I realize Freddy's watching me with narrow eyes, almost like he can sense the direction of my thoughts. He can't, that's impossible, but I shut them down anyway. He continues.
“The truck will leave the garage around 1:45 to pick up the load and make the drop. The guard at the garage has accepted a hefty sum to let me in and then disappear for about twenty minutes, which is all the time I'll need to rig the truck with enough explosives to light the warehouse up like the Quarter during Mardi Gras.”
He's fucking insane. His windows of opportunity are narrow, his intel questionable, and the chances of success are so fucking small. It takes every ounce of resolve not to cut him off and tell him what I think. I chew at my bottom lip.
“Meanwhile,” says Freddy, “you two will have positioned yourselves here.”
He sparks a lighter I didn't realize he had in his hand – my lighter, a green Bic. I get the urge to backhand him, but I bite down on it just before my arm twitches. His sleight of hand is just a trick, and he'll need more than that to pull this shit off.
A shade of a smirk tugs his lips then disappears. He sets the lighter upright on its end near the cigarette box. He says, “Maria, you'll position on a rooftop here, with my Dragunov. Izzy, you'll cover Maria.”
Maria's head jerks up as her wide eyes snap to him, proof that they haven't discussed the whole plan before now.
“You're leaving the Dragon with me?” she asks, not at all like a leader. Much more like the leader's little sister.
To see that side of her now, so sincere, nearly makes me cuss aloud. Not now, not after she buried that little girl. Not after she was a woman beneath my touch.
“You've shot her plenty of times. Don't act gun shy now,” Freddy says, and his tone is more admonishing than I've ever heard from him. It hints at the leader that has survived from his distant past.
“I've shot her in range conditions, Frederick, not when it really mattered,” she answers, her gaze falling back to the smokes and the lighter.
After all the cock measuring and proving herself that she's done since Charlie died, I can't fucking believe that she'd argue with Freddy now. Apparently, neither can he.
He slaps his hand down onto the table, the noise making her jump and look back to him. His rigid posture doesn't quite lean toward violence, but his sudden stillness makes major waves in the tension. He's watching Maria with a hot and heavy intensity, ignoring me – mostly.
He says, “Do you want to end this or not, princesa?”
The steel in his tone is his greatest weapon of surprise. She flinches, but she doesn't crumble. Her voice is so low I almost miss it when she says, “Of course, I do.”
I'm waiting for the balance to shift, for her to come clawing out of the gate with flag raised and weapons blazing. But it's clear she's out of her league. She's never witnessed, much less planned, something of this magnitude. She's left to his expertise. His, because she doesn't seem to give a shit about mine right now.
He says, “Then you'll wait for that truck to roll into position and you'll pull the trigger. You'll only need one shot to blow that warehouse and everyone inside to hell.”
She sighs, but she nods. Then she looks up at me. For a moment, I wonder if her vacillation is an act. But Freddy's watching me, too. They're waiting for my reaction. What a nasty team they make.
It's like slow motion, grabbing my smokes and lighter, shattering the scene he has set. I cock a smoke and light it without looking at them. So many things don't sit well about this.
“What about Josh?”
Maria's beseeching expression stutters, caught somewhere between surprise and that suspicion she gave me in the Caddy, when we were alone and she made a bid for my presence at her funeral meeting.
What started there as revenge has mutated into something much uglier. I never thought there could be such a thing, but this revenge will also be an acquisition of power. Power only corrupts, and revenge only ever leads to revenge. That's what killed Charlie, it's what sent Derrik to our doorstep, and it's what sent him back, a dirty, bleeding harbinger of this very moment. Maria wasn't bluffing when she said she wanted to destroy them, and she wasn't bluffing when she said she had nothing left to lose. Any one of us could give her everything and it would never fill the void left by her brother.
She still hasn't answered, so Frederick makes a throaty noise of disgust. His voice is forced when he says, “He'll come with me. Watch my back.”
I'm not sure if I want to laugh or call bullshit. Freddy wants Josh watching his back like he wants another hole to breathe through. The alternative, though, is having Josh watch Maria's back. My gun is more experienced, and so Freddy will take the burden of the rookie. This plan is so rich it tastes like fertilizer: a steaming pile of shit. I choose to let the silence stretch, during which I steadily switch my attention to Freddy.
He fields the volley with considerable mettle, again with that notion that he's silently willing me to dissension. A guy like him must have a lot of steam to blow, a lot of secrets and skeletons, just waiting for him to slip up. I take a long drag on my cigarette and don't care to tilt my head, so that when I exhale it goes
