“Maria, I love you.”
Her foot moves like light as she slams it onto the brake, throwing me against the giant dashboard before I can realize what she's doing. She whips the boat onto the side of the highway like she's driving a Roadster and skids it to a complete stop, sending dust flying and soliciting angry honks from trailing traffic. I have fleeting doubts that she even hears them.
“You what?” she asks hoarsely.
I take a deep breath and peel myself off the dash.
“I love you,” I say again.
I'm staring at the bugs crowding in on the headlights, like I would if I were studying the mysterious screen of a confessional. I don't want to see her face if her eyes are still glazed over like glass. The silence again blossoms, then spreads between us. The noise of the road seems suddenly distant.
Moments pass. They feel like years. Only sudden, tiny sniffing sounds can pull my eyes toward her, the only sound that can unfailingly break my resolve. She's sitting very still with her hands abandoned on the wheel, hands that are capable, yet useless now. She's still staring forward, her eyes wide and momentarily empty. The glass has shattered. Tears have returned to her perfect cheeks. I am so useless in this situation that it hurts deep in my gut.
“No. Joshua. You don't,” she says to me. Her voice is low, wavering. Her arms might be shaking a little, but the steering wheel holds her steady.
I've never seen her this distraught. I sit back against the sticky car seat and look toward the green at the edge of the headlights' reach, as if the night's obscurity can save me. I belatedly pull on my seatbelt and I tell her, “I do. I just wanted you to know. In case we die.”
She punches the gas as fast as she cut it off moments ago. I feel my muscles spread a little over the seat's surface. My brain experiences the back of my skull. My stomach lurches as she swings the Caddy onto the blacktop, flinging roadside pebbles like water. We are long gone before the dust can settle.
She says nothing else.
An eternity later, we roll into Biloxi in a dead heat. Maria trails the car ahead of us, breezing across the city limit at a pace that would be leisurely in any other situation. I pop the magazine out of my Glock for the fourth time. It's still loaded. Its weight is at least a comfort. Even the metal is warm to touch in this cursed summer air, and the world feels like it will never again be cool.
She drives along the beach like my grandmother used to drive after church, so slow and steady that I think my blood may be standing still in my veins. I roll down my window just to let some of my tension escape. The breeze isn't cool, but it's better than the old stale smoke smell and silence that cling to the Caddy's interior.
I can barely hear the Gulf that moves beyond the streetlights, and some slow blues drifting from the Hard Rock as we pass it. The coastal air catches her long hair, which sticks to her smoldering skin. If she feels it, she ignores it. Nothing can distract her at this point.
She turns inland and slows the car even more. My suspicions are proving to be all too true. We are going to hell and, before long, even at our dawdling pace, she guides the Caddy down their street.
I'm overwhelmed by the purple, syrupy smell of an overzealous lilac bush. The car moves toward the Reaps' largest trap house like sap leaks over tree bark. I can barely stand the waiting. For a mad moment, I consider bailing from the car and running until my heart explodes. My arms feel like I've bench pressed the Caddy. The uncertainty is just as heavy.
The house of the wicked inches by on my right. Things seem quiet. The shades are drawn. Light leaks out along the bottom of the windows, betraying the life inside. There are no guards to be seen.
She finally turns her face toward me, but for the first time – maybe ever – I'm glad her eyes aren't searching for me. She glares toward the house, assessing the situation. I've seen the same shrewd expression on her during deals and poker games. That look could melt a polar ice cap.
I know that some of the most dangerous people we've ever encountered are sitting right inside. There are guns and drugs and money. She knows, too, but I can also tell that danger makes no difference to her.
Yeah. Our world is about to shake.
But then the moment is over. The house passes as slowly as it crept into my perception. Maria sits back against her seat and drives. I can't help the breath that escapes me, as if the past couple of hours were conveniently just a particularly awful nightmare. As if my partner in crime isn't dead, and I didn't admit to the only one left who matters that I love his sister.
Maria coaxes the yacht into the gravel at the side of the street beneath a huge magnolia tree, its big, waxy leaves sheltering us from the eyes of the neighborhood. She pops the trunk, swings open her heavy door, and steps out of the car. She leaves the door open, the engine purring.
Her movements are so deliberate that I feel lost, as if I should also have some determined objective. She's terrifying in the accuracy of her actions, how she wastes nothing, not even a breath. Why won't she just speak? I don't know what she's planning now, and I can't even pretend like I have a clue. I do
