“There weren’t too many places available to procure a vehicle for today’s purpose and I know you have an aversion to borrowing.” He tossed the other bag that had been sitting on the driveway into the back.
“No, I imagine not.” I looked down the street and the only traffic I saw was a sedan packed to the gills, trying to get out of Dodge. If you were still normal, you didn’t want to be around other people anymore. It was too dangerous.
Fate came up to me and rested his hand on my lower back as we watched the SUV drive away down the street. It took with it the last thread of deniability I’d been clinging to. People were fleeing. Campers had been flying off the lot, bank accounts had been emptying and businesses were grinding to a halt.
“This is really happening.”
“Don’t sound so shocked. Live long enough and there aren’t too many things you don’t get to see.” He patted my hip in an overly friendly way but I guessed that was what happened when you snuggled in bed every night. “Come on. You ready to get some guns?”
And this was the reality now. Gun runs and ambushes. “Yep. Let’s go.”
The truck was rugged and high off the ground. It made sense. We were going on a run to get more guns. This truck was much more suited than a sports car. I started looking for a handle to pull myself up with but Fate came over and hoisted me up.
I waited until we were pulling out of the lot before I took the opportunity to talk about something that had been bugging me. “What’s your beef with Knox?”
“I don’t like him.”
I waited for him to continue but he didn’t. Who doesn’t explain a statement like that? “Why don’t you like him?”
He shrugged. “Just don’t.”
“You just met him for the first time, right?” I’d learned in these past months to never make any assumptions. That luxury died with my body in the train wreck.
“Yes. And you?” His eyes nailed me in a stare that had me torn between squirming and yelling.
I compromised between the two and caught a slight attitude. “I’ve never seen him before.”
“You’re sure? He was looking at you like he was pretty familiar.”
“I’m positive.” The relaxing ride into the country for guns wasn’t turning out to be the pleasant afternoon getaway I’d imagined. Who’d have thought? “You were kind of rough on him at the meeting.”
He shrugged. “He’s the new kid and needs to learn the boundaries.”
I was the new kid too, or at least I still felt like it. Wasn’t a great feeling. I fell quiet, not caring to explore this conversation any further with the turn it had just taken.
We drove about forty minutes inland, and I watched as the houses became more and more spread out until we pulled down a gravel drive, surrounded by nothing but woods.
“Where is this place?” I asked, seeing nothing but trees everywhere.
“There.” He pointed to a small ranch that was just starting to appear on the horizon.
I grabbed on to the handle above the door as the truck bounced all over the rough drive until we reached the house. Fate threw the truck into park and I jumped off the passenger seat.
“Here?” I hooked a thumb in the house’s direction. “I thought this was going to be an armory or gun shop or…I don’t know. But not this. What kind of guns are we going to possibly get here?” It was a large ranch but still a ranch. It had shutters, flowers painted on the mailbox and was that a gazebo I saw in the back?
He started walking towards the front door. “The kinds of guns we need aren’t sold to the public in places that say firearms in bold lettering above the entrance.”
I stared at the blue painted door with a plaque that read, “Home Sweet Home,” above it and the pieces clicked into place. Living in a house my grandmother would’ve been at home in was probably a great cover for an arms dealer, drug dealer or basically any of your run-of-the-mill nefarious types.
Fate rapped his knuckles on the glass panes of the door and someone who looked nothing like my grandpa, and had no Earthly business residing in a house like this, strode over to open it. Lanky with dark brown hair, he looked like he’d be more comfortable cruising down the highway amidst a motorcycle club of the illegal variety.
“Hey,” he said, nodding his head and forgoing the more normal custom of a handshake. “Who’s she?” he asked, looking in my direction.
“None of your business,” Fate said.
“This ain’t no candy shop.” He was looking at me when he spoke.
Okay, maybe I wasn’t in gunrunner-appropriate attire but candy shop? I turned to leave, but not because I was offended. I didn’t care enough to be bothered. All that was on my mind was the sunny day and how hanging outside seemed like as good—if not better—use of my time.
Fate’s hand grabbed my arm when I would’ve left. “Why don’t I just go—” I didn’t get a chance to say wait in the car and explain how it was for the best, hiding my true desire to feel the warmth on my skin under my noble pretense to not cause problems.
“She’s. With. Me.”
The way Fate said those three words lowered my odds of a couple of minutes of sunshine down to zero.
The guy shook his head and started walking as he said, “I swear, if you weren’t such a scary fuck, I’d tell you to go screw and to buy your shit somewhere else.”
“You have no idea what a scary fuck I can be,” Fate said as he followed Gun Guy, as I decided to call him since no other name looked like it was going to be provided.
There was something about that statement Fate had just made that sent off little warning flares in my psyche. This was my snuggle buddy at night? Another reason I shouldn’t get involved on a more intimate level. If someone said they were a scary fuck, who was I to disagree?
I followed the two but not without one last longing glance at the hood of the truck. I could’ve lain there sunning myself instead of pondering who—or what—I slept beside every night.
“I got the stuff on the list, most of it anyways. All the AK47s, assault rifles, sniper rifles…” Gun Guy was listing off the rest of the arsenal but all the numbers and letters started sounding like a bad algebra quiz. I tuned him out as he opened a door in the small hallway that led to a basement.
He flipped on light switches, illuminating the place as we went. It looked like a typical basement, fake wood paneling, a workshop to the right, washer and dryer.
“But?” Fate asked, the break in the gun list drew my attention back.
Gun Guy hesitated, his lips compressing before he said, “I couldn’t get the napalm.” He stood watching Fate and I saw the slightest hesitation as if his foot was getting ready to take a step back.
Fate looked like he was doing mental gun math before he said, “The napalm might have been overkill.”
Gun Guy grabbed one end of a clothes rack next to the laundry area and Fate grabbed the other as they moved it out of the way. The guy opened the paneling behind it.
Now this was what I’d expected, a room with cement blocks, lined with guns on every side. This was the lair of a self-respecting gunrunner, not that pansy Home Sweet Home sign.
The guy walked over to where five large duffle bags sat on the floor. “Here’s your stuff.” He reached down and placed one on the table in the center, to make it easier for Fate to rifle through it. “I gotta ask you something.”
“What?” Fate didn’t bother looking up.
I started looking through one of the bags on the ground, not that I knew much about the serious machinery in front of me but I didn’t want to look lacking.
The Gun Guy’s eyes shifted to me and back to Fate as he stalled. Articulate, he was not.
“If you want to know something, ask,” Fate barked out impatiently. “I’m not holding your hand or staying for a picnic out back.”
The words might have sounded harsher than he’d intended while he was looking down the scope of an automatic rifle. Or maybe I was overly sensitive, not being a gunrunner.