by Kyla Stone
A big Suburban nosed into a smaller Chevrolet Spark, forcibly shoving it out of line to squeeze in front of the nearest pump. Metal scraped against metal as the Spark driver screamed insults at the Suburban and shook his fist.
No one had brandished a gun—yet. Everyone looked tense, angry, and afraid. The whole place looked like it was ready to explode into violence.
“We’ve still got more than two-thirds of a tank,” Carson said.
“Don’t stop,” Logan said.
A battered Toyota was parked along the grassy shoulder between the road and the gas station’s lot. Two young white guys dressed like rednecks leaned against the hood. They smoked cigarettes and watched the chaos at the pumps.
As the F-150 drove past, they both turned to stare at the truck with hungry, hooded eyes. They were probably out of gas already or lacked the cash to pay the outrageous prices.
The first one—shirtless and so skinny Logan could’ve counted his ribs—reached for the handgun tucked into the saggy waistband of his shorts.
Logan lifted the Remington and rested the barrel on the passenger window frame.
The second punk’s eyes widened. He elbowed his friend and shook his head. Not worth it.
“It’s sure as hell not,” Logan muttered.
He kept his eye on them until the truck was out of range. Those two were going to carjack someone—if not today, then tomorrow.
The more desperate people got, the more they were willing to risk violence. And the longer the city went without a law enforcement presence, the more emboldened the punks and thugs and douchebags of this city would become.
“They’re acting like…animals,” Carson said, clearly shaken.
“They are animals,” Vanessa snapped. “Did you expect them to behave any differently?”
“They’re scared like the rest of us,” Shay said quietly. “They’re trying to take care of their families. They’re just trying to survive.”
“I would never behave like that,” Vanessa insisted. “Never.”
“You never know,” Dakota said. “When you get desperate enough, you do things that surprise even yourself.”
No one said anything after that.
They drove past a family trudging along the sidewalk pulling an empty wagon behind them. A middle-aged Haitian woman swept up glass and debris in front of a hair salon. A teenage girl with a giant orange knit bag slung over her shoulder shuffled down the street, staring mindlessly at the pavement, her dark, stringy curls limp in the heat.
A Volkswagen Beetle appeared in the rearview mirror about two hundred yards behind them. The car didn’t speed up or appear to be a threat.
Still, Logan didn’t let his guard down.
About fifty feet down a side street, a dozen cars were crammed together in the middle of the pavement. On the next street, it was the same.
At first, it seemed like an accident—some kind of major pileup. But the cars looked as if they’d been pushed there by something big, like a kid organizing his Hot Wheels into a reenactment of an accident rather than the real thing.
The fine hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
“Logan,” Dakota said. He heard it in her voice—the same uneasiness he felt.
“I see it.” Logan’s muscles tensed. “Something’s wrong.”
26
Logan
Logan scanned the buildings alongside the road—everything was quiet and still.
Too still.
“We should go around,” Dakota said. “Backtrack.”
“Not again,” Vanessa whined. “We’ve wasted the entire morning! At this pace, we’ll be trapped out here with the hoodlums till nightfall!”
Carson gestured toward the windshield. “It’s clear ahead and much faster.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Logan’s pulse thudded in his ears as he studied the buildings and streets, searching for movement, for anything amiss. “It’s worth it to go around.”
“Every second we stay out here just adds to the danger!” Vanessa argued, her voice rising in panic. “You saw those people at the gas station. And what happened last night. It’s not safe!”
“Doing something stupid without thinking things through won’t change that,” Dakota said.
“It’s our truck,” Vanessa said. “We decide. Carson, just go.”
Carson pursed his lips and put the truck in gear. “We’re going through.”
They drove forward.
“It could be a trap,” Dakota said, anger and disgust in her voice. “What’s the point of bringing us along if you’re not going to do what we say? This is bull—”
“We said no!” Vanessa cried, her eyes bulging. She looked desperate and panicky, ready to do anything to escape the city, including clawing someone’s eyes out.
