Chapter 7 #6
“Why would he if he has backup coming? He’s going to be patient, wait for us to fuck up and if we don’t, he’ll have backup here to help him. I’ll be fine?—”
I shove him toward Antonio and rush away from the cover we’d found. The guy is instantly on me, gun firing as I feel tree bark strike my cheek. But it tells me his position and when I move again, his only option is to fall back or shift his body in a direction that would show him to Grayson.
He moves forward, planning to outgun me, but he doesn’t realize how fast I can focus and pull the trigger.
The man hits the ground on his back, likely still alive and fine as long as he gets attention soon. Grayson puts a hand on my arm and pulls me toward our car.
“Why the hell would you do that?” he demands.
“You were in such a fucking rush to make sure I didn’t go out there that you didn’t check anything.
There was a tree behind you that you could have used for cover.
It would have kept you completely covered until you needed to draw him out.
Hell, you might have reached him without him ever even seeing you if you’d done that.
Instead, you just risked your life for no damn reason. ”
I ignore him as I reach our SUV. There’s no hesitation as Antonio gets into the driver’s seat.
“Cal, I’m speaking to you,” Grayson says.
For a man who acted like he didn’t know how to drive a vehicle earlier, Antonio sure shoots off before we even have the doors shut. I practically fall in when Grayson grabs me by the back of my pants, giving me the ultimate wedgie as he shuts the door.
“Sorry!” Antonio cries. “I just saw the sketchy black SUVs, and they very much look like bad guy SUVs.”
I look back and see two SUVs falling into line behind us.
The engine roars as he pushes it to its limits. “I was going to eat brunch. And meet your friend’s dog. And then maybe eat some brownies, and when we got back to Felix’s we could watch a movie,” Antonio rambles on.
“We can still do all of that. We just have to ditch these guys first… or shoot them.”
Grayson’s hand stops me from lowering the window. “Don’t you dare stick your head out those windows. They have guns already pointed at us,” he warns. “They’re being cautious because Antonio is in the vehicle. But the moment we start shooting?—”
“I’ll lose them. Don’t risk your life. I’ll lose them,” Antonio assures me, fingers tight on the steering wheel.
“I don’t know a lot about cars, but I feel like theirs are a bit faster than ours,” Grayson says with a grimace.
“Speed would help, of course. But it’s not the only thing that matters,” Antonio replies as the vehicles steadily gain on us. “Please buckle your seat belts.”
“How am I supposed to shoot out the window if I do that?” I ask, positive I could force them back if I had a moment.
“You’re not supposed to.”
Grayson reaches over to buckle me in while I try to smack him off.
“I know how to buckle myself.”
“Yet you still aren’t buckled,” he says as he fights me until he wins and buckles me in.
He looks quite pleased with himself once he’s done that and smiles at me again.
He’s acting like we’re on some swan boat in the middle of the most romantic pond, when I’m pretty sure we’re in a death trap.
At these speeds we’ll definitely die if Antonio crashes the car, but if they let me shoot we’d only probably die.
“Not sure if you’ve noticed, but they’re close to kissing our bumper at this point,” I say.
“I didn’t notice, thank you,” Antonio retorts. “Now hang on, I don’t need your head smashing through the window.”
“I would prefer it didn’t as well. What are you planning?”
“I’m going to turn onto that bridge.”
I look ahead of us and see a very sharp ninety-degree turn right onto a narrow one-lane metal bridge.
It’s one of those bridges where you creep over and feel like it might crash down right when you’re in the middle of it.
But nope, we are driving as fast as the SUV can go and Antonio seems determined that we’re going on this bridge.
But hey! It wipes the smile off Grayson’s face.
“Uh… you know, what if we maybe do shoot instead? I’m starting to think I’m with Cal on this. I feel like shooting sounds significantly safer than turning onto that bridge,” Grayson says.
Antonio lifts a hand off the wheel to wave us off. Like he’s so casual about all of this that he doesn’t even need two hands. “Just hang on.”
“I don’t think hanging on is going to help us live through this,” Grayson says. “Cal, since we’re going to die, can I apologize right now?”
“No.”
“Fucking hell. Do I have to find you in the afterlife?”
“Maybe! Maybe I’ll have amnesia after Antonio murders us.”
