I looked over at Luca and grinned.
“All right?” I asked.
“Fuck,” he said.
“All right,” I said.
I flashed my lights three times.
Then threw myself to the floor of the car.
Luca did the same on his side.
Then the world exploded into gunfire.
Screams rang out from the parking lot. More screams, some running, more gunfire. It sounded like a fucking war was happening. Bullets broke my rear window, broke my windshield. One snapped off the rearview mirror, bullets broke each side mirror. They tore into the car, and I moved up as the firing began to slow down. I looked out the back window and saw one man limping for his truck. I popped off two rounds and he tumbled down to the ground with a moan.
“Get up,” I said to Luca.
“It’s over?” he asked.
“Get your ass up. You’re okay?”
He nodded. “I’m good.”
“Good. Come on.” I threw open the door. It hung at an awkward angle. I climbed out and stepped in glass.
The parking lot was a bloodbath.
Bodies littered the ground. All nine of them in various stages of trying to run away. The shotgun guy had his gun in one hand, like he’d tried to throw it aside, but failed. Their bodies were torn to pieces, ripped through by bullets. I walked through the carnage, a smile on my face, until I reached the man that had tried to get away.
He was breathing hard. His bright red hair and freckled face made me grin huge as I kicked him in the side and rolled him onto his back.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re Connor O’Malley.”
He tried to spit, but only managed to blow blood up into the air and have it settle back onto his own face. He groaned in pain as I shoved the tip of my boot against his chest.
“Fuck you,” he wheezed.
“All right, Connor,” I said. “No need to make this last longer than it needs to. I’m guessing I just wiped most of your muscle out tonight, isn’t that right?”
He glared at me, but didn’t speak.
“Fine, okay, don’t talk. I don’t need you to. I’m going to visit your boss next. I mostly just wanted to know if you had a message for him.
“Fuck. You.”
“Clever.” I held my gun out and put a bullet in his skull. Blood splattered on my jeans and Connor went quiet.
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.
25
Colleen
I 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
