I stepped back from him and took a breath. I grinned up at the roof across the street and saw Simon wave to me, a rifle on his shoulder. I waved back and looked up at each roof around the parking lot.
All my guys were there, grinning like idiots.
“Shit,” Luca said, standing in a puddle of blood. He blinked around him. “I didn’t think that would work so well.”
“Took a page from their book,” I said. “I guess I can learn new tricks.”
Luca laughed. I laughed with him and couldn’t stop myself. We both laughed hard, the laughter of men that just escaped something that could’ve gone very, very wrong. I heard more laughter echoing from all the rooftops around us, my men laughing with wild abandon, the cackle of the victorious ringing through the night.
“Come on,” I said. “We have one more stop to make tonight. But first, we need to swing by my place and pick up Colleen.”
“What about the car?” he asked. “It’s fucking totaled.”
“Leave it.” I waved a dismissive hand. “We’ll get a new one.”
He sighed. “You make that sound so easy. You know I’m the one that has to get the cars, right?”
“Quit complaining.”
The distant wail of a siren made my body go tense. I looked up at the nearest roof and made a circle gesture with my hand.
That was the signal to scatter into the night.
“Come on,” I said and started to walk down the sidewalk. Luca hurried and caught up with me.
Together, we moved away from the garden of corpses that we’d planted, and hurried toward my house and the girl that was waiting for my good news.25ColleenI paced back and forth in the living room. My stomach was a mess and I thought I might throw up. I managed to choke back a can of chicken noodle soup that I’d found in the back of Steven’s pantry, but otherwise I couldn’t bring myself to do anything other than wait and think.
Steven’s plan was insane. It was such a big gamble. He thought that if I gave my uncle some bad info about him going to some drug deal then my uncle would send a big chunk of his guys there to try and kill him. I went through with it and did my best to sound convincing on the phone, but the whole time I was talking I though my uncle would start laughing, call me a liar, and hang up.
Instead, he believed it.
Worst of all, Steven insisted on being in the car. He said that if someone was going to be bait, it better be him. I tried talking him out of it, but he insisted, and in the end I knew I couldn’t stop it.
So he drove off, and left me alone to wonder, worry, and pray.
I wasn’t big on the praying. My life hadn’t really worked out the way I always thought it would, and so prayer sort of fell away. But as I paced and worried and wondered, I found myself praying again, praying for Steven to come back safely.
Sometime after midnight, as I paced toward the kitchen then turned to head back toward the front door, I stopped dead in my tracks. It sounded like the night just lit up with fireworks, pops of explosion scattering through the evening.
I stood there and felt every single one of those blasts on my spine. I felt like I was vibrating with them. I knew what I was hearing, I knew what was happening just a few blocks away.
Men were dying. Blood, screams, death.
And in the middle of it all was Steven.
I dropped down to the floor and curled into a ball with my hands over my head. I held myself there as the gunshots stopped. I could still hear them, each shot ringing in my ears.
It happened. God, they went there, and it really happened. My uncle bought my story, or maybe he didn’t, maybe he saw through the trap and all those gunshots were for Steven.
Maybe Steven was sitting in a car bleeding out right at this moment.
I climbed to my feet and ran into the kitchen. I stood over the sink and retched, but nothing came out. I filled up a glass with water, drank it back, then found a bottle of whisky under the sink.
I poured myself a finger and knocked it back.
I groaned and felt like I was sweating. I peeled off the zip up sweatshirt I wore over a black tank top. I wanted to take off my jeans, but I couldn’t bring myself to go that far. I stood in the kitchen, the burn of the whisky in my stomach, anxiety rolling through my body in wave after wave.
I stared at the tile floor until I heard a sound at the door.
I stepped toward the kitchen threshold and stood there, leaning against the wall, as the door swung open.