Overdose (The Gunn Files Book 2) Read online

  He shrugged as if it wasn’t worth thinking about. “I seen weirder shit. You ever tried ketamine?”

  I shook my head.

  “How about LSD?”

  “No.”

  LSD and ketamine didn’t do that to your eyes. Unexplained weirdness was going on here. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case I’d come here to solve. As long as Monica was still breathing, she was someone else’s problem.

  I called 911 and reported an overdose. Then, I yanked Travis Mannheim off the floor and steered him back out onto the porch where I bent to pick up the prop clipboard I’d dropped earlier.

  Whatever Monica had taken, I’d bet money I didn’t have that it wasn’t terrestrial in origin. There was only one offworlder I trusted who would be able to tell me more.

  But first, I had to get my fugitive to the police station and collect my paycheck.

  2

  I pushed Mannheim through the doors of the city jail and came face to face with Detective Sheila Gonzalez

  At least, Gonzalez used to be a detective. Today, she wore a blue uniform and stood behind a booking computer at a raised desk. Highly unusual.

  The uniform reminded me of the Gonzalez I knew in college. She applied for the police academy the day we graduated, determined to follow in the footsteps of her father. Gonzalez always had a certainty about her purpose in life that I envied. By the time her old man retired and Gonzalez transferred back to Austin, she was an accomplished detective. Knowing that, it stung a little to see her stuck behind a desk like this. She regarded me stoically, face lit by the monitor, prominent cheekbones casting long shadows. She didn’t have to say anything for me to see that working here was eating her alive.

  “Gonzalez,” I said, giving her a broad smile and trying to project an air of friendship and goodwill. “How you holding up?”

  Her lips turned down into a slight frown. She slid a piece of paperwork across the desk. “Name?”

  It may have been partially my fault she was here, but there was no reason to be rude about it. “Hey, Gunn, I’m good, thanks. It’s nice to see you, too.”

  She lowered her voice and leaned forward until she seemed to loom over me. “Need I remind you how I ended up here in the first place?”

  “Oh snap,” Mannheim said.

  I wrenched down on his cuffs and he cried out. “Ow! C'mon, man.”

  “Quiet.” I looked back up at Gonzalez, who was frowning deeply now. “I really thought you’d be back out in the field by now.”

  She sniffed. “What’s his name?”

  “Gonzalez, if—”

  Gonzalez glared at me. “Name?”

  Guilt burned my cheeks as my stomach tried to knot itself. I decided it was in everyone’s best interest to simply answer the question. “Travis Mannheim.”

  She pointed to the paperwork. I filled it out while Gonzalez came around the desk to take Mannheim’s photo and fingerprints. After processing, a uniformed officer led him to a holding pen near the back of the room to await transfer. Since he wasn’t a first-time offender, it was likely that he would only stay here for a few hours before being taken to a semi-permanent residence in the county jail. With any luck, I’d never see him again.

  “Adios, Mannheim,” I called out.

  He scowled over his shoulder. I grinned back. Not even Gonzalez’s ire soured the triumph I felt to know that I had helped put another scumbag behind bars where he belonged.

  I texted Alek Ludwig, my bail bondsman and my best client, to let him know that Mannheim was in custody. He responded with a big thumbs up. A good day for the both of us. I’d been working with Alek long enough to know that the payment would be wired to my account before Mannheim was settled in his new cell. I took a deep breath and leaned back against a bare wall. I closed my eyes and slowly exhaled.

  “Don’t you have something better to do?”

  I opened my eyes. Gonzalez stood before me with her thumbs hooked through her belt next to an empty gun holster. That by itself wasn’t unusual; no firearms were allowed in the processing area. However, along with the blue uniform, it seemed yet another symbol that Detective Gonzalez had been stripped of the freedom and purpose a detective typically enjoyed.

  “I’m really sorry, Sheila. I never meant for you to get in trouble. If there’s anything I can do…”

  She crossed her arms and glared at me. I gave her a tight smile and cocked my head to one side. Eventually, she sighed and leaned against the wall next to me. “I’m a big girl. I knew what I was doing.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  She snorted but didn’t deny it.

