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“Not now, assholes,” Angel snaps, and hauls Declan away from me, after shooting me a death glare. “Come on, Dec.”
“What about a getaway car?” Jorge asks.
“Don’t worry your pretty head about that,” Angel snarks. “It’s already in place.”
I throw the butt of my cigarette down and step on it, then shove my hands into my pockets and glance around as the others gather around Mav and Angel for instructions.
That’s when it strikes me that I know where we are, and fuck, we’re not far from the bar and the campus. I really hope no students are around, that I won’t see anyone I know from the bar, and yeah… that Gigi isn’t going home at this time.
Come to think of it, that’s about the time I saw her head to the bus stop from the university last time.
Fuck. I can’t be that unlucky, can I? Angel will go ballistic if he sees her around here. Around me.
If he sees anyone nearby during the heist.
Not that I give a shit about her. The fact I scrubbed the apartment clean in case she comes over again, that I put up a poster of a group on my bedroom wall and made the bed has nothing to do with her.
Right…
Pulling another smoke from the pack, I put it between my lips and light it up. Shem is staring at me, so I offer him one, and he takes it.
“How come you’re not going in with them?” I ask, eyeing him over the smoke drifting up in the cold air.
Going in means taking a cut. I’m here pretty much for free, paid peanuts whenever Angel and Mav are in the mood to pay me. I don’t expect the sky to rain dollars cuz I’m in the gang, like Seb does.
He’s such an idiot, and I ask myself for the thousandth fucking time why I’m here, doing this to myself, for a rash promise I made to a woman who doesn’t even remember me.
Yeah. Fucking great.
“Angel doesn’t trust me not to fuck it up,” he says with a shrug. “Not after I got into that fight last time. Need to win back his trust, he says, and shit like that.”
I shrug, too, unsure what to say. I settle for a “Yeah,” and hide behind my cigarette smoke.
Trying to ignore the fact that, behind me, the gang is breaking into an electronics store to rob it, smashing through the glass cases and breaking the plastic locks attached to the tablets and phones to carry them away.
That I’m an accomplice to a crime, in full conscience of the fact, for reasons that don’t count as excuses at all. Protecting my family? Yeah, right. As if that makes a difference to the store owners. To the goddamn law.
A crash comes from behind my back, and I jerk, the cigarette falling from my fingers. Then an alarm goes off, and it’s on.
Waiting for the gang—for my brother, dammit—to come out of the store, I put a hand to the small of my back, wrapping my hand around the gun handle. If anyone comes this way…
What, I’ll shoot them? The fuck. Gritting my teeth, I keep watch, as I’m supposed to do, and take my hand away from the gun.
When I think to check, I find Shem gone. Probably ran away the moment the alarm went off. The wailing siren is still going, in fact, and no sight of the gang.
Where the hell are they? My skin is crawling. I see someone walking by in the distance, and my fingers twitch.
Go away, whoever you are. Run away, while there’s still time.
They told me Mav once shot a guy who witnessed one of the gang’s robberies, to keep his mouth shut. Maria told me, a gang recruit, before she fled across the country and was never seen or heard from again. She said nobody in the gang would ever tell the cops, and she didn’t know the victim’s name.
Who knows if it was even true? Could be fucking hearsay.
Or not.
My leg muscles burn to get running. My stomach roils with unease. The alarm is still blaring right in my ears, deafening. I turn again toward the store.
They burst out of the smashed façade, hauling duffel bags heavy with loot, and it all seems eerily quiet, the sounds muffled by the siren.
