Page 2 of Ride with the Devil

A member of the Sinners Syndicate, a mafia local to this big city, da Silva is their official tattoo artist. I haven’t fucked with the gangs in Springfield before, but once I leave my hummingbird behind, these hotshots will at least know I’m flitting around.

I look forward to it.

The front door is shut, a neonclosedsign crackling in the window. Over my head, the lights are out. I hung out in my rental car earlier tonight, waiting for the blondie he’s shacking up with to leave before da Silva locked the door behind her. Now I’m banking on him being asleep in his bed alone.

Genevieve Libellula. The woman that Kelly claimed da Silva assaulted has been spending nearly every night in the apartmentthat da Silva keeps over his shop, and another reason why my gut feeling is iffy on this one. If he really held her down and fucked her in front of Kelly, would she really keep crawling back to him? Unless this is some kind of Stockholm syndrome thing…

I know all about that. Lindy kept returning to Jason no matter how many times he hurt her because she loved him even as she cradled her busted arm and put a pound of make-up on to hide the bruises. She would’ve loved him to her own death if I hadn’t shot him first, and if another woman needs help getting away from her abuser, I’m more than willing to help.

Just in case, I take the corner, dipping around to the back of the studio. Rear doors fill the back, as well as trash cans and wider delivery areas for the shops. There’s also a handful of fire escapes attached to places with more than one floor. I already know which one belongs to da Silva. I jog toward it, then take the stairs two at a time to reach the top.

The window is closed, the shade only halfway drawn. It’s dark in there, and while I can’t see if da Silva has any guests over, odds are that the artist is sleeping, blissfully unaware what’s about to happen to him.

I smile and grab a tube of industrial glue from my supplies.

I don’t waste time fiddling with it. After unscrewing the cap, I slather as much of the glue in the tube as I can into the gap where the window pane touches the sill. I push down at the top, counting to twenty until I’m sure it’s good and stuck, and re-cap the glue.

Can’t give him any easy way out if he wakes up before the fire does his job.

Bouncing back down the stairs, the metal creaking under my weight, I touch down on the pavement before the sound carries too far.

I scoot around to the front. Still no one on the street, and I stroll back to Sinners and Saints. Grabbing my lock-pickset from my bag, I get to work breaking into the studio. I’ve practiced on the same style lock in my hotel room. My record was forty-two seconds. With the real thing, I’m popping it open in less than thirty.

I’m prepared for an alarm to sound, though I don’t expect it to. Why rely on the cops when a Sinner can handle a break-in on their own? That’s what cockiness gets you, and as I slip inside the eerily quiet studio, I grin when I realize I was right.

I give myself one minute to get in and out. By the time the door is closing behind me, I already have the gloves on and the canister of gasoline open. Humming a song under my breath, I move around the studio, sprinkling the accelerant all over so that the fire catches and catches quickly. Pushing past the door that divides the studio from the stairs, I sprinkle some near the bottom one, but don’t bother going up where da Silva lives. For one, I want him to realize he’s trapped in there before the flames get him. For another, I’ve already wasted thirty of my seconds.

Tossing the canister in the studio, I yank off my gloves so that I don’t have any of the gasoline on me. They get discarded, too, more kindling for the fire. With my hands free, I grab the fireproof box I bought for just the occasion, plus the matchbook I palmed from Il Sogno, a restaurant frequented by the Dragonflies on the East End of the city. If it survives the flames, it wouldn’t hurt to cast a little suspicion on Damien Libellula, the leader of the Sinners’s rival gang—and Genevieve’s older brother.

Still humming, bopping my head to a song only I can hear—no headphones required—I strike a match and drop it into the first pool of gasoline I find. With ten seconds to go, I drop the fireproof box containing my hummingbird just inside the doorway and slip back out into the night.

I’m not going to stick around. Usually, I do. I won’t get paid if I don’t complete the job, but how exactly can da Silva survivethat? And that’s assuming he even wakes up before the smoke gets him.

But I’m pretty sure I saw Kelly lurking across the street as I slipped back out. Hey. If the client wants a front-row seat to my work now that I’m done, I’m not going to stop him. He saw enough to know that I was here. I’ll get paid.

And if I don’t? I’ll cut the rest of his cock off and feed it to him for even trying to think of stiffing me—and if he knows enough of my reputation to track me down and hire me, he’ll knowthat, too.

So I leave. As the dark interior becomes orange from the glow of the blooming flames, I adjust the headphones, brush a stray curl out of my face, and head back the way I came.

As I go, I smile a little wider, singing along to the song that’s been bouncing around in my head since I struck the match.

“‘Come on baby, light my fire’...”

ONE

WHEELS

LUCA

FIVE MONTHS LATER

There’s nowhere I’d rather be than behind the wheel.

I got a late start at driving. My parents convinced me that I wasn’t legally allowed to get a license until I was twenty-one; if I hadn’t pushed the subject, it might have been even later. Having been homeschooled my entire life, I didn’t realize that most of my peers got their permits at seventeen, their licenses at eighteen. I just saw it as my chance of escaping, and I was desperate enough to take whatever opportunity I could.

Of course, just because they finally allowed me to learn, that didn’t mean I had a car of my own. I stole theirs after they disowned me, using the twenty-year-old Buick to get me from my hometown all the way to Hamilton, a day-and-a-half’s drive away, then traded it away for a cheap, broken-down Mustang that I built back up, piece by piece.

That car is my pride and joy even now, five years after I got it to run. I have it stowed in the garage of the apartment building where I live, taking it out for special occasions. I have a discrete black Sedan Devil gave me on my first anniversary of getting my Sinners tattoo that I use when the boss doesn’t need me. Other than that, I’m driving his town car for him.

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