  “How long until you’re back in the field?”

  “No clue.”

  “Seriously?” I said. “They didn’t give you a timeframe?”

  “New chief is making an example of me. Not even the former police chief’s daughter can disregard standard operating procedure and get away with it.”

  I suddenly understood her dark mood. “This is why I work for myself.”

  “Some days, I envy you.”

  I tilted my head to look at her. “You? Envy me?” I wonder how much she’d envy me once I told her that the boss of the alien underworld owned my debts now. The thought gnawed at me.

  “No one can assign you to special duty.”

  She had a point. I grimaced, my guilt bubbling up again as I cast about for some way to make amends.

  She waved me off before I could speak. “I’ll figure it out. Not like it’s the first time that someone made my life difficult just because my dad was once the chief of police.”

  We stood there together, not speaking, just basking in the low murmur of voices, ring tones, and the clack of keyboards that filled the processing center. I pictured the strange orange glow in the eyes of the drug addict, Monica. Was it fair to burden Detective Gonzalez with my new suspicions? Would she resent me further if I told her?

  In the end, I couldn’t keep it to myself. Gonzalez was the only one who’d heard the Peacekeeper ask me to be on the lookout for unusual offworld occurrences, and I needed her level-headed advice. “Speaking of special duty, when I was picking up Mannheim today, I saw something… weird.”

  Gonzalez froze like deer in headlights. “What now? Wait, I don’t want to know.”

  “Friend of Mannheim’s was in the throes of some strange drug. There was an orange light dancing in her eyes that seemed very alien to me.”

  “Alien?” Gonzalez said, and I knew she was thinking what I was thinking.

  “I called 911 and reported an overdose, but… this is what Dyna asked me to be on the lookout for, don’t you think?”

  Gonzalez frowned, then shook her head like a horse chafing against a bit. “Are you sure? How can you tell the difference between normal weird and…” She lowered her voice. “…Alien weird?”

  “I have to ask Vinny about it, but I’ve never seen a drug do that before.”

  “Let me know what he says, but be sure you’re not raising the flag for no reason. That so-called Peacekeeper brought nothing but trouble with her last time she was here.”

  Not far off, a pair of police officers holding a large, tattooed man between them, shouldered their way through the front doors and made their way toward the desk that Detective Gonzalez had been manning.

  “I have to go.”

  I wanted to tell her more about why I thought the drug was offworlder in origin, but she was already walking away. I swallowed the words, and wished, once again, that there was something I could do to get Gonzalez out of the predicament I’d inadvertently put her in.

  “Good luck,” I called out.

  She glanced back, but didn’t respond or echo our traditional words of parting.

  “Have fun,” I muttered under my breath, unable to let the words hang on their own. “Don’t die.”

  Stepping outside into the fading daylight, I looked around as I sifted thoughts through my sluggish brain. It had been one of those rare days in the early fall that made touri
sts want to move to Austin. Sunny and clear, cool and breezy. I took another deep, relaxing breath as a crisp gust of wind brushed across my face. I felt terrible about what happened to Gonzalez, but I also knew how tough she was. In the end, she’d be all right. The department couldn’t afford to keep a great detective like her on the sidelines forever.

  Content to stand here and think, I contemplated my next move. Part of me wanted to go home, to take a long hot shower and sleep for two days. Another part of me was anxious to know what strange drug Monica had taken that could’ve caused her eyes to turn orange and dance with tiny lights. Vinny would be able to tell me for sure whether the effect was caused by some cutting-edge pharmacology developed here on Earth or if, as I suspected, the drug was offworlder in origin.

  Gonzalez was right. Before I reached out to Dyna, I needed to be sure.

  While I was debating my next move, a black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows rounded the corner and pulled to a stop at the curb in front of me. The driver was a bull-necked man with a shaved head and pitch-dark sunglasses. A rear door popped open.

  “Get in,” said a deep, familiar voice from inside the vehicle.

