Standing in the thick downpour is the leader of the Alpha Wolves groupies.
“Mia?” Glinda asks, squinting through the heavy drizzle of rain at her friend. Mia's a wreck, her dark hair hanging loose and tangled around her shoulders, her makeup smeared, mascara running down her cheeks like black tears. “Is that you, baby?”
“I see you're having plenty of fun without me,” she sniffs, her hand on her purse, squeezing the leather with white knuckled fingers. “I'm pretty easily replaceable, aren't I?”
“If you wanted to come—” Glinda starts, but Mia cuts her off, taking a step closer. I feel awkward, like I want to leave, but instead I stay where I am, wondering why we're having a conversation in the icy rain.
“Rebecca told me this would happen,” Mia continues and I notice Janae and Fauna exchanging a look. “So I took the money. I need it, okay? And I'm so sorry,” she says, looking from Glinda to me and lifting up her right hand. Fuck. She's got a fucking gun that I didn't see through the heavy downpour of rain and the fluorescent flicker of the store's lights reflecting off the puddles.
Mia sniffles and shakes her head.
“What are you doing, baby?” Glinda asks, letting go of the shopping cart and holding up her hands, pink acrylics bright under the street lamp above our heads. “You just put that down, okay? Everything's gonna be alright, sweetheart.”
“No!” Mia screams, waving the gun around as my hands drop to my purse. I've got Royal's Ruger in there. If I can just get it out, I'll shoot this bitch in the foot like I promised. I really don't want to have to kill anybody here. “It's not going to be okay. I tried and you know where it got me? In the fucking doghouse. I'm banned from the compound, from Royal's bed, and I've got nothing and nobody.” Mia sniffs again and closes her eyes, her stringy hair clinging to her wet cheeks as I flick the latch on my purse and her brown gaze snaps open.
In less than a second, the gun is up and she's taking a shot at Glinda. The bullet goes straight through her shoulder and smashes into the window of her minivan with a splatter of red. The rain washes it away as quick as it came, shredding the evidence to nothing as Glinda staggers back in her pink cowboy boots and hits the cement on her knees.
She doesn't scream or cry or anything, just glances over at her shoulder with a dazed expression. The air around us lights with flickers of white and the sound of gunfire. Our bodyguards, that kid Sketch and the sullen faced Jump-Start, they're fighting, too.
Shit. This isn't a grocery shopping expedition; it's a fucking coup.
Janae screams, the sound shattering the night sky as Fauna drops to the ground and pulls Glinda into her arms. The Ruger's in my hand now, and I'm disengaging the safety, lifting it up and taking a shot at Mia with two steady hands. The bullet hits her dead in the chest and she staggers but doesn't go down. Holy hell.
She fires a second shot at the same time I do, this one flying wide as blood blooms and then dies on her chest, washed away by the rain. I shoot her again. And again. And again. I realize it's probably overkill in the solid, stately logical part of my brain, but my emotions are all fuzzy and I'm breathing hard and why won't this bitch just die?!
Mia drops to the ground and she doesn't get up, but neither does Glinda. I register dimly that Janae is wailing, wilting to the cement like a flower as she pleads with … someone. My gaze flicks briefly to my left, noting the empty bikes, the missing Wolves, before I turn back to Janae and watch as a figure appears from the sheet of rain.
“Sorry, sugar, but I never much liked you anyway.”
There's a man standing there that I don't recognize, wearing a cut and a smirk for a smile. His hair is sandy blond and his skin is tanned, rugged and handsome with age. He must be in his late forties, tall and muscular and dressed in dark jeans and brown boots. He lifts his gun and points it at Janae's face, but she's quick, too. Can't be married to an outlaw and not know a damn thing.
She lifts up a revolver I didn't know she had, but it's not fast enough. I can see the man's finger tensing on the trigger, readying himself for a head shot. Nobody survives a head shot.
I take aim, release my breath, and fire into the thick muscle of his bicep, sending his shot wide. Janae screams anyway, reaching to her suddenly bloody left ear, the revolver still clutched with her right hand as the man kicks out hard and hits her in the face. Janae goes sprawling, her gun flying across the pavement as I ready myself to take another shot.
“Not that one,” the man says, his accent thick and southern and warm. It's so odd to hear that sound coming from his cold lips. “That's the mayor's daughter.”
“Lyric!” Fauna screams, and my first instinct when I hear the panic in her voice is to duck, dropping to the pavement on my knees. The impact is hard and wet and it hurts like fucking hell, but it's better than being shot or hit in the head or dosed with chloroform or whatever. Fauna, who not surprisingly also has a gun, aims at something behind me. When she fires, I feel the wet spray of blood on my back, but I don't let that distract me. Instead, I take another shot at the blond man and hit him square in the chest.