Page 33 of The Highwaymen

The wail of sirens cut through the night, growing louder by the second. Someone must have called the cops when they heard the gunfire. We had to move. Now.

“Jamie, baby, we gotta go,” I said urgently, cupping his face in my hands. His eyes were still glazed and unfocused. “Can you stand? We’ve got to go now.”

Jamie blinked slowly, my words finally seeming to register. He nodded jerkily. “Yeah. I think so.”

“That’s my boy.” I helped him to his feet.

He blinked and swayed, unsteady, but he didn’t go down.

I turned to Tammy, who’d gone back to sit in the doorway of the Airstream, clutching Deacon’s body. “Tam, honey, I'm so sorry. But we can't stay here. Cops are gonna be crawling all over this place any second, and the cartel’s gonna be right behind them. You gotta come with us.”

Tammy raised her head, her one good eye blazing with grief and rage. “Fuck the pigs! They can lock me up. I don't give a shit. I ain't leaving my Dee-Dee!”

“Don’t be stupid, Tammy,” I snapped. “Deacon wouldn’t want you behind bars. Not for him.”

Tammy glared at me, tears and snot mixing with the blood on her face. For a long moment, I thought she might tell me to fuck off and stay with her dead husband.

But then something in her eye shifted, hardened. With a shuddering breath, she pressed a final kiss to Deacon's forehead and gently laid his head on the ground.

“Alright, you bastards,” she said, gripping her bloody side. “Let’s get this show on the fucking road.”

Tammy staggered to her feet, swiping at her tears with a bloodied hand. She snatched up the M16 and stalked towards us.

Jamie and I wasted no time. I sprinted for the truck, pulling Jamie along with me. The night air was cold as fuck against my naked skin, but I hardly felt it, too pumped full of adrenaline. I yanked open the passenger door and shoved Jamie inside. Then I vaulted into the cab after him, Tammy hot on my heels. She slammed the door shut behind her as I jammed the key into the ignition. The truck roared to life, headlights cutting twin beams through the darkness.

In the rearview mirror, red and blue flashing lights crested over a distant hill. Shit. No more time.

I stomped the gas pedal to the floor, and the truck lurched forward with a throaty roar. Tires spun and kicked up gravel before finding traction. We peeled out of the junkyard in a cloud of dust and exhaust, the smell of burning rubber filling the cab.

My head throbbed intime with the lurching of the semi, every bump in the dirt road sending a fresh lance of agony lancing through my brain. I blinked, trying to clear my blurry vision. Everything seemed to waver and tilt at strange angles.

Sticky wetness matted my hair and ran down the side of my face. I reached up with a shaking hand to touch it and my fingers came away stained crimson. Blood. So much blood. It coated my naked skin in macabre swirls and spatters, some of it mine, most of it belonging to Romeo's goons. The coppery reek of it mixed with the stink of sweat and fear in the close confines of the cab.

In the driver's seat,Stu gripped the wheel with white-knuckled intensity, his jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth might crack. Blood and gore were splashed across his face and chest like war paint, turning him into a feral, primal thing. His eyes blazed with barely contained violence and I shivered, my cock stirring traitorously at the sight. Stu in a rage got me hot like nothing else.

Behind us, Tammy sat in the sleeper cab with the first aid kit sprawled out around her, trying to patch up her wounds.

My eyes fluttered shut, the ache in my skull making it hard to string two thoughts together. In the sleeper cab, Tammy let out a pained groan.

“I think my tits stopped some of the bullets,” she said, her voice shaking. “But there's one stuck in my side. Hurts like a motherfucker.”

“Hang in there,” Stu growled. “I know a doc in Escondido. He's discreet, he'll patch you up real good.”

“He better,” Tammy muttered. “Deacon got me these double-Ds for our fifth anniversary. I ain't letting no back alley butcher hack 'em off me.”

I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the passenger window, watching the desert landscape blur past in the pre-dawn gloom. My stomach churned, and I swallowed back a wave of nausea. Fucking concussion. If I ever saw Romeo again, I was going to crush his skull like a watermelon.

Anger bubbled up inside me, cutting through the pain and fuzziness. “You should've killed him,” I spat, glaring at Stu. “You had Romeo dead to rights. Should've put a bullet right between his eyes.”

Stu's hands flexed on the wheel. “I coulda shot you, you fucking idiot!”

“So? You still shoulda taken the shot,” I growled.

I stared at Stu, my concussed brain struggling to process his words. Why the hell would he care about shooting me? It's not like we had some grand love affair going on here. I was just a piece of ass he'd picked up on the side of the road, a warm mouth to stick his dick in when he got horny. Sure, the sex was hot as hell, but that didn't mean shit.

At the end of the day, I was nothing to Stu. Just another hitchhiker, just another easy fuck. He'd drop me on the side of the road again as soon as he got bored. So what if he accidentally put a bullet in me while taking out Romeo? I was disposable. Replaceable.

I'd learned that lesson the hard way, from every John and every so-called foster parent who'd used me up and tossed me aside. Stu was no different, even if the sex was a cut above the rest. He didn't give a single fuck about me.

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