  I tensed. “Hard pass.”

  “I have a job for you.”

  I peered inside the SUV. The contrast of the daylight outside, and the tinted darkness inside, made it difficult for me to see many details. Unmistakeable though, was the ambient blue fire reflecting off shiny dark leather and outlining a figure who lounged in the far corner.

  I couldn’t make out any specific features, but then, I didn’t have to. The voice and the fire could not be mistaken. I was talking to the Gatekeeper, Austin’s own extraterrestrial mafioso.

  Was he here to call in my debts? It took every ounce of my willpower not to make a beeline for my truck.

  “I’m in the middle of a job,” I lied.

  As I turned away, an object plunged down out of the sky and struck me square in the chest. The blow knocked the wind from my lungs and I stumbled backward into the SUV. A madly cackling Daacro flapped himself back into the air just outside of my reach. Tiny imps with wings, the creatures were often mistaken for Gargoyles.

  I swiped at the Daacro, but strong hands grabbed fistfuls of my t-shirt before I could recover from the sneak attack. The door slammed shut as the Escalade lurched into motion.

  We merged with traffic while I gasped on the floor. Uncontrollable coughs racked my chest as I tried to catch my breath. When the fit passed, I panted and lifted myself onto the slick leather bench seat. “Good grief, man! Was that really necessary?”

  “You weren’t cooperating,” the Gatekeeper replied.

  “No shit, Sherlock. You could have tried asking nicely.”

  A pair of glowing blue eyes flared as the large man—or, should I say, creature—glared at me. The creature had the muscled body of a soldier, with shoulders broad enough to take up two seats. Oh, and it had three bulldog heads, each complete with snub nose, crooked canine teeth, and mean little eyes.

  “I am not in the habit of repeating myself.”

  His tone made it clear that I would not get another warning. I made a show out of getting comfortable as I studied him sidelong.

  The left and right heads of the humanoid dog alternated between staring like they wanted to eat me, and watching out the back and side windows as buildings scrolled by. The eyes in the middle head were the only ones that burned with blue flame. Unlike the sickly orange eyes of the drug addict I’d inspected earlier, the lights in the bulldog’s eyes were not caused by a drug. They were the mark of the Gatekeeper’s presence within. He had the ability to inhabit any living creature he chose. He’d never tried to get into my head, thank God, but I’d watched once as his ethereal form pushed into the mouth of an innocent young man. It was… discomforting to watch.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to ignore the butterflies that fluttered in my stomach as I spoke. “I don’t appreciate being knocked around by your nasty little Daacros, but I’m here now. Say what you have to say.”

  I crossed my arms. The driver, certainly another one of the Gatekeeper’s offworlder bodyguards but disguised by a reflective photon cloaking field to make him look convincingly human, growled and glanced at me in the mirror, then calmly took a turn and drove us around the block at a leisurely pace.

  Unperturbed, the Gatekeeper said, “My spies tell me that you saw something unusual today.”

  A electric thrill skipped down my spine. Of course—the grackle that had startled Mannheim. It must have been one of the Gatekeeper’s Daacros. I’d caught them following me before. Had they been tailing me the whole time I was hunting for Mannheim, or just since I got back to the city?

  Worse than the idea of being spied on, I realized that if the Gatekeeper knew what I’d seen, that meant that he wanted me to see it. No way he shows up at my skip’s hiding place by coincidence alone. What did Monica’s orange eyes have to do with him? I recalled what Travis Mannheim had told me about Monica having her own sources.

  “Did you drug that girl?”

  He lifted a hand and made a seesaw motion in the air. “We did not force her to take the drugs, if that’s what you’re asking. However, she did provide a convenient way to test a theory. A theory that, unfortunately, proved to be true.”

  The Gatekeeper paused. I raised my eyebrows.

  “Someone is using human dealers to distribute an illegal Lodian drug. In my town.”

  That was a frightening prospect. But the Gatekeeper wasn’t sharing this information out of the goodness of his heart.

