Chapter 22
Autumn
The desert twilight was as beautiful as it was haunting.
The sun had just dipped below the distant mountains, giving the landscape a sharp contrast of soft pastel hues and long eerie shadows. Tonight more so than every other night; the cloudy yellow-red sky looked extra fiery. I shivered against the surprising chill in the air when Dante opened the door.
It felt like the series of ominous headlights bobbing down the dirt road toward us brought with it an abrupt change in the seasons. The unusually hot fall was officially over.
Ahead of us was only a harsh, unforgiving winter.
“Do you remember what I taught you about driving a manual?” Dante quickly fastened his pants and ran over to a small table covered in framed pictures of his family.
“Yeah, I guess?” Everything to do with working the stick and clutch was fresh, but frustratingly hazy. I was pretty sure I remembered all the steps. Whether I could do it successfully or not was anyone’s guess. I cleaned myself off with his discarded shirt and dressed as fast as I could. A pit was forming in my stomach at his weirdly anxious demeanor.
With one sweeping arm Dante cleared off the table and pulled a black, plastic gun case out from beneath the floor-length tablecloth. I jolted from the glass-encased memories shattering all across the concrete floor.
There was something heartbreaking about seeing them so easily discarded.
“Shit!” When Dante realized all the guns were still on the table up in the gym he violently slammed his fist down, then threw the empty case across the room. Dante froze, lost in thought. I could practically see the gears turning in his head as his eyes darted around the room. Finally, he dashed over to a large warning-sticker-covered, metal cabinet bolted into the wall.
“What’s going on?” I walked toward him. He had the cabinet open and was hurriedly unscrewing the tops on all the various containers of liquids that lined the shelves. “You’re kind of freaking me out here.”
“Get back in the car!” Dante shouted at me with dark eyes that were as wild as a cornered animal.
His frantic urgency startled me back a step, but it was what I saw in his eyes that made me realize that something was very, very wrong.
Fear.
I didn’t think anything on earth could possibly rattle a man like Dante Marks.
Who were these people?
“Stay quiet and keep your head down.” He snapped sharply, then was on me a second later roughly moving me back into the still running Plymouth. Looking past me at the rapidly approaching vehicles, he continued in a much quieter tone, but with the same intensity, “The controls are mostly the same as the Ford you practiced in, only much older. When things get bad you need to drive out of here as fast as you can. If you see headlights behind you don’t stop until you reach a police station.”
“When things get bad?” I protested. Now I was terrified. “What do you mean? What is all this—”
“Whatever happens DO. NOT. STOP.” Dante repeated firmly through a scowl. He slammed the car door between us and paused a moment to give me a hard look through the window. Of the torrent of emotions that crossed Dante’s face, surprise wasn’t among them.
I put a hand on the glass touching the spot where his hand would’ve been had the window not divided us. I had so many questions that I knew would never get answers. What’s going on in your mind, Dante? What is all this? I only had time to ask the most important one. “Please tell me we’re going to be alright?”
Dante averted his eyes and said nothing.
His lips pulled into a straight, white slash across his suddenly cold and unreadable expression. Glancing up at me one last time before pulling his hand away from mine, I no longer saw Dante. His deep, mysterious eyes had turned cruel. A different person stared back at me; a hard and dangerous stranger whose past had finally caught up with him. And the look on his face was unmistakable.
You were wrong, they said. It’s not OK and never will be.
Then like a man walking out to meet his firing squad, Dante walked down the length of the car to stand protectively in front of the open garage door. With everything his father ever built at his back, Dante defiantly faced those that had just arrived.
Tentatively I poked my head up just enough to see out of the driver’s side window. I got a decent look at the sedan, and five motorcycles that came to a stop in front of Dante. One after the other they blasted their high beams, causing Dante to squint against the aggressive light. They definitely weren’t the police and they were too rugged to be anyone from production.
Who else could possibly worry Dante?
