Chapter 17 #4
“Need to Jet-Set-Radio our way out of this place. I’d love it if you used your manly-man-man powers to pick up Gram.
Just be gentle, okay?” I give him a look as he catches up and then speeds ahead of me, jogging down the hall and then pausing in front of her bedroom door.
I toss over the skeleton key and Widow unlocks it.
Emma Jean’s door is already open, so I pop my head in to see that she’s dressed and has a suitcase packed. I don’t see the typewriter or the stack of papers or any of the tea that she was offering to make for me earlier. She cleaned out the damn minibar. Good for her.
“Take your shit and wait out front. Whatever the boys tell you to do, do it.” I give Emma Jean a look as she bites her lip and tucks that short blond hair behind both ears at the same time.
“I have stellar instincts, and my gut is sayin’ the mayor will have your heads if you don’t beat a posthaste retreat. ”
“Yes, ma’am,” she agrees with a giddiness born in the suburbs.
She might be a little nuttier than you think, Scarlett.
And she might. Chaotic good. Praying for Chet’s death because he deserves it and it’s the morally upright thing to see him murdered.
I need her in my crew. That’s another thought for later.
“Good girl,” I purr and Emma Jean blushes.
I find Widow in the room with my grandma, trying and failing to coax her up from the chair.
He’s a bossy dick, but there’s something in him that makes him want to be nice to old women.
It’s adorable. One day, during our library period together, I caught him out back jumping one of the librarian’s cars.
He’s a good guy that looks like a bad guy, ain’t he?
Seeing him there with Patricia, his T-shirt pulling across the strong muscles in his back, his mouth a stamp of impoverished elegance on a young, rugged face, I’m dead.
No wonder I saw him for two seconds in the hallway and couldn’t let him go.
Trish better hope that Bohnes tortures her before I do.
I’ll be less nice.
Nobody talks to my Adrian like that and fuckin’ lives.
Widow looks up, his hard-bitten eyes like coins in a modelesque face.
Blood and oil stains on his clothes. Pure love in his eyes when Ash held that gun on his forehead.
There was this nebulous moment where I thought he might die.
Where he knew he was going to die. And all that was left was the honest truth.
I force my bare feet across the lush carpets to stand beside the pair of them.
Widow straightens up, studying me with a tangled expression.
So many threads in those animal eyes. Confusion.
Satisfaction. Frustration. Love that couldn’t be dimmed even in the face of certain death.
On my finger, his crude engagement ring burns.
“Hey Gram,” I say as gently as possible.
After I told her my story (most of it, slightly sanitized and fuck-free), she did not say one word to me.
Not one single word. But we’re out of options here.
I squat down by her chair, the cold mug of tea untouched on the side table, her gaze fixed blankly out the window.
“I hate to be curt with ya, but we have to leave or we’re dead.
Widow’s going to carry you outside, okay? ”
Patricia turns slowly to look at us, her eyes widening. She might be old and slightly conservative in her ways, but she’s an old and slightly conservative Prescott broad.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Force,” Widow grumbles, sliding his huge arms under her and hauling her to his chest like she’s as heavy as a stuffed teddy bear. We literally don’t have the time to let her walk down the stairs. That’s where we’re at.
Gram takes hold of Widow’s neck for balance, lips pursed. If she wasn’t pissed at me before, if she didn’t hate me before, she might now.
I stop briefly in Ash’s room to grab the portable habitat with his frog. How could I possibly forget that? He’d never forgive me.
Down we go, back to the living room where Bohnes is holding an unlit clove cigarette between his lips, humming a song, and pouring gasoline over Maryanne’s hacked-up corpse.
She’s basically a fillet at this point. Bohnes winks at me as we pass by, on our way out the front doors to the cobblestone drive.
“You aren’t planning to light this place up with that cigarette, are you? Those cloves are hard to come by,” I grouse as Widow and I flee the soon-to-be decimated murder house.
“Well, they’re not hard for me to come by,” Bohnes replies with a bubbly laugh. He’s having the best time today. The absolute best. Gram shudders at the sound of his dark mirth.
The front gate is open and there’s the blue Pontiac Trans Am that Cody used to drive, parked beside the black SUV that I was kidnapped in. On the other side of that, there’s the GT500 and the Cobra. Ash’s Shelby. Aspen’s Shelby.
Alexei is there, too, blood-streaked and beautiful as he holds up several sets of keys. Emma Jean is standing next to him, holding a brown leather suitcase by the handle and wearing a very unfortunate pair of mom-jeans and a baby pink top. Gag.
Widow moves over to the SUV, setting Gram in the backseat with care and belting her in. Alexei steps up beside me, tense-jawed and high-chinned and straight-shouldered.
“Mr. Kelly is in the trunk of the Pontiac,” he informs me, holding out a freshly gloved hand in the direction of the dinged-up blue muscle car.
It took a beating on the track when Cody raced me, that’s for damn sure.
Neener neener, you rapist pig, dying with your own severed cock rotting behind your teeth.
I grin.
“You can have that one, Marie. I’ll drive the SUV. Widow, take the Cobra and Miss Emma Jean. Bohnes will be in the GT500.”
I open the door to the SUV—oooh, an Escalade, nice—and secure both Lemon and Aspen (the frog) in the passenger seat.
There’s some muffled screaming coming from the back which I can only assume is Trish.
Poor Grandma. She’s staring at me like she’s never seen me before.
I’m going to have to work my ass off to fix our relationship. If it’s even fixable. Fuck.
“Smashed the Cobra with chains, committing grand-theft-auto with it now.” Widow shakes his head, giving me one last cursory glance—so many unsaid things—before climbing into Aspen’s black beauty.
He pauses before closing the door. “Any particular place I should go? You’re homeless now.
I’m dead if I go back to the halfway house. What’s the goddamn plan now, Scarlett?”
Bohnes strolls merrily out the front doors of the mayor’s mansion, lighting up that clove cigarette and taking in a long, glorious inhale before he turns and flicks it inside.
He drags the doors shut just before an explosion rocks the building, blowing the glass out of half the downstairs windows.
Strapped across his back, he has Ash’s sword.
Under his right arm, he’s got what I think are…
wooden masks? Huh. Guess he found somethin’ worth stealing.
“Follow me and do as you’re told. Same plan as always.” I grin at the three of them as I sashay my way over to the SUV, pausing just once to look back at the inferno behind me. “Third rule of arson, boys: get the job done and then GTFO. Never dillydally at the scene of a crime.”
I climb into the Escalade, and then I summon my girls.
We ain’t called the Crimson Crew for nothin’.