“Lookslike the one you least expected is the one that’s gonna come out on top after all.”
Tom stands a few feet away, swaying like a dead tree in a storm, a gun clutched in his trembling hand. The barrel wavers between me and Wheels, making it unclear which one of us he’s going to shoot.
He’s a horror show.
Half his face is raw and glistening, the skin hanging off in strips like melted wax. His clothes are charred tatters, fused to his body in places where the flames licked at him too long.
Second- and third-degree burns. Maybe worse. There’s no amount of grafting or plastic surgery that could ever repair the damage.
He’s a dead man walking—he has to know that. The only question is how many of us he’s taking with him…
“Get off Jack,” Tom commands, his ruined mouth twisting into something of a lopsided grin. “I want a clear shot of both of you.”
Wheels hesitates, obviously reluctant to take any kind of orders. Certainly orders from a man he tried blowing up moments ago.
“Now, Nate. And lose the knife too.”
Slowly and begrudgingly, Wheels pulls back. He climbs off me and tosses the knife aside, where it lands in the grass with a soft thud. I stay where I am, flat on my back, my chest heaving as I suck in air.
Both of us remain still as Tom points the gun at us.
In the distance, gunfire crackles like fireworks. The battle is still raging—my men against his, Steel Kings against Road Rebels. Engines roar and men shout at each other in between the bang of their firearms.
The flames from the earlier explosion are still going, the air stinking of smoke and burning rubble.
But right now, the world has shrunk down to three men and one gun.
“I know I’m not looking so hot right now,” Tom says with a raspy laugh. “But even if I’m gonna die, it’s a pleasure to take you two bastards down with me.”
“The grenade was meant for Silver and his men,” Wheels snarls. “Not you. You weren’t supposed to?—”
“Bullshit,” Tom interjects at once. His eyes—one of them swollen nearly shut, the other bloodshot and wild—fix on Wheels with cold fury. “You think I don’t know your MO, Nate? How fucking vindictive you can be? After the years in prison we served together? Let me guess. You were pissed about me and Silver meeting up. Pissed I was about to take his deal and walk away.”
Wheels’s jaw tightens. “You’ve got no spine. No loyalty.”
Tom laughs again and then spits a glob of blood onto the grass. “Loyalty to who? Your ass? Face it, Nate. We were alwaysstrange bedfellows. It was always going to wind up with one of us backstabbing the other. You just got there first.”
I see my opening.
“Tom,” I say, slowly holding up my hands. “Let’s just... calm down. The three of us can talk this out. Come up with an agreement we all like. Nobody else has to die today.”
Tom’s ruined face swivels toward me. For a second it’s like earlier, where contemplation flickers in his eyes and he’s obviously thinking over what I’ve said. It’s almost like he’s the old Tom again. The man who used to be my best friend.
Like a brother to me.
Then it’s gone.
“None of your reverse psychology crap is going to work on me, Jack,” he says flatly. “I’ve made up my mind what I’m going to do.”
“Then shoot me already if you’re going to do it!” Wheels barks, his patience snapping. “I ain’t got all day, and I’m not here for victory speeches either!”
Tom tilts his head and redirects the gun further to the left, pointing directly at Wheels’s chest.
“Alright,” Tom says simply. “If you insist, Nate. I’ve got no problem with that.”
Turns out, he’s fucking with us.
Because, after he points the pistol at Wheels as if about to shoot him, at the last possible second, he switches it up. He swings the barrel toward me and pulls the trigger.
