Chapter 19
Scarlett
I push forward up the steps, stirring leaves with the heels I reclaimed from one of Alexis’ suitcases.
All the items of mine she thought to steal after letting her ‘lover’ murder me, they were tucked in the back of the SUV with Trish.
These are snake spiral-wrap sandals, worth nearly two-grand. Won ‘em at the track.
I flick the stolen lighter absently, pausing to look at the assorted humanity occupying the derelict bus. It ain’t worth much, and it probably won’t run again after we park it somewhere and abandon it, but it’s the perfect getaway car to scrub our tracks.
Widow has his dirty t-shirt tucked into his jeans like a rag, dangling out of one back pocket as he uses both hands to push back his galactic hair, turquoise and purple strands twisting enticingly over his sweaty, grease-streaked forehead.
His eyes are like lanterns, calling to me through the murk of a snappy December morning.
Alexei is also sweating, but not in a sexy tore apart some cars, babe kind of way, but in an I have OCD and I’m standing in a place where a thousand teens have fucked way.
He’s replaced his gloves so many times that the box of black latex he was carting around with him is empty and there’s nothing left.
He’s opted for bare hands, tucking them in the pockets of the black Tripp pants he never wanted to wear.
Ash…oh, Ash. He did as he was told, like a good boy.
He pulled the carburetor out of the Cobra and I hope it was as cathartic to him as it was to me to watch him split and gut his dead twin’s vehicle.
The same vehicle that Aspen was driving when he shot Evelyn is now a metal skeleton on cinderblocks with a note taped on and fluttering in the wind.
It reads nah-nah-nah-nah-na with a bright red lipstick kiss courtesy of yours truly.
Borrowed some of Shirley’s lip stain—Unrequited Violence—and threw that down with a dash of panache.
The mayor’s only remaining son is seated on the floor with an amphibian habitat in his lap, wide-eyed and staring at the debris.
He lifts his gaze up, like he can sense that I’m looking at him.
I’m sure he can. He peers back at me with this helpless resignation, like he knows he should kill himself in an attempt to protect me.
Just like Widow said. It’s selfish for Ash to want a future with me, isn’t it?
But I’m removing that factor by giving him no choice in the matter.
Gram is seated and buckled in, head in her hands.
Curly poufed hair mussed and flattened. Gaze fixed determinedly on nothing and everything all at once.
I know she’s watching me, but she doesn’t want to acknowledge me either.
Emma Jean is seated beside her, one hand on Patricia’s thigh, speaking to her in low, soft tones.
In the back, there are two bundles. One is bloody and still. Ernest Bolin. The other is squirmy and screechy. Trish. I’ll be driving this here bus, but it’s going to once again rest on Bohnes to tell me where I can put my grandma. Emma Jean. Our unwilling captives.
It’s going to rest on Bohnes to give us all a place to stay.
I turn around and he’s right there, hands still on those bars, blocking the door with his skeleton-traced arms and his shock-fright-hair and his borrowed rich boy loungewear.
It sits well on his street-hardened frame, emphasizing the exquisite toughness of a pauperized boy that spun his own cocoon and emerged as a ferocious undertaker.
A man from nothing who won’t rest until he owns everything.
His eyes match the winter bleakness of the sky above, but there’s a ring of sapphire around his pupils that flares when he looks at me, comforting but dangerous, like a summer-warmed sea.
“I have a request,” he tells me, and whatever it is, I’ll grant it because he deserves that. Still gonna punish these idiots for what they did to me at the track, but I can set that aside for now. I’m not a vindictive bitch. Nuh. Swear to fuck.
I pop a hip, letting the Unrequited Violence of my red lips twist into a smirk.
“What is it, baby?” I ask, knowing that’ll annoy him.
Shadows sweep into Bohnes’ face and his mouth turns to mimic my own.
He takes another step forward and then another.
His arms now stretch out behind and to either side of him, still holding onto those damn poles.
He leans down and puts his mouth against my ear, and his breath smells so sweet that I want to turn and take a drag of it.
“We find ourselves in need of a blindfold or two or five,” he whispers, the sound like the wind in the trees around Ferndale Hill Cemetery.
A beckoning, a goodbye, and a hello all at the same time.
Bohnes stands up straight, releasing the poles and turning with a snap, like a military general, to face the back of the bus.
“Blindfolds?” I repeat, twisting to look at the other boys. At Emma Jean. At…ahh, man. Now I have to blindfold Grandma? What a nightmare (with no capital letters). “Right.”
