Chapter 4: Thirty-One Thousand

I waited in Bridget's car at the pharmacy until four o'clock on Thursday.

Toby Nordin came across the lot at ten after, in a team jersey and sunglasses, swinging his keys.

He went in empty-handed.

He came out with a white paper bag, whistling.

"Stay here," Bridget said, and then she got out with me anyway.

"Toby."

He turned around, and the whistling stopped.

"Joanna? Hey. Tristram said you were, uh." He looked at Bridget. "Resting."

"Give me the bag."

"It's your prescription. I'm doing you a favor."

"Then you won't mind showing me."

He held the bag against his stomach.

I reached for it, and he took a step back and tripped on the curb.

The bag split.

An orange bottle rolled across the asphalt and stopped against my shoe.

The label said levothyroxine, and I knew the cap would be full of white tablets.

"Toby," I said. "Who told you to switch them?"

"Nobody switched anything."

His voice cracked on the last word.

He grabbed the bottle and ran for his car.

I got the Ledger from my bag so I'd have something to hold on to, and Bridget put her car in gear.

We followed him for six blocks.

He went into a sports bar called the Pinnacle, with a neon football in the window and a crowd of men in jerseys at the long counter.

By the time we found him he was already at the head of a table with six friends and a pitcher of beer.

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