“What am I? An idiot?” came the answer from the backseat. “It’s hard to run a business from death row. No, thanks.”
I pulled the SUV over just as the sheriff’s department car turned on its light and sirens. When the deputy climbed out of the car, his face was blank, but I could see a twitch of displeasure in his jaw. He hadn’t gotten to play with his toy car nearly as much as he would’ve liked to. I already had my fake license in hand. . . . The registration and insurance from the glove compartment wouldn’t match, but I expected to take care of our cop problem before it came to that. Or so I thought.
The deputy had drawn his gun and had run from his car to ours, shouting, “Get out of the car! Get out of the vehicle, all of you, hands behind your head, and lie flat on the ground! Do it now!”
“Fuck,” Stefan muttered, and, cop or not, he slid his hand inside his jacket for his gun. He’d have good intentions; that was my brother—following those good intentions all the way to an internal Hell, though those intentions had saved me. He’d doubtlessly try for a leg shot, but you never knew what would happen when you were trying not to kill someone and you were both armed.
I had planned to touch the deputy’s hand when he took my license and put him to sleep. I’d say it was now time to improvise, but chimeras didn’t improvise. We moved to plan four. Plans two and three were based on a less aggressive and less intelligent deputy—balls and brains, irritating. I’d already rolled down the window and had to keep my voice low as to not be heard by the Law Enforcer of the Year outside. “Stefan, I have diabetes.” I didn’t ask if he got it or understood. My brother was smart too.
I opened the driver’s door and stepped out. I wavered a little, hands up but too floppy and uncoordinated to cup behind my head. My license fell from fumbling fingers into the dirt where we were pulled off the road. “I . . . I don’t feel so . . . where . . . I? What’s going on?” As soon as the “on” left my mouth, I bent and projectile vomited, Exorcist style. Linda Blair would’ve given me a ten out of ten for style and a record-breaking eleven for velocity. The splatter of my lunch on his shiny mirror-bright shoes distracted the deputy as I fell to the ground, to the side of my recycled lunch—that much into The Exorcist I was not—and began having a full-blown seizure. I flailed, convulsed, foamed a little at the mouth for veracity, and decreased the circulation to my lips to turn them temporarily cyanotic blue.
Stefan came boiling out of the car. “He’s diabetic! He’s going into ketoacidosis. That’s a diabetic coma, you dumb country shit. Help me hold him down.” He yelled back at the car, “Jack, call nine-one-one!”
The deputy had seen a lot of faked illnesses in his day; that was the nature of being a cop. Fake pregnancies, fake grandpa’s-having-chest-pain, fake kidswallowed-the-dog’s-squeaky-toy, all to get out of a speeding ticket. But he had never seen anyone who could vomit and turn cyanotic at the drop of a hat. He was smart, though. He didn’t drop his gun, but he stepped closer—close enough that one of my flailing hands smacked his leg. Cloth didn’t stop the touch. It was too flimsy an armor. He went down, loose-limbed and easy as Godzilla did for his afternoon ferret nap. Stefan grabbed the gun from his hand as he fell, explaining, “No need for baby to accidentally shoot us as he goes sleepy-time. Good job, Misha.” No Good job, Misha, except for risking your life when I could’ve risked mine instead and probably gotten shot in the process. Not even a Good job, kiddo. I couldn’t imagine I appeared proud while at the same time wiping the foam and traces of vomit off my mouth . . . but I was. Proud as hell. It was good to be the little brother, but it was also good to be an equal—a partner.
Stefan nodded at the deputy’s car. “Don’t forget that while you’re on a roll. You’re the computer genius. See if the car has a camera. Are we on video, can you erase it if we are, or do we need to blow the damn thing up?”
Computer genius? “I’m the everything genius”—I frowned—“and that seems either your or Saul’s criminally inclined abilities are up to something that simple.”
Stefan grinned. “You’re the newbie in this elite fighting force. I wouldn’t want to take away that rite of initiation.”
“Initiation?”
“You know,” he said, his grin wider and, I thought, more evil, “where we make you do all the scut work while we sit back, drink beer, and criticize your technique. We all go through it. Saul peeled potatoes in the military. I mopped up the restrooms in the strip club. Good times, Misha. Welcome aboard.”
“Stop playing around, you jackasses.” Saul had his own window down now. “He could have called for backup. Let’s get out of here before our secret weapon with a double-oh-seven in puke has to spray the entire sheriff’s department.”