Chapter 33 #3
Nisha and I watch patiently as Bastian is thoroughly searched and then encouraged to climb in the passenger seat of Chet’s white Ferrari, the very same one that housed Polina’s body the other night.
I wait for them to roll out of the parking lot and then I start the engine.
“Let’s get him,” Nisha growls as I keep my headlights off and ease forward on the throttle. I’m going to drive in the pitch-black, stalking Chet like a monster in the dark.
“Let’s get him,” I breathe back, and the hunt is on.
It’s spooky and foggy out, the perfect night for a perfect murder.
Chet is an efficient driver, but not particularly talented or creative. He doesn’t make enough U-turns, doesn’t cut across enough fields, and certainly doesn’t drive through any almost-too-narrow alleyways. Where’s the spirit? Where’s the fun?
The challenge comes when the Ferrari hooks a sharp left onto a long gravel drive. There’s a wooden archway built over the entrance with a sign that reads Archer Funeral Services. The crematorium. He took us straight to the crematorium!
Ahh. Feels so good when a plan takes the most likely route and proves your ass right. Very satisfying.
The fly is zooming toward my sticky web.
I wait for Chet’s car to approach the gravel lot at the end of the drive, and then I put the pedal to the metal.
The back tires screech, the Catalina roars, and off we go like we’ve been shot from a slingshot.
Warning: I am definitely going to classic car hell.
Also, don’t worry. I paid my girl’s distant-cousin way more money than this ride is worth.
My heel hits the brake, sending us skidding through the rocks. I turn the car to the side and allow it to slam into the front driver’s side of Chet’s vehicle. Just enough to dent both cars and trap him inside. Not hard enough to hurt Bastian, Nisha, or myself.
Nisha and I both are up and out of that convertible, prepared for a firefight under the stars.
On either side of us, there are woods instead of Archer Realty Construction signs.
Guess Chet likes his dark kinks more than he enjoys the money he’d make by building shoddy overpriced homes out of pressboard and plastic on this sensitive grassland.
There’s a gun in my hand, the black semi-auto that Bohnes gave to me. It doesn’t have a serial number. He might’ve made it. Stole it. Bought it and then filed it off. Who knows. It’ll be hard to trace though, even if someone were to find a shell casing.
I shoot one of the guards in the neck, sending a spray of blood everywhere.
It’s not going to be fun to clean it up, but expediency is more important.
We have a split-second of surprise and need to use it.
If Chet calls in the rest of his team, we’re in trouble.
He’d rather work to spin some story about why he was caught in the dark at a funeral home with a bunch of teenagers than die at our hands.
Bohnes runs two of the men over, smashing their bodies between his new car and the wall. The rest of my crew’s rides flood the parking lot, driven by Jennifer and Shirley and Tuesday and Juana. Ash. Widow. Alexei.
One of the guards takes off over the short wooden fence and disappears into the night. Widow gives chase and even though it kills me, I don’t follow after him. He’s a big boy. He can handle his part in this. We all can.
Ash has his sword out, scrambling to the roof of the second of two separate security vehicles that were in Chet’s motorcade. A trio of cars fleeing to the woods in the middle of the night to do horrible things. Ash thrusts the blade through a crack in the sunroof and impales a guy in the shoulder.
What’s happening now is justice. This is what justice looks like.
It’s vengeance fulfilled.
This is Providence.
Alexei slides out of the final car. Not a borrowed one like the other boys, but the black Lamborghini that my girls and I robbed him in. He puts his arm on top of the open door, studying the chaos in front of him before reaching up to remove his white face mask.
“Mr. Archer, may we have a word?” he asks as Chet scrambles out the passenger side of the Ferrari, his hand on Bastian’s upper arm.
Chet’s blue eyes are wide with surprise, but not fear.
He’s not afraid yet. “If you’re looking for the men that were supposed to be guarding this place to help you, you’ll be sorry to hear that I gave them an offer that was too good to refuse.
Money talks, doesn’t it, Chet? Well, not yours, since you don’t have any left. Check your accounts: there’s nothing.”
Alexei shuts his car door as the sixth man guarding Chet throws up his hands in surrender, falling to his knees. See? People are predictable. This guy doesn’t want to die for his stupid asshole employer. The money is good but he can’t spend it if he’s dead.
