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I did as he said, my stomach flipping with both nerves and excitement. It was a weird mixture, one that I wasn’t used to feeling. Why did I need my gun out and ready? I was always taught not to hold it unless I intended to fire a bullet from it. “What are we doing?” I asked.
“Getting supplies,” he said simply, almost as if we were parked outside of the grocery store and needed to go in to buy milk. He reached behind my seat. “Put this on.” He threw something onto my lap, the black material a stark contrast to my light denim jeans.
I opened my mouth, about to ask why, when tires squealed to a stop beside us. Theo yanked one of what he’d passed me over his head and flung open the driver’s door. It was only then that I realized it was a balaclava.
He didn’t want anyone to see our faces.
Maybe I should have thought twice about it before I grabbed it and pulled it over my head. But I didn’t.
I followed him out of the car and to where he was standing with four other men, all wearing the same thing. Machine guns were held in their hands, their stances wide as they listened to Theo giving out the orders. He pointed left and right, doing some weird signals with his hands.
It was obvious that this wasn’t the first time they’d done something like this. Only now I had a front row seat to all of it.
“Me and Lena will take the front; you four take the back,” he ordered, spinning around and signaling for me to follow him.
A rush of adrenaline slammed through me, and I couldn’t deny how giddy I felt. That was until we entered the partially open black door, guns raised.
“Everybody down!” Theo shouted.
Yelps and screams echoed, but a spray of bullets from somewhere toward the back soon had them quietening. The other’s had made their entries too.
“Stay here,” Theo told me, wrapping his arm around my waist. “We’ll be in and out within a minute. Just guard the door and don’t move until I get back.” He stared into my eyes for a second. “Got it?”
“Got it.”
My shaky hands held my gun out in front of me as I swiveled to face the door, and a second later Theo was gone.
The sixty seconds that went by felt more like sixty minutes. Several more shouts echoed from behind me. As well as thumping and something that sounded like boxes falling. But all the while I kept my attention trained on the door until footsteps pounded from behind me.
“Let’s go!” Theo shouted, grabbing my wrist and sprinting out of the door. The other guys weren’t back to their van yet, but Theo didn’t mention it as he practically pushed me into the passenger seat of his car then ran around to the driver’s side.
He placed his gun on my lap and yanked the balaclava off his face then sped out of there. He’d done it so effortlessly, but my shaking hands were struggling to get the material off my face. The musty smell had my nose scrunching up, and when it was finally off, I threw it down onto the floor.
I blinked over and over again, trying to process what had just happened and what I’d been part of. I hadn’t known it was coming, but maybe that was how Theo worked. Maybe that was why he’d gotten away with so much over the years.
He was a professional, one who knew when to take risks and when not to.
“Lena?” Theo’s voice seeped through my thoughts and I turned my head to look at him. “You good?”
Was I good? I didn’t quite know, but I found myself nodding anyway. Fake it until you make it, right?
It was for a cause—to take him down—so why did I feel a rush? Why did the idea of Theo not being free cause anxiety to bubble up and practically choke me?
“Where are we going now?” I asked, needing a distraction.
“Your place,” he answered right away, and within a couple of minutes, we were pulling up to my apartment complex. Normally I would have scanned the parking lot to make sure we were safe, but I didn’t this time. I just pushed out of his car, my legs working on automatic until we got inside my apartment.
Still, I felt like I couldn’t quite take a full breath though. It was getting harder and harder to get air into my lungs. That was until Theo wrapped his arms around me. Only then did I feel like I wasn’t about to pass out.
Dammit.
This wasn’t good. None of this was going down well. But I couldn’t stop it. The whole thing was a car crash waiting to happen, but I didn’t have any brakes to stop it.
So instead of bracing for the impact, I went with the ride and held him closer, determined not to overthink anything. Too bad for me that I was a serial overthinker.
Chapter Nine
LENA
