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“Yes,” she said, and just stared at him for a while. “You’re okay with that?”
“Oh hell no,” he said, and that at least was heartfelt and honest. “I’m not okay with a lot of things. But if I was lying on the battlefield and you had to cut my leg off to save my life, I’d be okay with it because the alternative sucked worse. I’d be not so okay with all the pain and coping, but everything’s a tradeoff. I’m trying to believe this is—no different. ”
“It—” She eye-polled the others. Riley shrugged. Regardless of what she believed, she couldn’t add to Joe’s general distress. He was too pale, too controlled. Let him keep his illusions, if they got him through the day. “I guess maybe it isn’t. ”
“Then I’ll whine about my awful life later,” he said. “But even then, I’ll be alive to whine about it. Relax, Bryn. I’m cool. ”
“That’s why we love you,” Pat said.
That was too close to real emotion for Joe to handle. Bryn saw it, and he put up the armor again. Fast. “Moving on . . . What about Jane?”
“She’s dead,” Bryn said. “I slashed her throat and poured Thorpe’s cure right down the hole. ”
“Jesus!”
“She deserved it. ”
“Yeah, I know, but Jesus, Bryn. You sounded just like her for a minute; you know that?”
She did, and it made her fall utterly silent. Patrick kept them moving, speed high, until they reached another turnoff—actually he passed it, then studied that side of the road, looped around and came back.
This side road, after half a mile of badly paved road, led to something that had sometime in the seventies been a happy family mobile home community, complete with convenience store and pool and campgrounds. Today, it was polluted by crumbling ancient trailers with blacked-out windows, trash, and prowling stray dogs. The pool was empty and full of rusting junk. The convenience store had long ago been left to rot in the sun, and taggers had left their discontent all over it in primary-colored swirls of graffiti.
“What are you doing?” Riley asked. “This place looks like they might as well call it Meth Manor. ”
“You know what I love about meth cookers? They usually have a lot of money and drive good cars,” Patrick said. “They also love weapons, and tend to not call the police when you steal from them. ”
“Ah,” Joe said. “Supply run. ”
“That, and I’m pretty damn sure this truck is LoJacked. So they’ll be tracking us in it. On the other hand, if they come rolling hard into this place and start shooting—”
“Lots of bullets come right back,” Riley said, and smiled broadly.
“It’s a side bonus, along with the heavy potential for explosions. Meth cooking is not exactly a low-risk business, especially when you combine it with firearms. I think it has the potential to make our friends’ lives very interesting for a while. ”
“There,” Bryn said, and pointed. In front of a particularly decaying trailer that had once been disco-era antique gold sat a new Dodge Challenger, matte black. If Batman had a casual car for running errands, that was what it would look like, she thought—and the Challengers had a lot of power under that hood. Enough to get them out of a lot of trouble.
“Outstanding,” Patrick said. “Riley—”
She gave him a cartoon salute, and was out of the truck the second it stopped. The Dodge was locked—not an unreasonable precaution in this neighborhood—but she took a second to search around the rocky ground near a Dumpster, and came up with a flat, thin piece of metal that she rapidly fastened into a slim jim.
“Somebody ought to tell the FBI they need to check their criminal records,” Joe said. “Because she’s done this before. ”
Fifteen seconds after Riley found the metal, she was in the car, and fifteen seconds after, she had it running, a low throb of engine that Bryn felt even through the battle-tested metal of what they were in. “Go,” Patrick said, and bailed out to join Riley; Joe and Bryn were right behind him.
Bryn was still outside the car when a skinny, pale dude in smudged underwear opened the trailer’s door and stepped out on the rickety front porch, mouth open in an outraged yell. His front teeth were gone.
She waved, jumped in, and Riley jammed the car into gear and smoked tires on the way out.
Joe started laughing, and the rest of them joined in, not out of any real amusement but simply because ripping off a meth cooker was probably the funniest thing that had happened to them in a long time, and it felt good to laugh.
Bryn finished with a last hiccup that was almost giggles, and sagged against Joe. She put her head on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Really. ”
He shrugged a little, but he was careful not to dislodge her from that position. “I’ll adjust,” he said. “So will Kylie. Really. ”
In the front seat, Patrick was quizzing Riley about her car-boosting skills; she was electing to reply with a frosty, regal silence that was funny in itself.
Jane was dead. They’d roused at least some part of the government to act directly against the Fountain Group, if Riley was to be believed. And against all odds, they were still together, still moving.