“There he is!” Came a gravely, yet light voice from the opening passenger-side car door. Leaving the door wide open, the broad male form rounded the car to step in front of one of the headlights. It gave his already imposing silhouette something of a full body halo and a sense otherworldly dread. “What’s with the grave look? Shit, son! Family reunions are supposed to be fucking joyous occasions.”
I quickly adjusted the rearview mirror so I could still see most of what was going on while crouched down on the seat. Between the dwindling sunlight and the high beams from the vehicles, couldn’t make out most of the man’s features, aside from him being clean shaven and having short, slicked back hair. I could tell by his voice, outline and walk that he was in his mid-to-late forties and at least half a foot taller than Dante. He might not have been as beefy as Dante, but it was hard to tell in his jacket.
Either way though the guy was enormous!
“Where’s the rest of the family, Mitch?” Dante scoffed, pointing at the much younger bikers. “I don’t recognize any of these toddlers. Where’s Craig, Jim and Toph? And I don’t see Melissa anywhere”
“I am the family.” Mitch’s jovial voice deepened, growing more severe by the syllable. He held an old revolver in his and took several menacing steps toward Dante. “What can I say? They all went their separate ways.”
“Like me?” Dante asked. Surprisingly his fists weren’t clenched. The franticness that consumed Dante had evaporated like gasoline on hot pavement. I still couldn’t get a read on Dante, and that unsettled me even more. It was like he reverted back to some hidden personality he had before I met him.
“Not like you.” Mitch flashed Dante a disdainful look, then fished a handful of bullets out of his pocket and casually started loading the gun. The bullets entered the cylinder and rotated with a lifetime’s worth of practiced ease and the regular, steady click of a countdown timer. “But then again, you were always special.
“You were always my favorite son.” With a flick of his wrist, Mitch locked the chamber into the now fully loaded gun, then gave it a spin. “How I have missed you, Jack.”
Jack? Who was this guy and why was he calling Dante Jack? What the hell was going on?
“How’d you find me?” Dante was utterly unimpressed by the show.
I wasn’t nearly as coolheaded. I curled up in the fetal position on the seat and was practically shitting myself over seeing the gun. It was one thing to practice safely at a firing range, but to have some stranger waving one around was terrifying.
The power of a gun was so viscerally recent that I shivered at the thought of what a bullet could actually do to a person—what it could do to us!
“Oh a little birdie sent me a link of you going all action hero with that actress girl. Once I figured out that you were the son of the Crash Teller, finding you was a piece of double key lime pie. You should’ve told me. I’d have loved an autograph. I’m a big fan.”
“Got a garage full of them.”
“I can see that.” Mitch leaned to the side to get a better look. He whistled excitedly as he recognized various event posters and rattled off the makes and models of the motorcycles that were used in some high-profile stunts. “Goddamn, that’s quite the slice of Americana you got there. Hard to believe you left all this just to come play with us. You add your own trinkets to that room since you been back, stuntman?”
“A few.” Dante shrugged, cocking his head toward the garage. “I’d ask if you’d like a tour, but you were never the sentimental type.”
“All this time…” Mitch doubled over laughing in disbelief. “Hiding right in front of our fucking noses. We’ve been looking for you and we never bothered to check the goddamn television. Ken showed me your IMDB page before we came out here. I’ve actually seen a lot of the movies you were in and had no idea, can you believe that shit?”
“You always were a ballsy mother fucker, Jack.” Mitch paused, incredulity seeped into his thick voice. “I guess it’s not Jack, is it, Dante Marks? Or is it Dante Teller? You were my right hand man for longer than I can remember and I didn’t know the first damn thing about you. I’m not too proud to admit that that hurts a bit.” Mitch shook his head, looking genuinely wounded. “Shit, son, does anyone know who the fuck you really are?”
God help me if I had anything in common with that psychopath, but I was wondering the same thing.
