All In (Firsts and Forever 2)

I tried to dissuade her by saying, “Mrs. Dombruso, if I help you break out of the hospital, your grandson will never forgive me! And you want us back together, right? So I probably shouldn’t go and do something that’s guaranteed to piss him off.”

She considered this for a long moment as she turned from me and fished an enormous black handbag out from under the bed. “Well,” she said, “you do have a point there.” I visibly sagged with relief. But then she added, “But if I force you to help me escape, Dante can’t possibly hold that against you.”

“He’d never believe it! I’m twice as big as you,” I pointed out. She was digging through her purse as I said this. “I mean, how would he ever possibly believe that you forced me to – oh.” I stopped talking then. The sight of the silver revolver in her hand had shut me right up.

“Don’t worry Charlie, I’m not going to shoot you. But now you can honestly tell my grandson that I forced you to help me at gunpoint. You had no choice but to agree. How on earth could he fault you for that?” She looked extremely pleased with herself.

“Mrs. Dombruso, can you please not point that thing at me?” I said, my throat going dry.

“I have to point it at you. Otherwise you won’t have a truthful excuse as to why you busted me out of here!” To Austin she said, “Here Cupcake, hold this so it doesn’t look like I’m making a break for it.” And she shoved her big purse at him. He grinned and put it over his shoulder, then tossed the fleece jacket back over our linked hands.

“Stop helping,” I whispered to him.

She shoved her huge glasses in place, which magnified her watery brown eyes and made her look like a cartoon owl. And then she climbed into a wheelchair that was sitting in a corner of her room. Austin quickly draped a little blanket over her legs and she concealed the gun beneath it, but still held it pointed at me. “Let’s roll,” she said.

Austin pushed the chair and I walked beside it. “Slow and steady, boys,” she told us. “Don’t want to attract any attention here. Just an old lady going for a walk with her grandsons.” She smiled pleasantly at every nurse we passed, most of which gave her odd looks. What had Dante said about her terrorizing the entire nursing staff?

A little giggle slipped from Austin, and I gave him a dirty look. “What?” he said. “This is fun.”

“That’s because the gun’s not pointed at you,” I hissed.

“I cased the joint earlier,” Mrs. Dombruso informed us. “There’s a service entrance just past the cafeteria. We make it that far and we’re golden.” She waved happily to another nurse, with the hand that wasn’t holding a firearm.

We somehow made it through the service entrance unnoticed. Damn it! I was hoping someone would stop us and question us, and then Mrs. Dombruso would have had to hand the gun over and return to her room.

Then again, maybe the woman was totally unhinged, and maybe if anyone had tried to stop us, it would have resulted in bloodshed. In which case it was a good thing we made it to my truck without attracting any attention.

“Give me the keys, Charlie. I’m driving,” she informed me as she hopped out of the wheelchair and swung open the driver’s side door.

“Why wouldn’t I be the one to drive?” I wanted to know.

“Because you’ve got a boy chained to your wrist!” she exclaimed.

“Do you even know how to drive a stick shift?”

“What, you think old people can’t drive stick? That’s just ageist. Give me the keys and get in the truck, Charlie, before we get caught,” she said.

I handed over the keys with a deep sense of foreboding. Then I hurried around and got in the passenger side with Austin and slammed the door a couple times to get it to stay shut. There wasn’t a whole lot of room in the cab, so he climbed on my lap. “Cozy,” he said with a wink.

Mrs. Dombruso turned the key in the ignition, then shot out of the parking lot, grinding gears the whole way. She was holding the gun and trying to shift with the same hand, and finally she gave up and tossed the gun in Austin’s lap. “Hold that for me, boys,” she said.

I gasped in alarm at the thought of a loaded firearm being thrown around. But when I picked it up, I realized it wasn’t a real gun at all. It was a plastic toy, painted to look like metal. And there was a picture of Woody from Toy Story on the handle.

“Oh my God! It’s fake!” I exclaimed, and Austin roared with laughter.