Page 32 of Reaper
“’No’ is a complete sentence, and it’s my fucking answer to your implied question.”
I stand, look around, and see the one remaining trucker in this miserable cafe wink at me as we make eye contact and decide I sure as hell don’t want to find out what’s behind door number three. I go back to the table with Adriana.
“That was your plan?” she says. “Get high with one trucker and flirt with another? How the fuck did Ruslan Volkov look at you and decide it was anything even fucking close to a good idea to lend you money?”
“Truckers sometimes take on hitchers, so what’s the harm in asking? And how the fuck was I to know one of them would be snorting sand and the other would want me to suck his cock?”
“And you didn’t even consider it?”
“Consider snorting sand? Fuck no.”
There’s a moment of silence before she speaks. She takes a sip from the glass in front of her. From the smell — vanilla, clove, and the still-warm ashes of an orphanage fire — it’s the whiskeyagain. A similar glass sits in front of me, and I take a sip, too. It tastes like burned hair and moss. So, like whiskey.
“We have to get back to Sacramento,” she says.
“We do. Unless you want to call Volkov, give him our location, and ask him to come out and meet us here so we can kill him.”
“I don’t think that’ll work,” she says. Then she takes a long gulp of her whiskey, winces, and blinks back a tear. “That was not a good idea. But I think I have one. Follow my lead.”
“Your lead?”
She doesn’t answer, except to stand. I watch her head to the exit, my eyes half watching out of curiosity, while the rest of my attention is focused on her ass. By the time she gets into the parking lot and approaches a blue Chrysler Sebring that’s parked among the semi trucks and trailers, I’m rock hard, curious, and fully attentive to the full curves of her ass and legs.
“That’s Vanessa’s sister. I can’t,” I mutter, half to me, half to my cock. I rarely talk to my cock, but right now feels appropriate. I can’t be hard for my dead girlfriend’s sister.
Before I have a chance to argue any more with myself, because an ass of that magnitude deserves a supportive counterargument and my cock is ready to give one, Adriana kneels in the parking lot — which is a damn fine counterargument that stretches both her pants and my resistance — picks up a rock, and smashes the driver’s side window of the blue Sebring.
A car alarm blares.
Which makes me pause and gulp the rest of the shit whiskey in surprise, because who the fuck would put a car alarm on that piece of shit?
“That hot bitch is stealing someone’s ride,” one trucker says.
I leap from my seat, and I wince as my hard cock collides with the lip of the table. “Fucking shit,” I shout, and then, still hard,still wincing, I sprint toward the parking lot, just as Adriana smashes a big rock into the driver’s side window and the server screams.
“That’s my fucking car,” he shouts.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I scream at Adriana as she slips into the driver’s seat, smashes open a panel, and begins fiddling with wires.
“It’s called a plan.”
“Breaking a window and stealing a car is what you call a plan?”
“It’s working, isn’t it?” The car hums to life — well, wheezes with the last dying gasp of a dented, forlorn car that’s begging for release from this mortal coil — and Adriana shifts it into gear with a smile on her face. “Get in.”
A rock smacks into the back of my head, sending me stumbling forward several steps. Blood, hot and sticky, drips down the back of my neck. I turn. It’s the server, and he has a second chunk of asphalt held in his hands.
“What the fuck are you doing? Throwing rocks? Are you fucking twelve?” I shout.
“Are you fucking hard right now? What the fuck?” He screams, then throws the rock, and I narrowly dodge it. “Is it your idea of fun to drink antifreeze, get hard, and steal cars from poor guys who are just trying to get by working one of the shittiest jobs on the fucking planet?”
“Did you say antifreeze?”
“Shit.”
“Are you serving people antifreeze?” Adriana shouts out the car’s window. “Who the fuck does that?”
The server shifts, drops the rock, throws a cautious glance over his shoulder at the door to the cafe. “Look, I should go. You just take the car, OK?”
