Page 29 of Wicked Rivals

At the car, I opened the door, and she and Enzo slid into the back seat, and I piled in after them. Tony got behind the wheel, then Bruce took the front seat beside him.

I would have liked to have driven Val and our son myself, but I feared I’d lost more blood than I could afford to lose and still operate a vehicle safely.

Beyond that, Tony excelled at shaking the red-and-blue tail coming our way.

We peeled away down the narrow side street.

Muted flashes of red and blue hit the car’s rear window.

Blaring sirens shrieked.

Two of the four squad cars followed us while Tony took them for a ride around Brooklyn without breaking a sweat.

Tony’s nonstop grin made me wonder for just a second if he was showing off now that he had an audience.

I redirected my focus to the boy while bracing myself for the next sharp, high-speed turn, ignoring the spiteful glare from his mother sitting between us.

He said nothing and hardly moved. He blinked out the window and held his mother’s hand.

Catching his expression proved difficult with all the jostling from Tony’s maneuvering, but I caught it a handful of times.

This child wasn’t scared.

His visible scowl hinted not at fear or concern but at anger instead, his brow furrowed around that single thin line along his forehead that echoed my own.

With his jaw tight and his back straight, he seemed determined not to let the mask slip, and after everything he’d been through, I couldn’t have been more impressed by how he successfully achieved that aim.

Once Tony put enough distance between us and the police tail, he pulled the Mercedes into an alley just wide enough for the vehicle. He killed the engine and the lights, and we waited.

Val breathed slowly but heavily as she stared through the front windshield. With one hand squeezing the boy’s, she clenched her other fist on her lap and almost succeeded in hiding the trembling of her body. Almost.

“Be smart for once,” I said.

The last thing we needed was her trying to make a break for it with the car stopped.

She seemed to realize the same thing. Her fist relaxed, and she stayed put without starting another argument between us.

The cops passed by, chasing their own tail, probably without even noticing the difference.

That trick never got old.

The boy must have thought the same when a flicker at the corner of his mouth caught my attention.

Tony inhaled loudly through his nose.

“Back to the house?”

“Yeah, but call ahead first. Make sure the doc’s awake and ready for us the second we walk through the door.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Then Bruce passed back a familiar yellow envelope.

“Hey boss, this is for you. Left behind at the shooter’s initial position.”

Tony started the car and rolled us carefully out of the alley.

I couldn’t open another one of those envelopes, not yet.

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