Page 46 of King
She laughs. “While I’m glad you’re here, you’re not letting me do shit, Dylan. This will be done with or without you.”
I groan and turn my attention back to the street as we travel deeper into one of the seedier neighborhoods in Oakland. It’s one of the areas the Sinners do business, so I knew exactly the place when Alana rattled off the address. I’m not happy she’s involved in any of this shit, but she’s right. She would have done it with or without me. I’m starting to see that’s just her personality and it won’t do me any good to try to change it.
We stop at the non-descript brick building and doom settles in my chest. “I don’t like this,” I say.
Reaper looks around the area. The sun is starting to set. Most of the three- and four-story buildings lining the street are abandoned. A sniper could be hiding in any of the empty rooms or even on the rooftops. It’s the perfect place to ambush us.
“I don’t either.” Reapers looks over his shoulder at Alana and then back to me. “It’s too easy for someone to gun her down as soon as she steps out of the car. There’s no place to hide.”
She’s a sitting duck as soon as she steps out of the damn car.
“We got company,” Reaper says just as soon as I start to call all this shit off.
When I look in the side mirror, a black Mercedes pulls to a stop behind us. The feeling of doom gets heavier. I can’t shake it.
I face Alana as she sits in the backseat. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
She smiles but it isn’t her usual chipper smile or even the mischievous one I’ve become fond of. This one I don’t like. It’s sad. It’s small. It doesn’t reach her eyes like usual.
“I don’t have a choice.”
I stare at her. It’s the same line she’s been giving me since she came back from meeting with Emilio. There’s so much I want to say but I don’t want to make this decision more difficult for her even though I want to scream she does have a fucking choice. She knows she may not make it out of this. And so do I, but I can’t stop her no matter how much I want to. All I can do is try to protect her from the shadows.
I give her a curt nod. She opens the back door and steps out, but I make the quick decision to make sure I’m by her side so Emilio Messina knows she’s not in this alone.
She reaches the sidewalk and I meet her, intertwining our fingers. She looks at me and I want so bad to pull her into my arms, to protect her. But I can’t because if I do, I won’t let her go. She squeezes my hand like she’s trying to reassure me she’ll be okay even though she knows she might not. I return the gesture even though I also know she might not. Then we start the short distance to the back passenger door of the Mercedes in nervous silence.
The dark-tinted window rolls down as soon as we stand next to the car, and I come face-to-face with Emilio Messina. I’ve only seen pictures of him. He looks much older than he did in those.
“Are you ready, Alana?” he asks.
Before she responds, I lean inside the window. “If anything happens to her, that’s on you. I’m warning you now, I will come for you with the full force of the Sinners.”
He smirks. “I expect nothing less.”
I stand and face her. “I’ll be right behind you. Don’t do anything that’ll get you killed.”
She nods and kisses me on the lips. “Take care of yourself, Dylan.”
Before I can respond to her goodbye, she opens the door and slides into the backseat.
“How long are we going to sit and wait?” Reaper asks.
We’ve been parked down the street from Alana and Emilio. We’ve been waiting at least twenty minutes and they still haven’t exited the vehicle.
“I don’t know.” I run my hand down my beard. “Maybe they’re working out the details.”
“Or he’s offing her, himself,” Reaper mumbles.
“Shut the fuck up!”
I thought about that too, but I didn’t need him to voice my concerns out loud. I’m barely hanging on to my sanity now.
“What’s the plan?”
“Once they go in, we follow.”
“And if there are any lookouts, guards?”
