Blinding headlights up ahead flickered twice in the darkness. Alfie pulled to a stop with a squeak of the brakes as four men exited the SUV in front of us. They left their front doors open, the engine still running, their shapes shadowed outlines between our headlights and theirs. No sign of Lou yet.
“Don’t think about moving.” Alfie flashed his gun in front of me.
I nodded again. Satisfied, he and Massimo exited the car. I always thought Alfie was a stupid brute. This just proved that. As if I was staying put to wait on their goodwill not to kill or torture me.
The interior car lights didn’t flick on when their doors opened, but the car chimed until Alfie slammed the driver’s door shut. The keys in the ignition swayed and clinked. Crouched low, I clambered over the console and stole them. With a soft click, my passenger door opened. Fresh air filled my lungs. Pine needles crinkled softly beneath my weight as I circled the car’s exterior. A vehicle rumbled past in the distance.
“You Mickey the drummer?” Massimo called out.
I flinched. I’d heard Mickey was one of Giambrone’s most ruthless capos. Rumor was, he got the nickname because he liked to bash in the heads of his victims.
“Yeah, that’s me,” a deep, rumbling voice I didn’t recognize said. “Where’s the woman?”
“Back seat,” Massimo answered. “The girl?”
One man’s shadowed hand pointed back to their vehicle, a good ten feet away.
Heart beating in my throat, I crept off the road and into the woods to loop around all of them. I hid behind tree after tree. My footsteps pattered over packed dirt and a few uncovered roots.
“Good,” Massimo said. “Give her to me.”
“That’s not our instructions. Give us the Burch woman.”
“Change of plans. We’ll be handling the trade.”
Step by step, I snuck further from Massimo’s sedan. I was about level with the SUV now.
The stranger chortled. “That shows how little you know. There won’t be a trade.”
“Then what the hell are we here for?”
“Cleanup.”
The quick pulse of a suppressed firearm plowed through their standoff, and a body thumped to the ground. I stiffened, halfway to the Giambrone men’s car.
“Boss. Massimo,” Alfie bleated as more shots went off. He scampered behind his own car. “Shit. Shit. Fuck.”
Shots went off. Alfie’s were sharp and booming, echoing through the darkness. Theirs were punctuated and low, chilling in their effectiveness. Bullets clanked into the metal of cars as more people ran to assist Giambrone’s goons. They must have been lying in wait just in case. I hesitated. What if there were more? What if there wasn’t?
I took the chance and ran to the back of the SUV, recoiling with every thunk of a stray bullet. The exhaust fumes clung to my lungs.
“We can work this out,” Alfie yelled.
“Cute.” Suppressed gunfire whipped through the night amidst Alfie’s bursts of return fire.
I snaked around to the open front passenger door and hunched over to crawl inside the purring car. The carpet was soft. The supple leather seats still had that new car smell. The varnished wood console didn’t feel like it had a single scratch,and a zesty air freshener vamped it all up. These Vegas cronies didn’t skimp on their rentals.
A stray bullet clapped through the windshield, and I ducked with a whimper. Someone else gave a muffled wail. There in the back seat was Lou. Her eyes widened to marbles, the white of them shining in the dark. She was bound by her hands and feet, lying on the back seat, unable to sit up. There was no way I was going to have time to cut her free before those goons finished with Alfie. I scrambled over the console and tore out the cloth gag stuffed in her mouth.
“Anzy, they’re—”
“Shhh.” I pressed the tip of a finger to her lips. “We’re going to get out of here.”
“How?” she rasped, her body shaking.
“Same way we came.”
It had gone quiet outside as I wormed into the driver’s seat, strapped my seatbelt on, and hunkered down, level with the dashboard. The steering wheel gently vibrated in my hands as I took a deep breath, my foot hovering over the accelerator. This was it.
