Free In the House On Lakeside Drive by Corie L. Calcutt

operation.”
    Riley eyed the thin man, his stomach turning. “If you fuckin’ tell me you’re plannin’ on sellin’ to kids, I’m out. I done a lot of shit, and I’ll do a lot of shit, but I got standards.”
    Charlie stared, silently agreeing with his kin.
    “No kids. That town over, North Kingston? It’s big enough to find someone discreet.” The Southerner picked up a bottle and threw it at Riley. “That there? Full bottle of amphetamine salts, and not generic ones at that. Going rate per pill is easily a hundred bucks.”
    Riley looked at the bottle. “You mean I’m holding three grand here?”
    “Yep.” He tossed Charlie one. “Alprazolam. Maybe fifty per. It’s half empty.”
    “Shit.”
    “There’s a fortune to be made in the secondhand pill trade. Long as you’re not terribly picky about your clients, and they’ve got the cash.” He laid out the rest of the hoard. “Looks like we’ve got a couple antidepressants—good sellers—and some heavy-duty ibuprofens. The oddball shit might snag a few bucks, but the Adderall and the Xanax, those are your big money.” Dayton smiled a half smile. “And wouldn’t you know, our friend Liam liked both of those.”
    “So the guy had a pill problem. We know. How does that help us ?” Riley was beginning to get irritated, and the wind snaking through his beaten hoodie wasn’t helping matters.
    “I knew clients who would knock over their granny’s medicine cabinets to get their fixes. Usually about the time they came looking for someone like me. But Liam…he had the whole candy store at his fingertips, and he came looking for me anyway. Know why?”
    “No, but I’m sure you’ll enlighten us.”
    “Bastard was a junkie with a conscience. He could have skimmed a few pills from the pharmacy, but no, not Liam. He came to me so he wouldn’t get caught. And when I had a small supply problem, d’you think he’d help?”
    Charlie snorted. “Goin’ with ‘no,’ here.”
    “Wouldn’t lift a finger. And he was in debt to me too, about a grand.” The sound of a pill bottle tapping against the newer, thicker card table grated on the cousins’ ears. “And then there was what happened next.”
    “So,” Riley said, eager to change the subject. “Phase two.”
    Dayton snapped out of his train of thought. “Phase two involves me moving this stuff and getting us a better place. One with a basement. Preferably in the middle of nowhere.”
    “Easy enough. Me an’ Charlie’ll go scouting. You want one close by or out a ways?”
    “Nothing close by. I don’t want the brats getting help so easy, should it all go to shit.”
    “You assume it’ll all go to shit,” Charlie said. “Not very optimistic of you.”
    The wiry man glared. “I had optimism once. Look where it got me.”
    “Well, you did get this op rollin’. Put the fear of God in those kids, too.”
    Dayton mulled on that a minute. “The younger two, they’ll be a little easier. That older kid, though…he might cause a problem.”
    “White Eyes is gonna have to ‘lose’ that stick of his, once we get ’em,” Riley added. “You didn’t see him with it that day in the yard. And from what he and his friend were saying, he practices with it regularly.”
    “Do we know where?”
    Cold shoulders shrugged, and Riley wrapped his arms around himself in an effort to keep warm. “I can follow ’im one night. Thursday nights, it usually is.” Dayton nodded, more to appease the paranoid Riley than to agree with his assessment of their quarry. “Do that. What about the ball of fun?”
    Charlie drummed his hands on the table. “I still say he’ll be a handful, but he scares easy. Look at the other night. I watched the whole thing from outside the windows. Kid shut up, followed directions, and had eyes wider than the Grand Canyon. I’m tellin’ ya, complete one-eighty from when I watched him out and about. Hell, I wanted to deck the kid then . Imagine after the shock wears