AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No!” Bruno yelled. “I can’t! I will not swallow this!”
“Nobody’s asking you to, Bru,” Kev said softly. “I’m sorry.”
He stared out the window at the raindrops against the glass, jittering his leg while the next outburst built. “How the hell did they know?” he demanded. “About Tam’s bleeding? That was random! Impossible to predict! How could they have known about the choice of Rosaline Creek? They could have gone to the Urgent Care in Craigsville, or Dawson Falls, they’re all more or less the same distance! But those fuckers were in exactly the right place, lying in wait!How?”
Con rubbed eyes that were deeply shadowed with exhaustion. “They have trackers planted somewhere? A bug?”
“In Tam’s house?” Kev let out a sharp laugh. “No way.”
Con shrugged. “So? What else could it be?”
“I’m going to kill him,” Bruno said again, though the words were empty, they did not release any of the tension. He rocked forward, folding over that stone hard lump.
“Bad as Aaro feels, he just might beat you to it,” Davy murmured.
Bruno looked at him, and Davy glanced swiftly away. “Don’t try to make me feel sorry for that incompetent fuck,” he said harshly. “He’d better not. I want that satisfaction for myself. If nothing else.”
Heavy silence. There was nothing anyone could say to this catastrophe. No comfort, no help possible.
They passed signs for an exit off the freeway, and Connor leaned forward. “Get off at the next exit,” he said, looking at Bruno. “There’ll be a car rental on the strip. Head east in this car. Just for God’s sake don’t get stopped in it. With the firepower packed in there, they’d take you for a domestic terrorist, and you have enough problems.” He turned to Kev. “Assuming you didn’t rent this car in your own name.”
“Hell, no,” Kev said. “With all the stuff going down? I knew we were going to need an invisible car.”
“Wait a minute.” Bruno looked around at the four men. “How am I just supposed to drive away from this? I have to follow Lily!”
The others wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Follow her where, Bru?” Kev said. “You’ve got nothing else to do. Rosaline Creek is crawling with cops. They’ll do their job without your help. And you’re a wanted man. Remember? That little detail?”
“We’ll follow every lead that we can from here,” Davy offered.
“But what could they be doing to her? I can’t…I don’t have time to road-trip across the damn country! While they hold Lily captive!”
“You can’t fly,” Con said. “You’d never make it onto a commercial flight. Unless you have a good disguise and a fake passport. Do you?”
Kev’s brothers looked at him hopefully.“Vaffanculo,” Bruno muttered, disgusted. “Of course not. I don’t play paranoid games with myself like you McCloud boys. I can’t just drive away from Lily!”
“You’re not,” Kev argued. “You’re driving towards the only clue in the whole fucking world that we have. You’re going where it all started. If you don’t get a lead there, you’re not going to find one anywhere.”
“Thanks for the pep talk. You’re warming my cockles again.”
“You get more than encouragement,” Kev said. “I’m going, too.”
“Me, too,” Sean said. “Wouldn’t miss this freakshow for anything.”
“Right.” Bruno stared them. “Real smart, for a guy on the lam to bring along six-foot-four blond identical twins, one of whom has distinctive scars on his face. Might as well paint you both neon pink.”
Kev and Sean glanced at each other. “If there are three of us, we can go faster,” Kev said. “We can’t go over the speed limit. If you get stopped, you’re meat. You’ll need someone to spell you.”
“No, I don’t. You think I’ll sleep while those assholes have Lily? I’m never sleeping again. It’s a piss-poor idea. You’re not doing it.”
“We’ll be discreet,” Sean said.
“Yeah? How? Wearing an old lady mask? Rolling an oxygen tank?”
Sean pulled onto the exit ramp, and entered a strip mall. The streetlights lit up hazy halos in the soggy gloom.
“There’s a rental car company by that drugstore.” Davy said. “Stop there.”
