Blood to Dust (28 page)

Pea’s knees are shaking. Probably seconds away from fainting. I’m just glad we’re in a place so populated, they can’t pull out a fucking rifle like the AB.

“Check for traffic jams,” I motion toward her cell phone with my chin. “I want to get into a standstill from hell where we can lose them.”

Prescott looks for the most congested roads, the ones marked in red on her GPS app, and that’s where our car heads. They can’t do shit with busy traffic surrounding us.

Two hours later, when we’re sure that we’ve lost the intruders, we’re back on the main road, heading north. Both Prescott and I are watching all of our mirrors, making sure we’re spy-free, for long minutes before she opens her mouth again.

“I know what you think,” she starts. “But the number connects straight to a rehab center. I called again and hung up when I got the receptionist. It’s legit, Nate.”

It’s no big deal to dial from a number that doesn’t belong to you. There are a lot of ways to hack through it, and I’m sure Prescott knows that full well. She doesn’t want to think about it right now, and I ain’t going to taunt her with the truth.

“Look,” she exhales. “This is not a part of our plan, and not a part of our arrangement. You don’t have to come with me.”

“I want to.” My words cut the tension in the air. Do I? No. I know it’s a trap. But I also know that if she’s walking into the open arms of Godfrey and Seb, I’m walking in with her. She’s not doing it alone. Correction—she’s not doing it at all. “But you need to do your boy a solid, Cockburn. Give me a day. One day’s all I ask. We’re going for Seb tonight. Let’s get him out of the way then visit your brother. Cool?”

Time.

I’m trying to buy as much of it as I can, but right now, it’s goddamn expensive. After Sebastian, I’ll ask for one more day. Then we’ll kill Godfrey. Then we can go wherever they want us to go, because none of it will matter anymore. They won’t be able to hurt her.
Us
.

Prescott considers it before nodding once. “Okay, but promise me that we will?”

“Baby-Cakes,” I warn. “You know I only promise things I can deliver. By the time tomorrow rolls around, I’m not sure you’re still going to want to do it.”

Knowing that Godfrey is going to be stalking every single motel near Stockton, we decide to blindside him and check into a Marriott in Santa Clara, some long miles away from Godfrey’s wise guys and snitches. The Marriott has top-notch security, and when we check in, we specifically ask for our room to be located in the middle of a hallway. The receptionist looks at us like we’re complete freaks but doesn’t ask any questions.

Prescott’s one-thousand-dollar piggy bank is running thin, and when I carry her backpack to the room, I tell her it’s time to go downtown and get some more dough. She fidgets with the hem of her tattered red dress, looking down,
looking guilty
, before her gaze glides back up to meet mine. The deflated smile on her face tells me everything I don’t want to hear. I just saved her ass, telling Godfrey I’ll kill him before he gets his hands on her, and all this time, she’s been keeping something from me.

“Nate.” She sniffs and stops walking, avoiding my face. “Please don’t be mad.”

But it’s too late, I already am. We stop by the door to our hotel room. It’s hard to stay calm under the stress of our current existence.

“What now?” I grunt.

“There’s something you should know before we. . .before we go to the bank.”

Fuck, no. More complications? This chick is like a fucking infection. She spreads inside you, fast, then before you know it. . .boom, you’re dead.

“Spill it.”

Her eyes are hard on the floor. We don’t have time for this shit.

“Prescott.”

She just sniffs.
Fuck!

“Prescott, are you broke?”

She doesn’t answer, just shakes her head, fat tears dropping from her lower eyelashes.

Fuck me.

“Prescott!” My voice notches up. An impending storm passes through her eyes. My peace is collapsing. How can this girl ruin yet make everything better at the very same time? I knew the little witch was a fraud, but my dick dragged me into her mess.

And now an entirely different organ is keeping me from smashing my fist into her face.

She conned me. Fucking set me up. She can’t pay me, can’t help me, and I’m about to run away penniless, with not a dime to my name. I have about five hundred bucks in my bank account, and I need to withdraw them before my parole officer realizes I favored a crusade against drug lords to sitting pretty in my crumbling house, playing nice.