“Dakota’s right,” Logan said. “It’s your truck, but I’m not getting killed for your stupidity. Turn the car around.”
“Did you not hear what we just said—”
“Turn it around!” Logan clenched his jaw as he twisted in his seat and raised the Remington.
Carson glanced at him, appalled.
Vanessa didn’t. She looked at him like a cockroach crawling out of a garbage can—something grotesque, but not surprising. Like she’d known all along he was nothing more than a violent criminal.
“You’re hijacking us,” she said flatly.
“I don’t want to, lady. But you’re not leaving me any choice. Now back up and turn around.”
Carson gripped the steering wheel. “I can’t turn around with that huge dump truck ahead of us. Just let me pass it and I’ll do what you want.”
“Back up,” Logan growled. “Right now—”
“I can’t. Just—I’m doing it, okay! Point that gun somewhere else!” Carson slowed the truck as he maneuvered around a large yellow dump truck taking up half the road.
Dakota swore loudly.
“Oh, no,” Carson breathed. “No, no, no.”
On the other side, two dozen men armed with semi-automatic weapons waited for them. The men stood in front of an SUV and an old dusty red pickup parked sideways in the road. One of them stepped forward and waved for them to drive forward.
“Go back!” Vanessa cried.
“Too late,” Logan said.
There wasn’t space to do a U-turn, not with the dump truck blocking most of the road and another car already stalled in the left lane. Whoever these guys were, they’d planned it this way.
On their right, the Airport Expressway, or SR 112, ran parallel to the side street, which hit 32nd Avenue in a T-junction. 32nd Avenue ran beneath the expressway. Just beyond the Airport Expressway wound the elevated rails of the Metrorail train.
To the left on 32nd Avenue squatted a bank, a Taco Bell, a McDonald’s, and a Publix, all screened by a row of tall, skinny palm trees.
Logan adjusted his grip on the rifle. He lowered it so it was hidden by the passenger door to anyone glancing at the truck from outside. “Whatever you do, be polite,” he said under his breath. “If they ask for something, if it’s in your power, give it.”
Vanessa’s face went slack. “Those aren’t police officers. They can’t walk around with those kinds of guns. They can’t stop us like this!”
“It’ll be okay, dear,” Carson murmured. “Just—just do what Logan says, okay?”
Vanessa didn’t answer.
Carson eased the Ford toward the guy waving them down. He buzzed down the window.
“Where ya headed?” the man barked, aiming the muzzle of his AR-15 at Carson’s head. He was Hispanic, maybe mid-twenties, tall and skinny with a do-rag and a giant tattoo of a tiger inked across his shoulder and chest.
The twenty or so guys guarding the road were Latino. They wore baggy shorts and tanks, bling draped over their chests, and tattoos sleeving their arms, necks, and faces.
Logan’s gut—already nauseous—tightened.
Two more gangbangers sauntered up along Logan’s side. The talle
r one’s AR-15 was slung loosely over his shoulder. He was just a kid, fifteen, maybe sixteen, with huge ears sticking out on either side of his head like a jug.
The second one was shorter but bulkier, his Miami Dolphin’s T-shirt straining against his bulging belly. No more than fourteen, he gripped an AR-15 in his fleshy hands.
Both kids wore ammo pouches belted around their low-slung waists and carried shortwave radios; a pistol grip stuck out of the chubby kid’s pocket.
“What you doin’ with these gringos, ese?” Dolphin said with a grin.
“You guys Blood Outlaws?” Logan asked casually, not even meeting the kid’s gaze.
“Yeah,” he said proudly. “We’re the new Kings of Miami.”
Blood Outlaws. Exactly the gang they didn’t want to run into.
He’d shot a Blood Outlaw in the Old Navy after they left the theater. The thug had threatened them; Logan did what he had to. It was self-defense, but no gangbanger would see it that way.
