maybe it was. Now, the pressure was unbearable. Win, win, win. If they won, it was on him. If they lost, that would be on him, too, only a thousand times more. If he couldn’t find a way to escape, he’d go freaking nuts. He just wanted to be alone. To just…be.

Tyler sat on the edge of the bed and opened the side table drawer, pulling out the straw he’d stashed there earlier. He untied the baggie and dumped the contents on the table. It didn’t look anything like what he’d expected. Gray powder, like cement before you add water. He frowned at how boring it looked. This stuff had better be worth it.

Using a razor blade he’d swiped from his dad’s workshop, he separated out two thin lines of powder. Since he’d never done anything stronger than beer and pot, he didn’t know if he was doing it right, but this was what the scary-looking guy who’d sold it to him said to do.

With slightly shaking fingers, he gripped the straw, leaned down, and snorted an entire line into his left nostril. He sniffed, wiping some of the residue with the back of his hand. Then he did the same with the other line and snorted it into his right nostril. Less than a minute later, warmth infused his body, as if someone had wrapped a thick, cushiony blanket around his very soul.

Weightlessness was the only way to describe what happened next. Like he was bobbing up and down in a sea of air. The world and all the stress, anxiety, and sadness began melting away. This was the euphoria he’d been promised. Totally worth it. Man, he should have tried gray death sooner.

His lips began to tingle, the same way they had the first time he’d kissed the head cheerleader, Melinda Burke, behind the bleachers after practice one day. He lay down on his bed and sighed, peacefully, for the first time in what seemed like years. Then he smiled and closed his eyes. Forever.

Chapter One

“MOS arriving now!” one of the nurses called out from the hospital’s emergency room desk.

Dr. Tori Sampson stood just outside ER 2, waiting for the ambulance to roll in with a “member of service,” either a police officer, firefighter, or EMS injured on duty.

Seconds later, a large man wearing black cargo pants, a black shirt, and a gun strapped to his thigh, along with Aiko, one of the nurses who’d been waiting curbside to assist, rushed a stretcher through the ER doors. A paramedic held a bag-valve mask over the patient’s mouth and nose, squeezing the bag, while another paramedic administered walking chest compressions as he kept pace with the stretcher. More uniformed officers crowded in behind them.

“In here.” Tori pointed to ER 2, inside of which two other nurses and a respiratory therapist were already waiting.

They’d gotten the call from the paramedics while they’d been en route to the hospital. All Tori knew at this point was that the officer had been exposed to something highly toxic and was in cardiac arrest.

“Suzie, I need you,” she called to her friend. To the other nurse behind the desk, she ordered calmly, “Call Dr. Barnett.”

“Move aside, please.” Suzie pushed through the throng of walking, talking testosterone. “We’ll take it from here.” At only five-three, Suzie somehow managed to take control of the situation and helped roll the stretcher the rest of the way into ER 2.

Knowing how tightknit cops were, Tori closed the door in the men’s faces. If she didn’t, they’d be hovering like a swarm of bees. Armed bees.