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“Out! Now!” I shouted, taking a few steps closer to the front of the truck. The driver stared at me through the windshield. He was too preoccupied to notice Leonardo sprinting along the side of the vehicle. His gun drawn, he halted right outside the driver’s door and pointed it up at him. Leaning forward, the driver put on the handbrake, diesel fumes filling my nostrils.
Though there was no sign of him, I knew that Matteo had taken his place behind the truck. My job, at the moment, was to keep the driver’s attention. My rifle could pierce through that glass with ease, and he probably knew that. Ignoring my order to exit the truck, he just sat there staring at me, fear written all over his face. Which was fine as long as he didn’t cause any trouble for us.
Then I heard Matteo’s voice over the sound of the engine. “Three, two, one…”
A loud blast ripped through the stillness of the night. Smoke rose from behind the truck as the driver was thrown sideways, disappearing from view. The little fucker hadn’t even been wearing a seatbelt.
“All clear?” I called back to Matteo. Though we’d accounted for every variable we could, we hadn’t been entirely sure that the charge would be enough to blow open the reinforced doors. At the same time, we didn’t want anything so strong that it risked torching the cash. But Matteo knew what to do if the first blast didn’t work. We always had a Plan B.
“Give me a minute,” Matteo called back.
Leonardo and I exchanged glances. Would it have killed him to give us more info?
Movement caught my eye. The chickenshit driver had reappeared, and he had something in his hands. My finger tightened instinctively on the trigger before I saw what he was holding.
It was a fucking shotgun. What kind of an armored truck driver packed a weapon more suited to picking squirrels off of tree branches?
The driver fumbled with his laughable weapon and then he coughed.
Shit.
It took my brain a half second to resolve the alarm spreading through me. The driver had coughed because of the smoke filling the cab of the truck. A quick glance confirmed that the wall separating the front from the back of the truck remained intact. So how was the fuck cab filling up with smoke?
My pulse tripled as I realized the driver had rolled down the window.
Shit, shit, fuck.
I trained my sights on the driver, but my gaze went to Leonardo. He was coughing, too, the ski mask not offering much protection from the acrid smoke. He’d taken a couple of instinctive steps back after the blast, but he was still too close to the truck.
“Look out!” I thundered, and in that split second, I knew I’d fucked up. I should’ve taken out the prick of a driver first. My shot pierced the glass, taking out the driver, but he’d got his off first, and Leonardo fell to the ground with a cry.
Matteo rounded the corner of the truck, almost tripping over Leonardo. “What happened?”
“Little fucker tried to be a big man,” I growled, dropping to my knees.
Leonardo was clutching his chest, and I yanked off my mask in order to see better. Matteo whipped out a flashlight, and we both stared down at the blood darkening Leon’s shirt. His breathing was ragged as he gasped in pain. It was obvious he was trying to keep from shouting, but that was the least of my concerns. The driver was dead, and I was determined that Leonardo wouldn’t end up that way, too.
“Hospital,” Matteo said briefly. Slinging the strap of my rifle over my shoulder, I slid my hands under my wounded friend. With Matteo on his other side, we lifted him off the ground. His cry of pain wrenched at me, but there was another sound behind it I liked even less.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Matteo said, meeting my eye. He’d heard it too—the sound of another engine coming up the road fast. Somehow, I doubted it was an innocent civilian out for a late-night drive.
All thoughts of the armored truck and the cash inside gone, we moved as quickly as we could through the woods. I was torn between wanting to just grab Leonardo and haul ass to our car and wanting to be gentle because of his wounds. I settled for a fast walk, nearly a jog, and Matteo kept up. He talked to Leonardo as we carried him, reassuring him that he was going to be okay. I wasn’t sure how much he heard over the moans and gasps he was trying to stifle.
Matteo pushed Leonardo at me when we got to the SUV and I held him while Matt opened the door and pushed down the seats in the back. Shoving aside our equipment, I laid him in the back, Matteo climbing in next to him. “Hang in there,” he said.
I drove without lights, thankful that we’d cased this area so many times that we knew every mile. Still, I was less careful than I should have been as I raced to the hospital.
Leonardo’s cries of pain made me favor speed over caution on a night where both were clearly needed.
2
PIPER
Most people hatedspending all night in the Emergency Room. Not me—I loved it. But that was because I wasn’t the one waiting in a room full of coughing people. I wasn’t sick or injured. I wasn’t even required to sit in those god-awful plastic chairs.
Instead, I was the one helping those people. Well, all except for those crappy chairs in the ER. No one, not even a skilled nurse, could save people from that torment.
My long shifts kept me on my feet all night. I crept home at dawn, too exhausted to do anything but fall into bed. Night after night, I saw the best and worst of what humanity had to offer.
