Page 111 of Collateral Claim

“Okay, fine, I hacked Endo’s phone. I see the road and the tracking signal.”

“What do you make of it?” I ask, maintaining the high speed that puts me right on top of her signal.

“There’s only one answer. They’re traveling underground,” Connor says.

Motherfucker. “How the fuck did your father dig up a metro under the fields without me knowing?”

“He was smart.”

“Smarter than you?” I ask.

“No.”

“It looks like he’s smarter than you, Con. You’re in charge of surveillance, and he slipped under the radar to build a tunnel he’s using to escape with my fucking wife.”

“Uh-oh,” Slada says.

“What?” I ask.

“You saidwife.”

“Shit.”

At that moment, the tracking signal disappears.

“I’ve got no signal,” I say in a voice I don’t recognize as my own. It sounds like the voice of a man who’s panicked, a man who’s losing control of a situation when the stakes are highest. I slam my palm on the wheel. “Fuck fuck fuuuck.” Then I hit the brakes and turn the car so that it spins the way I’m spiraling now, thinking I’ve lost everything.

I lost her.

The car stops, and smoke from the tires surrounds us. Dust lifts.

I look up at the roof. I wish I believed that if I prayed, God would deliver salvation, or at the very least empower me to deliver salvation for myself, but my relationship with God is strained.

Cass and I pushed a priest down the water well the day after he made me watch him masturbate. I guess he thought I would be ashamed, like Cass was ashamed to tell me he’d been the man’s audience for months. Yet, if there ever was a moment when I needed help, it’s now.

I step out of the car and put my hands on my hips, close my eyes, and raise my face to the skies.

“Endo,” Slada says from next to me.

“Yes?”

“Look.”

The dust settled, and up ahead on the side of the road is a man’s body. It’s the corpse of a large man with long, braided, jet-black hair. There aren’t too many big dudes with long hair, and certainly not braided. My brother is one of them.

I sprint toward him, hearing Slada yelling after me. Something about booby traps. The entire road could be lined with trip wires, and I could step on a mine and lose a leg or mylife, but my life isn’t that important if I can’t spend it with the people I care about.

And I damn well care about my brother.

When I get close to him, I slide on my knees and turn him onto his back. His beaten face is unrecognizable, but this is my brother, all right. Slada pulls up next to us and gets out instantly.

“It’s him.” Her hands fly to her head. “Is he…”

“I’m about to find out.” I press my ear to his chest and hear a faint beat. “He’s alive. Barely. But that’s good enough.”

“We sure could use that doctor right about now,” Connor says from the speakerphone.

I snort and grab Cass under his arms.