Page 69 of The Loves We Lost

Then Niro checks again.

With his fingers, he gestures.

Three . . . Two . . . One.

And then we burst in, when they’ve both expounded enough energy that they are too tired to fight us. Niro puts his gun to the man we believe is from the Righteous Brotherhood and pulls the trigger.

“Oh, god. Thank you,” says the man who works for the docks.

“Don’t know what your deal was with this group,” I lie. “But we’re going to give you two grand, and you’re going to let us walk out of here with their delivery.”

Niro raises his gun at the man to reinforce the point. “Driver’s license,” he says.

The man shakes his head. “I don’t have it with me.”

Niro laughs. “Dude, you color code the binders on your desk. Of course you have your fucking license on you. If you make me look for it, I’m just gonna pull the trigger instead. Makes my life easier.”

“Fine. No. Stop. I got it.” He fumbles for his wallet on the desk and pulls his identification out. The name on it says he’s Frank Paige. I take a quick photograph of it with my phone and send it to Vex to trace who he is.

“We now know who you are. In less than five minutes, we’ll know where you live, have access to your bank accounts, and will know the middle names of your parents and children if you have them. Fuck with us, and we fuck with you.”

“I won’t.”

“Just heard you try to renegotiate with this asshole,” Niro says, toeing the corpse on the floor with his toe. “You try that shit with us, you’ll end up the same way.”

“I won’t. I can help you get out.”

“Good. And for that, we’ll help you get rid of this body,” I say.

With Vex’s help, we’ve hacked into the dock security system and turned off the emergency lighting and security cameras so we can move freely. Vex estimates we have twenty-seven minutes before there is a problem, since the security guards here are slow as fuck to respond to anything.

I make Frank help Niro carry the body down to the water and toss it in. “Now you’re an accomplice,” I tell him. “You rat on us, I’ll say you were paid to help.”

“I won’t rat.”

“Good, because there’ll be two grand in your bank account by the time you get home. Try explaining it to the cops and see if they believe you.”

“Or you can just take a fucking holiday from this shit on us and go about your life,” Niro says.

“We need their shipment opened up. We need it loaded into our van. And you need to make it happen.”

“I can do that.”

Within eighteen minutes, the load is in our van. Russian weapons. Old-school shit like early Kalashnikovs. We’re selling them on to some paranoid fucker who told us he didn’t want AK-47s because he believes there are chips in them that track the user. Doesn’t even know that AK stands for Avtomat Kalashnikova, and we aren’t gonna tell him.

“To the Outlaws,” King shouts ninety minutes later when we’re back at the clubhouse, weapons hidden, knocking back shots.

“To the Outlaws,” I reply before knocking back the tequila Spark has told me is smooth as fuck.

He’s right. It goes down like a shucked oyster.

Memories of Vi and me in Maine flood through me. The night I took her virginity, we went to a small seafood place andate oysters that were salty with squeezes of fresh lemon and splashes of chili.

I want new memories with her, with Avery. And to make them, I need to be honest with my president.

“We have a short break now, yeah?” I ask King.

“I’m likely gonna have to put the club on lockdown tomorrow when the Brotherhood realizes we’ve stolen their shit and disposed of their contacts.”