Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,9
I needed to come up with a Plan C. Something without Max. Despair gripped me. Hard.
I opened my mouth to tell them forget it. They could keep Max and good fucking luck to them.
“We trust you,” Annie said. She made quick eye contact with Max and Ben, who after long seconds, nodded.
Holy shit. It worked.
Ben looked a million years old. Dylan told me to look after his brother, which frankly was not the whole of my plan. Annie hugged me. Before I could stop her, push her away, she put her skinny arms around me.
I shrank back hard in my body, because that’s how I survived. As far away from my skin as I could get.
I don’t care about you, I thought because it made me feel stronger.
Alone made me feel stronger. Hard and cold made me feel stronger.
I got in the car and drove away feeling as hard, cold, and alone as I could.
Because that’s how I was going to survive what was coming next.
Chapter 4
I made it into Georgia with a bleeding, concussed man in my backseat. Every half hour, I reached behind my seat and jostled him awake, which made him roar and swear at me for three minutes before passing out again.
The adrenaline kept me going for a long time. The second it would ebb, a police car would race by me and my eyes would nearly explode out of my head from the stress.
My God. I rubbed at my aching eyes. What have I done?
The news on the radio talked about the explosion and everyone was calling it a drug deal gone bad. One report said there were two casualties. But the next report said there were none. I caught the tail end of an update that claimed three men were in custody and they were looking for the fourth. But the news changed to weather and I didn’t hear anything else about it. I turned the dial searching for word on casualties but couldn’t get anything. And then, the farther south I went¸ the stories dried up. And then they just stopped. The news wasn’t talking about it anymore.
There were no more cops on the highway.
If it weren’t for the biker in my backseat, I could have pretended it never happened.
“Hey, Max,” I said, reaching back to give him a shake. “How you doing? Rise and shine!”
“Fuck off,” he groaned.
“And hello to you, too. Do you know what year it is?”
“Let me sleep.”
“Can’t do that. I need you to answer some questions. Do you know what day it is?”
“Wednesday.” Well, Thursday at this point.
“Do you know your name?”
“Max Daniels.”
“My name?”
“Joan-the-crazy-fucking-bitch.”
“Good enough. How are your ribs?”
“Hurts…to breathe.”
I glanced in the rearview and saw him sprawled out back there, breathing shallowly. One hand pressed to his side. Under the blood his face was turning dark with bruises.
Those assholes.
“You kidnapping me?” he asked.
“Only a little.”
I caught his gaze and tried to smile, but it felt all wrong. His eyes slid shut.
“Hey, hey, Max. Stay awake. Let’s…let’s talk.”
“Talk.” He shifted and grimaced and I grimaced too in sympathy. “You took me to my brother.”
“Actually, I took you to my stuff. Your brother just happened to be there.”
“He could get in trouble…because of…me.”
“I don’t know. I think your brother and dad can get in trouble just fine on their own.”
“Annie…”
“Yeah, she’s nothing but trouble. Trust me.” I was only half-joking.
“Jealous?”
I looked back in the rearview mirror to see if he was fucking with me.
“No,” I said definitively. But I was…a little. It would be nice to have some dude fall over himself to help me out. I mean, it would be weird. But there were days I could use some help.
“What’s with the fake badge?” he asked.
“The DEA thing?”
“Yeah.”
“You know, on second thought, why don’t you go back to sleep?” Because I didn’t want to talk about Bad Boyfriend #2. I don’t want to give the impression that it was all bad boyfriends. There were only two. And there had been one really good one sandwiched between them.
“Why don’t you tell me about the fake badge?”
“I had a boyfriend who used them to get out of traffic tickets and get free shit.” There were other crimes, things I didn’t like to think about.
“That’s stupid.”
“Says the straight up criminal.” I smiled at him in the rearview mirror, but he did not smile back.
“Where’s the boyfriend now?”
“He left me about a year ago. Took all my money, but left me the badges. They come in handy every once in a while.”