This was all so difficult to wrap my head around. We’d shared so much with each other. Over these past few weeks I felt like I was starting to get to know the real Dante, but here I was sitting as quiet as possible, hiding from what was obviously some kind of gang. I felt gross even thinking it, but Mitch was right.
Who was Dante, really?
“I didn’t trust you for years. You really think I was stupid enough to tell you my real name back then?”
“No. And that’s what I liked about you, you clever sonofabitch. You always knew how to play the long con.” Mitch paced around Dante in a wide arc, studying him.
The long con? Was Dante some kind of con man? That didn’t feel right. There had to be something else to this.
“So stuntman, how much did you tell your lady friend about us?” Mitch came full circle and stopped.
Lady friend? Was he talking about me?
I froze. How did they know I was here? Did they see me run into the car?
“Knowing you, probably not much if anything at all.” Mitch frowned. “Turns out you’re quite the secretive bastard.”
“She’s a client. I’m just getting her to where the studio needs her to be.”
“The studio needs you to fuck her in the back of a vintage nineteen-thirty-eight?” Mitch’s eyes flicked down Dante’s shirtless body. “Your hotdog stand’s open for business.”
“The car’s a nineteen-thirty-seven.” Dante zipped his pants.
“She in love with you yet?”
“They all think they are.” The dismissive tone in which Dante said that struck a somber chord in me. “At least for a little while.”
Don’t think the worst of him, I reminded myself. This was a crazy situation; Dante was probably doing what he thought he needed to just to keep us both safe.
“Ha! Aint that the truth!” Mitch clasped Dante on the shoulder and laughed uproariously. A darkness flickered across his mirthful demeanor, then like a lightening strike. Mitch backhanded Dante with the gun, dropping him to a knee.
“No!” I screamed, drawing Mitch’s sharp, serious gaze directly into the rearview mirror I was watching them through.
“I deserved that,” Dante cleared his throat, spitting out a disgusting, fleshy, red wad of blood.
“Who took you in when you had nowhere to go? I did. I fucking taught you everything you know. I made you into a fucking man!” Mitch screamed down at Dante, stabbing his gun into Dante’s shoulder, head and back. He looked completely unhinged. It was horrible to watch. “Then all of a sudden you abandon us, abandon me? In the middle of a job? I ought to put you in the fucking ground right fucking now!”
“I can’t make you rich if I’m dead.” Unconcerned about being shot, Dante batted Mitch’s gun away, then stood back up. Raising one hand up to show that he was unarmed Dante slowly pulled the wallet out of his back pocket. He handed a black metal card to Mitch and dropped everything else. “This will make you rich.”
What game was he playing? Run! Get out of there! It took everything from me not to close my eyes and scream.
“Hmm.” Mitch snatched the card away and flipped it over in his hands. He clicked his tongue, obviously irritated with his own curiosity. He thumbed the gun’s firing hammer back and forth between the ready and resting position while he considered Dante’s offer. “My thumb’s getting awfully tired. You going to tell me what this is?”
“The longest con in history.” Dante spoke with absolute conviction. He didn’t take an offensive stance or try to protect himself from another hit. He simply waited until he had Mitch’s undivided attention. “That key card will get you into the financial records mainframe at Lionhouse Studios. With that card, and the CEO, the billion—with a capital B—dollar payout I have planned would make that San Francisco job you blundered a little while back like chump change.”
What? A heist? No. Dante couldn’t be serious. That wasn’t the man I’d been getting to know these past few weeks. But what was a few weeks compared to nearly fifteen years? I felt sick. It was harder and harder to hold onto any hope whatsoever.
“And let me guess the card will only work for you.” Mitch snorted, shaking his head. He was clearly frustrated that none of this had gone the way he planned, but had cooled off enough to at least listen to Dante. I was just glad he stopped waving the pistol around like a madman.
“When my father died, I saw my opening and I took it.” Dante spat. Seeing the side of his bloody face already starting to swell made my insides cringe into knots.
