The moon was bright enough to show a little of the ghost landscape outside the windshield.
I gripped the gun as the van lurched over hummocks and washouts.
After a few moments, Michael pointed again. Cyndra adjusted course, and the road suddenly smoothed to the whisper-jar of a dirt road.
“Access road for the tower,” Michael explained, shooting bright, junkie-with-a-fix eyes to the rest of us. He turned back to Cyndra. “Turn on the lights. Punch it.”
The lights blazed as Cyndra floored the accelerator. Pebbles pinged the side of the van.
I ejected the gun clip. Popped the slide and palmed the bullet in the barrel.
LaShonda watched with saucer eyes. T-Man nodded like he knew the first thing about guns.
We wound down the hill. The tires bit and spit rocks. At the base of the hill, a gate hung open where the pavement started.
Cyndra slowed and followed Michael’s directions. Everyone pulled their hoods and gloves off.
I kept my gloves on. Held the gun, clip, and bullet.
Michael directed Cyndra to a box store off the main road that bisected town. Parked in the lot were T-Man’s Lexus and Cyndra’s silver Mercedes.
T-Man whooped and held a hand out to Michael.
A worm, edged with razors, burrowed into my chest.
The cars were here. He’d brought the gun.
The lie about helping Cyndra, all to get me to be invested, somehow. When it was his own father’s practice he’d targeted all along. As if suspicion somehow wouldn’t focus on him, or his friends.
Or me.
The well-executed escape. Almost like he’d planned everything. Even getting interrupted. All so he could save us and get his adrenaline fix. Hero worship, adulation, and brain buzz in one great needle.
Me, the perfect fall guy.
And even though Michael didn’t know about it, now Janie and I couldn’t leave. Or if we did, it’d be a whole other proposition. Because it was one thing to leave town as nobodies. Something else entirely for me to disappear as a suspect in a crime.
And I never saw it coming. Idiot.
“Okay, Cyndra, you’ll take Beast and follow me in your car.” Michael turned to me. “Ice, you go with T-Man and LaShonda. I’m going to ditch the van and meet you back at my house.”
I shook my head. “This is where I get off.”
“What?” Cyndra’s voice reduced by the acid in mine.
I threw the clip at Michael. Then the gun. And the bullet.
“Fuck off, you psychotic bastard.” I got out of the car and then took off the gloves, shoving them in my pocket with the hood.
“Wait.” Michael jumped out and ran up behind me.
I whirled, hands up. “You going to shoot me, Michael? Is that next? What the hell was that?”
“Shut up,” he hissed. “Keep your voice down.”
“Does your great plan involve me getting arrested for your little stunt tonight? Because I fail to see how that helps you with Cesare.”
Although, I could see how my arrest would help Michael, just not with Cesare. I was his safety if the cops figured it out. A get-out-of-jail-free card. The kid with the record pulling the heaviest weight.
“Calm down, Ice. No one’s getting arrested for anything. We got away clean.”
I bit off a curse at his idea of clean.
“You know what? I don’t care. I’m done,” I said.
“Finish the job, and you can be done.”
“Screw you. I’m done now.”
Michael crossed his arms high on his chest. “Go ahead. Ditch. Don’t get the rest of your pay.”
Rage arced through me like a lightning strike.
Michael saw it and stepped back. Then he took another step back. “They were blanks, Ice. Blanks. No one got hurt. No one ever gets hurt.”
The shattering glass. The fallen guard. Blanks my ass.
He got back in the van. After a moment, Cyndra and the others got out. Michael screeched the tires as he drove the van away.
Beast, LaShonda, and T-Man got in T-Man’s car and trailed the van out of the lot. Cyndra leaned against her car, watching me.
After a few minutes, pulled like she was magnetic north, I went to her. She held out a roll of bills. “He said to give you this.”
Her crimson-tipped fingers hung there, holding the money.
The razor-worm writhed in my gut. I took the money.
“I’m to drive you where you want.”
I got in the car and turned down her unspoken invitation. “Take me to the school.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
That night I slept on the mats in the old gym. Mostly because I didn’t want to talk to Clay or Janie. Didn’t want to explain what had happened at the offices. Because that would lead to Janie getting upset that we couldn’t leave yet, and then me having to explain to Clay about Florida. And I was too tired to have that conversation now.
I needed to think. About the offices, and leaving with Janie. And something, tugging at my mind like an unraveling thread: Michael had planned it all.
Part of me expected a cop to show up. Was waiting for the blare of a siren, remembering the shots, the shattering glass, and the security guard. I was the perfect fall guy, after all.
Another reason not to go to Clay’s.
I texted Clay—asked him to tell Janie that I was okay and that I’d meet her at home after school the next day. Thanked him for taking care of her.
It was cold enough that I went into the locker room and pulled on extra layers before huddling on the frigid mats.
The gun, the shot, Michael’s eyes—shining at the turn of events. How he couldn’t have been happier, or more unsurprised. T-Man playing right into Michael’s “save.” Michael’s claim that the bullets were blanks. And Cyndra, the magician’s assistant.
I didn’t sleep.
Friday morning, the first tone sounded. I didn’t move. Just waited there.
I knew. Through the tones that buzzed across campus after each class and at lunch.
It wasn’t over.
Just like I knew Michael would come to find me.