I raise an eyebrow as Flora all but shoves the chick into the back of the Escalade. Flora follows and starts singing the song too, really getting into character.
“Want another pill?” Flora offers Inessa as she sits next to her and buckles up.
“Of course, bitch,” Inessa says, sticking out her palm and falling directly into our trap.
I put up the partition between my section and the back and drive us away from the nightclub towards the spot where we’re gonna take care of this chick. The place used to be a boxing gym until the Cuban biker gang who owned it got into a major territorial dispute with some crazy fucking redneck bikers. Now, some dude named Magnum Sinclair owns the place and I’ve done a little bit of business with his brother Ryder in the past, so he was more than willing to rent the space out to us for a slightly more personal job.
Just so long as we leave the place clean.
At first, I don’t hear anything in the back seat aside from the music coming out of the car speakers which I chose to keep the ladies occupied, and then I hear a small grunt and then a thud. There’s a little yelp after that and I hear Flora’s voice yelling above the chaos, “Turn it down! She’s unconscious.”
Eager to shut the damn music off, I slam down on the power button and the Escalade falls eerily silent. The partition takes itssweet time lowering itself. Flora blows out a small puff of hair and flips her hair over her shoulder.
“I cannot believe how annoying she is,” Flora says, glancing down at what looks to me from the rearview to be an unconscious lump with hair extensions detaching from the base of its head. Grim.
“You could have done more to hold her down,” Gino says, slithering out of the darkness and crawling across the floorboard of the car before diving head first through the partition window. He thumps into the front seat, where I never invited him.
“Why are you leaving me back here with her?” Flora squeaks. “What if she wakes up.”
Gino looks over his shoulder. “Are you taking a selfie right now?”
Flora’s phone falls to her lap as she responds guiltily. “I was just checking my hair.”
“Is that important now to what we’re doing?”
“I don’t know what we’re doing,” Flora whispers. “I’ve never done this before. I’m starting to get scared.”
“It’s too late for that,” I growl at her. “Just relax. It will all be over soon.”
Gino reaches into his breast pocket for a flask.
“Drink that,” he says. “You’re gonna be just fine.”
He’s better at comforting my sister than I could ever be and I’m grateful that the flask works. You never know how people are going to react to death and gore up close. I’ve taken plenty of kids out to work their first job and had them end up sitting in the car crying their eyes out.
Luckily, they’re all too scared of what it might mean to cross Leandro Taviani to actually snitch after the traumatizingexperience. I really thought Flora would be better off than she seems now. I can hear her heavy breathing all the way to the warehouse and she stumbles out of the car first, eyes glued to Inessa’s unconscious body as if she would suddenly reanimate.
“Come on, get her legs,” I tell Flora as I exit the car and survey the situation with her. She throws a nasty glare my way.
“So if she wakes up she can kick those fake ass Louboutin shoes at me? No thanks.”
“I don’t care if she has lube all over the shoes,” I snap. “Take them off and grab her legs. Don’t be difficult.”
“If she wakes up, I’ll send her back to sleep,” Gino backs me up in the face of Flora’s last minute resistance. “You want to help, don’t you?”
Flora huffs and moves bravely towards Inessa’s unconscious body. She lifts the woman’s wrist and then lets it drop to the ground with a thud.
“I guess she’s really out. I’ll grab her legs.”
Flora hops into the car and pulls off Inessa’s red-soled shoes while Gino grabs her arms and they carry her out of the car to the warehouse’s overhead garage door. I press in the code I got for the rental – previously untested.
It’s loud for this time of the night, but only Flora reacts nervously.
“How do you know there aren’t cops?”
“We don’t,” Gino says. “It’s not like we can’t handle a couple cops.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Flora grunts as we walk into the warehouse together and I find it exactly as I requested. Clear plastic lines the floors and walls enough to capture all the DNA. There’s a char in the middle of the roomcovered in thick layers of plastic. We have a small wooden table available to us and thankfully, Gino and I brought our own tools.
