Page 87 of Overkill

“Of course. I’m tailing them now but keeping my distance.”

“Shit balls.” He grumbled, rising to his feet. “Couldn’t have called like five minutes sooner, before we both got concussions.”

“Well, if you’d stop tugging each other’s dicks and just kiss and make up, maybe your little friend would have answered my call.”

Then she hung up.

She and Taz had the same terrible phone etiquette. No bye. Just a beep and rude silence.

“We’re taking my truck,” Griff said. “I’ll drive. You set up the long guns in the back. They’re under the seat.”

With that cockamamy plan, he walked out, leaving the door open so we could ride together and get my woman back.

Chapter 30

Not Today

Melody

How old was Ian? Sixteen? Old enough to have his license, because this was clearly his car; I’d noticed the custom plates with his name. Expensive. Greasy finger smudges all over the stained dashboard, with a sticker of the American flag with the red and blue stripe running across it.

“You should have skipped town the first time I warned you!” he said through his teeth as we drove through the deluge, weaving through the twisted mountain roads.

Honor student decal on the rearview mirror too, along with a Spartan shield hanging from it.

The pistol in his hand. The other on the wheel. His knee shook.

And perhaps it was more absurdity, but I wasn’t scared. Annoyed, yes. Irritated? Also yes. Of all the days, he chose today to make himself known. Couldn’t he have waited until tomorrow? I could have handled this better tomorrow. I could have played the damsel and pretended to cry, like he clearly wanted me to.

“I warned you! This is your fault. All you had to do was disappear!”

Yes, yes. I know. I was asking for it.

That was the Grays’ defense for everything. It was Turner’s excuse for getting a fifteen-year-old pregnant, and then his excuse for getting the next wife pregnant at only seventeen, which brought Ian into existence. A mistake on so many fronts.

Then all the other things that happened after.

Stamped, sealed, and delivered to us all with the Grays’ trademark. Not a family. A fucking corporation. A firm. A brand.

“You couldn’t listen, could you?”

He didn’t see me roll my eyes. He was too busy driving through the torrential downpour as the water rose higher and higher.

Maybe I should have started building an ark.

Too bad I didn’t have two-by-two animals to put on it.

I would have liked to have some goats. Maybe some cows, too. Damn.

I needed to focus on Ian, and the gun, but my brain was just protesting.

“Can you hear me?” he snapped, finally bringing me back to the present.

“Yes, I can hear. I just don’t care…” I let out a long sigh. “You kill me, then there’s foul play. None of you will get any of it. Miriam and Marc would never be put in your custody, so you’ll never see a dime of that inheritance. It’ll go straight to Miriam and Marc when they’re eighteen. They won’t share it with my killer.”

Marcus might hate me. Miriam and I weren’t close like we used to be. But they wouldn’t do that. They were good kids.

“Ha!” Ian snorted. “You think we hang out with Marc because we like him?”