by Zoey Parker
If Fang was one of the men shooting, I figured he would have ignored me if he thought I was dead or if he didn’t see me hiding underneath the man in black from the back seat. I put my bound hands against his against his back and held him above me, creating a pocket of air where I could breathe.
I wanted to call out for help, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself while Fang and the other guy might have still been in the car. I sat and controlled my breathing, keeping it slow and quiet, trying to calm my body.
Adrenaline rushed through me, but it was really unnecessary. I was not about to hop up and try to run anywhere. I wasn’t about to try to fight my way out of the car. I was fine right where I was for the time being. If working for Fang had taught me anything, I knew that sometimes it was just better to sit and wait things out. Sometimes situations really did handle themselves.
I listened as Fang cursed and called for his men.
“This fucking glass,” he shouted. “Did you see anybody?” he asked the other guy in the car.
“No, sir, not until they were shooting at us,” the goon answered.
“How the fuck did they sneak up on us?” Fang yelled.
“I don’t know. It looked like they didn’t have their lights on,” the guy said.
“Hey, are you okay back there?” The body shifted above me as Fang checked to see if he was alright. He wasn’t. I could have told Fang that, but I was trying to hide.
“I think it’s just us, boss,” the other guy said again.
“Where’s Sasha? Did she get thrown out of the car?”
Their conversation sounded so normal and casual against the silence of the night outside. The gunshots had ceased. Everything had come to a complete stop. It was as if the Overlords who had ambushed us had left us here on the side of the road, convinced we were dead. I wasn’t okay with that. I wanted to be rescued. I wanted to be reunited with Cole so I could apologize for everything and start trying to make things right between us.
“No, sir, I think she’s still inside,” the other guy said. I could feel the front passenger seat moving against my back. A light came on, probably the flashlight app on one of their phones.
I closed my eyes and held my breath as the bright white light filled the car. I figured if I held very still underneath the dead man lying above me, they wouldn’t see me.
“I see you,” Fang said, laughing dryly. “Sasha,” he called me.
I kept my eyes closed and sat as still as I could. If he did see me, maybe I could convince him I was dead. He wasn’t buying it.
“Sasha, look at me,” he said. His tone told me he wasn’t going to give me the opportunity to be dead. Even if he had been calling out to my corpse, I probably would have answered his commanding tone.
I looked up from underneath the body.
It looked like Fang’s goon was holding the phone so Fang could see me. Fang reached down and slid the other guy off of me so he could see me plainly. I didn’t stand a chance now. I had nowhere to go, and Fang knew I was mostly okay.
“I’m coming back for you,” he croaked. “Don’t go anywhere, Sasha. We still have business to finish. Remember, this is your fault. If you hadn’t slept with Cole and betrayed me, none of this would have happened. All the blood that has been shed today is on you.”
I tried not to laugh, because the only response I could think of was to say that some of it really was on me. At least my sense of humor was still intact. If nothing else, that was enough to let me know I was okay.
“I figured you’d have something smart to say for yourself,” Fang continued. “I’m even more disappointed in you now, Sasha.”
I heard his seatbelt unbuckle as he started to climb out of the car.
“Come on,” he called back to his passenger.
“What about the girl?” he asked as he unbuckled and climbed up behind Fang.
“We’ll come back to get her. She’s not going anywhere,” he called from outside.
With both men gone, the light was gone, too. Soon, my eyes adjusted to the moonlight spilling into the car from the open windows facing the sky. I could see enough to see the seats riddled with glass that sparkled in the moonlight. The scene was eerily calm and beautiful. Without the weight of the dead man bearing down on me, I was able to finally catch my breath.
I still couldn’t do much about moving around. With my wrists tied, it was surprisingly hard to grab ahold of anything and use my upper body strength to pull myself up. My ankles being bound made it difficult to stand. I was in trouble if I couldn’t get out of the car before Fang came back, but if they weren’t alone outside, I figured I had a little more time to figure out how to make my body work for me in my current condition.
Then it hit me. I could use the glass. There were shards of glass all over the car. If I could just get one and run it across the rope and tape around my wrists, I could cut myself free, as long as I didn’t cut myself too terribly in the process.
Alas, that was easier said than done. I couldn’t seem to find a piece large enough for me to hold it right. I kept dropping them at my feet. Luckily, I still had shoes on. I could hear the glass crunching beneath me with every step.
“Come on,” I said to the empty car. “There’s got to be something I can use.” I looked around frantically, trying to find something I could use to scrape my ropes and tape so that I could free myself, but all the glass was small, and in my panic, my eyes were losing sight of the details. It was as if the car was growing darker, as if the light was fading from the moon.
I groaned and slumped against the back of the passenger seat. At least if someone was out there, I had a chance of getting rescued since I’d been unable to do it myself.
