AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
*Brodi “Bro” - Tail Gunner*
“How much longer should we sit out here?” I ask, tapping my thumb on my knee.
Lost in his flighty and broken thoughts, Vee simply stares, gaze unfocused, at the door as though he can see Jess right through it.
“You said she went straight from the booth to here, right? Been in there ever since?” The inside corner of my bottom lip is nearly raw from me chewing on it while anxiously watching for anything. Anything at all.
From our hiding spot, we have a decent view of both the front door and the back porch area. Nothing has changed. What lights were on when I got here to replace Kio are still on, and no shadows of movement have darkened the illuminated windows. Nobody has arrived. Nobody has left.
“Think she fell asleep?” Eyes flicking from window to window, I finally catch movement and jolt upright, my palms coming to the damp grass.
A bird.
A fucking bird.
I lean back against my bike again, close my eyes, take a deep inhale and slow exhale, then mutter under my breath, “Something feels off.”
After an hour or so of talking to myself, Vee finally comes back to life, focus sharpening and slinging toward me. “You feel that, too?” he whispers in an ominous, detached way.
“What the fuck, Vee!?” I hiss under my breath. “Is that what you have been working through this whole time!? Say something next time!” I scramble to my feet.
His tattooed hand rubs down his face, and he huffs out a frustrated sigh. “Look, everything that is up is down, and everything that is down is up for me right now. The only thing consistent about my thoughts is that we are experiencing some sort of butterfly effect; I feel it in my bones. I am fucking terrified that if I even do so much as take a step, meteors will come crashing down from the sky or some shit.”
Last thing you want to do when someone is losing their damn mind is tell them that they are. So I keep that much to myself. “Come on, Vee, how much worse could it possibly get?”
Vee points at me, nostrils flaring, and curses me in Italian before translating it in English. “Do not say that!”
Holding up my hands, palms out, my focus darting from him to the house and back again. “What do you want to do about it? Should we knock on the door? Break in?”
Vee adjusts from foot to foot. “Do you think the Stoners saw us head this way? They could be waiting for us to do something stupid like walk right up to the door of the townhouse where their main prospect is currently staying.”
I shake my head. “We have a lot of eyes, brother. Even the street crew says things are quiet. Stoners are lying low at their downtown clubhouse.”
I know because I may or may not have been obsessively checking in with every pivot point since I got here. Ears perked toward Vee but attention locked on the house, I suggest, “One of us can go check on her. Peek through the windows first. Go from there. Whichever one of us stays behind can keep watch.”
It is literally our job right now to watch Jess, which is hard to do when we can’t even see her. Reiterating the obvious to my superior would be an idiot move, though, so I keep my mouth shut and hope his damaged thoughts circle back around.
His head turns, gaze narrowing and going unfocused on the townhouse. Fuck. Having lost him again, I plop down to the ground and scoot backward to prop against my bike once more.
“Fine,” he says.
My attention whips from the townhouse to him.
“You go. I keep watch.”
“Hell yeah!” I bound up to my feet.
“Got your bluetooth?” he asks.
One up, I am already digging in my saddle bag before he can even finish the sentence.
