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He was just bullshitting, spewing out crap. He was nowhere near me. I knew that, but adrenaline kept racing through my veins all the same. My hands balled on my lap.
“Fuck you!” I yelled out the window, which actually made me feel a little better, even though Xavier just chuckled. Kaige aimed an approving grin at me.
Then Xavier turned away from us to call out to his men. “Bring one of the trucks right up onto the sidewalk to give us a clear path. These dipshits aren’t going to stop us from getting what we want for long.”
Damn it. Wylder and the others started firing again, forcing Xavier to jerk out of range, but the truck the Storm’s men hurried to was sheltered by other vehicles around it. None of our force managed to pick any of them off. And as soon as they got it in place on the sidewalk, they’d be able to run the explosives right to the front door while it shielded them, nothing we could do about it short of charging at them straight to our deaths.
“In just a few minutes, we’ll all be smelling baked Nobles,” Xavier announced in a weird singsong voice. The man was totally deranged.
Even as my nerves jittered with that thought, something clicked in my head. Xavier made a terrifying figure, sure, but he shouldn’t have been that much of a challenge. He was reckless and savage. All we needed to do was outthink his animalistic brain. How hard could that be?
What did I have around me that I could use?
I scanned the entire street, my physical symptoms of panic fading into the background as I focused on my new goal. My gaze snagged on a building at the far corner, beyond the Storm siege.
A huge poster of a man’s slickly smiling face was posted in the window, the sign overhead announcing it was the office for one of the new mayoral candidates. I’d barely even noticed the election campaigning getting started a few months ago, it mattered so little to us. The Nobles lived above the law.
I doubted that dork had been doing much campaigning since war had broken out on the streets of the Bend anyway. But he had a loudspeaker system set up in the building, with speakers mounted all along the front of the structure. They should have some kind of control center that ran them from inside. If I could just get access to that…
“Wylder,” I hissed, keeping my voice low enough that Xavier shouldn’t be able to hear. “Hold them off as long as you can. I need a few minutes, and then I think we can send them running.”
Wylder raised an eyebrow at me, but my best friend trusted me without needing to hear more than that. At his gesture, our men all started shooting again, one of them managing to shatter the back window on the truck. The warmth of his faith in me sped my fingers across the tablet’s screen.
Xavier thought he could lord his strength over me, taunt me like I was pathetic. He had no idea whatrealstrength looked like—or just how many forms it could come in.
The local network was still running inside the campaign office. I clicked on a device I’d stashed in the glove compartment that boosted my own range and disabled the security protocols in a matter of seconds, peeling them away like tissue paper from a present. A different sort of adrenaline coursed through me now, thrumming with confidence rather than quivering with fear.
I might not get far with a physical confrontation, but this was what I was made for. Xavier couldn’t beat me at my kind of game.
He’d noticed I was up to something, though. He leaned against the car he was poised behind and cocked his head. “Look at the poor little geek, scrambling frantically to save his skin.”
I let out a laugh, not even needing to fake it. A couple more taps—and there, I was in. I barely needed to look at the screen as I set up the final pieces of my gambit.
“You’re the one who’s going to be running scared in a moment,” I shouted out the window. “You’ll get going right now if you know what’s good for you.”
Xavier snorted. “Big words from a puny little man. Am I supposed to be afraid of this tiny band of resistance.”
“Nope,” I retorted. “But I don’t know how much you’ll enjoy dealing with our friends in blue.”
I concealed the click of a button on my lap out of his view, and the wail of police sirens sounded as if in the distance. The truth was, it was a recorded sound I was playing through the loudspeakers, keeping the volume low to give the Storm’s men the impression that the cars had only just gotten close enough to be heard.
Xavier’s head jerked around toward the sound. Then he turned back to me with a sneer. “The cops wouldn’t want anything to do with the likes of you.”
I shrugged. “We’ve paid them off to look the other way plenty of times, and now we’re paying them to crack down on the mess you’re making on our streets. Every cop in a twenty-mile radius is headed this way right now, fully armed and ready to rumble.”
A flicker of uncertainty crossed the big man’s scarred face. I nudged the volume a little louder as if the sirens were getting closer.
“How would your boss feel about you getting into a massive shoot-out with the local law enforcement?” I asked. “Is that really what he sent you here to do? I’d have thoughthe’dwant to get them in his pocket, not have you turn them into enemies. You know how the police feel about cop-killers.”
I could tell I’d struck the right chord. Xavier’s jaw twitched. A man like the Storm, someone who kept his own hands as clean as possible, didn’t care how many fellow criminals Xavier took down, but he wouldn’t want to set himself completely at odds with the police before he’d even claimed this territory.
Most of the Storm’s men were listening now. Several had lowered their weapons. They looked at Xavier and each other nervously.
I increased the volume even more. It sounded perfect, like a whole swarm of cops about to descend on this street.
Wylder didn’t know exactly what I’d done, but he was smart enough to play along. He set his hands on his hips and smirked at Xavier. “I look forward to watching the boys in blue mow you down.”
Xavier cursed, but I could tell he was finally convinced. He pulled back, shouting at his men. I pushed the volume higher, as if the sirens were just a few blocks away now. It was almost hilarious watching the Storm men scramble into their vehicles and peel out like they had a pack of demons on their tails.
“Run, baby, run,” Kaige hollered after them. Xavier gave us one last ominous look before he leapt into his car. The vehicles scattered into the side-streets, a few of them almost colliding with each other in their haste to get away.
As soon as they’d roared off, Wylder and Mercy waved to our people, and they rushed to the store. “Bring the injured down so we can get them out of here right away,” Wylder called to the guards who’d been holding their ground inside. He shot a glance back at me. “That was fucking brilliant, Gideon.”
Kaige glanced around. “There aren’t any actual cops coming, are there? Because I don’t think they see us as friends.”
I chuckled. “It’s just a sound effect I found online. Go get our guys out of there.”
We’d beat Xavier even hugely outnumbered and out-armed. We would beat him again and again. For the first time, I could really believe that we’d take him and the rest of the Storm’s forces down for good before our time ran out.
And I’d be right here fighting alongside the rest of the Nobles in my own way.