Suddenly, the silent night was split open by more gunfire. I ducked, even though my chances of getting shot seemed significantly lower now. I moved so that I was against the backseat instead of in front of the back window. I looked out the window, but the frame around it had been crushed, and I could barely fit my hand out, much less the rest of me.
Something hit the roof of the car, and I could hear someone yelling.
Gunshots starting ringing out pretty steadily. Honestly, it felt like a hopeful sound. The sound of guns meant that Cole and his Overlords were still out there, and they were coming for me. I couldn’t imagine Cole leaving without me, or without at least checking to make sure if I was alright.
“Cole!” I called out, sure I couldn’t be heard over the gunshots, but I wasn’t about to stop. I called for him a few more times.
I slumped back down against the backseat and waited as the gunfire seemed to get closer and completely encircle the car. While I listened and waited, my mind wandered.
What had Fang and his other goon been up to while it had been so silent outside? Surely, they had been doing something. Had they simply been working out a plan of action? Had Fang called for backup?
I didn’t know much about the cabin hideout. I didn’t know if he had people in the area he could call for backup or if all of his goons were back in the city. I didn’t know if it was really just a cabin or a compound that he just referred to as a cabin. I really hoped it was the former. I wasn’t sure how close we were, but we felt a lot closer to the cabin than we did to the city. If he had people coming down from the cabin, Cole and I were in big trouble.
“Cole,” I shouted again, straining my voice against the night.
“Shut her up,” I heard Fang yell at his goon.
“Want me to shoot her, boss?” he asked.
“I don’t care what you do, just shut her up,” Fang answered. “You know what? Fuck it. Shoot her if you have to. We’re going to do that when we get up to the cabin anyway. Might as well handle it now.”
My heart stopped. If Cole or one of his Overlords didn’t show up, and fast, I was a goner. This was it.
“No, no, no,” I repeated as I looked around the car for either a way out, a weapon, or a way to cut myself free.
Both Fang and the other guy sou
nded like the bikers were keeping them busy, though, so I had that working for me.
The corpse! The body of Fang’s other goon was still in the back seat with me. He’d been carrying a gun when they put me in the car. I started digging through his pockets.
“Sorry, man,” I told him. “It’s nothing personal, but you’ve got something I need right now.”
My hands wrapped around a pistol in his jacket pocket and I pulled it out.
“Hey, little lady,” a voice said above me, and it was the living goon, poking his head in the window.
I tried to point the gun at him and pulled the trigger. He ducked to the side. I missed, but I was close enough to stall him. However, my hands were so damn awkward, the recoil kicked the gun out of my hand and it fell into the darkness beneath me.
“Shit.” I knelt down and tried to find it. I reached around on what was now the floor, but I couldn’t find it. I just ended up scratching my hands up with the shards of glass that had fallen at my feet.
“Need some help?” the voice returned.
“Smart-ass. If you’re going to shoot me, just go ahead and fucking do it. Spare me the bullshit,” I told him. I stopped searching for the gun and stood up. I tilted my head up to face him. I wasn’t even going to try to avoid it or fight it anymore. I was ready to accept my fate, but something told me this guy was too chicken shit to pull the trigger at such close range.
He scrambled to get into position above me so he could get his gun inside the car and aim it at me. As he worked to steady himself, he waved the pistol in his hand back and forth in front of me.
As soon as he looked away, I grabbed his wrist and bent his arm the wrong way against the door, jumping as I did so that I would jerk his arm down as I landed. The gun went off, shooting the dead man in front of me, but then he released it.
“You bitch!” He grabbed his wounded arm and rolled off the car.
I was now stuck in the car with at least two guns and a dead man with two people outside who wanted me dead, and countless people shooting at them who seemed to have no idea I was inside, alive.
Chapter 24
Cole
We could see our targets now. We spotted them by the muzzle flare as they shot back at us. From what I could tell, there were two of them—Fang and one of his goons. They’d ducked behind the car, using it as cover while they shot at us at intervals.
“Alright, guys,” I shouted at my men over the gunfire, “surround the car. We’ve got to take them down. Leave Fang for me if you can. Someone find Sasha. She may still be in the car.”
I didn’t check to see if anyone nodded, flipped me off, or otherwise acknowledged what I was saying to them. I started walking to the car with my gun in front of me. I saw Fang duck around the front of it, and I didn’t care what else happened, I was going to shoot his ass. Before everything was said and done, I was going to eliminate him. The other guys were more than able to handle the other shooter and get Sasha to safety.
We’d started shooting again when we saw a phone screen light up. The night had been silent and almost pitch black for some time after Fang’s car had come to rest on the side of the highway, but we heard voices from inside the car.