“Don’t trust us?” Widow asks with a hint of threat in his words.
But Bohnes only shakes his head, strolling down the aisle of the bus and resurrecting the dead leaves.
He stops in front of Ash and squats down, reaching into his own pocket to retrieve the bloodred tie from earlier, the one Ash shed during sex.
Ash lifts his heavy head up, his black eyes open and exposed, all of those stars spiraling out of his personal galaxy.
“If you’re caught and tortured, you won’t be able to give up our location or our secrets.
” Bohnes lifts the tie up and Ash grits his teeth, but he doesn’t protest as my Nightmare wraps it around his head and ties it with a flourish on the side of his blood-and-oil streaked face.
Then, very deliberately, Bohnes unstraps the sword from his own back and lays it across the top of the frog’s habitat, placing Ash’s fingers over the cold blade.
The touch of the weapon seems to settle Ash’s nerves a little.
With a sigh, Widow grabs hold of one of the bars near the ceiling with one hand, bunching his t-shirt around his eyes with the other.
“I will merely close my eyes,” Alexei declares, also refusing to take a seat.
Hope that he and Widow are as cocky and capable as they’re acting because I’m about to drive this bitch like we’re on the track.
I’m going to turn corners into straight lines and ignore traffic signals. “I trust that’ll be sufficient?”
Bohnes snorts as he stands up, giving the other man a purposeful once-over. Bohnes simply shrugs and moves away to stand beside Emma Jean and Gram, putting his hand on the back of their seat.
“Hoodie, now.” I strut over to Alexei like the decrepit bus aisle is a runway, wiggling my fingers in demand.
Marie is repulsed, tearing the soiled hoodie off with jerky movements and revealing the white tee beneath.
There’s some faded design on the front. Squinting my eyes, I see that it’s a Fall Out Boy band tee from God only knows when.
I take the hoodie over to Gram and kneel down in front of her.
“I need you—” I start, but she snatches the item angrily from me and ties it around her own face.
See? Once a Prescott bitch, always a Prescott bitch.
Emma Jean is hurriedly complying, unwilling to let Bohnes do it for her.
She slips the long-sleeved heart-patterned top off, revealing a red camisole underneath. Over her eyes it goes.
I stand up and Bohnes and I lock gazes. I make my way over to the driver’s seat and he joins me, perching sideways on my lap, facing toward the open bus door. There’s a handle to close it, but it’s rusted and when I try to tug on it, it breaks. Okay then.
“Start driving,” he says, a heavy weight on my leg. Bohnes tosses an insouciant look over his shoulder and lifts a brow. “I’m sorry, my everlasting destruction. Should I have phrased it as a request?”
I ignore him, releasing the brake and easing the creaking, metal heap of yellow across the parking lot and onto the street with a thump.
We’re jostled around, and I thank the merciless demons of my life that Gram at least has a seatbelt.
Emma Jean goes sprawling at the next speedbump, but hey, Widow and Alexei are still standing.
Ash is curled into a ball, wrapping himself protectively around the sword and the frog.
“Left,” Bohnes says mildly, but he points right. I take a right. He turns his head, narrowing his blue eyes on the others. “Right.” He doesn’t point this time, so I go right. “Left.” Points. “Left.” Doesn’t point. “Right. Left. Right. Straight for six blocks.” He holds up three fingers.
So on and so forth.
“Pull in there.” He holds out an arm, his pale skin and black ink a beautiful sight with the rusted bus as a backdrop. It’s like art. Bossy as he’s being, I listen, pulling the bus into the (ironically enough) bus station.
We roll to a stop and Bohnes leaps to his feet.
I don’t turn the engine off because I’m not sure if it’ll start up again and none of us are Basti-level mechanics.
I notice the Chevelle parked nearby and raise an eyebrow. Not sure how he got from here to the mayor’s mansion without it, but sometimes with Bohnes, it’s best to let him keep his secrets.
“Leave your blindfolds on,” he instructs, and Alexei scowls worse than Widow. Jesus. My little dom-mob boy. “Except for you, Mrs. Force. Miss Reporter.”
“Miss Journalist,” Ash grumbles dejectedly, processing his shit with a poet’s romantic moue.
He was all ready to leap into the flames, to heroically execute Jonas and Chet.
I’m tellin’ ya, there wasn’t going to be an epic destruction of our enemies, it was going to be a sad and useless slaughter of Ash himself.