I chuckle. “We’re not keeping it, though. We just need it to outrun the police.”
“Fair enough. I’m done cooking in this tin can,” Honey replies.
I shrug. I can’t argue with that. The drive here was several hours of silent sweating, salt stinging my eyes as it dripped down from my eyelashes, an unpleasant reminder that I can’t trust anyone. I’m reminded of that more every day with each new twist and turn my life takes, making a simple union of two powerful mafia families more difficult than I ever imagined it to be.
Don’t trust anyone. Just don’t.
I tap the rear bumper of the convertible with the front of my van, ensuring that the driver won’t flee the second that the light turns green. “No guns until I say so,” I command as I put the van into park, leaving it running as a decoy for when the police round the corner. If we pull this off quickly enough, they’ll swarm the van and ignore us speeding away in the convertible.
I hop out into the summer heat with Honey at my heels. Henry is walking on hers, which makes Amy the only person not in my centipede of people making their way toward the convertible. I try not to appear menacing, but it’s difficult with how tall and heavy I am. I’m like a sack of bricks walking toward a thin store window. It wouldn’t take much for me to do serious damage.
The driver of the convertible jumps out, ready to yell at me for scratching up his cherry-red paint. He’s dressed casually, but his swooping blonde hair and light-blue eyes tell me he’s not from around here. More likely than not, he’s a tourist with a rental car, which makes this easier on my conscious. Rentals are always ensured.
“Do you see what you’ve done?” he asks, jabbing an open palm toward the rear of his car. He doesn’t seem the least bit intimidated by me, but he’s about to be.
“It’s a darn shame,” I say, shaking my head, “Maybe we should swap cars.”
“Yeah-fucking-right,” he replies with a bitter laugh.
“That wasn’t a question,” I say, pulling the gun from my waistband. It slides out like cream against silk, so satisfying in its presentation. I’ve always been a huge fan of guns ever since I was little. They put even the smallest man on the same level as a giant, and that’s simply fascinating to me. Of course, when the giant is the one with the gun, and the little man is without one, the effect is doubly potent.
The driver’s face pales, and he freezes, unsure of what to do. He doesn’t need to know because I already do. His keys are still in the car, so I push him aside and lead my group into the buttery leather seats of his red convertible as the police turn down the road.
Honey slides into the passenger’s seat behind me, letting her blonde hair down from the bun she tied it up in when we were sweating buckets in the van. It flows over her shoulders, partially damp and clumped together with sweat but still beautiful in its adventurous glory. Damn, does she ever look bad?
“Seatbelts on,” I command, wanting to make sure nobody goes flying out of this roofless wonder when I start sliding sideways around corners.
“Better hurry the hell up,” Honey says, looking over her shoulder as I press the car through the intersection, ignoring the blaring horns from the other drivers.
I look behind me to see an onslaught of police vehicles, this time accompanied by vans with armed men hanging off the sides, ready to use lethal force. Sometimes it’s better not to engage the enemy, especially when you’re outgunned.
“Hold on tight,” I warn before pressing my foot down hard on the gas.
With a roar and a jerk, the convertible jumps forward, leaving a satisfying streak of rubber against the pale road as we speed away from the looming threat of arrest. Honey lets out an excited yelp from beside me, a wide grin stretched from one of her rosy cheeks to the other. Henry looks a tiny bit disappointed that he didn’t get to shoot any more people, but he’ll get his chance later today. I’m almost certain of it.
Sirens blare behind us as police speed around the abandoned van and nearly hit the man who we carjacked. They’re reckless, even more than we are, which means they’re desperate to capture us. It makes me wonder if Honey has a price on her head, just like I do back at home. It wouldn’t surprise me, considering how aggressive Bheka has been in the past.
But someone knew we were here, and I’m going to find out who it was. I doubt that Henry or Amy are behind this, but I’ll still have to give them a shakedown once we manage to evade the cops. You can never be too careful.
“Watch out,” Honey shrieks from beside me, her usual sweet voice tainted with shrill panic.
I swerve the car, narrowly avoiding a collision with a silver tanker truck crossing through the intersection. We would’ve been killed in an instant had we made impact with it, the crushing weight of three tons of steel turning us all into fleshy pancakes.
“Fucking hell,” I exclaim. My fingers dig into the wheel so hard that they begin to go numb. The skin around my bones turns white as I squeeze the blood out of it with anxious force.
“I’m gonna shoot the bastards,” Henry announces, turning around and pointing his gun toward the armored van with police hanging off the side like leaves clinging to a branch during a storm.
“Don’t shoot, you fucking moron! They have guns too,” I shout over the sound of the air ripping through the car.
I see Henry turn back around, having to tear himself away from our pursuers to stop himself from killing them. We don’t have nearly enough ammunition to kill them all,
