“Aye, aye, Commander.” The call ended.
She was at the traffic light for the main road. The convenience store where Peter wanted her to wait for him was to the left, down about a half mile. The garage where he was doing his sneak-and-peek was around the block to the right.
Shayla took a deep breath, and made the left as she used her phone to call Peter. He needed to know that Izzy and his men were delayed. But just as it had done for Izzy, the call went right to voicemail. She tried again. Same thing. When she pulled into the convenience store lot and parked, she sent Peter a text.Izzy delayed. Call me. Please.
It took forever to send, and when she received thenot deliveredmessage on her phone, she realized that this part of town was in a cellular dead-zone. She didn’t even have a single bar showing to be able to make a call or send a text.
So she put the truck back in gear and headed toward the garage. Her phone had worked over there.
She’d make contact with Peter and then find another safe place to wait—onewithcell service.
The little knife was sharp, but Maddie had to wait for the stupidity trio to not be staring at her in order to saw away at the ropes.
Dingo must’ve known that, because he kept trying to pull their attention away from her.
“Does this thing work?” he asked as he pushed the button to one of the car lifts, and yes, it worked, and everyone ran over to get him to turn it off.
But now, Dead-Eyes’s cellphone rang and he rapidly went from jocular—Hey, bro, y’almost here?—to a more subduedNo, sir. No, Mr. Nelson, we didn’t….No, sir.He moved to the back of the room, and as Maddie watched, the skinhead clones exchanged aDo you know what’s upglance, and then both shook their bald heads before they trailed after Dead-Eyes, trying to listen in.
Go, go, go! Maddie widened her eyes at Dingo, and moved her head in a gesture that she hoped said,Watch them for me!
He nodded almost imperceptibly, his eyes narrowing as he looked toward where Dead-Eyes and the clones were now in a huddle after what was apparently a sobering phone call from their fugly asshole boss.
“What thefuck!” exclaimed the skinhead with the neck tattoo—he was named Stank. It was definitely Stank—his voice was higher pitched than Eddie-with-the-nose-ring or Dead-Eyes. “He’s dead? He’s fucking dead? We didn’t hit himthathard!”
A murmur of lowered voices as Dead-Eyes tried to calm him, then Stank again: “I’m not going to jail for-fucking-ever! No fucking way! Or…worse! Yeah, dudes, you know what’s going to happen? It’s going to be seriously worse!”
More murmurs.
“You just said he’s going to be here in thirty fucking minutes! What do you think Nelson’s going to do when he arrives, huh? He’s going to come in here and he’s going to fucking pop us! He’s not even going to say hello, just, bang, bullets in our heads. We are so fucking dead!”
More murmurs.
“Yes, hewill. Because we fucking connect him to the dead guy—Darron or Daryl or whatever the fuck that fuckwad’s name was!”
Oh, dear God. Maddie looked up at Dingo, who was frozen there, across the room. “Ding!” she said, but of course it came out “Mmph!”
Still, it was enough to get his attention, and his gaze moved jerkily over to her, and she knew that she’d heard right. Daryl Middleton—Dingo’s best friend since seventh grade—had died from his injuries, which meant that these three men had killed him.
That bad news was even worse news for Maddie and Dingo. Because if Stank was right, and Nelson was going to kill him, Eddie, and Dead-Eyes? Nelson was definitely going to kill Maddie and Dingo, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As Shayla pulled into the same gravel area where Peter had exited the truck, her phone whooshed, rapid-fire, with incoming texts, five times in a row.
She parked, grabbed, and looked—it was Peter.Trouble connecting with Z,his text read.Forward to him.
He’d sent a series of photos that she immediately messaged on to Izzy Z-for-Zanella. They were of the back of the building—concrete block, nondescript, single window with security bars covering it, single metal door—plus three shots of the interior, taken through one of the windows.
She could see Maddie, duct tape over her mouth, tied to some kind of support pillar.
She could see Dingo, his body language radiating his anxiety.
And the final picture was of the three men that Dingo had told them about in his text, as they huddled together in the back of the room. The body language there was crazy, too. They were definitely freaked out about something.
She texted Peter:Izzy hit traffic. New ETA about 55 mins.
The texts went out more quickly if she kept them short, so she hitsendand then wrote:No cell service at convenience store.Send.
