Page 10 of If You Go
The Irishman glances back. “We’ve dogs t’ sniff fer accelerants. Lab lads t’ swab residue. If dere’s danger left behind, we’ll find it.”
Joshua edges closer to me, phone out, thumbs flying. He’s already texting Sam O’Brien, we met him a few years back with a home renovation in Seattle. He wanted a nice remodel, but with some secret rooms to hold weapons and leather. If you catch my drift. Corver mutters something about “footage” and peels off toward the truck, lost in his screens.
I follow Juniper inside. The crunch of glass under our boots sounds like bones breaking in the silence.
When we enter, I am even more stunned. The shop is completely unrecognizable. June was right. It does look like a bomb went off. I think that might have been what actually happened.
The front windows are jagged holes, glass scattered across the floor like ice. Spray paint covers the walls in thick black slashes—words scrawled, threats I don’t recognize, symbols that look more ritual than random, almost like Runes. Stations overturned, chairs split, ink bottles smashed and smeared like bloodstains across the tile. The smell of chemicals hangs heavy, sharp, and wrong.
Juniper’s hand shakes as she lifts a fallen frame—what’s left of one of her first drawings. She presses it to her chest, shoulders trembling. Josh hovers too close, jaw tight, ready to swing at shadows.
The Irishmen fan out, moving as efficiently as soldiers. Which I suppose, they are. Two bring in dogs, sleek and lean, noses pressed to the ground while another snaps pictures. Another crouches near the counter, swabbing what’s left of the charred residue. The leader strolls slowly, scanning everything, hands in his pockets like he owns the place, an unbothered king is what Juniper would typically call someone like that and I snort at my own thoughts.
I step closer, my voice low and clipped. “What does this have to do with you?”
He looks at me, eyes sharp, smile thin. “Yer askin’ de wrong question, lad. Ye should be askin’ what it has t’ do wit’ her.” He jerks his chin toward Juniper—then toward Hazel’s name scrawled on the wall in dripping paint.
My stomach drops. Hazel.
Josh’s phone buzzes. He glances at the screen, his face hardening. “Sam says this isn’t random. His sister’s car was torched last night. Threats came through after. This was aimed at her. Juniper and Hazel are collateral damage.”
The Irishman hears him and nods once. “Aye. Ye’re in deeper dan ye know. Stefan’s already movin’. Keep yer eyes open, lads. ‘Cause dis… dis is only de beginnin’. Dis is war.”
The words hang in the wrecked air, heavy as ash.
Images from old mafia reels flicker through my head–families warring in the shadows, vendettas carried out in alleys and back rooms, blood always spilling where it shouldn’t. There’s never just one target. Collateral damage follows like smoke after fire. Businesses burn, wives weep, sons inherit grudges older than themselves. I used to watch those films and think they were stories, exaggerated, distant. But standing here, glass still crunching under my boots, it doesn’t feel like fiction. It feels like foreshadowing.
And for the first time since I was a twenty five year old kid, I feel the ground shift under me.
CHAPTER THREE
HEADING DOWN THEelevator with Alisha and Hazel to rush over to the tattoo shop, panic tightens in my chest. The text message from last night burns like a brand in my pocket. I keep rehearsing how to tell them, when to tell them, but every version ends with their faces breaking—hurt, betrayed, angry that I kept it from them. But by the time the doors glide open to the underground garage, I’ve talked myself out of saying anything. I’ll just… keep holding it in.
The elevator doors slide open, spilling that harsh glow of fluorescents across the garage floor. For a heartbeat, I think maybe the light’s just too bright, maybe tha’s why it looks wrong. But as the four of us step out, the silence hits first. No hum of the air system. No dripping pipes. Just…ruin.
The car sits in the center of the garage, or what’s left of it. Mycar.
The hot pink Audi RS6, my pride and joy. The present I receive from my dad just two months ago. It isn’t a car anymore. It’s a crush can, a half-flattened skeleton of metal and glass. The roof’s cave in as if something dropped straight form the sky. Every window has exploded outward, glittering shards scattered across the concrete like spilled diamonds. One Tire’s complete shredded; the others sag, the rubber split and melted form the pressure. The front half looks…pulverized. Like it was run over by a goddamn tank.
Hazel gasps beside me. “Holy shit. What even—what could’ve done that?” But I can’t barely hear her, let alone see her. What I do hear is the shrill sounding echo reverberating in my brain from the cavernous walls in the garage.
Alisha’s hand flies to her mouth. “Was anyone down here?” she whispers, scanning corners as if expecting someone—or something—to still be here.
“No.” My voice sounds foreign. Hollow. “I parked it last night. Nobody’s been down here since. Or, I wasn’t alerted to anyone else, anyways.”
Richie crouches by the wreckage, squinting. “The tires didn’t burn out. Theyburst. From inside out. That’s pressure. Like it got…crushed.” He runs his hand along the hood, then pulls back when his fingers come away smeared with a dark oil stain. “Whatever did this wasn’t human hands. It was a machine of some kind.”
I step closer, glass crunching beneath my boots. The smell of coolant, oil, and something burnt—rubber maybe—hangs thickly in the air clogging my throat. Or maybe those are the tears I haven’t let fall. My heart hammers in my chest. Not fear, exactly. Just that sharp, crawling awareness thatsomeone’s been here. In my space.
Then I see it, somehow untouched by the surrounding debris.
A single sheet of paper lies dead center of the roof, pinned beneath a fragment of the wind shield. The white stark against the mangled metal, the handwriting unmistakably shark and deliberate.
A note. With my name on it. In handwriting that brings a chill to my spine.
I stare at it for a long moment before moving, as if it might explode if I get too close. The others try to grab me, telling me to stay back. But I can’t do nothing. My pulse pounds in my ears as I slide the glass aside and lift the page free.
Up close it’s the same. Untouched by the surrounding oil and dust, it had obviously been placed after the damage.