“And you didn’t feel compelled to contact me at all in the last three fucking years to tell me what you were up to!” Mitch’s eye twitched. Skepticism was written across his face and seething anger boiled just below the surface.
I shuttered at what he might do if he didn’t believe Dante.
“They’re much smarter than you think. You honestly think they would’ve believed that I had really changed if they caught me calling you?” Dante wiped the side of his bloody face then leveled a hard glare on Mitch. “After all they found you when even the cops couldn’t. That’s where the little birdie came from, right?”
Wait, what? Was Dante implying that Lionhouse sent these lunatics here? That didn’t make any sense! They knew I was here. I’m one of their main stars! If I was hurt or…something worse they wouldn’t be able to make their movie! Wasn’t that the whole point of training me so hard in such a short amount of time?
Mitch snorted, amused. He put a hand on his hip and let everything Dante said sink in. Finally, he smiled and hugged Dante hard. “Clever sonofabitch. I knew there must’ve been a good reason for you to disappear. I fucking knew it!”
Dante hugged him back like an old friend. Was he really telling the truth? Was all of this some elaborate game to him? I was flooded with all the moments that we shared and felt light headed.
Was everything he ever told me a lie?
“If Lionhouse sent you, then we’re going to have to move fast.” Dante broke off the hug and glanced at the rest of the crew. “There’s a lot of planning left to do for this job. We should get going.”
“What’s the rush?” Mitch scoffed insulted. “Your family comes in to visit and you aren’t going to even show us around? You’re better than that. I raised you to have manners.” Mitch took a stern fatherly tone, then raised his gravely voice to make sure I heard him. It was terrifying how quickly and easily he shifted from moods. “It’d be rude to not at least introduce us to your friend. “Come on out and say hi, Autumn Moore,”
Hearing my name come out of Mitch’s mouth shook me to the core. I gasped at the sudden tapping on the back window of the car with the butt of a revolver, but otherwise stayed motionless.
That information shouldn’t be available online anywhere! Sarah, my public relations contact, censored the crap out of the training videos I posted on my channel, not that Dante was ever in any of them. Dante wasn’t even officially attached to this movie. There shouldn’t be any connection between Dante and me.
Maybe Lionhouse really did send them…
All the car’s windows suddenly darkened with bodies as the rest of his crew surrounded me. Some had their guns out, others didn’t, but they all tapped the car and all called my name. Despite their young age they all taunted me with the menacing demeanor of hardened criminals.
The only thing that kept me from fully freaking out was that the doors were all locked. I’d made sure of that when I got in the car, not that that would stop any of them for long. They were on the roof and the hood, windows cracked and doors rattled as they pounded. This was hard sleet in hell; it was my worst nightmare come to life. That’s when I noticed I had started to cry.
I was going to die.
“Enough!” Dante roared, tearing a Hispanic boy off the hood like he was a stuffed animal. “Get the fuck off my car.”
“You know the drill,” Mitch paused raising a scrutinizing eyebrow at Dante. “She’s a witness; we have to kill her, Ja— Ah!” Mitch smiled as he waggled his finger goofily. “Jack. Dante. What do I even call you know? I mean you spend years cursing out one name, then you got to learn a whole different name for the same guy…but hey, that’s no excuse. Manners are important. That’s how we grow as people, right? Right!”
The rest of the crew stopped and reluctantly agreed in unison as if their teacher had just addressed the class. It finally struck me how young they were. They were all kids, not more than sixteen or seventeen years old, and all from different ethnicities. The diversity of the gang would almost be endearing if they weren’t trying to kill me.
“You heard the man, get the fuck off his car. We’re not animals. That’s a goddamn classic, and you little bastards will show it some respect.” Mitch glared at the kids until they obeyed.
