field, rolling towards us like a wave, and my first thought is that a bad storm is approaching. But it hardly ever rains here and there’s no wind. Yet the hissing keeps coming.
I crawl to the path and stick my head out from the grass to see what’s happening. Blaze is giving me a ‘what the fuck’ kind of look, but I ignore him. There’s no wind and besides, the hissing of the grass isn’t uniform like it would be if the wind was causing it.
Then I see them.
Black shapes, darker than the night, and therefore clearly visible. A whole sea of them, at least fifty. Ours? Theirs?
They all look the same. They’re all dressed the same. And in my experience, that can mean only one thing. Cops.
I pull out my phone and call Rook.
“We got company back here,” I whisper. “It might be cops. What do we do?”
I can hear Rook catch his breath. “Stay put. Wait for orders.”
I relay the message to Blaze, he passes it along to the guys behind him and I do the same on my side of the road. The hand gestures we use to communicate with each other on jobs are elaborate and practically a language of their own. It took me ages to learn the signs, and I’m still not sure I know them all.
My heart’s thumping hard and blood’s whooshing through my veins. The hissing of the grass it’s so loud it sounds like a herd of elephants is approaching.
Abort. Don’t be seen.
I relay the message and start crawling backward into deeper grass. I’m fairly confident any sound we’re making as we retreat is masked by the approaching cops. But I still don’t dare take a full breath until we’re in the nearly full darkness by the corner of the wall.
I stand up, confident none of those approaching can see me in the complete darkness. At least, I can no longer see them. I hope Blaze and the brothers on his side of the part reached safety too.
Then a strong gust of wind plasters my hair back against my scalp a split second before the sky explodes like the sun rose straight up from the ground yards from where I’m standing.
I hear nothing as I hit the ground again, my heart thumping in my throat and my vision seared away by the brightness of the explosion.
What the fuck happened?
Are Rook’s orders still standing?
I call him, but the ringing in my ears is louder than the ringing of the dial tone. So I text instead, asking what the orders are now. And spent a heart-thumping eternity during which screams and yells start breaking through the bells in my ears.
The dark shapes have reacted to the blast by going down too, and they’re now starting to stand up slowly, most of them staying crouched and looking around like a group of hens with no leader.
The screen of my phone finally lights up. Abort. Don’t return to HQ yet. I’ll contact you.
I forward the text to Blaze, tell the brothers with me, then take off at a run into the darkness, away from the path that’s now covered with cops and away from the walls. Seriously, this fucking place and me have some strange symbiotic energy going on. Three times I’ve been here with a task, and three times I’ve been exactly where I needed to be to prevent something no one foresaw. Except I doubt anyone foresaw any of what happened tonight, especially not that fucking explosion. I hope all my brothers are all right. I hope they all get out all right.
But I’m not exactly upset this job got so spectacularly railroaded.
I’ve been ordered away from HQ, so there’s only one place for me to go. The Lucky Star Motel and Brenda. I just hope my bike’s where I left it because otherwise, it’ll be one hell of a walk.
10
Brenda
In my dream, someone was calling my name softly, gently, like a heavenly creature whispering. But it was accompanied by loud tapping on the glass and that woke me before I could answer the call, before I could find out what wonders lay in store for the rest of that sweet, soft dream calling to me.
A man is standing by the window, a darker shape against the faintly lit parking lot, and now my heart is racing, and my breathing is fast and frenzied. Instead of a sweet dream, I woke up into a nightmare.
“It’s me, Colt,” the man says. “Open the door.”
I’m