Page 72 of Absinthe Dreams
“Tell the rest of the boys,” Hex said. “Lemme handle it with them.”
“I got you,” I said.
He and LaCroix met one of the suits at the scene, and I went back to Saint and the rest of them and told them everything. Told them how Gen had ordered the necklace thing, how it worked, and how she’d triggered it, but the cops had been too slow to get here. They had a bead on the girls, and we were justwaiting on them to point us in the direction of where they’d gone with ‘em.
“I knew this was gonna be bad,” Axe muttered for my ears only. I nodded.
“We’ll handle it,” I said.
“Oh, yeah.” He had the killer’s gleam in his eye, the kind that said people were gonna die and badly at his pleasure.
I swallowed hard and tried not to replay Cy’s head coming apart in front of my lady over and over on this demented loop in my head.
There was a shout from inside our compound, and all heads turned that way. I couldn’t make it out, but Hex and LaCroix were closer. They immediately turned and headed our way. Hex shouted, “Let’s roll! Ain’t nothin’ can be done here!” We mounted up.
I hated that nothing could be done here, but Hex was right. We were needed elsewhere, and I trusted my president and vice president implicitly that they would get us there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Genesis…
It was hot in the back of the van. Stifling. Only made more so by the copper tang of blood that filled my nose from the splatter I wore. It was mixed with the sour sweat of fear and the adrenaline that heightened all our senses to the nth degree.
We were moving now, at a good and solid clip without any stops – so on a freeway, or highway.
Jessie wasn’t keening or crying anymore. She was silent, alert, and I could see it in her eyes that she was going to survive to make these motherfuckers pay.
Sandy was stressed and wriggling as much as she could, trying to free herself. She’d kicked and hissed and spit so hard when they’d bound her that they’d wound up binding her feet together with duct tape around her ankles. That led to the rest of us getting the same treatment.
She wasn’t wrong to fight. Statistically speaking, if they got you to a secondary location, you were less likely to make it to the ER and more likely to wind up in the morgue. But they had said something about Russians, so I wasn’t going to doom too hard.
I had no idea what was in store for us. It was terrifying either way, but if they were going to pass us off to some Russians, it was more than likely they weren’t going to kill us. At least not right away, which meant we still had some kind of opportunity to get away.
I kept hoping and praying that the police were on the way. We slowed down, and one of the men up front swore.
“Were you fuckin’ speeding?” the passenger demanded.
“Fuck no! I ain’t stupid.”
“Well then, why are they riding your ass?”
“Probablytryin’to get me to speed, fuckin’ pigs.”
All of us girls looked at each other. At once, we all started screaming and making as much noise as possible from behind our duct tape, thrashing and kicking out at the back doors and the sides of our prison, trying to make as much ruckus as possible without kicking each other in the process.
“Shut up!” the passenger roared, and he pointed a gun in our direction. We all froze and fell silent.
“Keep driving. Don’t let ‘em push you into speedin’. Maybe they’ll pass us. Ain’t no place to pull us over on the bridge anyway.”
We girls all exchanged another look,the bridge…no stops, steady pace; and it felt like we had been on itfor-fucking-ever.The bridge across Pontchartrain? There was no way of knowing.
We stayed still, my heart thundering against the inside of my ribs, and I forgot to breathe… only dragging in another breath when my chest started to burn and to ache from the lack of regular breaths.
“We’re at the end now. They’ll pass us. Just stay steady.”
Several more minutes went by, or maybe it was just seconds? Time had honestly lostallmeaning due to the dire situation.
“Ah, shit, they’re lighting us up, Viper. I don’t like this…” the bald-headed passenger hissed.
