Page 193 of Come Back To Me

His uncle lifts both palms to the heavens, then slaps them down against his thighs in disbelief.

I look up to Travis. His eyes narrow.Shit. He might actually kill me after today. If I survive it. My nerves are going to kill me if this doesn’t. My hands are trembling. I’m one step closer to the light.

“Just hurry up,” Vincent says shaking his head. He’s on edge like the rest of us. “We’ve got twenty minutes. That was all I could buy us.”

“What’d you say to them?”

“Told them Bills’ bike broke down on the way to us. We had to stop and get him. They bought it, but we haven’t got long. They’re expecting us at one-thirty. We need to be on the road, stat.”

The pigs start to squeal, turning all of our heads. They know something’s wrong. Their collective noise sends a horrific shudder down my spine.

“Here,” Mop says stepping forward. He holds out his hands full of trackers, his skin stained red.

“Right,” I say. I look down, the tip of my knife about to cut the thick, hairy skin.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Mick asks grumpily.

The knife shakes in my hand. “What does it look like?” His forehead rolls in confusion. “Trackers need to gointhem.”

His face turns bleak. “So, you think you’re just going to make a hole in their rubber skin and slip it in?”

I look at Travis then back to him.

“Did you forget how we do things?” he aims at Travis with a snarl.

Travis doesn’t retaliate, but his jaw is ticking ten to the dozen.

Twenty people including a child are now safe in the barn toour left, their trackers removed, courtesy of Mop and the others all working fast. I can’t say I’d given a huge amount of thought as to how we were going to pull this next part off, but Travis apparently should have, given his upbringing.

“You need to use the gun,” his uncle says. He huffs, walking to his bag. Pulling out a yellow device, he clicks it open, then picks up one of the trackers. “Should fit,” he says to himself. He slips the tracker in the end, pinches the skin on the back of the pig between its shoulder blades, then pulls the trigger. There’s a sharp click. “Done.” He slaps the pig’s rump as it moves to the pen I opened. “How many more do you need?”

“Two per crate? Eleven more.”

He laughs. It’s fake. “I want two-grand per pig if they don’t make it.”

Two fucking grand?I look at him. He knows I really don’t have time for this. “Fine,” I spit. Cheeky fuck, extorting us. I guess I did promise I wouldn’t burn him. He’s just insuring himself. Makes sense.

We proceed to put the trackers in the pigs, working against the clock. I’m sweating as our production line works effectively. “How long we got left?” I ask Vincent, wiping my head with the back of my hand.

“Down to ten minutes.”

“Fuck.”

“They eating it yet?”

The Joker nods. “Oh yeah. They’re eating,” he shouts. “Greedy fucks.”

The pig feed laced with the sleeping sedative has all but gone. I see the first pig go down with a thud. “Okay, let’s move them into the crates.”

I hear Skitz grimace as another pig goes down, and he and Beats lift it into the crate. “This better fucking work.”

I grab the feet of another pig as Jack grabs the front. Wemake light work of lifting it into our crate.

“Fucking show-offs,” Skitz grumbles.

“Two minutes!” Vincent shouts.

We all move quicker, loading up the last crate with the last pig just in time.

---