I didn’t have the first idea of where to start looking for weapons. Thankfully, Seb was one step ahead of me.
“Where are we going?” We were in a black car with Pepper, and as far as I could tell, we were driving out of the city. “Indiana?”
Seb shook his head. “Somewhere better. Trust me.”
I shrunk back into the leather seats and watched the scenery pass as the driver cruised down Lakeshore Drive into the southern part of the city. It was a stark change—the magnificent, well-kept architecture of the Loop faded away quickly and was replaced by dilapidated warehouse buildings and veritable shacks on the side of the road. I watched as we passed by increasingly apocalyptic landscape: a field burning off oil, a torn-apart old factory, a lot of ancient-looking abandoned school buses.
“This is too much,” I said, turning to Seb. “How the hell are you even familiar with a place that looks like this?”
Seb had wraparound sunglasses on, and he looked impenetrable. “Does it matter?” He smirked at me over the tops of his shades. “I mean, I don’t really think it does, Enzo. I don’t think you actually give a shit where we’re going, as long as we get the weapons.”
I shrugged. “I don’t want to finance any gang activity,” I said ominously as the car cruised past an old factory covered in spray paint tags and unreadable gang signs. “This is a dangerous part of the city.”
Seb threw his head back and laughed. “You are such a pussy, Lennox,” he said with a scowl. “Where’s this heart coming from? You never cared who buttered your bread before.” He lowered his shades and glanced at me over the tops of the glasses. “I mean, that’s practically how LennoxCo was built. It’s not as though you used to have ethics. Why the change?”
Seb rapped on the partition and instructed the driver to take the next exit, pulling off the highway and onto a little ramshackle road. As the car bounced from fresh pavement to a road covered in potholes, I closed my eyes and wished that nothing would happen. I can’t die right now. Audrey needs me. Please don’t let this be a bad deal, please.
When I opened my eyes, Seb was smirking. “Pussy,” he said again, shaking his head and winking at me.
I rolled my eyes. “You have to admit, Seb, it would defeat the purpose of our coming here if we’re attacked before we even have the chance to get out.”
“Shut up,” Seb said carelessly. “You have the cash?”
I opened my attaché case and peered inside. Before we’d left town, we’d stopped at a bank, and I’d pulled out a few thousand dollars in cash. I pulled out a wad of bills and waved it at Seb’s face.
“Right here,” I said, my tone smug.
Seb craned his neck and looked down into my lap. “That should be enough,” he said. The car was bumping over the road so hard that once or twice, my ass left the seat, and my head slammed against the roof.
Seb rapped on the partition window. “Goddamn it!” he yelled at the driver. “Can’t you drive any slower? We don’t want to bust a fucking tire out here!”
The car slowed, and I settled into my seat, jostling and bouncing along as we drove further and further away from any recognizable civilization.
Finally, the car slowed as we passed a ramshackle house. “Right here.” Seb rapped on the partition with his knuckles, and the driver screeched to a stop. “Come on,” Seb said to me. He jerked his head to the side and climbed out of the back seat of the car.
Outside it was freezing cold, and even windier than it felt in downtown Chicago. I craned my neck and looked up at the darkening sky. “Where the hell are we?” I looked around, trying to get my bearings. We were so far off the highway that I couldn’t even hear the roar of traffic. “What the hell are we doing out here?”
Seb frowned. “What the fuck do you think we’re doing out here, asshole?” He pulled his coat tight around his muscular body and set off for the house. I was surprised—when we walked up, I could tell that it was clearly not in terrible shape. Rather, it was designed to look abandoned, but there was actually a lot of insulation.
“Is this a decoy?” I frowned as Seb knocked on the door.
He shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Who the hell cares? As long as we get what we came here for, I don’t give a shit.”
The door swung open, and a heavyset, middle-aged woman stepped out. Her face was lined with deep creases and her hair, or what was left of it, perched on her skull like cotton fuzz. She stared at Seb, taking in his tailored appearance. She even sniffed the air, and I shuddered as I thought about what she would smell like.
