“Well excuse the fuck out of me for not having played dead body Tetris in a trunk before, Knox. If it all gets there, what does it matter?” I can hear the eye roll in Ash’s voice.
Knox huffs with exasperation. “We gotta have room for the rest of it, dumb-ass. River’s shit, Gage’s shit. All this shit still next to the car.”
“You do it, then.”
“I will. Move.”
Priest sighs as he walks outside with his own bag and seems to contemplate loading it himself before just putting it down next to the car for Knox to deal with.
Knox grumbles under his breath as he starts rearranging things in the trunk, and Priest is rolling his eyes when Gage and I come out.
“It’s too early for this much bickering,” he mutters.
“With those two?” Gage says. “It’s never too early for them.”
“Too early for the rest of us, then.” Priest smiles at me, a small smile that actually reaches his eyes, and I lean up to kiss him on the cheek before approaching Knox with my bag.
“If I try to put this in the trunk will you have a fit?” I ask him, half teasing.
He rolls his eyes. “It’s not a fit. I’m just saying it makes more sense to do it this way. Easier to unload, more space for shit.”
It’s funny because I never would have pegged Knox as the one to be the best at organizing, not when Gage is right there, but considering how orderly he keeps his ‘tools of the trade’ it makes a certain kind of sense.
Once everything is loaded to Knox’s specifications, we pile into the car and hit the road.
It’s weird to drive away and not see Hippo (the current name for the dog, given to him by Knox after he ate all of Knox’s take out, right from the container) in the window, barking to send us off. But since we’ll be gone for a bit, the bartender from Sin and Salvation is watching him.
I like that none of the guys even suggested putting the dog back on the street or doing anything but making sure he was taken care of. I’m pretty sure I even saw Ash sneaking some dog toys in the bag of stuff we brought over to the bartender’s house when we dropped Hippo off.
It feels weirdly domestic to be going on a road trip with these guys, and I settle in the backseat with Ash and Priest.
Gage is driving, and as soon as we back out of the driveway and get onto the road, Ash puts on a whiny voice and asks “Are we there yet?”
Gage sighs, long and with feeling, and Knox laughs.
“Ash, I swear to fuck,” Gage says.
“What, you’ll turn this car around?” Ash quips back. “You won’t stop at McDonald’s and you’ll make me eat the food we have at home?”
Knox just cackles, and Priest rests a hand on my leg, rubbing his thumb lightly over my knee. It’s a small point of connection between us, but it feels nice.
“Let’s focus for a bit, okay?” Gage says. “And go over what we know.”
That makes Ash get serious, for the moment at least, and we all sit up a little bit straighter in our seats to go over the plan. We know that Julian is expecting a big shipment of drugs. We know the route.
“When do we expect the drug runner to reach the spot where we’ll be intercepting him?”
“Four days, give or take,” Knox says.
“Which gives us two days to reach the place, and a buffer of two days in case the runner is ahead of schedule,” Gage adds.
I nod, fixing that in my mind. We have a plan, and it’s a good plan. Gage is known for making good plans, and so far, everything has been going the way we want it to.
I gaze out the window, watching the buildings and houses of the city give way to the open highway. The signs start signaling exits for leaving Detroit, and I take a deep breath and then let it out.
In my mind, I can picture Julian’s smug fucking smile when he saw me. I think of the razor I dragged over my skin afterward.
It’s his turn now, to feel what it’s like to die by a million cuts. This will be one more deep slice.
One step closer to our goal.
21
Ash
It’s a long-ass drive, and it’s kind of tedious. The company is good, but even that can’t really take away the monotony of driving for this long without some kind of entertainment.
If we weren’t on a schedule and doing something important, I’d be bugging Gage to stop at every single random tourist attraction we pass.
But I can’t, since we don’t have the time to waste. We need to make it to the spot we’ve chosen in two days, so it’ll be a long two days of driving.
All in all, it’s not so bad, though. I’m in the backseat with River, and she’s dozing against my shoulder. She stirs when we hit a curve, and I smile and put my hands on her.
“Here,” I murmur. “This will probably be more comfortable for you, beautiful.”
She just gives a sleepy little noise of affirmation, and I help her to lie down more with her head in my lap. Her feet go in Priest’s lap, and out of the corner of my eye, I can see him rest a hand on her ankle, rubbing it gently.
I look down at River’s face, her features softened only slightly by sleep. Even when she’s knocked out in the back of the car, I can see that determination on her face. In the set of her mouth, the way her eyebrows are drawn down. She doesn’t look relaxed, she looks ready.
I like that about her. I have since the moment we met. I’ve never met anyone as strong and fucking stubborn as she is, except maybe Gage.
Nothing stands in her way for long, and it’s hard to imagine a time when that won’t be sexy as hell.
I reach down and play with her hair, letting the soft, silver strands run through my fingers. Just having her head in my lap gets my cock hard. Just the feel of her resting against me is enough to have me moving toward half-mast. River turns me on just by existing. She’s just so fucking sexy to me.
I swallow hard and keep stroking her hair, letting the arousal ebb and flow through me. She’s asleep, and we’re in the car anyway, so it’s not like there’s room to do anything. But that’s a thought, though. Gage driving, forced to keep his eyes on the road. Knox in the front seat, probably grumbling about not being able to touch her. And me and Priest back here, with River spread out for us…
Okay, that’s definitely not helping the whole being turned on problem, and I try to shift my mind to something else as we keep driving. We’ve hit the stretch of interstate where there’s just long miles of nothing but billboards and other cars.
We pass families in SUVs, loaded up with all their kids’ assorted crap, cars hauling boats and other cars behind them. U-Hauls and moving vans and little sports cars that zip between the lanes, impatient with the flow of traffic.
Billboards whip by, advertising sex shops and restaurants and truck stops. A big one looms ahead with a picture of Jesus on it, weeping tears of blood. Just a few feet beyond that is another big one, advertising “XXX Hot Girls Tonight!”
I snort and shake my head at that, and River mumbles something in her sleep that I choose to believe is her agreeing with me about how stupid that is.