dance, and knew he’d been right. The man was holding, and Daniel meant to cut himself a slice of that pie.
“Now Danny-boy, I got me a problem that maybe you could help me with. I was checking you out earlier, when I came in. You look like an intelligent kind of a guy.”
“Yeah, that’s me.” He wasn’t entirely successful at keeping the bitterness out of his voice. If he’d been really smart, would he have ended up here?
“Well, I’ve got this inventory. And I kind of need to hold a fire sale, as it were.”
Daniel dropped down out of the top bunk, quick as a cat, and squatted beside the bottom bunk. Keith was resting on one elbow—looking toward him, though it was hard to see that in the darkness. A gold ring in the shape of a phoenix glinted in one ear, the brightest thing Daniel could see.
He’s holding. And he needs to get rid of the stuff before the cops figure that out. Daniel held out his hand.
Keith dropped the small white packet into it. “There’s plenty for everyone,” he said in his mellow voice, as the other inhabitants of the holding tank began converging on him with a slow tidal movement.
Daniel backed away, defending his prize. In one pocket, along with other odds and ends, was a chopped off bit of soda straw. He tore open the small glassine packet—­carefully, oh so carefully—and dipped the straw end into the white powder. It wasn’t as good as spiking a vein, but it would do, oh, yes. He snorted hard, pulling the powder up into his sinuses, and from there, straight to the bloodstream. He didn’t know what Keith had offered him—coke, horse, one of the new supposed-to-be-legal concoctions—and right now he was too far gone in need to care. Just a little something to quiet the dragon trying to gnaw its way out of his bones.
He felt it come on almost instantly: a velvet-wrapped pile driver that made his heart race, even while it wrapped him in soft clouds of not-caring. He blinked, forced himself to look up, and saw Keith handing out packets to everyone.
“Hey,” Daniel croaked. “Save me some for later.” The white tide was rising, carrying him off to a place where nothing hurt and no one was cruel.
“Don’t