I choked back a sob. None of the men acknowledged my existence, much less my distress. How many times had they done this? How many hapless victims had taken this same ride?
“Here?” the driver asked as the car came up on an exit.
“Yeah, let’s do it at Gilgo,” the passenger said on a smoky exhale.
“Is the tide coming in now?”
“I don’t know”—taking a big drag—“it doesn’t matter anyway”—smoky exhale—“I never had a problem with anything being found yet. Remember that guy we tried the acid on?”
The driver laughed, a deeply unsettling sound. “Yeah, that was funny.”
“Ruining a seven-hundred-dollar pair of shoes wasn’t funny. The smell wasn’t funny.” The passenger’s voice rose.
“Oh, but seeing the way he turned into goo was. Looked like bubble gum. Pink bubble gum.”
The passenger nodded, his memory no doubt matching the macabre picture the driver had painted.
The car slowed and turned off the highway. We were in a more suburban area now, houses and small businesses flowing by on either side of the car. The images blurred as my tears kept coming.
The passenger turned his head again to look at me through the swirling cigarette smoke. He put his gun in his lap and pulled out a handkerchief.
“Frankie, wipe the pretty lady’s tears.”
The man to my left reached out a meaty hand and grabbed the fabric from the stranger. He went to wipe my face, but I took the linen square from him before he could touch me. I used it, intentionally smearing my mascara into the fibers. A petty act of defiance. I would still be killed. My mascara on his handkerchief would wash away, disappear, just like I was about to do.
The car kept going, oblivious to my tears and my fate. The area had just as quickly turned rural, trees bordering the road on each side, hiding whatever lay beyond. Twilight had passed, the shadows deepening into night.
I blew my nose into the handkerchief out of spite.
As the car hurtled closer and closer to my doom, the fear began to turn into anger. The anger began to take hold inside me like a tree with deep, twisting roots. More than anger, resentment. I resented the assholes in this car. Even more, I resented DiSalvo. I saved him from a prison cell time and time again. I made it possible for him to retire in Cuba and live like a king for the rest of his life. After everything I’d done for him, this is how he repaid me? Four goons taking me out to a backwater and putting a bullet in my brain? Fuck no.
The passenger had long since turned away from me, perhaps embarrassed by my tears. The meatheads ignored me. The smoke continued to swirl. The only movement was the driver—turning, slowing, accelerating. He was the one variable, the one part of the equation that I could change.
Then I did something rash, stupid even. I didn’t think about it. I just acted. I reached out and grabbed a fistful of the driver’s hair and pulled as hard as I could.
The next moments were nothing short of chaos. The car careened off the roadway and flipped down a grassy embankment. I didn’t have my seat belt fastened, but the meaty killers on either side of me provided a pillow of sorts as we somersaulted through the air. They crushed me and cushioned me, depending on how the car was positioned. None of us screamed. It was too fast for us to even muster a cry of surprise. The sound of metal crunching and glass breaking and the loud thunks as the vehicle landed on the dirt before taking to the quiet air again created a jagged cacophony in the enclosing darkness.
Chapter Ten
Lincoln
“Whoa!” the cabbie yelled as the black car ahead of us jerked off the roadway and went tumbling down a steep embankment. It rolled and rolled down the hill. Only one thought was in my mind—Evan is in there.
“Pull over, now.” I heard the shaking in my voice, felt the chill of terror that slid down my spine.
The car slowed and stopped. I jumped out into the night and tore off down the hill after Evan. A man lay in the grass, twisted and broken. His dark eyes were open and his face covered in blood. His neck was at a wrong angle, giving his thin-mustachioed face a puppetlike appearance. His eyes saw nothing. Dead. I continued down the slope at a breakneck pace. The mangled car had come to rest upside down in a few inches of water. It had carved a path through the cattails that crowded the edge of a swamp.
I should have been careful, should have checked for bad guys or weapons before approaching the car. But I couldn’t. I needed to get to her, no matter the consequences. I saw no movement in the wreckage. My heart pounded in my chest, the rhythm of blood loud in my ears.
I got down on my hands and knees in the muck to peer inside. It was dark, but I made out two, maybe three bodies. I saw Evan’s hand hanging out of the busted rear window. A chunk of dark hair with scalp attached to it was clutched in her grip. Her skin was pale in the moonlight, too pale. I crawled around through the mud and took her hand. Her skin was warm, but she didn’t return my grip.