He smiles. “As a matter of fact, I am.” The shit-eating grin on his face makes me want to shoot him right now, but I don’t have a gun. What idiot in their right mind would send a guy to a deal with a verified murderer, unarmed? Robby would, that’s who.
My memory quickly searches for a time when I would have met him before, but I can’t think of any. In school we heard of him, and at the time, he was Robby’s boss. Something big must have happened between then and now that we missed.
He scans my face curiously. “You look familiar.”
I give a shrug. “Doubt it, man.”
Thugs like him aren’t stupid, but apparently I am. If we—or I mean, if I were smart, I would have sent someone else to pick this guy up. If he recognizes me and puts two and two together, I’m getting a bullet in my head sure as shit.
“You got my money?” I ask, giving him a stiff nod.
He smiles again. “Of course.” When he moves to reach in his pocket, my heart pounds faster. I can outrun a lot of things, but I can’t outrun a bullet. Thankfully, he pulls out a wad of cash and hands it to me. “It’s all there.”
I take it quickly and hand the duffle to him at the same time. He raises an eyebrow when I go to shove it in my pocket. “Aren’t you going to count it?”
My stomach drops and I curse myself for being so preoccupied with not getting capped that I forgot the most important step. I have to appear aloof.
“Aren’t you going to make sure I didn’t just hand you a bag full of kittens?”
He laughs once, dropping the duffle at his feet. “Funny guy,” he mutters, unzipping the bag.
My heart continues to beat double time until I see two pairs of eyes peeking up from behind him. They move quickly through the darkness and before I have a chance to get a good view, they tackle Sam to the ground, tossing a bag over his head. It takes me a moment before I notice that it’s Robby’s guys and then I start to relax a little more. I clutch my chest and breathe for a moment as they drag him away into a van parked down the road.
I reach for my pack of cigarettes and light one just as Robby is walking down the road toward me. “Come on,” he says and then smiles. “We have one more stop to make. You ride with me.”
Muttering under my breath again, I reluctantly follow him to his truck and get in. It’s a rather large, ostentatious SUV if you ask me. I look around at the buttons and screens and shake my head. All I need when I drive is a working radio, but I guess I have simpler tastes.
He drives for a few miles in silence. When we take a turn up a up familiar road, I reach over and grab his arm.
“Wait a sec. Are we going to the cliffs?”
He grins, driving further up the mountain. “Poetic, isn’t it?” He glances quickly in my direction. “I thought you’d appreciate that.”
“You really are a fucking dick,” I growl, lighting another cigarette. I push the button to lower the window and my smoke begins to curl outside. When I turn back to him, the anger is apparent on his face.
“You used to be borderline respectful,” he chides. “Now it seems like you don’t give a shit at all.”
“I don’t.”
He smiles again. I think he likes the fact that I’m so far gone at this point that nothing seems to bother me. I used to fear him, and now I’m two seconds away from grabbing his gun and putting him in the ground next to Sam. “Well, maybe you’ll feel better after this.”
Highly doubtful, but it can’t make me feel any worse. Can it?
43
Blind
Perry- Now
When I was twelve, I went hunting for the first time with my dad. I remember being so excited I was finally going to be able to shoot a buck just like him. I could have the horns mounted, and one day they would go on my wall and proudly display my accomplishment.
But when the time came, I didn’t get that buck. Nothing prepared me for the feeling that came over me when I looked it in the eyes with my shotgun raised. It still bothers me I chickened out and shot the tree instead. My dad wasn’t angry with me for missing, but I felt like there was a certain level of disappointment in his eyes.
I won’t make that mistake again.
Robby pulls the vehicle to a stop and I light another cigarette. I take a long drag and stare out of the window at the large rock at the edge of the cliff. I can’t believe this is where he wants this shit to go down. I take that back. I can believe it. That sadistic fuck wants me to suffer, too.
He shifts in his seat, turning toward me. “You ready for this, Michaels? You’re playing with the big dogs today my friend.”
“I’m not your friend,” I mutter, keeping my eyes focused on the rock.
He laughs. “And why’s that? What have I ever done to you that makes you so resentful?” He pauses, lighting a cigarette of his own. The smoke curls out in front of me and I fan it away angrily with my hand. “We’re the same you and I.”
This causes me to laugh. I turn my head to him, my gaze hard. “We’re not the fucking same. I’ll never be like you. I never wanted this.”
“And yet, here you are.”
I don’t answer him and face the window again. It’s easy to sit in your own delusion. Thinking that maybe you are better than that when you know you really aren’t. If I had my choice, and I could back and do it all over again, I would like to believe I would have told Jeremy no. I would like to believe that, but I don’t know if it’s true. I’m still trying to figure out if I was really the innocent one trying to protect everyone, or if I’ve been holding my finger on the trigger this entire time.
Robby interrupts my thoughts by handing me a gun. “I saw that you’re unarmed.” I take it from his hand and he smirks at me. “That’s not smart.”
The first thing I do is check the chamber. It’s loaded. For some reason I don’t trust him enough to expect him to hand me a loaded gun. Reaching for the door handle, I look back to him. “I guess that’s why we’re really here, isn’t it?”
He follows and walks by my side. The other vehicle unloads four men and Sam.
“Let me tell you a little story,” Robby says. I keep my eyes on the men as they drag Sam over to the rock. “When you and your boy decided to go rogue and hook up with Sugar, I was fucking pissed.” He motions to my stomach. “I think you know that, but I wanted to tell you in case you forgot.”
I grit my teeth. “I didn’t.”
“Okay, good,” he says, smirking again. “I hate when small details ruin someone’s understanding of a good story.”
I stop and face him. “Will you make your fucking point already?”
The smile fades from his face and he looks me over carefully. “I was angry you got into something that I’d been trying to do since I got into this game. Sam wasn’t a very good leader, so I decided to change things.”
“You fucked him too, huh?”
Robby laughs once. “We all do bad things, Perry. That’s the way life works.”
I glance back to Sam. His hands are tied behind his back and his mouth is taped shut. Two men surround him on each side.