Page 28 of Brazen Defiance (Brazen Boys #4)

Jansen

S queezing out the attic window, RJ closing it behind me as I scramble onto the icy roof, my backpack heavy against my spine, is not nearly as exciting as I thought it might be.

Instead, I’m still caught up on Clara clinging to Walker, not even joining in the debate we just had. Not even listening. Not adding her two cents, offering improvements, asking good questions.

No, whatever happened, she was wrecked. Which is why I’m scrambling over the eaves toward the party house next door, glad that their roof is a few feet lower than ours. I run low to the shingles, the ice slowing me and flinging me off-center as I launch myself over the gap between the houses.

For a few weightless moments, I’m certain the patch of ice I hit right before I leaped will literally be the end of me, but then, three fingers of my left hand slap the roof.

I go to grip it, but there’s too much ice, and my knees slam into the side of the house, icicles shattering around me, shards of ice forcing me to squeeze my eyes shut, the swift slide to the left accompanied by the burn of all the skin I’m leaving on the roof.

I struggle to get my right hand up, but the weight of my bag makes it difficult.

That and the fact that I have to reach even higher to make it.

Doing that while fighting pain and a slip and slide on fucking jagged ice. ..it’s pretty much impossible.

So, I hold on with my left hand until the pain has passed the point of warning to danger, and then I let go, praying I’m close enough to the ground that I won’t kill myself when I land.

Unforgiving ice greets me, both my ankles screaming before I break through into the powder below. Scratches up my calves accompany the throbbing mess that is my left hand, but a quick survey says nothing is broken.

But a few steps in the icy mess tells me my right ankle is probably sprained.

Well, isn’t that just splendid.

I hobble through the icy snow to the other side of the yard, not bothering to smother my footsteps.

Whoever Trips’ dad sent to watch us will notice we’re gone before long.

We just have to have vanished before they figure it out.

Nobody is going to look for ghost footsteps in the neighbor’s yard until it’s too late.

I glance at one of Trips’ old-school fancy watches he slapped onto my wrist when I popped into his room, so we all can keep track of the time without technology, the gold band glinting in the hazy light off the back porch of the neighbor’s house. Almost four hours until the rendezvous.

Four hours to make a mess impossible to follow.

Four hours of misdirection.

Hopping the fence on the other side of the yard, I continue across the backyard of that house, all the windows dark, whoever lives there not back from break.

There are two cars in their lot out back, both shitty old things, and I debate starting here, but without knowing where exactly our spies are located, I continue for another five houses, coming out on one of the cross streets.

My ankle isn’t any happier with marching down the sidewalk than it was in the snowy mess I just trudged through, but I don’t have any other options. Not a lot of spare ankles lying around.

A few blocks down, I find a red mustang covered in a thick layer of snow, and I decide I don’t feel bad starting the job with this car. The least the owner could have done is to cover it. Obviously, they don’t love the car. I might as well help them value what they have.

You never know how good you’ve got it until it’s taken away.

Using the tool RJ made for me to steal newer cars, I get it set on the right frequency, and after a little finagling, the door unlocks. Dragging my leather glove over my mangled left hand leaves me cursing more than I think I have in the last decade, but fingerprints are bad.

Leaving bits of blood and skin in addition to fingerprints? Lethal.

I scrape the car, adjust the seat, and I’m rumbling off.

Four blocks away, I find a newer Honda that I know the device will work on, and I park the Mustang next to it, then get to work on that car.

Circling Dinkytown in the Honda, I spy an old school Land Rover I can boost manually, so I park the Honda next to it and pull out my tools. It’s hard with one hand screaming at me, but I manage it.

Two more cars boosted and parked, then I’m heading out to the suburbs.

It takes forty minutes, turning up and down streets, minutes slipping by that I’m not sure I have, but I find what I’m looking for.

I park a few blocks away in the lot of an office park, and trudge back to the place I saw, my ankle now swollen and achy.

It takes another ten minutes of digging through the attached garage, my breath halting with every creak of the wind against the walls, to find the surprisingly well-labeled bin of towing supplies.

Then, I’m pulling out of the driveway, strangely elated, having never driven one of these things before, carefully inching across the icy streets back to the car, then struggling to hitch the stolen car behind, yet another thing I’ve never done before.

And with no internet to help me out, I’m not sure I’ve done it right.

But when I pull onto the freeway, it stays hitched, so I assume I haven’t fucked up too badly.

And because I’m a bit of an ass, I pull off about a mile before I should, parking in a McDonald’s lot and unhitching.

I bring my last stolen car—a high-end SUV with after-market rims—to the spot I stole the Mustang from, parking it where the Mustang was, and with a painful skip and whistle, start the long, hobbling walk back to my prize.

Each car stolen within a mile of our house tonight will lead to another car stolen within a mile of our house. One big circle screaming ‘fuck you’ to whoever is looking for us.

They’ll have to scan far and wide to figure out what we’re actually driving. And even then, we’re probably going to switch a few more times.

Disappearing.

I never thought we’d have to.

But I never thought the girl I love would be forced into marrying my friend. Or that we’d be watched by so many interested parties, not one of them standing on the right side of the law.

I never thought that I’d leave without saying goodbye.

But life is funny like that sometimes. Saying goodbye rarely happens, not when it really matters.

I check the time—I’m cutting it close, but I’ll make it. And then?

Then we start a new journey.

A whole ass new life. The five of us. And in this one, I get to be Canadian. Why the fuck not?

Only when I get inside the dark, nasty house, I’m the only one there.

Thirty minutes until it’s go time.

Where is everyone?