It’s kind of funny how circular life can be sometimes.
Because I’ve been to this storage facility before. I’ve even been at this facility with these same guns before. Last time we were intercepting their movement and stealing the shipment, and this time I’m loading up what remains of it, but it’s still the same guns at the same facility.
When the last box is on the truck, I shoot Felix a text that he instantly reads. Guy must have his phone in his hand.
The drop point is only a few miles away, and I pull into the abandoned lot right next to the sedan. Felix is leaning against the door, arms crossed as he waits, and he straightens as I hop down from the cab.
A year ago, I’d have gone in for a shake. Maybe even a quick bro-hug. Too much has changed, but the impulse is still there.
“Hey, man.” He nods.
I snort at the strange, stiff greeting. “Felix. You look good. Last time I saw you, you were like a buck eighty-five? You’ve put on some muscle.”
His gold tooth flashes in the light from a street lamp at the edge of the parking lot. “Shit, you wanna fuck me,mano?”
And just like that, the tension is broken. I roll my eyes and clap him on the shoulder. “C’mon.”
We head around to the back of the truck and I shove the rolling shutter door up, revealing five plywood crates. Felix gracefully climbs up into the truck bed and lifts the top off one.
“It’s a fire sale,” I tell him proudly.
He cuts me a look. “Was that supposed to be a joke?”
“Yeah,” I chuckle. “Get it? ‘Cause they’refirearms?”
“Oh, I got it; you’re just nowhere near as funny as you think you are,” he says distractedly, examining the goods in the box. He whistles, lifting an AK-47 out. “Where’d you get all this heat?”
“Been holding it for a while,” I shrug. “It’s… time to let it go.”
In actuality, there were six crates left from the job we did that brought us to Ulysses. The Feds seized most of it, and used it as evidence to close the case on the illegal weapons trading the mayor was doing, and we kept six crates full of explosives and military-grade weapons in a storage facility right under everyone’s noses.
Felix gets five because… well, just because I’m getting out of the hitman business, that doesn’t mean I’m going to just give up all my toys.
He grins again, slamming the heel of his hand on the top of the crate to seal it back down. “Well, I’m happy to take it off your hands.”
“That ought to cover our debts, yeah?”
Felix’s laugh rings out. “Yeah. This oughtta do it.”
Dimitri hated this idea, but he didn’t want the guns either. None of us wanted the hassle of trying to fence them, or the potential legal nightmare of trying to turn them in. Obviously he’s worried about Felix using them against us, but not me. This is the dawn of a new era.
Plus… if he does, thanks to Madison, we have everything we need to nail his ass to the wall. But I don’t think he will. Not while we’ve got his family on our team.
Thank God for Mads.
Felix drops down from the truck bed and tugs the door back into place. I offer him the key, pulling back when he swipes for it. “Don’t even think about veering from the plan. I’ll be watching.”
He takes my key, then my hand, slamming it into a shake with his own. “Oh, I know. You always are.”
Not for much longer.“No hard feelings between us, yeah?”
Felix lifts a brow and flashes that grating smile—the one that’s at once knowing, judging, superior and private. The one that makes you feel like he’s 10 stepsahead of you and he knows something you don’t and thinks it’s hilarious. “Nah. Holding grudges is bad for business—I cater to other people’s, no time to hold my own. Besides, seems to me you three make better allies than enemies.”
He tosses the key to the sedan at me, and I climb into the old, beat-up car. As Felix drives off, I reopen the comms channel. “Operation ‘we can trust this guy, right?’ is a go,” I say, grinning when I hear someone—not even sure who, with so many possible voices in my ears now—snort.
It’s Mads. Good ol’ Mads. The girl who can always be relied on to get the joke.“A bit wordy for an operation codename, don’t you think?”
“Too late to change it now,” I sing. I squeeze the steering wheel in my grip, itching to tap my other earbud and open the line back up with Eleanor. My leg jiggles nervously.