“How much money have you got?” I pin her to the wall by the neck. Not erotically. Not longingly. But not too painfully either. My eyes play her a horror film that’ll become her reality if she doesn’t comply, and she quickly settles back into her role as a captive and a victim, pinching her lips together. I squeeze harder. “How much? In all of your bank accounts. Altogether. What’s your funds situation? You better not fucking lie to me.”

“About two grand,” she whimpers, looking scared beyond belief. And I hate it. And I hate
her
. My skin is burning with anger. “Probably, like, two grand.”

I pick up her backpack from the floor with one hand and clasp her arm with the other, leading her back to the elevators in a bruising grip.

“We’re withdrawing everything we have right now.”

“Why?” she questions. “I can take it out whenever I want. The police aren’t after
me
.”

“
Yet
,” I snap. “We don’t know what Godfrey has in store for us.”

Ten minutes later, we cancelled our room reservation, got a full refund and are walking into Bank of America. We take out her money, almost $2,500. I do the same. I end up having $780.

With the money in my pocket—Prescott doesn’t argue or asks any questions as she hands over every penny she has—we drive north, looking for a hideaway. We can’t stay where we withdrew money. It’s too risky.

We wander into a small motel in Martinez an hour later, and the reason it appeals to us is because no one speaks English here and there’s no way we’ll get ratted out. It looks a lot like our Los Angeles hotel, only not under the haze and charm of doing this together, Bonnie and Clyde style. I haven’t spoken to her since I found out she’s almost as poor as I am.

Locking the door to another dingy shithole behind us, I give her a warning: “Stay here. Don’t move. Don’t fucking breathe. I’m getting in the shower. Watch the window and holler if you see anything fishy.”

The minute the cold water hits my skin, I hear a screech.
Ignore it.
She probably sat on the crumbling bed. Better yet, she probably opened the door and took off again. This time I won’t be chasing her. It’s her funeral if she wants to keep wandering alone when kingpins put a bounty on her head.

Another screech.

I’m suddenly aware that Prescott may have company outside. Company she hasn’t invited.

Pulling my jeans over my wet thighs in a hurry, I jump out and kick the door open. A horror scene plays before my eyes.

There’s the guy who drove the RAM earlier today sitting on top of Pea. She’s pinned under him against the dirty mattress, and he’s throwing punches at her. She dodges some of them, clawing into his eyes with her nail-less fingers, screaming and kicking. She’s hurting him. He’s yelling, twisting his head violently, trying to escape her fingers. My storm is blinding him with her strength. A ruthless bitch.
My
ruthless bitch.

Then I notice a huge, pink and fresh bruise on her left cheek, and a little blood trickling from her nose.

My nostrils flare and my jaw tightens. I blink my eyes open, and it’s like I’m watching everything through a first-person shooter video game and I’m about to die. The edges of my vision are splattered with red and everything darkens. In a few seconds, I won’t be able to see anything at all.

He hurt Pea, and he’s going to pay.

I jump onto his back and peel him off of her, dragging him by his neck and throwing him against the wall. He’s not going to die. He’s going to live.

Too bad for him.

Pinning him until his body molds with the exposed bricks, I signal her with my index finger to come closer behind my back. Her figure appears next to me in no time. My fingers sink into the flesh of his neck, cutting off his air.

“What’s your name?” I ask the young guy. He looks to be in his early twenties, fat, thuggish and ugly. There’s a red handprint of her small palm across his cheek.

“I ain’t telling you nothing,” he hisses out, along with whatever oxygen’s still left in him, and then spits blood. Prescott hands me my dagger, and I shove it deep into his thigh, until I hear the tear of his pants as the edge pokes through the other side of his leg.

“All right, let’s go through your options”—I shrug, sporting a polite smile—“Tell me what your name is, and you’ll live, plus, I’ll let you go. I got a little message to send Godfrey, anyway. However, if you do not cooperate, I will kill you, find out who you are, then go and butcher your family. Seeing as you know who I am, I trust you’ll go with the sane, user-friendly option number one. Now, I’ll ask again—what’s your name?”

“T-T-T-Tony,” he sobs, snot running down into his mouth. What a fucking wimp. It makes what Prescott went through with her chin up so much more admirable.

“Listen to me carefully, T-T-T-Tony,” I repeat mockingly, yanking his cell out of his pocket. “Call your backup downstairs and tell them you need help dragging our bodies down. When he gets up here, we’re going to sit down and discuss your next move. Am I clear?”

