Page 134 of Tide of Treason
Exit sixty-two flickered by.
Lucius tapped the rearview twice. Not for a cop this time.
“Don’t move,” he said calmly. “Third car back. Brown Charger. Been trailing us since fifty-five. Headlights cut when I switched lanes. Tinted windows. No front plate.”
“Make?” I asked, already sliding my phone into my bra. Priorities.
“Hidalgo family. I burned their heroin fields in South America and took out two of their nephews. Same ones who shot at us in that corner store a few months ago.”
Annoyance needle-pointed my sternum. “They waited this long to pull a sequel?”
“They don’t rush. Mexicans grieve slow. Hunt slower.”
I turned the radio to jazz. “I didn’t know you were a fan of alliteration.”
He smirked. “I have layers.”
“Layers I own,” I clarified.
And maybe I said it a little louder than necessary.
Just to make it fucking clear.
“Good.”
He took the next exit without signaling, smooth as a sigh, and merged onto a tree-lined service road. The Charger surged forward. So did my pulse. Lucius gunned it off the shoulder, slamming into the loose gravel with enough force to throw us against our belts. I clutched the handle and braced my feet as we fishtailed past a splintered billboard for WaffleHouse and barreled down a slope.
This wasn’t love.
It was inertia.
It was the unholy math of consequence multiplied by lust, raised to the power of every decision we hadn’t made and every secret we had.
We hit the clearing at eighty miles an hour.
Sunlight caught the windshield just as the lake yawned open, slick and bottomless.
“Is there a plan?” I managed, lungs burned raw by speed and the metallic taste of maybe.
“Yeah. Crash theirs. Keep ours.”
My brain short-circuited on the math—what—
He spared me half a second of eye contact, a silent assurance that this was far from his first time racing. My teeth clicked. Lucius feather-tapped the brake with a cocky heel and twisted the wheel hard left. A rush of vertigo clamped my ribs. The Charger overshot, momentum couldn’t forgive arrogance, and the Hidalgo’s whole car tipped, skidding across mud and root, before slamming straight into the edge of the ravine.
It hung there a moment, trembling, and then . . .
Fell.
A splash erupted, baptizing the sky with shrapnel and foam.
We sat in the silence of his idling Chevelle, listening to the last shuddering groan of metal in the ravine. Wind threaded through the needles overhead, a mournful obbligato.
Finally, I ventured, “Plan B?”
Lucius glanced at me, a faint flush riding his cheekbones, and pulled my hand into his lap. “We get married.”
Sarcasm tripped over disbelief and skinned its knees on bewilderment. “I was thinking gas station, bottled water—maybe Funyuns. You know, the usual.”
