"Kelly, you up? Kelly?" Shay's voice came into his room like an unwelcome house guest.
She kept alternating between calling his name and pounding on the door until he eventually dragged his ass out of bed and yanked it open.
"I'm up now," he answered, swearing that he just hit the sheets about an hour ago.
"It's after noon." Leslie informed him. "Were you plannin' to sleep the whole day away?"
"I was hopin' to." he answered.
Shay gave him a funny look. He never slept this late...even on his days off. He got up...went for a run or hit the gym...got coffee...
Something wasn't right.
Kelly turned around and went back to his bed where he flopped back down.
Leslie came into the room and sat down beside him.
"How's your shoulder?" she asked.
He rotated it shoulder a few times trying to work the kinks out, but the pain shot through his arm all the way down to the elbow.
"Did you ice it?" she asked. "When you got home from wherever you were?"
No, I was too busy buying drugs, he thought.
But instead he said,
"Let me jump in the shower."
By the time he stepped out, he saw that Voight had called twice.
You've gotta be kidding me...he said to himself as he pressed 'call'. What the hell did he want now?
"Yeah?" he said when the call went through.
"We're gonna set somethin' else up. Same place. Midnight, Friday." The gravel voice sergeant instructed.
Four days...
"That's pretty quick...they won't suspect somethin?" Kelly asked.
"You're an addict, remember? You're eatin' those things like candy." Voight reminded him.
Three more buys over the next ten days went down just like the first.. Each time a few more words were exchanged. But Pierson didn't try to make small talk. Get the pills and get out.
"You can call me directly," he told Kelly on the last deal handing him a card. No more middle man, or, more accurately, no more anxious twenty-something year-old pre-med student.
Voight was ecstatic...or whatever passed for ecstasy with Voight. Who could tell?
"This is good." he said. "Now we'll make the jump up the food chain."
Voight liked seeing each little piece fall into place, keeping to his timetable.
It was all coming together better than expected. Severide was playing his role perfectly.
Erin was still pissed, but she'd taken a vow of silence toward Hank. An added bonus, as far as he could see.
That jump up the food chain sounded more like a leap off a cliff to Kelly. This was the part where he was supposed to complain about the quality of the product goin' downhill. Voight wanted him to demand to meet with Pierson's boss.
Not wanting to lose a good paying customer, Pierson agreed right away.
Now the fight was over wire or no wire. Erin and Voight adamant in their opinions...very different opinions.
'He is not going in without us hearing every word. Period." Erin had already gotten the listening device from Jin and was checking it out.
"Take off your shirt," she told Kelly.
"I say no wire yet." Voight was just as adamant. "Pierson's guys, they're gonna test him. No wire."
"And I say they're not gonna..." Erin began.
"I don't wanna wear a wire." Kelly interrupted.
He figured he should have some say. Hell, he was the one goin' in, and he was sweatin' enough as it was. For once he was on Voight's side.
Erin dropped the wire on the desk in front of her loudly and turned around. She gave him a parting look that felt like winter was back.
She must've gone to splash cold water on her face or somethin' cause she came back a couple minutes later. She listened to Voight's instructions, and she had to admit...Hank was one of the best cops out there.
Now, time to get the fireman ready.
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Kelly walked into the seedy motel room not knowing what to expect. He knew what Voight expected, but experience taught him that scenes had a way of heading in new directions in a split second. Same old motel, they just moved it out of the parking lot and into a room this time. Creativity apparently was not a strong suit.
Joe Pierson sat at rickety table, flipping through blister packs of prescription painkillers...it was a veritable addict's candy store. All the usual suspects...Percocet, Vicodin, Dilaudid, Oxy, morphine.
Another man dressed in jeans and a dark blue button down lay across the bed.
Clean cut looking kid...Kelly thought. Barely a man really...no more than twenty two, twenty three.
Was this the 'higher-up' supplying to Pierson?
"Take off your shirt," Junior ordered, mouth set in a grim line, eyes saying he'd lost any childhood innocence years ago.
There was something cold about those ice blue eyes looking Kelly up and down.
"I said take off your fucking shirt." he repeated.
"Sorry...you're not my type." Kelly said. "I'm outta here.
He turned to the door, but Pierson was already in front of it.
"Move...or I'll go through you." Severide told him with more bravado than he really felt.
"You wanted to meet me." Junior said. "Somethin' about the quality of my product?"
Kelly turned back around, keeping Pierson in his peripheral vision.
"Yeah...it's shit." he told Junior. "That last batch was nothin' but sugar pills. Didn't do shit."
"I stand behind the quality of my product." Junior said, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Then you got scammed." Kelly said. "I'm not the only one who said the pills were crap. You can ask my buddies down at the firehouse. They're not happy either."
"You're givin' the pills to your buddies?" Junior asked.
"Not giving..." Kelly said cryptically. "Maybe there's a little somethin' in it for me."
Oh shit...he thought. What'd I just get myself into?
He had the same thought again a second later when two guys stepped out of the bathroom and the closet respectively. Two big guys...and one had a scar the ran from his right temple all the way down his face, across his cheek, to the corner of his mouth.
"How many "friends" are we talking about here?" Junior asked.
Kelly shrugged.
"Half a dozen...give or take." he said. "Firefighters get hurt all the time. It's a dangerous job, in case you hadn't heard."
Junior studied Severide...the way he was standing...holding his right arm close to his side. Definitely hurting. And there must be a hundred more out there like him.
Maybe there was an untapped market there...
"Well..." Junior said slowly. "I have nothing but respect for firefighters..."
Kelly recognized a snow job when he saw one.
Where was this guy going?
"Thanks..." he said warily.
"And I wouldn't want these men to be in pain unnecessarily." Junior went on. "Not when I could do something to help."
"A real humanitarian..." Severide scoffed.
"No...a businessman." Junior told him. "And I'm offering you an opportunity to go into business with me."
"You want me to sell your shit?"
"You're already selling it. You just admitted it. I can set you up with an 'inventory'...we split it eighty/twenty."
"You think I'm some kinda idiot?" Severide asked incredulously.
"Of course, you'd get a discount on your own "prescriptions"."
"Still not enough." Kelly said. "Sixty/forty...or I walk."
Kelly's heart was pounding in his chest, and he was surprised no one else could hear it.
What the hell are you doing? his mind screamed at him. This wasn't something he had talked about with Voight...or Erin. He was flying blind.
But just when he was sure his big mouth had gotten him into a whole shitload of trouble...he saw Junior nod his head.
"I think we can work with that. You drive a hard bargain, Lieutenant Severide."