“Well?” Vic asks, looking over his shoulder at me from the driver’s seat of the second stolen SUV we pinched today. This one’s a Suburban though, a bit newer but filled with children’s’ toys. Makes me feel a little guilty. Hael is driving the Armada with the body in it. That must suck serious ass—even with a mask on his face. Makes me remember the shitty coronavirus pandemic some years back, and I shiver. “Are they otherwise occupied?”

“Oh, they’re occupied alright,” I say, feeling my mouth twist into a smile. “Kali has small, shriveled looking tits from all her bulimic episodes, and Mitch’s dick is short in length and lacking in girth. Plus, his balls are weird as hell.” I pass the iPad forward again as Victor grins at me.

“Aren’t balls always weird?” Callum asks, leaning an elbow on the edge of the door. I shake my head.

“Not like these balls, Cal. Not like these.”

“Focus, please,” Oscar purrs as Aaron smiles at me with much less melancholy than he did at the gravesite. “We have a few minutes to get this done, at best.”

“You’re being optimistic,” Cal chuckles, laughter coloring his voice. “Bet Mitch blows his wad before we’re done.”

“Not taking that bet, the odds suck,” Aaron murmurs as Hael reverses the Armada so that it’s ass-to-ass with the blue two-seater car. Vic parks beside him and rolls down the driver’s side window so they can talk to each other.

“A ’69 Corvette Stingray?” Hael says, choking and coughing. I can smell the body from here. No wonder he’s got tears in his eyes; the stench is almost unbearable. “Where the fuck is Mitch getting the money for this shit?”

“Slinging coke, that’s how. Get out.” Vic climbs out of the SUV, and the rest of us follow. I’m given the iPad to monitor as the boys don fresh gloves and unwrap the body. The smell makes me gag, even from all the way over here.

We use the Suburban as a shield for our activities. Luckily, we’re on a corner lot across the street from a rundown elementary school. There are no cameras here, no cops, and the next neighbor over is hidden behind an eight-foot tall fence.

Perfect.

Callum picks the lock on the old trunk, then together, the five of them heft the body out. They shove Danny into Mitch’s trunk and then slam it shut. I glance back at the Armada and see a few stray maggots. My stomach churns, and I glance down at the iPad.

Mitch’s orgasm face is right there, front and center. My lip curls in disgust, and I have to resist the urge to roll my eyes.

“He’s done,” I say, lifting the iPad up.

“Told ya,” Aaron says as Cal flips off the trunk of the car.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Vic says, opening the driver’s side door of the Suburban. “Let’s stop at our favorite McDonald’s and clean that shit out before we return it.” Hael nods and exhales, cracking his knuckles before he switches out his gloves yet again, shoving the old ones into a trash bag that he tucks on the passenger seat of the Armada. He puts on a fresh set of gloves as I climb back in Vic’s borrowed SUV with the others.

“I feel like we weren’t as careful as we could be,” I muse, thinking about the few stray maggots.

“Forensics are good, but they can’t get you if they don’t know where to look. The owner of the Armada is out of town for two weeks on business; he’ll never even know his car was missing. How can the police search it for trace evidence if they never knew we were in it?” Vic asks, starting the engine.

“And this one?” I ask, watching as Hael pulls out behind us and we start down the road.

“The owner of this car just had surgery and won’t be out of the hospital for days. Her children are with their grandmother; the father is dead.” Oscar tells me this in a total deadpan, like it isn’t completely creepy that he knows all of that shit.

“How do you figure?” I ask, turning around to look at him. He stares right back at me and smiles. Chills trace over my arms and I shudder.

“Because that’s my job, Bernadette, to know things.”

What a fucking non-answer if I’ve ever heard one.

I don’t ask how they got the camera in Kali’s room. It’d be pretty easy to break in there, if one were so inclined.

“Your favorite McDonald’s?” I query, and Callum smiles cheerily, like he didn’t just chuck a dead guy’s body into a teenager’s trunk.

“South Prescott, no cameras, a lot of illegal activity to work under.” His smile gets a bit wider. “Plus, they never give out cold fries.”

Dark humor. But it works. I give Callum a look that he returns with a private one of his own. We have shit to work through, but it’s been—pardon the pun—buried underneath everything else. But I haven’t forgotten. I hope he can tell by my expression.

I turn back to the front and lean into my seat.

We just dropped a corpse off to the leader of the Charter Crew.

Talk about a clapback.

We order pizza and smoke weed together, and I start to realize that what I first witnessed when I joined Havoc—that day we chilled and watch South Park together—was like a … calming ritual of sorts, a bonding exercise. Adrenaline was high after the, uh, body heist, and it’s calmed down a whole hell of a lot with some community smoking.

“I can’t believe you put a dead rat in that guy’s Armada,” I say with a snort. The smell Danny left in the SUV, it was impossible to miss. Hael cracked the front window, sent one of their Havoc lackeys to find us a rodent and … voila, an easy way to explain the stench of rot.

“This job’s all about innovation,” Hael says with a grin, glancing down as his phone buzzes. His lips turn down at the corners, and I have to take a guess on whether it’s his mother … or Brittany. “Shit, I’m late,” he growls, shoving his fingers through his hair. “Time to talk to Britt’s dad.”

Britt.

The sound of the familiar nickname rolling off Hael’s tongue annoys me.

“Keep us updated,” Victor warns as Hael grabs the keys to his Camaro. He looks like … well, I was going to say death warmed over. But really, I could just say he looks like Danny Ensbrook. “And don’t lose your temper.”

Hael licks the corner of his lip in an annoyed gesture.

“I won’t, boss.” He opens the door, and I stand up from the couch, following him out. Aaron and Vic watch me go, Oscar doesn’t act like he gives a shit, and it’s damn near impossible to figure out what Cal’s up to when he hides inside his hood like that.

“You called her Britt,” I say as I pause on the path that connects to the driveway, watching as Hael unlocks the driver’s side door and turns to look at me. He seems surprised somehow, like he didn’t figure I’d care.

“You okay, Blackbird?” he asks, standing up and turning back to me.

I move a little closer, so there’s only about a foot of space between us.

“You know, I keep thinking that if this is your baby, that things are over between us,” I say, and Hael whistles, letting his body slump back against the Camaro. Seems a little weird, to talk about shit like this after what we did today, but then again, what wouldn’t seem weird right now? My whole existence is weird.