Page 56 of Live for Me

“To the truck,” Utah said and grabbed my arm to pull me out of the booth.

Tennessee chuckled, but stayed right where he was and watched while Utah tried to push me toward the door.

“But why aren’t?—”

“Now, angel,” Utah hissed in a tone that I’d never heard come out of him. “Go to the truck.”

He handed me the keys and his hand was on my lower back a moment later to push me toward the door again.

“Don’t pick this fight here. You have rules to follow. I don’t. One of us will die before I let anyone take her from me,” Utah warned quietly while I started to back away from the table.

“I don’t plan on taking her from you. I’ll get you both. See you on the road, kid.”

“For your own safety, I’m going to suggest that you never see me again,” Utah said before he looked at me and nodded toward the door again. “Go.”

I turned around and picked up the pace for the door after that. I wasn’t sure I understood why Utah would have me leave ahead of him when the man was obviously very aware that I wouldn’t be driving myself out of this parking lot anytime soon, but I got to the truck and locked myself in it anyway.

I pulled out my laptop as quickly as I could move and ran the license plate on Tennessee’s truck. My fingers moved so quickly that my keyboard nearly caught fire while I drafted a stolen vehicle report for it. I reached for my phone as soon as that was finished and caught the sight of Utah walking across the lot toward the truck while I dialed the anonymous tip line for the local police department. Utah paused about halfway to the truck and turned to look back toward the diner entrance, where Tennessee was standing in the open doorway.

I explained very quickly that I was sitting in a parking lot, staring at a stolen vehicle, described the make, model, and color, and provided the license plate number before I hung up the phone.

I unlocked the truck doors and stepped out just on the running board.

“Let’s go,” I whisper-shouted at him. He glanced back at me, but I watched his hand shift to the waistband of the back of his jeans.

Because that was exactly what we needed with the police on their way—Utah shooting a man right here in public.

I jumped down and hustled my way back to him to grab his arm. I stood up on my toes to get closer to his ear.

“We need to leave. Cops are on the way.”

His eyebrows pinched together when he looked back at me that time.

I shook my head. “It’s okay. I called them. But we can’t be here for however that plays out.”

I tried pulling on his arm to get him to move with me. When that didn’t work, I forced his truck keys in between the gun in the waistband of his jeans and his hand then went back to the truck myself. He’d follow me. Utah took another few backward steps before he turned to walk the rest of the way to the truck.

“How long before they get here?” Utah asked.

I shook my head.

“Indy, police scanners for this area,” he said while he started the truck. “Anybody on the way here yet? I don’t want him following us down the road. Sending another set of cops after us once he gets pulled over. Rather leave him here with them from the start.”

When Tennessee stepped out of the diner entrance and onto the sidewalk, Utah opened his door again and opted to stand on the running board. Tennessee paused right where he was, too.

“How long?” Utah asked. His annoyed sigh suggested that he was not at all impressed with how long they were taking.

“What am I supposed to do to keep him here, but away from us, for the next ten fucking minutes?” Utah asked. “I can’t kick his ass just for the police to show up and find a half-dead guy.”

It was interesting to get to see an Executioner behave this way while working. He wasn’t yelling at Indy about finding an answer. He was annoyed and uncertain about what he was supposed to be doing, but he was completely calm. Like it didn’t faze him in the slightest that he might have to actually almost kill a man in a minute or two. He was just as unconcerned about that as he was about the prospect of us just driving away once the police were here. He didn’t seem to be struggling with the possibility that this could go a hundred different ways or the knowledge that more than half of them could result in one of us dying.

What it must be like to be able to look at a situation in front of you and just see it for what it was in that moment.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

utah

Memphis was still squirming around in her seat when Indy finally said that the police were only a couple minutes out.

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