He nods frantically and follows my instructions. Three minutes later, another guy walks in. He’s black and tall, and looks like he’s seen a ghost when he enters the room. Prescott points with her stress ball to the corner where T-T-T-Tony sits.

“Please, sit down. Would you like anything to drink?” Her upper-class manners kick in, and our new guest’s mouth hangs open.

I drag the dagger out of the first guy’s thigh, slowly as I possibly can so that it’ll hurt more than necessary, and bring the dagger to the black man’s throat, the blade stroking the pulse in his neck.

“You know you’ve been playing for the losing team, right?” I poke at his skin, producing a pea-sized dot of blood, before withdrawing it and admiring the blood at the tip of the blade from all angles. “The good news is, you can still atone for your mistake.”

The dagger flies down the guy’s T-shirt, and I tear it almost completely, letting the blood on it stain the cloth. I squat down to his legs and slash his pants. Then I go back up and punch him in the face, so that it’ll look like he’s been in a fight. All while Tony is still slumped against the wall, staring at his thigh wound in horror while holding his leg like it’s about to run away and leave him behind at any moment.

“Here, that looks better. Now, as the lady said, please sit down.” I throw him head first to collapse next to his injured friend and then bend down.

“Gentlemen, driver’s licenses.” I open my palm and wait for them to slap their IDs into it. I’m starting to think that this is the best thing that’s ever happened to us, being discovered by two of Godfrey’s wise guys. Prescott writes down their names and addresses on the back of her hand with a pen we stole from the motel. As if she’d ever use ‘em.

“Caleb,” I go through the black guy’s wallet, walking back and forth in the tiny room that’s now crowded, with three grown men and my girl inside it. “I see you’re a baby-daddy. She’s cute. I’d hate to fuck her up, ya’ know? Look at that smile.” I pass his wallet to Prescott. There’s a toddler, around two years old, in a photo behind the dirty plastic of his wallet. A big, innocent smile adorns her sweet face, pink flowers in her braids. Pea tsks and shakes her head, playing along with my game. “We can make a good buck selling her across the border. Too cute,” she agrees, straight-faced. I almost snicker. I’d rather slit my wrists than hurt a kid, but
he
doesn’t know that. He thinks like a scumbag. And sadly, a part of me, the fresh-out-of-San-Dimas part, thinks like one, too.

“What about this guy?” Prescott nods her chin to Tony. “Who has he got to lose?”

“Please,” Tony gulps. “No.”

“Yeah,” I reply, throwing Caleb’s wallet into Pea’s hands and flipping through Tony’s paperwork. “We know everything about you. But you only need to know one thing about us—to Godfrey and Seb, we’re dead. Go there. Tell them you killed us. Take our clothes with you. Take some of Prescott’s hair. Tell them you dragged our bodies out at night, to avoid drawing attention. Make them think they’re not in danger. Disobey, and I will slay each and every one of your relatives.”

Tony lives in Stockton, and judging from the screensaver on his phone, he’s got a girlfriend. One he wouldn’t like to see in a coffin.

“How can we be sure they won’t rat us out, anyway?” I hear Pea enquire from behind me. That’s a fine question, with a very fine answer.

“They’ll have us on speaker phone the whole time. From the moment their asses hit the seats in their car, to their point of destination in Godfrey’s office. Try and signal to him, scribble something down or warn the old man—and I’ll know. I’ll go straight to your families. I’ve got the addresses.”

“Godfrey’s order was to bring you in alive,” Caleb jeers, rubbing his swollen cheek.

“We put up a good fight. It was a life or death situation. He’d rather us be dead than still on the run.” Bullshit. Godfrey will kill them, they’re deadweight, collateral damage, the minute they come back empty-handed.

But they don’t need to know that.

“You sure?” Tony’s shiny, crooked eyes glance over to Prescott, who stands behind me. She nods.

“Positive.”

We escort Tony and Caleb back to the RAM and press the call button. We hear everything, sitting on the bed and listening to their every move. They drive silently, grunting and whimpering the whole journey. We hear the noisy road and the bell of the elevator to Godfrey’s office building, which I recognize, and we hear them delivering the news we put in their mouths.

Nothing to worry about.

Nate and Prescott are dead.