Bad Bitch(47)

Rain coated the car and slid down the windows in heavy drops and runnels. The driver had a preordained path, heading south, toward the Brooklyn Bridge. But then where?

“Well, I’ll tell you. Mr. DiSalvo isn’t too happy with you right now. You’re a problem, see?” He asked it as if I would agree with him.

Even though I knew there was no other explanation, the mention of DiSalvo’s name caused dread to erupt in my heart. It swallowed up the shock and every other emotion I was even capable of producing. It was as if I were still sitting in Clarence Sherman’s cell, his fetid breath filling the air as he made the darkest threats I’d ever heard. But now the promise of harm, of death was even more immediate. DiSalvo had sent these men to kill me. I shuddered.

The stranger kept his eyes on me. “Now, you’ve been very good to Mr. DiSalvo in the past. That’s why we’re going to do it easy. None of the usual stuff. He told us not to cut anything off or touch you”—his gaze slipped down my body and then back up to my face—“or do anything like that. Just a bullet to the back of your head. Real quick, simple. No pain, see?” Again, like I was supposed to agree with him, to thank him for being so generous by not torturing or raping me prior to snuffing out my life.

He turned back around and whistled as the car sped over the bridge. The men on either side didn’t look at me. They just stared straight ahead. Other cars were next to us on the bridge—a couple in a red car arguing, a solitary woman driving a beat up sedan, a church van full of teenagers. I watched them as the rain streamed between us. It was like watching some sort of boring movie, the actors phoning it in even though I was fully invested in every move they made. None of them saw me through the tinted windows. They were living their lives while I was living the last moments of mine.

I wanted to fight, to cry, to scream. But there was nothing I could do. I could barely move, much less try to escape from a speeding car while surrounded by hit men.

I was going to die.

I didn’t have any questions. The stranger had already told me everything I needed to know. My death was ordered by DiSalvo. He had been a father figure for a time, when he needed me. Now I was a liability, expendable, as good as dead.

I should have guessed from his phone call that he had something planned for me, that he was just testing to see what my plan was, what I thought I could accomplish without incriminating him. It was foolish, but I believed, right up until the moment the stranger with the mustache and the gun said different, that DiSalvo actually cared for me, not much, but as much as a man like that was capable of. And maybe he did, in his own sick way, by ordering the hit men to off me quickly.

I continued to stare around for help that would never come. The whir of the tires on the bridge turned into the steady hum of a long smooth roadway. The slick hiss of the rain lapping at the wheels was like a needle in my ear.

The car was silent for a while, only the sound of the stranger inhaling and exhaling as he chain-smoked breaking through.

My mind raced. I thought of how Vinnie would react when I never showed up in the morning. Would he try to defend the case with Wash? Without me? Jena would be relieved I hadn’t shown up to bitch at her for whatever she’d done wrong. And who else would miss me? No one. There was nobody. No family. Not even a dog, cat, or so much as a fucking parakeet. My apartment would sit quiet and untouched. No one would even know I was gone until I’d been dead for days.

Even when an alarm finally went out, they’d never find my body. I’d be stuffed, in pieces in a fifty-gallon drum at the bottom of some muddy inlet on Long Island. I could see it in my mind. I looked down at my hands, imagining them drained of blood, stiff and broken, shoved down on top of other disjointed parts of my body.

It was over, all of it. Silent tears slipped down my cheeks. As despair pooled in my chest, I closed my eyes. I saw a flash of Lincoln’s dark hair play across my eyelids. I hadn’t allowed myself to think of him, the real him, for weeks. I’d created a fiction for him, Prosecutor X, a nondescript adversary. I let that fall away as I focused on him, thinking of how we had started something that was real. I would never know if it could have been more. I’d never been in love. I didn’t think I was capable of it. And now the one chance I had was gone. I’d killed that chance as surely as these men were going to kill me.

Lincoln had seen through to the heart of me, and I would never know if he was the one. He would never know what happened to me, if he even cared. No one would know. And no one would really care. Sure, Vin would mourn me. But he’d move on. He had a family, a child on the way. I had nothing, no one. My own actions had made sure of it.