Alexei takes out one of Pavel’s guns and shoots the man in the head. It’s harsh, but we can’t have any witnesses to this.
Chet tries to drag Bastian with him as he turns to flee, stumbling when Basti drops to the ground like a sack. He just crumples, letting his knees give out so that he ends up on the ground. Hard to carry dead weight like that and run for your life at the same time.
Chet abandons Bastian, stumbling through the gravel toward the back of the building.
The crematorium is over there somewhere, I hear.
With a sigh, I allow him to wander off. He ain’t goin’ anywhere, and we’ve got the signal jammer on now.
No calls or texts or emails or livestreams. My eyes wander across the carnage, cataloguing all the dead goons as Ash walks around and double-taps them with his sword, just to make sure they’re dead.
Widow climbs back over the fence and pauses beside me.
“I’ve got boys coming to clean up these cars,” he says, and I nod, giving him a long, measured look before turning to Bohnes. Alexei. Ash.
“Sit. Stay.” I reach out and take the baseball bat from Widow’s hands, examining the bloodied nails embedded in the end of it.
Hm. I start to whistle as I swing the bat up to rest on my shoulder, careful not to impale myself with the nails.
My girls swoop behind me, like some sort of inverted urban fairy-tale princess.
Instead of song birds, I’ve got bitches. Instead of princes, I’ve got fuckboys.
“I don’t want to talk about it. Not now or ever.” Bastian jogs up to stand beside me, holding a machete in his right hand. He has hickeys all over his neck, and my throat nearly closes up. “Don’t, Scar. Blood will wash the taste of trauma out. Seriously.”
“Feelings for later anyway.” Nisha is on my other side now, carrying some chains, like she maybe also stole her weapon off Widow. Those are just too classic. A knife? A gun? Boring. Chet isn’t allowed to just die. That pain only lasts a second.
I want this to hurt.
We walk together into the woods, my girls fanning out and disappearing into the foliage. The moon is rising in the sky, unveiling herself in clouds of wet mist between the branches of the trees, a silver smudge and little else. I cock my head to the side, listening.
Someone is stumbling messily through the forest, breathing too hard.
Without a word, I turn and start walking that direction in my heels.
I make a hell of a lot less noise than Chet does, scrambling around in his search for the road.
Girls appear in the trees, pointing in the direction I need to go.
Not that I need that. The idiot is breathing loud enough to attract every bear, every cougar, every angry Prescott bitch in a hundred miles.
“Grr,” I say, lifting my lip as I step into the clearing with Chet. To his credit, he tries to run, finding himself blocked at every exit by girls carrying guns. In the end, he turns to face me and falls to his knees, commencing the pleading before I’ve even said a word to him.
“You got what you wanted, didn’t you? The company.
The money. Why bother me? I haven’t done anything!
” Chet puts his hands together, rubbing them shamelessly as he crawls forward and I extend the length of the bat, forcing him to keep his distance.
He eyes the weapon in the strange, murky shadows, lifting his attention back up to me.
A flash of anger in his pale eyes proves that he hasn’t fully accepted his fate yet.
I grin at him, giving Bastian a moment to shine.
“You know who Lucy Bree Hall is, don’t you?” Bastian asks, more gently than Chet deserves. Not out of any respect for the man, no. But because while I’ve recovered a little from the shock of losing Lem, Basti is still mired deep in grief. “Your own daughter?”
“Some hooker’s spawn?” Chet scoffs, looking around like he’s in disbelief. “That’s what you want to talk about? Fine. I’ll pay you whatever you think her life was worth. If I were you, I wouldn’t—”
One of my girls throws a rock that hits Chet in the temple.
He curses and flinches, holding up a hand to the side of his bleeding head.
Another rock comes whizzing out of the shadows, knocking against his back.
Then another. Another. It’s a hailstorm of stones, the pummeling of a condemned criminal by an angry mob.
I hold up my hand and the rocks stop, clattering to the forest floor all around the clearing. Chet is groaning, bruised and scratched and bleeding. He’s still on his knees, arms thrown up to cover his head. His big, white teeth are clenched and he’s panting, not in pain but in rage.
“Don’t offer us money again. It’s insulting.” Nisha spits in the man’s face, and he gets all jittery, like his temper is rising to the surface like bubbles in a pot of boiling water.
I bend low and look right into Chet’s eyes.
I want him to see his painful death reflected in my gaze.