Worse, there’d been a witness, a second thug who escaped out the back door. Logan had wanted to chase him down then and there, but the first Blood Outlaw shot Shay in the head. To save her life, he’d remained behind.
He hadn’t seen the second thug’s face. He didn’t know who he was looking for. But if the thug had gotten a good look at him…
Cold iced his veins. He felt exposed, completely vulnerable.
Logan didn’t want to draw any extra attention to Dakota, Eden, and Shay in the back. He didn’t turn around in his seat, but he could feel their eyes on him, could feel the tension ratcheting up inside the cab.
No way he could take on twenty guys with a hunting rifle and the few bullets remaining in Dakota’s Sig. The Blood Outlaws would riddle them with high-powered gunfire and kill them all within seconds.
One wrong move. One mistake. One thug glancing at him the wrong way.
That’s all it would take.
Logan kept his expression carefully neutral. Hopefully, none of these scumbags would recognize them. But just in case this all went sideways fast, he was already forming a crazy-ass plan.
27
Logan
“There’s a tax,” said the guy with the tiger tattoo. “Pay the tax, you’re free to go.”
“What’s the tax?” Logan asked evenly.
“It depends. What do you have?”
Two more guys circled the truck like sharks, eyeing it for anything of value. “What you got in the back?”
“Just two injured people we’re trying to get to a hospital,” Carson said.
“You and everyone else.” Tiger Tattoo snorted. “Good luck, ese.”
“We’re looking for food, mostly,” the kid with big ears like a jug said. “And water.”
“We’ll take cash, jewelry, watches.” Tiger Tattoo let his gaze roam over the Ford F-150. “And sweet rides. Which you’ve got.”
Carson stiffened. Logan flashed him a look, warning him to shut the hell up. Luckily, he did.
“We’re taking care of our own,” Jughead said, even though no one asked what the tax was for. There was a slight waver in his voice—and his movements. His bronze skin had a yellowish tinge to it, and his eyes were wide and glassy. He took a step back from the window and pointed across the street. “No one else doin’ it. So we will.”
Radiation sickness. Logan pretended not to notice and looked where the kid pointed.
A bunch of Hispanic kids—a few black kids, too, all in their early teens—were standing around a bunch of pallets and two forklifts in the Publix parking lot. The kids were busy handing out packages of bottled water, along with crates and cardboard boxes stuffed with boxed and canned food.
A straggly line of people—the elderly and families with little kids climbing all over their legs—waited to receive their boxes. They were mostly Hispanic, but not all of them. Some had battered cars or bicycles, others were walking. Everyone left with several grocery bags or a box or two of supplies.
“We worked most of the night gettin’ it all done,” Dolphin boasted.
He wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his bare arm. A constellation of raw, red cuts and welts marred his arm from his wrist to his shoulder. A few peppered his throat and chin as well. He must’ve been standing near a window during the blast, and hadn’t escaped the shattering glass.
“We’ve got outposts all over the city now,” Dolphin said. “I mean, not downtown. But everywhere else. Some of the churches are helpin’, too. They don’t wanna know where it’s from, but they still take it.”
“Father Michael says a prayer over it.” Jughead snorted like that was the funniest thing in the world. He was clearly sick but doing his best to act like he wasn’t. “Says it ‘sanctifies’ the food, whatever the hell that means.”
“What about everyone else?” Vanessa asked sharply, unable to contain herself. “What’re they supposed to do now that you’ve stolen all the food from the stores?”
Dolphin’s eyes hardened. “No one else ever cared nothin’ about us. Why should we care ‘bout anyone else?”
“Let the rich gringos starve,” Tiger Tattoo said. “What’d we care?” He narrowed his eyes at Carson and Vanessa, at the pearls circling Vanessa’s throat. “You got places to go, fancy-ass hotels and second homes and yachts. What’d we got? No one can afford to leave here, man. This it. This our home.”
