Page 52 (1/2)

Chapter 1

Max

I woke up on the strangest day of ot out of the habit when I was on the ht before Whiskey Consu hoht in Max Reilly’s rundown apart of San Francisco

My head fucking hurt I didn’t have a shift today, at least I worked construction for cash under the table, usually across the bridge in Oakland You’d think I wouldn’t be pri sees to that—but you’d be wrong I had no probleh, and I rolled out of bed, cursing Last Night Max’s idiocy, put ononly boxer shorts

Coffee and toast didn’t helpto the gym The rain had cleared out and I could see the dark clouds rolling off over the bay as I drove the short distance through the south end of the city to Sporty’s, the gym which was practically my second home It was cheap, and a hole in the wall, and it smelled like unwashed balls and dirty socks, but no one asked me questions there I’d never seen a woo to Sporty’s—and the guys were all as silent and surly as hts at three o’clock in the hts you couldn’t sleep, and you wouldn’t be the only one there

By the tiym, the whiskey had mostly sweated its way out ofat the te and lay on the weight bench for a

This was y alone at night and trying to pay off my medical bills and my dead father’s debts I liked it this way—no co hanistan was to be left alone So, yeah, this was my life

Except it wasn’t

I had fivedollars in my bank account

Da ti we knew, the friend I’d grown up dirty on the streets of LA as a billionaire He’d also met a woman he was flat out crazy about and would probably marry, if I knew him at all And because he was Devon, and because he kneas drowning in the debts I owed, he’d wiped all of the deposit into my bank account

It was the best, ed everything I owed him my life

I felt like I was falling

I made myself take a breath as sweat broke out on the back of ether, Reilly I closed my eyes as the world spun and my stomach clenched This wasn’t the aftereffects of the whiskey No sir, this was pure, one hundred per cent crazy-as-fuck Max Reilly and his shitty brain

I waited I took breaths I pictured a path in the woods, crisp air, fall leaves I went to that place and stayed there for a while Then, when the attack had passed, I got up and went home

It was nuts to have a panic attack over what most people would see as a dreae that my messed-up psyche couldn’t handle My entire life, such as it was, had been upended with one bank deposit, dumped out like laundry tossed on the floor I had no idea what the hell to do It hts scramble when I tried to think about it, because I’d already been through a lot of crazy shit in s to make , I apparently drank whiskey like an idiot

I showered for nearly thirtythe handle I’d installed in the shower stall, letting the hot water run offached I put on jeans and an old t-shirt and ain, then I made a sandwich in my kitchen and forced it down into my screwed-up stomach The anxiety had receded, but it had left me cla that usually worked for rabbed a book from my bookshelf and sat down to read

My bookshelf was overflowing, one of the biggest things in my tiny apartment I liked to cruise used bookstores—there were a few left in San Francisco—and add to er the better I hadn’t always been a reader; I’d grown up running wild on the streets, my mother barely home, my father usually drunk It was only after I’d enlisted that I really discovered how reading hts deployed Long, dead stretches of time in the desert And, later, the ti rooeries I uarantee I’d be even crazier if I hadn’t found the outlet of reading

The book I had noas The Call of the Wild, a yellowed old copy with a screwy gr

een cover that didn’t even have a wolf on it, even though the book was about wolves It had cost edthe book take me away