“That’s enough,” a man said.
“You touch one hair on her head and I’ll?—”
“You’ll what?” Bossman replied.
“What the fuck are you doing with her?”
“She’s just a little insurance policy.”
“Insurance policy? I’m here now. I’ll have your car soon. Let her go.”
“I’ve been doing some thinking, and yeah, that car you’re about to lift would be nice, but I don’t think it’s worth the price.”
“It’s not going to cost you a damn thing,” I spit.
“But it is. It’s going to cost me my best employee. This car would bring in a couple of million, sure, but if I have you, I can bring in a couple of milliona day. See where I’m going with this, kid?”
“It’s not fucking happening. I told you, I’m done. I want out.”
“Yeah, nice try, but that’s not how that works. I say when you’re done.”
I tightened my free hand into a fist at my side as I clenched my jaw in anger. The rage in my blood was raising my blood pressure, and my vision was starting to blur.
“So, how’s this going to go then? I bring you this car, promise to do all your dirty work, and you let her go? Is that it?”
“Fuck that car. You have one hour to trade your life for hers. If you aren’t here by noon, you won’t have to worry about her leaving you because you’ll be cleaning her brains off the concrete. Same location as the drop-off point. Come alone, and don’t sound any alarms. If I even smell a donut, I’ll shoot her and leave her for dead. Tick-tock, Oliver.” The call was ended.
“Fuck,” I cursed under my breath as I slid the phone into my pocket.
It wasn’t a question of whether I was going to go. Of course, I was going to go. I’d gladly trade my life for hers any day of the week, no matter if we were together or not.
The question was: what would I do once I got there? I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that he’d actually let her go. Believing that was about as stupid as believing I could trade my freedom for one car. And then I wondered what he actually planned on doing with me. He wouldn’t shoot me, not if he wanted me to keep jacking cars for him, but I highly doubted that he trusted me the way he once did.
Fuck, maybe it was all a ploy to get me there just so he could kill me. When bossman was done with you, you were done with life. He very rarely let someone stay alive once business was done. It meant trusting that the person wouldn’t roll over on him, and he didn’t trust easily.
I knew I should have stayed away from the Russian cocksucker.
Then again, I had found myself back in the same spot I was in when Crash’s dad was caught in the crosshairs. I just wanted out. I didn’t care if I achieved that, being dead or alive. I didn’t have much to live for without her anyway. So as long as he let her go, I didn’t care what he did with me.
I took a deep breath and turned away from the building that held the two-million-dollar car, hating myself more than before. If I had just kept my mouth shut, Amelia would’ve been with me, and we would’ve been stealing the car that would take us to our new lives.
Instead, I did exactly as she asked. I grew a fucking conscience, and she left me for it, putting herself right in their clutches. A bitter chuckle fell from my lips: the thief grew a conscience. It was almost comical. More like my own bad karma coming back to bite me in the ass.
It didn’t matter what I thought of the situation. Nothing changed it. I’d already fucked up, chased her away, and was headed straight to people who wanted to hurt us both. I didn’t give it a second thought. I pushed myself forward and started on my way. I was on a time crunch.
I walked down the crowded sidewalk that lined the clubs, hotels, and tourist attractions. Even with it being early in the day, people were out and about. Women pranced in designer clothes, while their rich counterparts wore fancy watches and expensive cell phones.
I felt like I was one of the only normal people in the area, but that helped me out because rich people usually didn’t pay much attention to anything that didn’t concern them or make them richer.
I ducked into an alley and walked to the backside of the businesses where the employees parked. That’s where I found the cars that were easy to jack, the cars I didn’t have to worry about being tracked. I thought about the good old days when my biggest problem was a fucking alarm. That was nothing compared to all the smart cars that were taking over the market. But for every person working to make things harder on thieves, there were ten thieves creating tools and software to make our jobs easier. It was a never-ending cycle.
I broke in and hotwired a black, two-door Toyota. I was pulling away from the curb before anyone even knew what happened. I hoped the person who owned the car hadn’t noticed it was missing for a couple of hours. I didn’t need to get pulled over on my way to Skyrocket, and I didn’t want any police noticing the car after I parked it at the meeting location.
When I hit the highway, I stepped on the gas a little harder, making up for lost time.
I didn’t see the road in front of me. I didn’t notice the other vehicles on the road. I didn’t look to my future—that was still up in the air anyway. All I saw on my drive was my girl. I saw the way her blue eyes would light up when she’d laugh, how they’d darken when I was moving inside her, how they’d twinkle with amusement when she was giving me a hard time. I could hear her laugh echoing throughout my head. I could feel the warmth of her body against mine. As long as she had freedom, that was all that mattered. But I wasn’t willing to walk into a trap, so when I got close to the location we were set to meet, I ditched the car and finished the distance on foot.
I hid in the shadows across the street, watching the building. It was quiet. Nobody was coming or going, and there weren’t any windows that I could see through. I knew that when I walked into that warehouse, I had no idea who or how many were on the other side of that door. I could’ve walked in to just bossman and Crash, or I could’ve walked into a warehouse full of police, ready to lock me up and throw away the key. It was a risk I had to take.
