Aspen gazed out at the storage facility. He hummed. “Fuck it. Let’s drive that truck through a wall.”
“Of the building!?” Jamie asked, his voice ratcheting up a notch. Then he let out a low, evil laugh that had Corbin groaning. “I do like that.”
“Ya chucklefucks aren’t getting me killed today. Trucks through walls.” Corbin shook his head.
“And why not?” I asked. “Those walls aren’t much more than tin. The boss did say to make it messy and memorable.” I winked at Aspen, who grinned right back at me, making my stomach flip in a good way.
“Won’t be that simple,” Corbin grumbled. “Nothing is ever that simple.”
Jamie grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “What a sour outlook ya have today. Let’s do it. We’ll grab as much as we can and leave Reyes trying to explain his lack of punctuality to his buyers. And Sloan will know who has been double-crossing him by the influx of those begging for product from him. There will be punishment all around.”
Corbin shook his head slowly and glanced toward the sky as if to ask for help from God.
Less than thirty minutes later we had three guys standing around who Jamie seemed to know well enough. They weren’t Irish, I didn’t think, but they knew the value of money and were quick to say “yes, sir” to every order.
Corbin glared at everyone as he passed around a box of black nitrile gloves. “Keep these on. We don’t want our fingerprints everywhere.”
No one argued, even though the gloves would make handling the guns trickier.
We piled onto the black leather seats of the ridiculous truck you’d never see in Ireland, anywhere, and even though I hurt all over, I couldn’t help but chuckle under my breath about it. The humidity had my back stinging as I sweated like a stuck pig. Corbin handed out silenced Rugers, though why he bothered with keeping things quiet, I had no idea. The Reyes men would be making noise.
Corbin took the driver’s seat, and Jamie was the front passenger. Aspen and I were in the back seat. After rolling up the tonneau cover, our three extra men sat in the bed of the truck, ready to shoot as soon as we got close to the fireworks stand. The bright Miami sun glinted on their guns. They had scarves over their faces, apparently worried about security, but I doubted Reyes would allow any cameras to be trained on that building, leastways not any that would have pictures the cops would see, and we wanted them to know who’d hit the location.
Steady as anything, Corbin navigated to the proper street and drove past the fireworks tent, and the men in the bed of the truck shot the poor sap sitting in a white plastic lawn chair behind the counter. The bullets struck his chest and his white T-shirt bloomed red as he slumped back in his seat, head lolling. Corbin drove along an alley around the right-hand side of the building, the same way all the other cars had, and the men jumped out of the truck bed.
“Say your prayers,” Corbin snarked and angled the wheel, putting his foot on the gas pedal. Jamie let out a happy shout as the truck plowed right into the back door that we’d seen opening and closing to hand out boxes. The tin wall crumpled so easily I was surprised we hadn’t brought the whole place down. We were out of the truck in a flash, guns ready for action. The dust from the drywall being jammed in had us coughing a bit, and Corbin grumbled behind us. Jamie laughed and glanced back toward the front truck tires. There were people under the rubble, or so I thought, crushed beneath the weight of the vehicle. He pointed.
“So much for bullets.” Jamie winked at us, and we scouted around. We’d busted into a hallway, and there were individual doors lining both sides with locks on each one.
I sighed. “Move fast. This might take for feckin’ ever.” Aspen and I each chose a side of the hallway, and the other three guys came in as well. We began kicking in doors, but the rooms were empty. Before we could get to the end of the hall, men burst into view on the far side. I saw their guns, not their faces, and we ducked down, firing at them before they got a chance to start. There were shouts of indignation, but we kept shooting until we got back to the truck and piled into it. I coughed as more dust went up my nose, this time tinged with the smell of gunpowder.
“Fuck it. Let’s plow into the building somewhere else.” Jamie’s eyes sparkled with excitement and he grinned.
“Are ya serious?” Corbin shook his head at Jamie.
“Yes!” He slapped the dashboard. “We didn’t see any product, but it’s coming out of here somewhere. Hit the left side.”
Corbin sighed and backed out as some bullets dinged the scratched hood and bounced off the shatterproof windshield.
“Aye, let’s get this shite over with,” I grumbled, and for whatever reason, that had Jamie laughing.
“I don’t think that hallway was on the blueprints,” Aspen said thoughtfully. “But the largest room was on the left-hand side around about the middle.”
“Thank Christ someone uses their head around here,” Corbin muttered, and he pulled the truck out. Our extra men stood and fired on the people trying to pour out after us, keeping them at bay, and that was probably good because there would be fewer to come up on us when we hit the other side of the building. Corbin swung around the corner into another alleyway.
“Careful, right about the middle,” Aspen said.
“Aye, got it,” Corbin muttered.
Aspen patted my knee, and I grinned, all at once excited. “This’ll be a story to tell Fallon and Rowen,” I murmured.
He laughed. “They’ll be jealous.”
Winking at him, I nodded.
“Brace for it, fellas!” Corbin shouted, and we put our hands out on the back of the seats in front of us and our feet up. The truck plowed into the side of the building again, and I bit the tip of my tongue, waiting to see if the roof would hold. Corbin flipped on the headlights. Bricks of drugs were stacked to the ceiling in taped-up black plastic wrapping, most likely heavy-duty garbage bags and duct tape. The drug trade wasn’t as high tech as I’d first thought it was when I started getting to know about it. We’d knocked a shitload of the stacks around, but that was fine. The air didn’t seem to be filled with powder, so I doubted any of the wrapping had given way.
Shaking off the daze from the impact—it was still a fecking jolt—we hopped out into the dark room lit only by the light pouring in around the truck behind us and the two bright beams that turned the corners into impenetrable shadows. We started tossing the bricks into the bed of the truck among the debris that had landed in there, but I stopped at a low growl from a dark corner of the room. Squinting, I peered that direction as a primal, instinctive fear gripped me that I’d never experienced when a man had me in his sights.
