Cadell waited in the atrium cafe beside the enormous stack of Danishes on the catering table.
In the front of the cafe, a space had been cleared where they would stand with the minister. The other members of Killer Valentine had set up a small acoustic grouping over in the corner. Georgie had lugged a small keyboard up, and Tryp held a bodhran, an Irish hand drum like an oversized tambourine with no cymbals. Peyton had an acoustic guitar, relieved of his bass duties since Cadell wouldn’t be playing at his own wedding.
Xan sat on a stool, holding nothing.
Seeing him like that, not holding an instrument, pained Cadell. Xan should have his hands wrapped around a guitar or at least a bass. Cadell would have been useless, in such a situation.
Beside him, on the table, the enormous stack of Danishes smelled like baked Heaven. Cadell worked out a lot to keep his shoulder pain under control, and he was a big, twenty-six-year-old man. His stomach rumbled.
Granted, the platter was standing on the table near his hip, but the tower of donut-like items rose nearly to his shoulder, and he was not a short man. The stack was nearly three feet tall. The browned pastry scent wafting off them made his mouth water, but he had a sneaking suspicion that if he tried to liberate one, the whole stack would collapse like a house of cards.
So he waited.
And swallowed.
He glanced at his phone. Seven minutes until the wedding was supposed to start. The crowd in the atrium was getting thick as people milled around the tables, finding places. Most of the doctors in the hospital were there, along with every one of the pediatric liver transplant patients who could safely attend. Dozens of small children sat in wheelchairs, drinking juice or milk out of cups.
Emily sat in a wheelchair by his side. A white paper mask blocked the lower part of her face, but her brown eyes crinkled from smiling so hugely. Cadell had braided her hair into two French braids down the back of her head. She wore just the top of the blue salwar kameez, just the sparkling tunic that flowed from her shoulders to her knees. A bowl of red rose petals sat in her lap.
A nurse standing beside Em’s wheelchair would push her down the aisle when the time came because Cadell would be standing up at the front, hopefully.
He looked over the crowd again. Andy still wasn’t there.
Hey, great. Cadell could see the headlines now: Rock Star Guitarist Left At Altar. Stood Up At Own Wedding. Pictures of Cadell’s stupid face would be splashed across all the rags.
Cadell hoped he could keep it quiet. He hated pictures, and the damn media might figure out about Emily.
Dr. Jackson had just walked in and was standing near the podium set up near the enormous windows that extended from the carpeting, up several stories to the ceiling, and curved around to show the sky. She was shaking out a black robe with a yellow-gold velvet panel running down the front and up the neckline. Three horizontal stripes of the same gold velvet marked both the sleeves. It kind of looked like a minister’s robe, but something about it was a little off.
Cadell turned, just about to tell the nurse to take Emily to the back of the aisle, when a man pushed out of the crowd to stand beside him. The guy’s brown skin and black hair suggested that he was of Indian descent, and he said, “Andal wants to speak with you. Come with me.”
He glanced at the nurse, who was one of Emily’s favorites, and she waved him off.
Cadell followed the guy. “Hey,” he said, tapping the guy’s shoulder, “Isn’t she supposed to be waiting at the left set of doors?”
“She’s over here,” the guy said. “She wanted to speak to you privately.”
“Is she all right?”
“She is very fine. She just wants to talk to you.”
They walked through the swinging doors and into the back hallway.
No one was there.
Cadell stepped back, his fists coming up to his chest, ready, but he kept his voice mild. “What’s going on?”
The shorter man turned. “A friend sent me.”
He held up two small orange balloons, like deflated water balloons, tied at the top. Inside them, Cadell could see the small bulges of what would be white powder encased in gelatin capsules, two each.
Every cell in his body lunged at the heroin, trying to get to it like a starving dog attacks a cat.
He stumbled backward and rammed his left shoulder into a wall, sending a blinding spike of pain through his back and neck.
There were syringes in this hospital, thousands of them, and rubber tubing for tying off and sterile water so that he wouldn’t even have to heat the heroin powder.
They were on the East Coast, so the heroin in there was most likely China White, his favorite kind. On the West Coast, most heroin is black tar that has to be dissolved slowly. In the South, you get Sand, an intermediate form.
Cadell kept moving backward. “What the fuck, man.”
He turned and walked away.
No fucking way.
Not with his daughter out there.
Not with Andy somewhere around.
Not ever again.
His tablet, he had to get to his computer tablet, immerse himself in the soothing slap of electronic cards on the virtual table and the ebb and flow of money, but he stumbled past his backpack. He dropped to his knees at Emily’s wheelchair, and she patted his head with her little hands, but he soon launched himself into motion again.
Andy. He had to find Andy.