Burton said, “Keep your gun out and go get the phone, kid. We can’t let that jump of Ace’s be for nothing.”
Brady did as he was told, and Burton hit the gas, peeling out and fishtailing to where Brady was reaching into the open passenger window, taking the phone from Eric’s bloody fingers.
He clung to that rust-stained hand for a moment, meeting Eric’s eyes.
“You okay, Charlie?” he asked gruffly.
“You killed for me,” Charlie said, not Eric, not now. “You—”
“I’ll never betray you,” Brady said. “Give me the phone, let me get us clear of this. I know where my home is now.”
“I’ll see you on TV, Cowboy,” he said, and it wasn’t Brady’s imagination. There were tears streaming down his face. He thought this was goodbye.
“Don’t worry, Charlie,” Brady whispered. “They’ll never know your name.”
Behind him, Burton pulled up, making an impatient noise, and Brady knew Eric would only believe in him if he finished his duty. “Charlie,” he said sharply, and Eric looked at him. “Don’t lose hope.”
“Okay,” he said, his voice all Boston. “For you, okay.”
And with that, Brady had to go. He shoved the phone into the zipper pocket of his windbreaker before hopping on the back of the bike. Burton peeled out for a few feet until the bike found its speed.
And then it was bob and weave around the cop cars scattered across the road like marbles as the collective police force of the lower half of California got its shit together and tried to decide who to chase.
Brady shot out several radiators and a lot of tires before they were clear of the mess, but not one officer had gone for his gun from the front seat of his unit, and Brady was pretty confident as they screamed down the westbound highway that the only fatality on that road had been the man who had needed to die.
Lines Dissecting Love
JAI WASthe biggest and the tallest in almost any situation—it wasn’t often he was ignored.
But after Ace and Sonny made their spectacular entrance—and exit—and after Brady and Burton had exterminated one large cockroach, Jai was surprised to realize that nobody out there even registered his presence.
While the police force slowly emerged from their vehicles and checked their radiators and front tires (Good work,cop, he thought with satisfaction), or their crunched bumpers and squashed quarter panels, Jai was able to walk to the side of the road and hop in the SUV where Eric lay, slumped and exhausted, against the seat.
“You are still alive?” he asked.
“Da,” Eric replied, and Jai’s mouth twisted, because the man had done a fair impression of Jai himself.
“Good. Let us go see where Ace and Sonny are, yes?”
Eric grunted. “I can’t be sure,” he said, “but I think I saw them go off the road about a half-mile down. It didn’t look like Ace could control the vehicle anymore.”
“Shit,” Jai said, his heart thumping in his chest. After that jump—that spectacular jump that landed—Jai had assumed (silly man!) that Ace and Sonny would be all right. They werealwaysall right. Ace’s ability to be all right after crashing a car doing crazy shit was the entire reason Jai’s old mob boss had given him to Ace and Sonny! Ace had promptly told Jai he hadno obligation, but by the time Ace was well enough to figure shit out and tell him that, Jai hadn’t wanted to leave.
Ace was a boss who treated him good and who wasn’t afraid of the things Jai had grown to be very good at. And while he was no longerinlove with the volatile, terrifying little man who loved Ace with his whole heart, Jai stilllovedhim, loved them both, as friends and brothers, the family he’d never known he could have.
He knew this stretch of road and knew the shoulder was solid hardpan—no rocks, no growth, just compressed dust in the wake of the terrible, impossible storm that had almost killed them in January.
Now it served as blacktop, and he did not love this car. He stood on the accelerator, ignoring the few police officers and deputies who turned to study him as he drove through the desert.
When he finally saw the dust path of the Forester and tracked it down to its inevitable end, his heart almost stopped.
Sonny’s door had been clear and undented, while the rest of the Forester looked like a sock full of rocks. But the door’s pristine state was the only reason Sonny could have gotten out, and he was now pushing against the back of the Forester with all his might, for all that it would do him no good. The driver’s side of the car was smashed up against a boulder, and whatever had happened inside the vehicle, Ace was obviously unable to get out.
Jai fishtailed to a stop, and Sonny turned toward him, face streaked with tears.
“They got off a shot,” he mewled. “It got him in the shoulder, and he was driving through it but… but he passed out and spun into the desert. And I can’t get him out. Jai, I can’t get him out—”
Jai hated to loom over smaller people. His great size was a blessing when he was trying to scare somebody, but he knew Sonny already had so many reasons to be afraid. But now Sonnywas losing it, spinning out, and Jai had been there the last time this had happened, and the results…. God, the results….