Were all these kids runaways? Everything made a little more sense, in a horrifying brainwashing sort of way. It was frightening how emotionally manipulating Mitch was. How long did Dante have to live with this guy? No wonder he had trust issues.
“My apologies, I promise that won’t happen again.” Mitch pet the side of the car lovingly, then whistled loudly. “Anyhoo. Hector! Kill Dante’s girlfriend.”
Dante snapped a hand over Hector’s arm before he could pull the gun from the waistband of his puffy-crotched pants. “That’s a mistake.”
“Ow fuck!” The boy whined, squirming against Dante’s vice-like grip and dropping the lit cigarette from his mouth. The rest of the crew were quick to start shouting and aimed their guns at Dante.
“You are making it really hard to trust you, Jack. It’s like your first fucking day all over again.” Mitch pushed the revolver into Dante’s head, but Dante refused to release Hector’s arm. Disappointment washed over Mitch’s face. “No attachments outside the crew. That was rule numero uno, Buddy. Did Rhonda’s death teach you nothing?”
“Her name was Rhoda.” Dante grimaced through notes of bitterness and regret. “Greek for rose.”
“That’s what I fucking said.” Mitch growled, then got in Dante’s face. The gun pushed his head so far to the side that his ear almost touched his shoulder. “What? You think I don’t fucking know the members in my own fucking crew?” Then he abruptly calmed and tried to appeal to Dante. “I get it, I do. Shit, I made the rule against fucking unnecessary casualties. I’d rather die than hurt an innocent bystander or someone not in our way.
“I’m not the bad guy here, son.” Mitch lowered his gun, then instructed the rest of the crew to do the same. Dante released Hector. “I’m just the one that has to make the hard call. She’s seen us, heard us, and can identify us. I’m not doing this for me; I’m doing this for them; for my family. It’s her or all of us. And that includes you too.”
Mitch searched Dante’s face, then burst out laughing. “Are you kidding me? She doesn’t know any of it does she?”
“I’m not one to kiss and tell.” Dante cracked his neck and cleared his throat; his expression was darkened clouds before a lightning storm. Whatever this was Dante didn’t like it. And with a crew like this I could only imagine how hard this event must’ve been for him.
“Oh come on, I fucking love that story. Shit, that might even be my favorite story, and you know what? I don’t think the crew has even heard, well maybe Tonya. She’s been around the longest. Gather around everyone, it’s story time.” Mitch lightly slapped Dante in the chest, then pulled a glass flask of some kind of alcohol out of his pocket. It looked similar to the flask Dante had in his first aide kit. Mitch took a swig, handed it to Tonya, a Caucasian girl who looked to be the oldest of the group, then waived the rest of his crew over. They filed in against the driver’s side of the Plymouth, rocking the car’s weight.
“So there we were, pulling a bank job in San Bernardino, had to be twelve or thirteen years ago.” Mitch spread his arm out and really got into the story. “We were fucking on that day. Everything was falling into place perfectly. We had the right outfits, nailed the guard rotation, everything.”
“None of this is necessary.” Dante’s fists finally began to ball up. There was only so much of this he could take.
“No, no, no. It’s important. It was a big day in your life and it should be celebrated.” Mitch was genuinely insistent, the same way a parent might recount their child’s graduation. “Cowboy security guard was packing and wanted to play hero. It happens sometimes, but not often. Usually they just cower and call the cops, but not this grizzled, old fucker. He had the look of a real hard ass to him.
“Anyways while we’re cleaning out the vault, this fucker creeps up on us. Our backs were all turned; he had us dead to rights. From the reflection on a polished metal lockbox, Dante catches the guy going for his gun. Dante turns, draws and fires before the cowboy can get the shot off. It was fucking magnificent! Fastest damn draw I’d ever seen. I mean real show down at the OK Corral kind of impressive.” Mitch wore this enormous cheshire grin as he acted out the speedy draw with his own gun. The rest of his crew passed the flask around and cheered at parts.
