Page 102 of Share with Me

“Probably not, but I’ll tell you anyway. Because one of the SISO patrons owns the hotel. SISO stays for half price.”

“I was right. I don’t care.” Art cranked up the radio. He turned the dial until he found a jazz station. “You play jazz?”

“My brother Quincy is in a jazz band. Disbanded now that he’s moved to Paris.”

Art slammed on the brakes as a family van swerved out of an adjacent street and cut in front of him. “Tourists!”

Ivan saw that they were still on Abercorn, but now they were following a slow-moving van with stick figure decals on the back window and out-of-state license plate.

Art was unable to pass him. “Five or six minutes to the hotel, they say. No traffic, they say.”

“You could cut across one of these streets here and get to Drayton one block over there,” Ivan suggested.

“Thinking the same thing.”

Coming up on Ivan’s right was the old Colonial Park Cemetery. Quiet and dark. He wondered if some of Brinley’s ancestors had been buried here. He tried to remember what she had told him. A rich Charleston planter, heir to the Brooks family empire, had fallen in love with a poor, destitute, indentured servant girl from Sav—

The airbag exploded into Ivan’s face and chest so fast, so quickly he didn’t even realize it until he was already covered with the inflated bag. It took him a moment to reorientate. Then he heard a moan.

“Art, you there?”

No answer. Just more moans.

Ivan felt another impact, this time from behind the SUV. It felt like they were in a multi-car wreck.

Have to get out of here!

Was it safer for him to get out of the SUV or stay inside?

He tried to open the passenger-side door, but it was stuck. The SUV frame must have gone bonkers.

Ivan heard another groan. “Art?”

Then he heard the windshield shattering.

Doors opening. Chiming. Chiming.

As strong arms grabbed his tuxedo, Ivan reached for anything he could find, airbag, door, whatever his hands landed on, to prevent himself from being pulled out of the passenger seat.

In the shadow of the night, Ivan thought someone punctured the halfway deflated airbag and sliced through his seat belt before he was ripped out of the SUV and thrown down as if he were a bag of dirty laundry. He stretched out his arms to break his fall. He body-smacked into the concrete pavement as he heard a sharp cracking sound like something snapped very close to his ears.

He screamed a million shards of agony as the sharp and mind-blowing pains shot up his left arm.

It wasn’t over as leather gloves descended on him. As he heard metal against flesh and bones, he felt pain on his head, neck, and torso. His arms flew up in front of face to protect it.

In the cloudy night, he saw shadows of hoods and masks all around him coming in and out of visibility in the distant lights. The streetlights directly above him were apparently out.

Then shouts. Muffled screams. Gunshots.

Gunshots?

Ivan couldn’t breathe. “Art!”

He couldn’t get up. He felt his own flesh rip. He tried to get away, but something pressed him down like he was being sat on. The pain in his left arm increased.

In the racket of metal pipes beating up organic bones, Ivan’s world faded to black.

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