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Kate snorted. “Wyatt acted like it he came up with it himself.”
“Figures,” Becca said.
She’d been talking and talking with her sister, but she didn’t feel like she’d made any progress. She didn’t feel like she’d sorted anything out. She still felt as confused and spun around as she had when they had left the hospital.
“What should I do, Katie Cakes?” Becca said.
“You have to decide that, Becks,” Kate said. “I can’t do it for you. Just… let your feelings be your guide.”
Are you kidding me?Becca thought, staring at her sister.
“That’s terrible advice,” she said. “Terrible.”
“Shut up,” Kate said, but she smiled a little as she said it.
“What, did you get that out of a fortune cookie?”
“Shut. Up,” Kate said. “You’ll figure it out.”
“I hope so,” Becca said.
18
The van felt like a close metal prison while Griz waited. It seemed to take forever, waiting for Death’s Head to show up, and the waiting reminded Griz of how he had paced and paced in the hospital while he waited for news about his father.
And with those memories, his resolve to inflict some heavy damage on Death’s Head grew and grew. It was night time, and the alley that they were parked in was dark, but some ambient light from the nearby street lights lit up the interior of the van enough to see his friends.
Devil was fidgeting around in the driver’s seat, clearly having as much trouble waiting as Griz was. Wyatt slowly twirled a shotgun shell around in his fingers, over and over, his eyes staying steady on the pawn shop across the street that Death’s Head was scheduled to visit to collect their extortion money.
The prospect, Pony, seemed to take the waiting the best. He simply sat, unmoving, as if waiting for a bus. While Griz and Wyatt had both brought sawed-off pump shotguns to do their work, Pony had brought a short assault rifle, the kind used by the Army.
“That’s an awful lot of firepower,” Wyatt had said as they loaded up into the van earlier. “You know if you shoot that thing, you’ll have to dump it. These shotguns can’t be traced, but that rifle can.”
“It’s what I’m used to,” Pony had replied.
Griz could appreciate the sacrifice. Rifles like that weren’t cheap to come by, and to be willing to use it and discard it showed that Pony really was all in with joining the club.
Good. They needed all the muscle they could get. Even if this went perfectly, and Ripper’s hit did as well, this was only going to be the beginning of a long and dirty war.
“Dang, dude, where are these guys?” Devil said, continuing to fidget. “If they’re coming to pick up money, you’d think they’d be in a hurry.”
“Just be cool,” Wyatt said. “They come when they come. I’ll bet you had to wait like this a lot back in the Army, hunh, Pony? Ambushes and stuff.”
“Roger that,” Pony said. “Never really gets easy, though.”
“No shit,” Devil said. “I’m going to have to piss into one of these empty bottles if we have to keep waiting like this.”
“Nobody told you to drink three of those energy drinks,” Wyatt said.
“Got to stay sharp, man,” Devil said. “Keep my driving skills in tip-top shape.”
Griz let all of the talk float past him, focused instead on the street. There wasn’t a lot of foot traffic on it, thankfully… less chance of a bystander getting hit… but it also meant that there were less faces for him to scour in search of his targets.
Wyatt, in the front passenger seat, had a little better of an angle, and at last, he straightened up and said, “Hang on. I think these two are our bunnies.”
Griz leaned forward to get a look. Sure enough, two men ambled slowly down the street, matching the general look that Death’s Head liked to sport; namely, baggy clothes that could more easily conceal weapons. As they got closer, Griz could see a tattoo on the closer man’s neck, a Grim Reaper right where Death’s Head always wore one.
“That’s them,” he said, and almost ran out of the van after them.