Logan looked past Tiger Tattoo at the group of restless thugs. Most of them were leaning against the two cars parked on either side of the road about thirty yards away. A few men sat on the hoods, drinking beers. Several coolers were pushed up to the front wheels of the SUV.
These guys didn’t seem intent on mayhem. On closer inspection, at least half of the gangbangers looked physically ill. They were hunched or slumped, their thousand-yard stares listless rather than malicious.
They were hot and miserable and just wanted to keep the line moving.
All Logan’s group had to do was pay the stupid tax and the gang would let them go. If they were lucky.
“It’s a really good thing you’re doing here,” Carson stammered. “Don’t misunderstand us.”
Tiger Tattoo scowled. “Man, I ain’t askin’ your permission or your approval.”
On Logan’s side, Jughead tapped his rifle nervously. “We got another car behind this one. We gonna let ‘em go? What about their guns?”
Logan stiffened, his finger moving toward the trigger.
“Relax. We don’t need your guns, ese. We collected us plenty of donations from Charlie’s Pawn and Gun Shop and Pantera Brother Firearms.” Tiger Tattoo patted the bandolier slung across his chest, which bristled with shiny ammunition. He lifted his rifle and mimed shooting at several invisible people over the roof of the truck. “Bam, bam, bam!”
Vanessa flinched.
Tiger Tattoo saw it and gave a hard chuckle. “Those pearls real, lady? I’ll take ‘em. My abuelita will like those just fine.”
Vanessa went rigid. “This was my grandmother’s. This is all I have left.”
“So what? Give it up, lady. Now.”
Carson coughed.
She still didn’t move.
Tiger Tattoo took a hand from his rifle and rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing. “We don’t got all day—”
“Hey!” One of the thugs leaning against the SUV thirty yards away stood and took a few halting steps toward the truck. Tiger Tattoo looked back at the guy, who waved a hand and gestured him over.
“You two take care of this. I gotta see what Spider wants.” Tiger Tattoo jogged over toward the other gangster, a spindly punk who couldn’t have been taller than 5’6. His skinny arms were almost black with ink. His long, narrow face was inked with a skull on his right cheek, charcoal tears on his left.
Sometimes the small ones were the most dangerous.
“Gotta get that necklace,” Jughead said. “Then you’re all good.”
“We’re fine,” Carson murmured. “It’s fine, honey. We’re gonna be fine.”
“Give it to them,” Logan said.
Reluctantly, Vanessa unclasped her necklace and handed over the pearls. Jughead grabbed them, thrust them in his pocket, and smiled. He looked a lot younger when he smiled. Like he belonged in school, an ice cream shop, or even a damn church choir, not on the streets.
He stepped back, Dolphin beside him, and gestured with the muzzle of his rifle. “Move on through.”
Logan expelled a breath through his teeth.
“Finally,” Dakota muttered. “Drive. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Carson shifted the truck into drive. They rolled slowly forward.
Tiger Tattoo stood next to the skinny, inked thug, who turned to stare straight at Logan.
Electricity exploded through Logan’s body as he caught the flash of recognition in the other man’s eyes.
28
Dakota
Dakota sat in the rear left passenger seat, tense and alert, scoping out three half-drunk gangbangers who kept eyeballing the truck in between swigs of warm beer.
Logan let out a string of curses.
Her stomach sank to her toes. She knew what it meant. One of these low-life gangbangers had recognized them. The crap was about to hit the fan, now.
Logan slapped the dashboard. “Go, go, go!”
“What?” Carson asked, blinking. “They’re letting us through! They’re—”
“Hey!” The small, scary one with the teardrops inked on his cheeks pointed at them. “They the ones that killed Potillo!”
“Stop!” Tiger Tattoo shouted. He spun and raised his M4. “Get them!”
The rest of the gangbangers snapped to attention. They leapt from the cars’ hoods and jerked to their feet, immediately spreading out to block the lane between the two vehicles.
Within two seconds, a dozen assault rifles were aimed at the truck’s windshield.