  “Ah,” I said as I put the pieces together. “You’re worried the Peacekeepers will come back to deal with this themselves, aren’t you?”

  “If the Federation discovers this is happening, they will send more agents. However, I am the Gatekeeper of Earth. Offworlders selling illegal substances to your kind is bad for business.”

  “So what do you want me to do about it?”

  The Gatekeeper sighed, a wet chuff coming from the dog’s throat. “I would like you to identify and locate this criminal for me. Find out which offworlder is supplying the drugs to human dealers, and bring that information to me so I can make an example of them.”

  “No way,” I blurted out.

  The eyes containing the ethereal blue fire narrowed, dimming the light inside the vehicle. The Gatekeeper worked his jaw as he fought to remain calm in the face of my insolence.

  “Human,” he growled. “Need I remind you that I own your debts, now? I will collect on them and make your life miserable if you do not agree to help me.”

  “I’m not your slave,” I spat. My hands shook and my gut wobbled uncertainly. It reminded me of an old verse my father used to quote: The borrower is slave to the lender. I think it was from the Bible, though I’d never been a very religious man. The myriad ways this could backfire horribly flashed before my eyes. If he called in my note, the Gatekeeper could collect on my house, which had been put up as collateral for the original loan. Or worse. The shell company he’d used to buy my loan from the bank certainly had some pull. Was I ready to test those limits? I took a deep breath, steadying myself. “Why don’t you just do it yourself? You have far more resources at your disposal than I do.”

  The Gatekeeper’s mouth opened and his tongue lolled out in a dog-like smile. “Whoever is doing this expects me to be looking for them. They don’t expect you, Anderson Gunn.”

  “I’m not interested in being your errand boy.”

  The Gatekeeper heaved another sigh that rumbled through the leather seats. “As soon as word gets out that I or one of my employees—” He gestured to himself, meaning the bodyguard whose body he currently inhabited. “—are looking for this supplier, they will either go into hiding or flee the planet. I cannot risk word of this getting out.”

  “Shake the bushes, and catch them when they try to run. I do that all the time with my skips.”

  “Hundreds of offworlders come and go from this planet every week. How woul
d I know which one is the guilty party in question?”

  Hundreds? I had no idea the number was that high. I’d seen a couple thousand offworlders crowded into Harbor, the Gatekeeper’s nightclub, but I didn’t realize they flowed in such large quantities to and from the planet. The vast majority of humanity didn’t have a clue that aliens lived among them, and the offworlders wanted to keep it that way. Earth was, according to everything I’d been told by Vinny and the Peacekeepers, a backwater planet. The boondocks of the galaxy. I tried not to let my surprise make its way to my face. Instead, I shrugged, feigning disinterest. “Still sounds like your problem.”

  “Yes,” the Gatekeeper agreed. “It is. Which is why I wish to hire a capable bounty hunter to conduct the search on my behalf. Is it not your specialty to find those who don’t wish to be found?”

  “It’s my job to find human fugitives. Not dangerous offworlder criminals. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Besides, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  The Gatekeeper nodded to himself, then lowered his head. “I will provide you with more information once you agree to take the job.”

  I shook my head.

  “If you do this for me, I will not only pay you for the job, but expunge a sizable portion of your debts as well.”

  This time, he hooked my interest. That was appealing. I somehow managed to shove down my desire to be debt-free. The easy way out always came with a catch. For all I knew, he had some sneaky plan up his sleeve that would end with me owing him more money by the time this was over.

  The driver stopped the Escalade at the next corner when the light turned red. I knew an opportunity when I saw one. Reaching out, I unlocked the door, and stepped down from the SUV before it came to a complete stop.

  “Tempting,” I said. “but no thanks. Expect my next payment to be wired to you before the end of the week.”

  I shut the door and hurried away. The window rolled down. I felt the Gatekeeper’s eyes on my back as I rounded the corner, but not one Daacro dive-bombed me or tried to stop me from leaving. I watched the rooftops and awnings of the buildings around me and walked faster, looking over my shoulder every few steps until I reached the relative safety of my truck.