Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76539 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76539 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
The second guy laughs as the first grunts and sits back. The gun leaves my skull, but it’s still pointed at me.
I twist to get a good look at my assailants.
The man on the left with the weapon is a narrow bastard. Denim shirt, denim pants, cowboy hat. Fucking Texas through and through. His mustache is bushy and ugly.
But the guy on the right sitting directly behind me makes my stomach crawl.
He’s a big man, thick shoulders, thick neck, like he grew up eating nothing but eggs and steak. He’s pale, wearing a Houston Astros ballcap, with a polo shirt and a pair of faded jeans. He’s in his forties, face grizzled and unshaven.
It’s the guy Detective Vance left with the other night. The one we assumed was her partner.
My heart races. My head spins. What the hell is happening right now?
“What can I do for you fellas?” I ask, trying to play it cool, but I’m on the edge of something bad.
I’m glad Sara didn’t come.
Mustache keeps the gun trained on me. “Right now, you can start the engine and drive.”
“I’d rather stay here.”
“Not up for discussion. Drive, or I kill you here and now and be done with this whole fucking mess.”
“I’d do what he says.” Vance’s partner grins at me. “I wouldn’t fuck around right now, Angelo.”
I turn around and jerk the key. The car roars to life and I pull out. Mustache gives me directions: left, right, left, straight for a while. The gun never leaves me. I see it glinting in the few streetlights we pass. We’re on the back roads now, away from the bar, away from anyone. Neither of them speaks as we keep going, further and further, and my brain’s doing flips trying to figure out what they have planned.
They could kill me. There’s no reason they wouldn’t, but I suspect that if they pull the trigger and end me here, it’ll only make Sara push that much harder. And on top of that, Carmine’s strength has been growing down here ever since he married Brice, and I doubt the locals want to fuck with him if they can avoid it.
No, murdering me is going to be a huge headache for them. These guys might be thugs but they’re still cops, and cops have to pretend like they’re following rules. There are too many eyes on them. Yeah, they’re nothing more than thugs with a pension, but I have to keep telling myself that killing me will be worse than keeping me alive. I gotta hope I’m right.
They’re probably trying to scare me. But it’s a big risk. They revealed their faces to me, which means I know which guys are a part of the coverup, and I should be able to find more of them if I look hard enough.
So murder might really be on the menu this evening.
Fucked up that I’m going to die while Sara’s back home thinking I’m a worthless piece of shit.
I hope it doesn’t hurt her too badly. Maybe she was right trying to avoid me from the start. I’m only bad news. Only ever been bad news. I think of Grandma smiling at me as she watched her black and white Westerns, smelling like dryer sheets and dirty denim. Grandma loved me at least, even if she was always too busy working to show it. Maybe Sara can meet Grandma one day, but I’m not sure it’ll ever happen.
“Pull over here,” Mustache says.
“Where? There’s nothing but fields.”
“Pull the fuck over,” Mustache says again.
I jerk the wheel to the right and come to a stop, tires bumping over dirt and grass. We’re in the middle of nothing, no lights nearby, no houses, only endless stretches of fields reaching out in all directions broken only by trees in the distance. The shoulder’s barely big enough for the car, but there are no other vehicles in sight and haven’t been any for a little while.
Vance’s partner exits first. He walks to my door and yanks it open. “Out,” he says.
Slowly, I step onto the pavement. Gravel crunches under my feet. I’m calculating how I’m going to survive this but my chances don’t seem good, not without a gun of my own, but I don’t have any weapons on me. Mustache walks ahead and beckons for me to follow him.
Vance’s partner shoves me. “Go,” he grunts.
I shuffle into the beam of my headlights. Mustache leads us further down the road, about fifty feet from the car, and stops. My mind’s calculating. If this is my last moment, I’ll meet my end standing up. Fucking Sara. Fucking hell. I’m glad she’s not here for this. He turns to face me, gun held out. Vance’s partner looms behind me.
“You two do this a lot?” I ask, staring Mustache in the eye. If I’m going to die, I might as well die like a fucking man. “I thought you guys were cops. Protect and serve.”