Page 61 of His Dark Vendetta

The truck driver opened his window. “Hey! What the fuck?” he shouted over the patter of rain.

Lightning flashed. I jumped onto the step, pulled myself up by the mirror, and pointed the gun in his face. “Hands where I can see them.”

Thunder cracked. The semi driver showed me his hands.

I tried the door. It was locked. “Unlock the door.”

He did, then shoved his hand back in the air.

I opened the door, unfastened his seat belt, and gestured to the passenger side with my gun. “Move.”

The driver slid across the seat.

“Keep those hands up.” I climbed into the cab, slammed the door, and wiped the water out of my eyes.

“Oh man,” the truck driver said, voice shaking. “I wasn’t even supposed to be on this route tonight.”

“Face the window.”

“Don’t kill me, man. I got a kid.”

“Face the fucking window,” I said more slowly.

He did, and I pistol-whipped the back of his head. He slumped in his seat. He’d be fine when he woke up, but he’d have a wicked headache.

I honked the horn. Mikey pulled the van forward through the intersection. I gave him a half-block lead, then followed, checking my side-view mirror for Dom. The U-Haul was right behind me.

The caravan turned down the next side street, a narrow access road between two warehouses, each of which spanned the entire industrial-park block. A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire surrounded the concrete loading docks. They were barely visible beneath the torrential rain blurring the flood lights. The ventilation windows at the top of the low cement-block buildings were dark.

Nausea washed over me. For weeks, the only natural light I saw in Vinnie’s warehouse came from ventilation windows just like those. I swallowed the bile and blinked the memory away.

I pulled over and turned the semi and its headlights off. The street went dark outside the diluted glow of the loading docks, but with our heightened vision, we didn’t need more. I bound the semi driver’s wrists behind his back with a cable tie, then climbed out of the cab and jogged to the back of the truck.

Dom reversed the box truck, lining the back up with the semi-trailer. Leo used a bolt cutter on the gate lock. Mikey stayed with the van as lookout.

Dom rolled up the rear door of the box truck, and Leo and I opened the semi’s trailer. Pallets topped with stacks of game consoles filled the space. Leo opened his switchblade with asnickand sliced through the plastic wrapped around the nearest pallet. Dom climbed into the back of the box truck. I stood on the ground between them. Rain hammered my head. Leo handed me a console, and I handed it to Dom.

Our supernatural speed fueled each movement, and once we fell into a rhythm, we transferred two, three consoles at a time. But five hundred boxes were nothing to shake a stick at, and the clock was ticking.

Three-quarters of the way through the cargo, sirens wailed in the distance, a faint echo beneath the pounding rain. A reminder that anyone could round the corner at any time.

“Hurry up,” I shouted. “Move!”

We picked up the pace, loading four boxes at a time. My muscles burned with effort.

I handed Dom the last of the boxes, and the roar of an engine and glare of headlights rounded the corner. The flash of a police light bar blinded me for a fraction of a second. I blinked to adjust my vision. A car sped toward us.

Another engine sounded behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. A second black-and-white barreled into view from the opposite direction, and its siren let out a single punishing yelp.

“Cazzo! Go! Go! Go!” I waved at Dom and Leo to get in the box truck.

The first police car skid to a stop.

Leo jumped from the semi-trailer directly into the back of the box truck but struggled to lift the gate. It was stuck. Dom pulled out his piece and dashed behind the box truck toward the driver-side door.

The second squad car spun sideways to a stop, sandwiching the cargo van between itself and the semi-cab.

Two cops got out of the car on my left and pointed their guns. “On the ground!” one of them shouted. “Hands behind your heads!”

---