Chapter 16
Fuck. This. Shit!
Fuck Ricardo for driving so fucking fast and fuck the NightPigeon for lying in wait like a cockroach in a cupboard until it was too late for August to stop him, driving in out of nowhere in a battered gray Honda Civic.
And fuck August especially for letting surprise freeze him in place for too long, losing sight of both Ricardo and Bird Boy.
But most of all? Fuck every single one of the insane people on the road right now.
August hated to admit that he wasn’t good at everything.
For the most part that wasn’t a concern because he was good at all the things he bothered to apply himself to.
He didn’t live for the latest technical manuals on modern sniper rifles the way Ricardo did, and he hadn’t worked as hard as he could have at his Spanish or Catalan because all his in-laws spoke such good English and French, but he was competent.
Competent, goddamn it! There was almost no situation he could get into where he wasn’t competent.
Trust this goddamn job to be one of them. Specifically, the driving.
Look, he’d grown up with chauffeurs, okay?
Driving was something other people did for him.
When he had learned to drive, it was in some of the most expensive, responsive, intuitive vehicles in the world.
Not in a borrowed—read: stolen, but he’d give it back—two-door sedan with a floor he could definitely see through in places with a manual transmission that was giving him fucking fits.
The gears weren’t supposed to make that noise, right?
“Fuck, fuck, fuck—” He had to turn, he had to turn, where was the place for him to get out of here, no—damn it, he was caught in another roundabout. These weren’t as big as the ones in London, but the drivers were ten times more aggressive here.
Speak of the devil—“What the fuck was that?” August shouted out of the window as a van that had clearly seen better days cut him off right as he tried to pull into the outer lane.
The driver didn’t respond; they probably didn’t even see him through the pouring rain that spattered across the windshield and barely yielded to the ancient wipers on this thing.
Bullshit. Bullshit.
“Naturally,” he muttered as he convinced himself to try again.
“Naturally, the one time we’re working in a country where I don’t speak the language and can’t drive, you go on a wild goose chase.
Because of course you do. Can’t find a nice, secluded parking garage and kill Darrow there; no, you have to be an absolute shit and drive off into the middle of nowhere, probably into the Canal or a rainforest or the side of a fucking mountain, and take NightPigeon with you. He was supposed to be my problem.”
That part burned the most. They’d agreed to divide and conquer, and it only made sense to let August handle their fellow assassin since he’d seen him up close and personal multiple times now.
He’d arrived early enough to find a decent perch in the airport to track Darrow from, knowing that NightPigeon would soon be on his trail.
And then August would be on his trail, and soon enough it would be bye-bye, birdie.
It didn’t happen that way. Ricardo moved too fast, NightPigeon moved even faster, and August…it was a bitter fucking pill to swallow, but he wasn’t up for this part of the task.
And his texts were going unanswered.
He risked a glance at his phone, then swore as the car beside him came within inches of hitting his front left bumper. “Watch it, asshole!” he shouted.
The man riding in the passenger seat, wearing a faded black T-shirt and a shit-eating grin, shouted back, “Presta atención, ?estás ahuevado?”
Wait, that was… was he calling August dumb?
The exact epithet mattered less as the car darted in again, swerving close before pulling away and then doing it all over again. Oh, fabulous. These punks were toying with him.
Worse than that, they were keeping him locked in this roundabout.
August wasn’t delusional enough to think that there was any hope of him being able to find either of his targets at this point, but at the very least he didn’t want to be stuck here until traffic thinned out.
Shit, traffic probably never thinned out in Panama City, given that it was the capital.
August gritted his teeth and gunned it for the edge of the circle. If being aggressive was the key, then he was about to have his way come hell or high water.
Hell, in the form of that fucking car, immediately reached out and nudged the back of his car hard enough to make the wheels spin out. He was barely able to wrench it straight and get out of the roundabout down a side street.
And those assholes followed him.
The hell with this. He pulled onto the side of the road, nosed in between a battered white Toyota Hilux and small, silver Hyundai Accent with a woman pulling a baby out of the backseat of it. Hurry up, lady.
August waited a moment to see if the Roundabout Boys went on by, but—nope, they were pulling over too, throwing doors open and very clearly prepared to have some more fun at his expense.
