bit out.
“That was to protect her, too.” His eyes shot back to me. “I didn’t know you were serious about her, I thought she was—”
“I heard exactly what you thought. Now shut the fuck up.”
If he was smart, he’d have listened.
But no one could ever accuse Mugsy Carmichael of being smart.
“I was wrong, I see that now.” He held his hands up in surrender. “But my intentions were good.”
Ash strolled closer, but Carmichael’s eyes were on me and the gun in my hand.
Another mistake in a worthless lifetime of them.
“Don’t you know what they say about good intentions?” Ash pulled a syringe from his pocket. “They pave the highway to hell.”
Carmichael finally looked to the side, but it was too late. Ash jabbed a needle into his neck and within seconds, he was down. His unconscious body dropped like a sweaty bag of bricks onto the still naked stripper.
“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes,” I told Ash.
“I was ad-libbing.”
I glanced around to figure out how we were going to get him out of there. “You couldn’t have waited until he carried himself to the car?”
“He was annoying me.”
Even wearing gloves, I touched as little of the DNA splattered blanket as possible, spreading it on the floor. I’d barely gotten it positioned when the stripper got some life back into her and gleefully shoved Carmichael onto it.
As soon as his weight was off her, she jumped out of bed, and I trained my gun at her. She didn’t notice as she skipped to the table, popped a handful of pills, and downed them with a few chugs from a vodka bottle. Stumbling back to the bed, she flopped down with one leg hanging over and passed out.
She didn’t care—and likely wouldn’t remember—we’d been there.
I looked at Ash and lifted the blanket. “Grab a corner.”
We got Carmichael out to the hallway just as a door slammed from the main area.
“It’s the two in our two-for-one sale,” Ash whispered.
A moment later, Dobrow yelled, “Janson is gone! Pull your tiny dick out of that whore and get out here!” The swinging door shoved open and his eyes went wide when he saw two guns aimed at his head.
That was all we got before he turned and ran.
Ash and I followed as he slammed out the door and raced toward a car. I shot once, the bullet whizzing by him to shatter the driver’s window.
“Fuck!” Dobrow screamed, dodging to the left and racing past the club. He turned the corner before darting to the side into the alley between two dilapidated and abandoned buildings.
I had to hand it to him, for such a bulky fucker, he was fast. Every time I thought I had a clear shot, he changed paths or used the dumpsters and stacks of garbage as a shield. Unlike the guns in action movies, my bullets weren’t infinite and I wasn’t wasting them. Dobrow didn’t have the same theory, squeezing off wild rounds over his shoulder that didn’t hit anywhere close to us.
He took a sharp right and we followed just in time to see him scaling and hopping a tall wooden gate down the alley.
“Has he been training for the Olympics? Varsity track? Shit,” Ash panted.
Hoisting myself onto the gate, there was no sign of Dobrow. I was almost over when he stuck his upper body around the corner and quickly fired three shots.
Burning pain exploded in my shoulder, making me lose my hold on the gate and fall forward to hit the ground.
“Fuck!” Ash landed on his feet next to me, his gun trained down the path.
“Go,” I ordered.
He didn’t argue.
Standing, I took a few seconds to fill my lungs with the breath that’d been knocked out of me. I ran a different route, reaching the end just as Dobrow turned in my direction.
His focus was aimed behind him as he tried to shoot over his shoulder, but the only thing the empty gun did was click. When he faced forward and saw me, his eyes went wide and his steps stumbled. Recovering quickly, he spun, only to find Ash blocking his way. He took a shuffling step backward toward a narrow alley, but before he could turn, Cole’s gun dug into his back.
Trapped, Dobrow glared at me with hatred burning in his eyes. He opened his mouth—likely hurl insults and spew bullshit—but he didn’t have the chance. A syringe stabbed into his neck, and he was flat on his back within seconds.
“Between him and Carmichael, one of