“I think you’re just dead after someone murders you! I don’t think you have amnesia.”
“If I say I might have amnesia then you agree.”
“One hundred percent. Fully agree with you.”
“Good,” I say as the road is coming closer and closer. “Antonio, not to tell you how to drive, but I think you need to slow down if you’re planning on taking that turn.”
“The goal is to never let the vehicle chasing you know what you’re doing,” he responds. “So if I start pressing the brake too soon, he’ll know just when I’m planning on turning and prepare himself for it.”
“I think at this point it’s safe to let them know!
” I cry, grabbing the door and the driver’s seat that’s in front of me when he presses on the brake just enough to pivot the car.
The tires squeal, the vehicle shutters, but it doesn’t even dream of fishtailing as he swings us right onto that road while I get a front-row seat to the vehicle behind us losing control and shooting off into the river.
I feel like I’m in an action movie as it becomes airborne an instant before making quite the splash in the river.
The other one misses the turn completely and by the time they realize it, we’re already over the old metal bridge and on the other side of the river.
Grayson is holding his chest while Antonio pushes the SUV back to its limits.
“I feel like in fifteen years I’ll be drinking with some buddy and be like, ‘Oh, let me tell you about this cool car chase I was in,’ but right now…
right now, I’m just shaking a little bit and feeling thrilled I didn’t piss my pants.
My stomach crawled into my chest. It might still be there. ”
“Mine tried crawling out of my throat,” I whisper.
Antonio adjusts the mirror so he can look back at us. “Why? What happened?”
I’m not sure I could possibly be any more shocked. “What… what happened ?”
“Yeah?”
“We nearly died. You held our lives in your hands.”
“Every time you get in a vehicle, the driver holds your life in their hands,” Antonio says, as though he can compare this to someone driving me to the mall.
“Were you not concerned about that at all ?” I ask.
“No? This car doesn’t even go that fast. It has a good weight distribution to keep it from flipping and the tires are good enough. No, I wasn’t concerned at all.”
I hug my rifle case as my heart thunders away. It looks like I’m not being dramatic at all, since Grayson is hugging the seat in front of him while looking like he’s just gotten done running the car chase instead of being the passenger of one.
“So… where do we go from here?” Antonio asks, not caring at all that we’re still recovering from our brush with death.
“I guess we could go home. I bet Felix and Lane can figure out how to get out of all of this by themselves. Hell, they’re probably already sharing a coffee with the guy and having a good laugh while we’re out here nearly dying. ”
“How about we drop you off somewhere safe and I’ll go back for them?” I suggest.
Antonio is quiet for a moment before glancing back at me. “Hell no. We’re in this together. If I had a semi or a dump truck… hmm… maybe a snowplow… I’d just drive it straight through their greenhouses. Then I’d coolly get out and be like, ‘I’m here to take out the trash.’”
I nod enthusiastically. “Ah yes… I’m glad we have all of this in mind, including a catchphrase.”
“I feel like you’re making fun of me and I’m not quite sure why.”
“I’m not sure either,” I mumble. “Especially because I really don’t have a better plan. Maybe we’ll ask Grayson, seeing as he was like, ‘Yeah, let’s go join an evil drug-dealing organization.’”
“Sounds like you’re the only one in the car who hasn’t,” Grayson says, and when he sees that I’m glowering and not laughing, he just shrugs.
“Why did you join them?” I ask.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It fucking matters.”
“We’re going to go back. I’ll figure out how to get your friends out of it. And then you guys will go home. Please?”
“No.”
“Cal, please?”
“Tell me the truth or I’ll never speak to you again,” I say.
He looks pained, and I see the way his hand tightens on the car door. “I can’t.”
“Then I’m never speaking to you again.”
“I understand,” he says.
Which pisses me off.
Whatever it is that’s going on, he’s obviously trying to protect me from it.
It’s the only reason he’d willingly agree to never speak to me again.
He’d sacrifice his ass for me, but I don’t need a knight to come save me.
I’ve only ever needed myself. Since I was old enough to walk, I quickly learned that I was the only one who would make sure I could keep moving forward.
The photograph of Devon Jefferson tells me why he’s here.
There’s something about what happened a year and a half ago that he doesn’t want me to know about. Something that has to deal with Ned and his little operation.
And I’m going to find out what.