No. There would be no fun. August might never be able to come back to Panama after this, but he was putting an end to this now.
“Hey, fren!” one of them called as he swaggered out in front, arms spread. “American, yeah? You—”
August pulled the little Sig P365 Ricardo had bought him for when a situation called for comprehensive concealment of his gun and raised it point straight at the man’s face. “Go on,” he said, practically spitting the words. “Go on, fren. Go for it.”
Both men put their hands up and began to back away. “You crazy?” the chatty one demanded as he got back in his car. He went off in Spanish, and August could only identify one word in ten at best, but it was enough to let him know that none of the words were complimentary.
Well, fuck it, because he wasn’t feeling complimentary toward them either. He exhaled a slow breath, then tucked his gun back in its holster, feeling a little ridiculous and a lot anxious.
Where the fuck was Ricardo?
Had he finished the job?
Had NightPigeon found him?
How was August going to find him when he couldn’t even drive himself more than a mile down these streets without getting into a car accident?
His phone went off, and he blessed the distraction even as he ignored the people on the sidewalk who were staring at him and checked the message.
Ricardo
I’m in San Miguelito. Sending my location, but I’m going to move on foot. I think I lost NightRaven for now. Mark is dead. Where are you?
Oh, thank God. The barbs in his chest loosened their grip around his heart. Ricardo was all right, the job was completed, and NightPigeon was in the wind. Better that than him hunting Ricardo down.
Where am I? He had no clue, but there had to be a remedy for that.
Rain had soaked his jacket through completely, and his hair was sticking to his forehead.
First things first—hat, then conversation.
He turned to the sidewalk and plastered on his most charming and innocent smile as he approached the closest store, with hats and sunglasses under an awning outside of it.
“The guy in there doesn’t speak English.”
August paused, then turned toward a young woman in a football jersey with the name Baloy on it. “I see.”
She shrugged. “Just saying. He can’t give you directions.” She was eyeing his jacket with interest. “Do all Americans carry guns around?”
“Not all of them.” Just the ones with a job to do. Actually… “Can you drive?”
She laughed out loud, teeth bright against the warm brown of her skin. “Better than you!”
“Amazing.” He reached into his back pocket for his money clip and counted off ten hundred dollar bills. “I’ll give you a thousand dollars to be the driver while I find someone. I’ll give you another thousand to drop us off near the airport and return the car once we’ve got him.”
Her eyes went wide. “You really are crazy.”
“But completely serious.” He waited, arm outstretched, money barely protected by the curve of his hand, and tried to keep his expression steady. He wasn’t about to force her to help him, but if she wasn’t on board then he needed to find someone else ten minutes ago to—
“Fine.” She pushed off the wall and grabbed the cash. “But if you’re messing with me, I’ll leave you in San Miguelito.”
“I’m not, but that would be easy for you since that’s where we’re going.”
She shook her head. “Of course it is.”
August literally felt his blood pressure drop when he got back into the car on the passenger side. He waited for his driver to adjust the seat to her liking, then pulled out his phone. Ricardo’s location was still live. “We need to get here.”
She glanced at it and grimaced. “Could be worse, but we better find him fast. I’m not staying in that neighborhood once it gets dark.”
“Fair.”
They didn’t speak once she got them going, either because it was clear August wasn’t in the mood to chat or because she needed to save all her attention for the roads.
She did a much better job than he would have, navigating the streets with ease and using her horn to do everything from signal which way she wanted to turn to inform people they needed to scoot over.
Every few minutes she looked back at the phone, and they gradually got closer and closer to Ricardo while the buildings and roads got more and more run-down, cars either rusted heaps or nonexistent.
“We better find him soon,” she warned, her knuckles blanching where they gripped the wheel.
“We will.” August pulled up the text log.
No more hide and seek, get where I’ll be able to see you. I’m in a red Kia that’s seen way better days.
Ricardo
Got it.
Not ten seconds later, the familiar figure of his errant husband appeared on the side of the street. “Here,” August said, and the car stopped with a squeal of tires. He rolled down the window and did a quick once-over on Ricardo. He looked okay, except for… “What the fuck happened to your hand?”