“How you are.” He extended his finger on his steering wheel, pointing at me. “When was the last time someone asked you that?”
I gritted my teeth and inhaled a deep breath as I pushed the door open. “When was the last time someone told you to go fuck yourself?” I slammed the door behind me and dipped so I could see into the car.
Brody shrugged, but his lips couldn’t contain his grin. “It’s been a while actually.” He looked up at the ceiling of his car. “At least four days.”
I couldn’t help it. A chuckle escaped, and the tension that had been holding my body hostage since last night started to evaporate.
The engine vibrated, and he winked. “Have a good day, Lola.” I stared at the car as it pulled out onto the road.
I felt like I’d just been owned by words alone.
Chapter Four
BRODY
“You’re in here with us today,” Hut said from the passenger seat of his SUV.
The darkened sky was deceiving, giving a pretense of cover that wasn’t there. Some people felt safer in the dark, but it was an illusion. A trick the brain played on you.
Just like the darkened windows to his SUV. They may have been blacked out, but that didn’t mean Hut and his crew were unreachable. Bullets could cut through the glass and metal like a spoon in butter. Something my car wouldn’t allow. But I couldn’t really tell him that, could I?
I tilted my head in acknowledgment and pushed into the back, slipping in beside Quinn and Jace. The two of them were skinny, strips of wind, and it was a good job because I took up at least one and a half of the back seats.
I hadn’t sat in the back since I was a kid, and one thing was for sure, I didn’t like it one bit. But I had to play the part, a part I knew way too well.
Ford revved the engine and pulled out into the road, nearly slamming into an oncoming car. Did this guy even own a license? It was on the tip of my tongue to ask Hut where we were going, but I kept silent. Silence could say more than a hundred words.
Silence was an amazing thing. Some people cherished it, and some people hated it. Hut was of the latter. He loved to hear his own voice, and when there was even a small section of silence, he filled it with unnecessary babble. And that was what would get him into trouble. He’d be his own downfall—it was only a matter of time.
Ford took turn upon turn, probably trying to confuse me as to where we were going, but he was an amateur compared to me. I’d run his game when I was in high school, and I’d been on a crew much similar to this, which made it almost laughable.
He drove around in several circles, circles which meant nothing to me. I’d have still known where we were even if I didn’t have a tracker inside my watch. Finally, Ford turned the engine off, and we all filed out of the car and onto the gravel. A small warehouse sat to the right with a one-story house in front of us, an old man sat on its porch with a rifle resting lazily on his lap. I tried to take a look around without seeming too obvious, but I could feel several sets of eyes burning over my skin.
“Welcome to where all the magic happens!” Hut held his arms open wide and spun around in a circle, acting like he was the star of the show and the outside light his own personal spotlight. “Come, lemme show you.” He waved his arm, signaling for me to follow, and like the dutiful soldier I was pretending to be, I stepped after him, leaving Jace and Quinn behind. Ford took up my rear, and it was becoming painfully clear that he was Hut’s second-in-command.
Through all of the surveillance, we couldn’t work out the ranking of his crew, but being with them for just over a month now let me see what others couldn’t. I didn’t even think Hut’s contacts knew who was second-in-command, but it was clear as day inside the crew.
Hut reached down and flicked the numbers on a lock, entering it and immediately scrambling them once it clicked open. Didn’t he realize bolt cutters would work just as well? The roller shutter clanged as Ford pulled it up, and the darkened space lit up like the Fourth of July. The brashness caught me off guard for a second, and then I got my bearings.
Holy shit.
“It’s amazing, huh?” Hut’s voice was full of wonderment like he’d just been given the key to the universe.
It was a shit ton of cocaine piled high. A mountain of snow, just not the kind you could ski on. “Wow,” was all I managed to get out. My shock wasn’t fake. I was one step closer to bringing him down.
“Come on, have a taste.” Hut didn’t wait for me to answer as he stepped inside. He pulled a pen knife out of his pocket, pierced one of the bricks, and brought it back out. The stark whiteness shone on the metal like a diamond enclosed in white gold. I could see the appeal of the stuff—both the money and the high—but I’d never slip into that life again.
He held it out, waiting with his gaze focused on me. Maybe this was a test because if I were someone looking to take him down, I’d never snort a line and run the powder over my gums. Little did he know I’d do anything to get this scumbag off the streets.
I took the handle of the knife from him, bought it to my right nostril, and inhaled a quick, deep breath. It burned, making me shake my head, but the effects were almost instantaneous. The euphoria blasted through me like a ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds on a rainy day. My muscles relaxed in a way only cocaine could make them, and the sigh that left my mouth physically told me how much I enjoyed it. It was in the back of my mind that I’d had to do this to prove some kind of unspoken loyalty, and even though my brain was telling me it was wrong and that I shouldn’t enjoy the effects of it, I couldn’t stop it.
Hut’s lips lifted into a smirk as he took the knife off me and dipped it back into the block. He took twice as much as I did and snorted it without a second thought, closing his eyes and basking in what I was feeling right now.
I had to pay attention to what was going on around me, but the next thirty minutes went by in a flash, and as soon as I felt my high starting to wane, Hut did too. Unlike him, though, I didn’t snort a second lot. He was chasing the high, but I knew better than most tha
t nothing compared to that feeling of euphoria the first time you snorted.
“Let’s go check on the old man,” Hut announced, practically skipping past me and out of the warehouse.