A perfect snow job. Har-har.
He supposed he should feel bad for the dead dudes’ families—no one was ever going to find those remains. But anecdotal evidence suggested the two guys had lived on the fringes, and not because they were hippies: guns, knives, a switchblade, weed, and some X had been found in their various pockets. And God only knew what was in those backpacks.
Violent lives tended to come to violent ends.
“—son of a bitch,” V was saying as he walked around the Hummer on its flatbed pedestal. “What the fuck did they run into? A cement barricade?”
John signed something, and V looked over sharply at Qhuinn. “What the hell were you thinking? You could have been killed.”
Qhuinn thumped his own chest. “Still beating.”
“Dumb-ass.” But the Brother smiled, flashing sharp fangs. “Meh, I would have done the same thing.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Qhuinn noted that Blay was quietly and unobtrusively drifting toward the door that opened into the facility. He was going to disappear in another second and a half, finished with the drama that had once again been dropped at his feet.
Qhuinn felt a sudden, striking urge to follow the fighter into the hall and away from prying eyes. But like he needed to take another go at—
Your cousin is giving me what I need. All day. Every day.
Oh, Jesus, he was going to throw up.
“So any more personal effects?”
Qhuinn snapped out of the bullshit and got his useful on. “I’ll get ’em.”
Hopping up onto the flatbed, he forced open the crumpled rear door of the Hummer and squeezed through a twelve-inch gap to the backseat. It felt good to jam his body into places it didn’t belong and didn’t fit—gave his mind something to do, and the little ouchies from his injuries were another fantastic diversion.
The two backpacks had been bounced around pretty damn good. He found the one they’d seen first in the wheel well behind the passenger’s seat, and the other was up in front on top of the brake and the accelerator. Weird luggage for those two as far as he could tell; the pedestrian vibe didn’t go with all the other kinds of urban tuff guy that the stiffs had been sporting.
Way more middle school than middleman in the drug trade.
Unless they needed a place to put their meth lab merit badges or some shit.
As Qhuinn crabbed his way back into the rear seat, he made an abrupt decision not to go out the way he came in. Twisting himself around, he lay out on the ruined leather and brought his knees to his chest. With a sharp inhale, he punched his shitkickers into the other side door and blew it open, the metal hinges ripping free with a scream, the panel bouncing with a crash on the concrete.
Satisfying.
While the sounds echoed through the parking garage, V lit one of his hand-rolleds and leaned into the hole Qhuinn had just made. “You know they have door handles for that, true?”
Qhuinn sat up—and realized he’d just kicked open the only side that hadn’t been wrecked.
Well, if that wasn’t a metaphor for his whole fucking life at this point.
Throwing the pair of packs out, he launched himself free, landing hard as John caught the payload and started to unzip.
Crap. Blay had left. The door into the training center was just closing.
Cursing under his breath, he muttered, “Any cell phones still gotta be somewhere inside—even though the windows are shattered, the glass is still intact, so there should have been no fly-out.”
“Well, well, well…” the Brother said on the exhale.
Qhuinn frowned and looked over at what John had found. What the…hell…“Are you kidding me?”
His best friend had just pulled out a ceramic jar—a cheapo one, like what you’d get from the housewares department at Target. And what do you know. The other guy had packed one, too.
What were the chances…?
“We need to find those phones,” Qhuinn muttered, jumping up onto the flatbed again. “Anyone got a flashlight?”
Vishous took off his lead-lined leather glove and held up his glowing hand. “Right ’chere.”
As the Brother hopped up on the thin edge of the bed, Qhuinn went into a tuck and got back in the Hummer’s rear compartment. “Don’t hit me with that thing, will ya, V?”
“It’d be a spanking you’d never forget, I promise you.”
Man, that hand was handy. As V put it inside, the whole interior was lit up bright as day, all the carnage inside throwing sharp, dark shadows. Crawling around, Qhuinn reached under seats, patting with his palms, stretching into corners. The smell was god-awful, a nasty combination of gas, burned plastic, and fresh blood—and every time he put a hand down, it fluffed up the residue from the air bags’ powder.
But it was worth all the pseudo yoga positions.
He emerged with a pair of iPhones.
“I hate these things,” V muttered as he put his glove back on and took the matched set.
Returning to the relatively fresh air, Qhuinn caught his breath and cracked his neck, then jumped down again. There was some kind of conversating at that point, and he nodded a couple of times like he knew what the fuck was being said.
“Listen, you mind if I take a T.O. and check in for a sec,” he interjected.
V’s diamond eyes narrowed. “With who?”
Right on cue, John jumped in, asking about the Hummer and its rehab plan—like somebody waving a torch in front of a T. rex to redirect it. As V started talking about the SUV’s future as lawn sculpture, Qhuinn nearly blew a kiss at his buddy.
No one knew about Layla except for John and Blay—and things needed to stay that way during this early period.
As Qhuinn was John’s ahstrux nohtrum, he couldn’t go far—and he didn’t. He eased on over to the door Blay had put to good use and got out his phone. As he dialed one of the house extensions and waited through the rings, he stared at his ruined vehicle.
He could remember the night he got the damn thing. Although his parents had had money, they hadn’t felt a great burning need to provide for him as they had for his brother and sister. Before his transition, he’d gotten by selling red smoke on the sly, but he hadn’t done a huge amount of traffic—just enough to close the gap of his paltry allowance, and keep from mooching off Blay all the time.
The cash crunch had ended as soon as he’d been promoted to John’s personal guard. His new job had come with a serious salary—seventy-five grand a year. And considering he didn’t pay taxes to the bullshit human government, and his room and board were paid for, he had a lot of green leftover.
The Hummer had been his first big purchase. He’d done his research on the Internet, but the truth was, he’d already known what he wanted. Fritz had gone out and done the negotiating and the official purchasing…and that first time Qhuinn had gotten behind the wheel, cranked the key, and felt the rumble under the hood, he’d nearly teared up like a pussy.
Now it was ruined: He was hardly a mechanic, but the structural damage was so severe, it just made no sense to save it—
“Hello?”
The sound of Layla’s voice snapped him back to attention. “Hey. I’m just back. How you feeling?”
The precise enunciation that came back at him reminded him of his parents, every word perfectly pronounced and chosen with care. “I am well, thank you very much. I have rested and watched television, as you suggested. They had a Million Dollar Listing marathon.”
“What the hell is that?”
“A show where they sell houses in Los Angeles—I thought for a little bit that it was fiction, but it turns out it’s a reality show? I thought they made it all up. Madison has great hair—and I like Josh Flagg. He’s rather shrewd and very kind to his grandmother.”