Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106953 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106953 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
I jerk upright at the tap on my shoulder. “You scared the shit out of me,” I say.
Beefer mouths something back to me. I can’t make it out. I clap a hand to my ear a couple of times. Guess the noise from the AK has made me temporarily deaf.
He points to the car and then slices his fingers in front of his neck. I nod in understanding. No more shooting. He’s going to check out to see if anyone is still alive. He hands me another magazine. I figure out how to release the empty one and install the full one.
And, then, like a good soldier, I walk forward with the barrel up and scan for signs of life. There are none. We killed them all.
Beefer drags the bodies out and lays them—all five of them—in a row. He takes out his Glock and fires a bullet into the forehead of each one. Then we loot the car. We find cash, some small jewels and more guns. There are also IDs, cell phones, two tablets and some comm equipment. We load it into the van and head for Marjory’s.
My hearing is clearing up, so I catch part of Beefer’s conversation over the radio. “We’re heading out. No casualties here.”
A different man’s voice comes on. I don’t recognize him and I can’t make out all the words, but the feeling is obvious. It’s grief. “Cotton…make it. Wife…tell her.”
“The boss will do it,” Beefer says abruptly and then cuts the comms off. He rakes a hand through his hair. “Fuck. Cotton, can you believe that?”
I shake my head because that’s the response Beefer wants, but, in truth, yeah, I do believe it. The fact we’re still alive is more incredible than that Cotton got plugged.
“The one goddamned good thing about this business is that ninety-five percent of these goons can’t shoot worth shit. They spend zero time with their pieces, thinking that pointing is the only aim they need,” Beefer rants. He makes a hard right. I hang on to the granny handle so I don’t end up in the enforcer’s lap. “You practice with your piece, kid, or you’ll end up like Cotton and then who the hell is going to watch after your sister?”
I freeze. In the firefight, I hadn’t thought of Bitsy at all, or my own death.
“Didn’t think of that, didya? Next time, don’t throw yourself in front of me. I had a gun, you dumbshit.” But he takes any sting out of it by reaching over and rubbing a hand through my hair.
“What’s going to happen to Cotton’s family?” He just had his first kid. They’d closed Marjory’s in celebration. I picked up baby shower crap for two days afterward.
“The boss will take care of them,” Beefer says. And for a slim moment, I give the boss props for decency, but Beefer goes and ruins it. “It’s not good for business for someone like Cotton’s old lady and kid to be dangling out there. Someone who’s not happy with the boss can shake her down for info. Not that she should have much because Cotton shouldn’t be talking about the boss’s business to anyone, not even the wife.” He slides a glance in my direction.
It’s a warning, to keep my mouth shut around Bitsy. Like I want her to know what I do. Like I want her to know that the same hand she thinks is so safe holds a gun half the time. But I want her to be taken care of when I bite it. Because running around with Beefer isn’t going to get less dangerous over time.
“My money goes to Bitsy. Whatever I have, you’ll make sure she gets it, right?” I tack on the last word so it doesn’t sound like a command.
Beefer tosses me an amused look. “You don’t got much in there. It might seem like a lot, but it’s a drop in the bucket of what you’re going to need if you want her out of this life.”
I remain silent.
He continues, “Which I know is what you want because you’ve hid the girl from us. She must’ve been an infant when you started running errands for me. I’m kind of pissed you didn’t tell me before, but impressed you kept her alive.”
A knot forms in my stomach. I didn’t do shit to keep her alive as a baby. She tumbled into my life and all I’ve done is give her a mattress on the floor and a few bottles of kid’s Tylenol.
“I didn’t do nothing,” I inform him.
“Sure you didn’t. Look, you want the deal that the boss is going to give Cotton’s family, you gotta bring the kid around. If you’d have died the other night, no one would’ve even known she existed. So bring her around and let us get to know her. We don’t got cooties, you know.”