“Did he smoke him?” One of the kids asked after a long, bitter sip of whatever was in that flask.
“Dante only clips the guy’s leg, but! He still gets the cowboy to drop his gun. Now this was all surprising as hell for me. You see when Dante first joined my crew, for as ballsy and clever as he was; he stayed a little too green for a little too long. To be honest I wasn’t sure if he was cut out to be one of us.
“So being the good Dad I am, I knew I needed to step up and help him become a man.” Mitch broke his attention off from his crew and leveled the gun directly on me. I screamed, scurrying as far back into the passenger side of the car as possible, but he still had a clear shot. The only thing between us was a thin piece of glass. I’d never get out of the car in time and if I did there was nowhere for me to go. I was trapped. “It took a little convincing, but in the end Dante did the right thing for his family. One shot, nice and clean, right between the eyes. The cowboy didn’t feel a thing.”
“No. Please.” I whimpered. Staring down the long barrel of a gun put things into perspective. I wasn’t too proud to beg. I was in so far over my head. I was just a girl who made silly YouTube videos. I never signed up for any of this; I just wanted to help my mom.
I didn’t want to die.
“Mitch.” Dante stepped between the two of us. I closed my eyes, not bearing to watch. “I don’t care what you do with her, but we can’t kill a fucking celebrity. There’s no faster way to get the whole country looking for us than—”
The crack of a gunshot split the air and quieted everything, the birds, the insects, even the breeze. It was only when I gasped in air that I realized I was still alive. But when I opened my eyes, Dante was gone.
“No!” I screamed. Crying, I threw myself at the driver’s side window to see where Dante was. Touching my forehead to the glass I could just barely see Dante lying on the ground, a pool of blood spreading out beneath him.
Get up! You can’t be dead. You can’t be dead!
“No one tells me what I should and shouldn’t do.” Mitch growled. “She’s only a baby celebrity at most. No one’s going to be that torn up over her.”
Mitch leveled the gun on me again. This time he put it right up to the glass I was pressed against. There was no possible way for him to miss.
“Help him up.” Mitch decided against firing and lowered the smoking pistol. He took a bandana off Hector’s head. Dante grunted in pain when the three kids got him to his feet. Blood poured out of a hole in his leg.
Oh thank, God. I exhaled hard, my sobbing was now of relief. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Maybe Dante was a killer and a con man, but I didn’t want to see him hurt. I hated myself for caring about him as much as I did.
This was insane! There had to be a way out of this! I was shaking violently and was barely keeping myself together. I thought again of driving the still idling car out of there, but with so many people holding guns standing just feet away I didn’t stand a chance.
“I love you like a son, Jack, please don’t make me kill you.” Mitch tied the bandanna around Dante’s thigh in a makeshift tourniquet. It stemmed the blood flow from the bullet wound just below it. “I need to know which side you’re really on. It’s time to chose. Which life do you belong to? Are you Jack or are you Dante?”
“Jack.” Steely eyed, Dante growled without hesitation. He looked pale from all the blood loss. I didn’t know if it was from the pain, but Dante was sterner in demeanor than even that first day of training. If I hadn’t watched this whole incident unfold, I wasn’t sure I’d have even recognized him now.
“Prove it.” Mitch put the loaded gun in Dante’s hand.
“Anyone can kill anyone,” Dante said more to himself than anyone else. He aimed the gun at me; his expression was cold and distant. Time froze as we stared at each other. How did it come to this?
“Please.” I pleaded with Dante through sore, red eyes. There had to be some of the man I loved still in there. Some of it had to be real, right?
“This isn’t enough.” Dante shook his head and stuffed the gun in his waistband. He untied the bandana around his leg. “You’re going to need real proof.”
Dante snatched the flask and the lit cigarette from Tonya. He took a pull from the glass flask, but didn’t swallow until he poured some of the alcohol on his wound. It kept him from crying out in pain.