“We’re here for the items. Let us in,” Seb said.
I pulled his arm back. “Hey,” I said in a low voice. “Maybe try not being so rude for once?”
Seb rolled his eyes again, but the woman stepped aside and let us pass.
Inside, I was surprised again. The interior was well-built to keep the cold out, and there was a fire going in one corner. There were two long tables set up, with black duffel bags on the floor. A man smoking a cigarette leaned close to the fire, then threw the butt of his smoke on the floor and crushed it with the heel of his boot.
When he walked over to us, I was startled at the resemblance between him and the older woman who had answered the door. They both had flat blue eyes and dull features, almost like they’d been blurred with the passing of time.
“Hi,” I said, trying to keep my voice strong and confident. “We need to buy some guns.”
The man let out a laugh. “I know what you’re here for, son,” he said, spitting on the floor. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his worn jeans and strutted over to one of the tables. “How much did you bring?”
Seb grabbed the attaché case from my arms and threw it on the table. Wads of cash went flying out. I half expected the old couple to scramble for the bills, but instead, they stared at the money, coolly appraising.
“And what kind of items are we talking about?” The old woman peered into Seb’s face, obviously having taken him for the leader. I didn’t mind. There was something about this old couple that gave me the creeps. For starters, how the hell did they even get out here? We were so far off the grid that I thought I might hear banjos playing in the distance.
“Something semi-automatic.” Seb looked at me. “Lennox, what kind of shit do you need?”
I thought about it. I barely knew anything about guns—I had one in my condo, but I’d rarely used it. When I first bought it, I’d taken it faithfully to the range every other weekend to practice shooting. Ironically, I’d bought it right after my first almost deadly brush with Hodges. After he was arrested and taken down, I’d worried that he’d get out on bail and storm my apartment. Thankfully, he never did. I wondered if I was still a good shot.
“Something small,” I said, being decisive. “It needs to fit in here.” I tapped the right pocket of my overcoat. “We’re going back into the city, and we can’t attract a lot of attention.”
The woman nodded. She took some of the bills out of the case and counted. “We’ll take five,” she said, putting the rest back into the leather fold and handing it over to Seb. “You boys wait here for a minute.”
Seb and I exchanged uneasy glances as she puttered around the cabin. Finally, she pointed to her male companion and had him heft one of the big bags up onto the tables. When I looked at her face, I realized the tip of her tongue was sticking out of her dry lips. I shuddered. It was a powerful visual, if only because it reminded me so much of Audrey.
“This should do it,” the woman said. She dumped the contents of the bag out across the table with a deafening clack bang thump. I gaped at the pile of guns as big as my body. The woman spread them out and began rifling through the collection with a practiced eye. Finally, she held up two small black handguns that looked like something out of a spy movie.
“What are they?” I picked one up and frowned. It was light—I couldn’t believe that it would actually do some kind of damage.
“Does it matter?” The woman cackled as her blue eyes met my own. “They come with two clips of twenty rounds. Does that serve your purpose?”
I punched Seb in the shoulder, and he handed over another stack of bills.
“Give us four clips each,” I said to the woman.
She raised her eyebrows and whistled. “You boys aren’t planning to rob a bank, are you?”
I shook my head. “Nothing like that. I just need to take back what’s mine.”
Ten minutes later, Seb and I were back in the car, heading back towards Chicago. Pepper seemed to sense distress—she was curled up on the floor of the car, resting her snout in her paws. Every few minutes, she’d look up at me and whine until I began to pet her.
“You’ve gone soft,” Seb said again.
I didn’t reply. We were close enough to the city that I could see the skyline, rising up like gray hunks of metal out of the earth. The driver sped up, and I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the window. Audrey, hold on, I thought silently. I’m coming. I swear I’m coming soon.