Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
And the twins, while we didn’t know exactly what went down during the years they lived in Puerto Rico, something about how they both carried themselves made me think they were involved in… something there. If not in charge of shit.
We were a solid crew.
“If I didn’t think we were capable, I’d insist on finding someone else to come with us,” I answered Brooks.
Brooks looked at me for a moment before nodding, accepting that I was right.
“Phones,” he said, pointing to the bar. We all took turns dropping our phones and any other electronic devices that might have tracking capabilities on the bar top. “Here,” he said, handing me a new burner. “You know the numbers?” he asked, since we clearly didn’t want to program something that we were just going to toss as soon as the job was done.
“Got yours and Fallon’s memorized,” I confirmed.
“Alright,” he said, nodding. “The SUV is gassed up and loaded.”
“Nave and I will take our bikes,” Sully offered.
Then, without much more conversation, we were heading out.
It was a shitty day for a drive, especially with Nave and Sully on bikes when the gray sky looked ready to open up at any moment, soaking them in cold autumnal rain.
But it was just a fifteen-minute drive. And the drop itself would likely not go longer than half an hour.
We couldn’t exactly complain about the job, given how little work it actually was most of the time.
Thanks to generations of this club existing and making deals with international weapons traffickers, shit ran like a well-oiled machine.
Guns came in every few weeks. Some of us went and picked them up, stored them in the basement, and called it a day.
Then, every once in a while, we had a drop like this to do.
It left a fuckuva lot of leisure time and paid a nice amount of money.
The SUV was silent for the drive, save for the low alt-rock station playing as I drove.
In the passenger seat, Perish’s hands kept opening and closing into fists. The twins’ posture was unusually stiff.
There was some kind of tension in the air. We all seemed to be picking up on it.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat as the sky started to spit halfheartedly onto the windshield.
While I trusted my instincts, had learned to listen to my gut a long time ago, I also had to remember that if anyone on a crew was feeling off for personal reasons, that shit infected the whole team. It could be as small as someone just being in a bad mood, getting up on the wrong side of the bed.
Yeah, I’d be a little more alert. But there was no reason to think we needed to turn back and say to hell with this drop.
The SUV followed Nave and Sully on their bikes north up the highway, the area getting a little more desolate as we drove away from the beach area and more toward the side of town that used to feature a lot of business, but was now dominated by old, uninhabited buildings.
Bad for the area.
Good for doing our kind of business.
Nave and Sully turned off the highway and into a lot full of cracks, the grass and weeds still sticking up between them as I looked at the long, low building that used to be an industrial store of some kind. Before my time, even before I left Navesink Bank for the military.
It still seemed in relatively good shape even after being abandoned for so long as we drove around to the back of the building, not wanting to be seen from the highway. The cops in this area didn’t have much to do with their time other than do speed traps or investigate suspicious cars in an abandoned lot.
Thanks to the L-shape formed by the loading docks, once we were back there, we were completely hidden by the building to the front and sides and a strip of woods between the building and a neighborhood behind it.
We all climbed out of the SUV in unison as Nave and Sully removed their helmets.
“Guess we’re early,” Sully said, glancing around.
Did he feel the tension too? Was it just me?
There was a prickle up my back as I moved around the edge of the loading docks, glancing at the highway.
But no cars slowed.
“They’re not from the area,” Nave said, shrugging as he leaned against the back of the SUV. “Probably estimated the time wrong.”
Still, we were all a little tense, shifting uncomfortably as the moments passed.
I was wound so tight that when I heard my voice called, I felt my heart leap up and lodge in my throat as I whipped around.
I didn’t even realize that my name hadn’t been said in one of the deep male voices of my brothers.
Until I saw the source of it.