Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 59405 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59405 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
“Well, that’s why I’m talking to you about it,” he’d said. “I mean, you’re a doctor. Can you give it to me straight? Like what dose is safe and what’s dangerous to make me feel good?”
God. I’d felt uncomfortable immediately. I was an animal doctor. I didn’t treat or prescribe medications for humans. His questions weren’t tied to working with the horses.
I hadn’t liked it. Not at all, but I hadn’t wanted him screwing around with his friends and overdosing. Or worse, to harm someone unsuspecting. So I gave him the facts—calculated a safe dosage by his weight and wrote it down for him, so he wouldn’t get it wrong, but told him I didn’t like it. That it was dangerous. Illegal.
In retrospect, I saw how dumb I’d been. Soooo stupid. I’d written it on a prescription pad like I was dosing him. And he’d gone into the clinic at the stable and taken the supply of ketamine right out from under my nose without me realizing. It wasn’t like all meds were locked up.
That was when things had turned ugly.
When I confronted him, he’d shown me a photo of my note on his phone. My handwriting, the proper dosage for him—a human. He told me it was evidence of my abuse of my license and if I didn’t order more ketamine—a large quantity—he’d show Mr. Claymore and the police. Tell them I’d been offering him drugs. Drugs that were meant for horses not humans. That I’d been abusing my credentials, my position on the ranch.
This had been a month ago, the same time Pops started really going downhill. I hadn’t been thinking straight at the time. I hadn’t known what to do, not with Dax, not with Pops. Even now, I honestly wasn’t sure Mr. Claymore would believe me and the truth over Dax. This was why I hadn’t said anything and done what Dax had wanted. I needed the job. Hell, I needed my vet license I’d worked so hard for. The school debts for it I was still paying off.
Mr. Claymore loved Dax. Everyone did, even though he was a two-faced piece of shit. He was like a chameleon, changing his moods and emotions, his personality to each situation. As for me, I was just the one who kept her head down and spreadsheets up to date. Yeah, I was the upright vet no one really knew much about. I was the newcomer on the job—I’d been there less than nine months. An outsider, by race, gender and my buttoned up personality.
I’d made my second mistake and ordered the ketamine.
That was when I became what he’d said he would accuse me of—a drug dealer. I didn’t deal the drugs. I didn’t stand on a street corner and peddle them. No, I was worse. I got the drugs under the guise of legitimacy.
I swallowed down the ever-present anxiety and looked to Levi in the dark truck, whose eyes were squarely on the road as we cut through the canyon out of town.
“What do you think will happen to that kid?” I asked.
“Who? Tanner?” he asked, glancing at me for a second. “Probably just community service. He’s only fifteen. His parents will have to come to the station and pick him up. He’ll hopefully get more punishment from them.”
I bit my lip. “If he was eighteen, it would really be five years?”
Levi shot me another curious glance. “You interested in law enforcement?”
“Oh! Um, no. I just feel for the kid, you know? Sometimes people get themselves into things without fully understanding the consequences.”
People like me, who couldn’t figure out how to get out. Maybe Levi would give me some ideas.
“I know.” His broad shoulders went up in a big shrug. “But wrong is wrong. That’s why I went hard on him back there. Scare him away from the dark side. Today, E. Tomorrow… who the hell knows? Choices he makes now could completely ruin his life. Destroy all his potential for a decent future.”
My stomach bunched up even tighter.
“H-how did you get into law enforcement?” I asked. “Did you always want to be a cop?”
Levi considered, like no one had asked him this before. “The people who killed my parents were never brought to justice. I guess that’s been sitting on me for the past fifteen years. So when the sheriff’s department was short a deputy last year, I decided to give it a go. Rob’s wife, Willow, as I told you, came to the area as an undercover DEA agent—that’s a long story there—and we’d found out our neighbor had been a big time drug dealer. It didn’t sit well with me, you know? I didn’t like feeling powerless against the bad shit going down in my valley. The guy was an asshole and was messing with people from the ranch.”