“What are you up to?” A wry grin slowly crept across Mitch’s bony cheeks as he watched Dante with wary curiosity.
Dante stuffed the bandana in the flask, then he pulled long drags through the cigarette, getting the cherry tip hot enough to light the dangling end of the bandana. I didn’t realize what he was doing until the alcohol soaked bandana caught fire.
“Reminding everyone here exactly who I am.” Dante growled through gritted teeth, then threw the Molotov cocktail into the garage. The flaming flask sailed past the framed family photographs, stacks of paper flyers from thrill shows long since forgotten, reels of old camera footage, his father’s riding gear and countless other irreplaceable heirlooms and memories to crash into the metal cabinet with all the open containers.
The ball of fire that erupted from the cabinet with all those chemicals gave way to a to much larger explosion seconds later that rocked the car and staggered everyone outside. It knocked Mitch and several of the kids to the ground along with a few of the motorcycles that were parked too close. Everyone fled from the fire that billowed out of the garage; everyone except Dante, who stood resolute against the extreme heat and stared at me.
Ashes and sparks of his old life rained down all around him, occasionally catching on his skin and burning small marks into his bare chest and face. An entire family history smoldered in a fiery inferno. Gone forever.
“Go,” he mouthed the word at me, not daring to say it out loud. His gaze was heavy with an immense sorrow.
My heart lurched when I realized what all this was.
This was the long con that Dante was playing at this whole time. My only escape. It crushed me to know that he had to burn his whole life just to save mine. Before I could try to convince him to come with me he went over to help Mitch who was already finding his feet.
I couldn’t waste this opportunity. This was my only chance. I slid fully behind the wheel and put the car in drive. The Plymouth immediately stalled out.
“Fuck!” I scolded myself starting it back up. I was way too close to the fire. The heat had permeated the inside of the car making it well over a hundred degrees. If I didn’t leave soon the tires would melt or the car itself might catch fire.
Breath, Autumn. Slow is fast, I reminded myself. Figure this out.
Agonizingly slowly I put it back into gear and started rolling. I let off the clutch nice and easy and started to move faster. I made it into first!
Then the back window exploded as a bullet tore through the inside of the car, narrowly missing me. In the rearview mirror I saw Dante standing there with an outstretched arm and a smoking gun. Both the engine and I screamed as I gave it more gas. A hail of bullets flew in from the rest of the crew mere seconds later. Most of the shots missed, but some didn’t, I needed to go faster! Mustering my courage, and praying to anyone who would listen, I attempted to shift into second gear. The transmission stuttered and there was a terrible grinding noise.
But the car didn’t stall!
One of the superheated motorcycles exploded behind me, which then set off the other closely parked ones in a chain reaction. As I pulled out of Dante’s driveway for what would definitely be the last time, my mirrors held an orange glow from the burning building that raged against the last of the dying, evening light.
I didn’t know how many vehicles were disabled from the blast, but I raced down the lonely dessert road as if I was being followed just in case. Heading nowhere, except generally away, I had nothing but time and thoughts keep me company. For hours I replayed all the events that just happened over and over in my mind. So many things weighed heavily during that long drive. I worried about my mother and wished I had a way to contact her, warn her. Dante wouldn’t tell them where she was would he?
Of course not! He saved my life!
He also shot at me!
But I’d seen him on the firing range. That would’ve been an easy shot for him if he was actually trying to kill me. Maybe that was a distraction too, a way to prove to the crew that he was trying to stop me? Nothing made any sense any more. It felt like my whole world was upside down. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Was that story Mitch told me true?
Was Dante really a cold-blooded murder?
I would never be the same after what happened at Dante’s house tonight; in many ways it was a violent end to the summer season of my life. As the cold air flooded in through the shattered back window of the bullet-ridden Plymouth, the chills I got were only rivaled by the ones I felt in the heart of the coldest day of a New England winter. Did I somehow skip a season? Was it the death of Autumn as well?