Then, there had been a light from within the car, as one of them had probably turned on a flashlight or a light app on their phones. We stood back even then and waited. We wanted to see how many people, if any, came out of the car.
Only two emerged, which meant that we’d definitely taken out the other goon. It also meant that Sasha was likely still inside the car. I’d still told the guys to hold their fire and stand down while we watched what the two men were up to.
One of them tapped his phone screen, and I could see Fang’s face illuminated perfectly from underneath. I could see his dark eyes staring down the phone, and I watched his mouth move as he was saying something to the man standing next to him.
I cocked my gun and waited. I couldn’t tell what they were doing. It looked like Fang was about to call for backup or for someone to come pick him up, but I wasn’t about to allow that. I took a shot, but he quickly moved out of the way.
The man had quick reflexes. Watching him in action, it was easy to see why so many people on the street compared him to a snake. The way he moved seemed almost unnatural, as did his dark eyes. They were quite possibly contacts, but I didn’t know anyone who’d spent enough time around him to know. I certainly wasn’t going to ask Sasha about it.
That was when everyone else began unloading on the two men. They fired a few rounds back at us, but for the most part we had them cornered behind the car. We advanced on the car. The gunfire calmed as Fang and his goon seemed to be regrouping and my guys were circling the car. They were so cornered and so screwed. I was surprised they hadn’t given up yet. It occurred to me as well that they could have just texted someone to come for backup, and that would have been a good reason for them to hold out as long as they could.
That wasn’t going to fly with me. We were going to end this now.
“Fang,” I called out. “I know it was you behind the thefts, man. Your girl told me everything.”
I stood with my back to the underside of the front end of the car. I could still feel the heat from the engine. It hadn’t cooled off completely yet, reminding me of how quickly everything was happening even though time felt like it was almost standing still for us. The night certainly felt still enough. The gunshots cracked through the darkness, echoing in the woods along the side of the road.
The interstate was dead, adding to the timeless feeling of the scene in front of us. The moon didn’t even seem to be moving in the sky above. Everything was still. Even we became still as we stood and waited for someone to make the first move.
I had seen Fang duck around the front of the car, so I crept slowly around, expecting to find him, but he wasn’t there.
I heard him shouting at the other gunman, and I stood back to watch what they were doing. I heard a gunshot from inside the car, alerting us to Sasha’s presence. Then, I saw the other gunman scrambling atop the car before rolling off.
“Fang!” My voice rang out in the night like a gunshot.
In the near perfect darkness, I saw his face snap in my direction. I saw those dark eyes focus on me. He raised his gun, but he didn’t shoot. Instead, he ducked around behind the car, leaving his man on the ground holding his arm. I couldn’t tell if he’d been shot or if something else had happened to him.
“Dammit,” I cursed under my breath. “Where the hell is everybody?”
It suddenly felt like the world had come down to just myself and Fang. Everyone else, everything else, had faded into the darkness of the night surrounding us.
“Come on, Fang, stop trying to delay the inevitable, man,” I called out into the darkness.
I pressed myself against the hood of the car and started to creep slowly back around.
“Guys,” I called out to my men, “I think Sasha’s still in the car. Someone get her out, but be careful. I think she’s armed.”
“On it, boss,” someone called out behind me. I could hear footsteps on the car as someone climbed up to get her.
I crept around the front end of the car until I stood on the interstate side of the wreck again.
“I’m not delaying anything,” Fang said as I came around the car. We stood face to face for the first time since our little feud began.
He had been able to elude me for years, and we were finally standing right next to each other. I almost wanted to put my gun away and shake his hand. Someone as successful as Fang—and successful in as many different areas as he was—almost demanded respect. And I would have been willing to admit that he had earned it if he hadn’t been stealing business from us. At the same time, though, that was how competition worked. He stole some of our business, forcing us to do a better job in order to earn that business back or pick up new clients to replace the old ones.
At first, I wondered if Fang was even a real person or just the name of his
gang. He had been that elusive. No one had seen him, even though everyone knew his name from his prostitutes and call girls. He was well known among the gambling rings as well, and a few of those guys had claimed to see him on a regular basis.
I wasn’t entirely sure how it happened, but it came to pass that a lot of his gambling associates had gone out of business over the years, robbing him of gambling business the way he had robbed us of weapons and security deals, but none of that could be traced back to us. A lot of those gambling rings were broken up by police. It seemed like anyone who admitted to knowing Fang had become a target.
As we turned up the heat on his clientele, he turned up the heat on us, stealing more of our business, and eventually resorting to stealing my product so he could cut into my drug money. I still wasn’t sure exactly how he expected to grow a sustainable drug business if all he was doing was stealing from me to sell what he’d stolen, unless he was working on getting to my supplier.