“What?!” Dickers snaps at him like he’s ready to bite his head off too.
Jacob nods to the rearview mirror. “We’re being tailed.”
Dickers looks up at the rearview mirror, his eyes meeting mine for a split second and still smoldering with murder, before he sees whatever Jacob is pointing out. Then he hits the steering wheel again. “Fuck.”
“Who is it?” Trent asks with a hint of worry.
Is he worried that James is behind us? Fuck, I really hope James is behind us. I hope he made it out okay…
Squinting his eyes into the mirror, it takes Dickers a full minute to answer. “I think it’s the neighbor.”
Jacob nods and leans back in his seat, out of eyesight. “That’s what I think as well. Maybe he’s simply heading in the same direction.”
“Or maybe he’s in with them,” Dickers counters. “Doesn’t matter though. Ain’t shit he can do once we reach the station.”
Dickers’s eyes meet mine again in the mirror and it’s takes everything inside me to hide my disappointment.
Grinning at me, Dickers says, “I’ll check in with the team. Have them cut him off with the truck on their way out.”
Dickers pulls his phone out of his pocket and punches in some numbers before hitting speakerphone. His eyes find mine once more in the mirror. He wants me to hear what’s happening.
He wants to torture me and watch me crack.
But I still have hope that James made it into the safe room, and all those guys they left behind won’t be able to do shit.
A deep voice comes through the phone. “Yo?”
“How’s it going? What’s your status?” Dickers asks.
“We just finished sweeping the house,” the guy on the other end responds. “Didn’t find shit. We’re thinking he might be in the basement. Probably trapped down there. Hold on.”
Muffled voices come through the line, as if the phone is being covered or pressed against something, but it’s easy to tell they’re talking strategy.
“Okay,” the man says, sounding clear again. “We’re going to breach the—”
The roar of an explosion suddenly drowns out the man.
My heart seizes in my chest. Just like when I was tased, I can’t breathe, I can’t think. I’m utterly stunned and paralyzed with terror.
“What the fuck is going on?!” Dickers yells into the phone when the sound of the explosion fades away.
No one answers Dickers directly. There’s a couple of groans and quite a few curses.
Then there’s another booming explosion.
A man screams somewhere near the phone as if he’s in absolute agony.
I squeeze my eyes shut and tell myself it’s not James. That’s not his voice. It’s totally not James.
He’s not the one screaming. He’s the one making them scream.
“What the fuck is going on, Harris? Fucking talk to me!” Dickers practically screams into the phone.
Coughing, the man comes back on the line. “Explosions.”
“Yeah, I fucking heard that,” Dickers snipes.
The man coughs some more, like he’s trying to cough a lung up. “The first one must have been planted. The second… I think he hit the gas line. Stupid fuck probably blew himself up.”
“You think or you’re sure?” Dickers questions.
“Yeah, pretty sure he did. Kitchen is gone. So’s all the shit in front of the basement. I think Wallace might be dead. I doubt that fucker down there survived.”
“No,” I groan out, unable to stop myself as my heart literally shreds to pieces. “No, no, no!”
James can’t be dead.
He can’t…
God wouldn’t do this to me. He wouldn’t take him like that…
Not when I haven’t even had a chance to tell him how much I need him and care about him. Not when we’ve only had such a short time together.
He wouldn’t take yet another person I love from me. Would he?
Would he?!
“Shut her the fuck up,” Dickers mutters to Trent. Then he snaps into the phone, “I believe you, but check to be sure. Then get your asses out of there. We’ll meet up at the station. Call me if anything else happens.”
“Roger that,” the man says before hanging up.
“Sophia,” Trent says, his face blurring in front of my eyes. “Sophia, calm down. Everything is going to be okay now. It’s all over now. I’ll take care of you.”
I didn’t even realize I was crying, I hurt so bad.
I’m gripped by agonizing, unbearable pain.
James is dead. Fucking dead. And… it’s my fault. All my fault.
I practically killed him with my own hands.
I rock back and forth on the edge of the seat, and it feels like my entire being has been shredded, then folded, and ripped into tiny pieces.
Over and over again.
“Well, ain’t this a fucking shitshow,” Dickers mutters. “Wallace might be dead. Don’t know how we’re going to explain that.”
“The warrant might still come through,” Jacob sighs, sounding just as put out.
“Fucking doubt it,” Dickers says. “Somehow those fuckers own all the judges. We’ll be fucking lucky if none of this blows back on us.”