“Did you even get a paycheck?” she said, with a half smile.
“No, they’re on their way. Right now. So payday is coming.”
She stared at him in shock.
He nodded. “You didn’t think you would get out of this unscathed, did you?”
“Well, I’d hoped so,” she said, sagging onto the couch. Just as she wondered what she should do, Gregg gently squeezed her hand. She let out a slow deep breath and squeezed his fingers back. What she needed to know for certain was what this big guy knew or to be sure that he didn’t have any clue.
She looked at the bully. “And when they come, then what?”
“Then you and him will get hauled out of here, and I’ll get paid, and I’m leaving,” he said. “Before any more shit goes wrong.”
“And the blood and wherever the bodies are that you’ve got stashed here?”
He snorted. “I can’t go out and deal with them right now,” he said. “So I’ll make it a part of the deal, for them to take care of.”
“If you say so,” she said, frowning. “But what if they won’t pay you, when they see the mess you made?”
He just glared at her, but she could see that she’d gotten him thinking.
“Shit,” he said. Just then came the sound of a vehicle coming up the road.
She looked at him. “Well, guess you’ll find out soon enough because it looks like we’ve got company.”
“Oh, yeah, we got company all right,” he said, with a big smirk. “And you’ll finally get what’s coming to you.”
She glared at him. “I haven’t done anything to you. I don’t know why you’ve got such hate for me.”
“I hate all bitches,” he said. “Ones with brains are the worst.”
She looked at him, smiled, and said, “Thank you, that was an obvious compliment. I knew you didn’t hate me.”
“It wasn’t meant that way,” he snapped.
She shrunk. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll take it anyway.”
Just then the vehicle pulled up into the driveway, and the lights shone on the house. He walked toward the front door, then stopped and looked at her hesitantly.
“Where am I going?” she asked. “I already came back.”
“No, I can’t believe that. Not the way things are going tonight.” He walked back over beside her and hit her hard in the side of the head. She collapsed onto the couch without another word.
*
Swearing heavily at that little scenario, Garret waited until the big guy headed out the front door. Then he raced into the living room. He said to Gregg, “Wake the hell up.” Then Garret picked up Astra and carried her out to the back porch, returning once more to the front room.
Gregg said, “I’m here. I’m here.”
Garret shoved the handgun Astra had kept in the back of her waistband, under her jacket, to Gregg. “Now that she’s safely out of the way, we need to get all of them.”
Gregg, keeping up with the headlights still shining in the front, stood, a little wobbly at first, then said, “Come on. Let’s go.”
They immediately stood on either side of the front door, hidden by the old thick ornate curtains covering the windows on each side.
Outside, yelling was going on.
“I guess they found the bodies,” Garret noted.
“What the fuck, man,” the one guy said. “We can’t deal with these bodies.”
“It’s not my fucking fault,” the big guy said. “The first one was his bullshit because he didn’t want to share, and he wanted whiny guy to just shut the hell up. Then the fucker pulled a gun on me, so I had to take him out. What the hell? Do you think I would stand here and get myself shot?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “This is all bullshit.”
“Maybe so, but, if you want your prisoners, come get them,” he snapped. “They’re on the couch. The girl too.”
“The girlfriend?”
“No, the girlfriend’s sister.”
“Well then, we’re not paying you full price. You didn’t fully deliver,” he said.
“You’re paying me full price,” he said. “I had the girlfriend. I went through too much for this.”
“We wanted the girlfriend, not the sister,” he said. “Anybody with brains would know that.”
“Well, with these two prisoners, you can get the other one.”
But, as far as Garret and Gregg could see, the one guy was backing up toward the car. “No, you clean up this shit first.”
“You get the hell in here and get your prisoners,” the big guy roared. “Otherwise I’ll release Gregg and the girl. And then you can deal with whatever.”
The new arrival had a conversation with somebody on the driver’s side. “Fine, I’m coming in to get him,” he said. “But I want you to step out first. No way you’ll shoot me, like you shot your brother.”
“Oh, no. No way,” he said. “You owe me some money. Until I get my money, I’m not giving you nothing.”
“You told me to come get him,” he said, exasperated.
“Well, I’ve already seen too much tonight,” he said. “This can go down easy, or it can go down seriously ugly.”
“Well then, ugly it is.” The guy dropped to the ground.
With that, the driver reached out of the car window and fired twice. The big man stood in shock, getting hit once in the arm and once in the leg, and then he roared and started toward the one man still outside the vehicle.
“Fuck, shoot him again, shoot him again,” screamed the man outside the car. “Jesus Christ, this is a shitstorm. Kill him.”
Two more shots were fired, hitting the big man in the torso, and he stopped and swayed in place. The final two shots did him in, and he fell flat, facedown on the ground.
Garret and Gregg looked at each other, as the vehicle stayed where it was. “Now what we need,” Garret said, “is for these two last guys standing to come in and get you.”
“But will they? It looks like a trap. What are the chances that they’ll just leave us and run?”
“The one guy’s on the phone.” They watched as he paced back and forth,
