Page 104 of Violent Little Thing

“What’s wrong with him?” I barked.

“He’s got a concussion. Bad one,” the medic said. “Every time he moves, he passes out.”

I pulled out my phone and called his girl.

She promised that she would be there soon.

I looked at several of the men who were standing around, looking unsure.

“Hey.” I walked up to them. “Y’all think y’all can help me get that cruiser flipped over?”

Several of them nodded.

“Sure, but why?”

“Because if it drives, I’m following them to get my girl.”

We did, in fact, flip the cruiser back over. Rather effortlessly, too.

It also started up and drove.

Thank fuck.

The windshield might be cracked as fuck, but the sirens turned on.

And the radio worked.

Giving me a play-by-play of exactly what was happening with Black.

Thirty-One

Be careful, or I’ll meet you on the porch with a squirt gun filled with tuna water.

—Text from Charleigh to Court after an argument

Charleigh

We were in the middle of a town, flying through traffic.

My body was screaming, and my leg…we wouldn’t even talk about what was going on with my leg right now.

At one point, I’d looked over to see my foot pointed the wrong way and decided that was the last time that I was going to look at said foot.

“Chris,” I said carefully. “You have to pull over. If you don’t, you could kill someone.”

He kept driving.

We’d made the same block fifteen times.

Now we were heading downtown.

I had no clue where we were, but I did know that we’d passed a preschool twice, and there’d been kids in a crosswalk headed across the road to a park once.

When we’d passed the second time, they’d been gone.

There were also now four cop cars following behind us.

The one closest was Black.