Chapter 27

I’m polite, but I’m also an asshole. I’ll hold the door for you. While you’re thinking that I’m nice, I’m thinking that you need to hurry the fuck up, stupid.

-Cora to Coke

Coke

I didn’t know what to do with it.

I was standing in the middle of the parking lot, staring at the purse, my heart hammering.

“Give it to me.”

I looked over my shoulder to see Tyler behind me, holding out his hands.

“Do you know what to do with it?” I asked.

Gabe hunkered down at my side as he took the bag from my hand, then gently pulled out the bomb that was now reading 3:32.

“Do you know what to do?” Tyler asked my earlier question.

Gabe shook his head. “No.”

That was because upon closer inspection, there were upwards to twenty wires, all of them connected to something or another. Dummy wires, but there was no way in hell that we could decipher which one it was that we needed to disarm the bomb.

“Fuck me.” Gabe sat back.

I didn’t.

I picked it all up, reached for the keys that were in the purse next to it, and started hauling ass toward Beatrice’s Beemer.

The moment I was inside, I floored it out of the parking lot and headed straight for the most unpopulated place I could think of—my yard.

With it being Sunday, nobody would be there.

Instead of stopping at the gate and opening it, I ran the Beemer straight through the lock, taking happiness where I could when I saw the Beemer’s front-end splinter and break due to the force of the impact.

My destination was the car crusher, and I arrived just as the clock read 1:03.

Parking it in the crusher as best as I could, I bailed.

After pressing the button for it to crush, I sprinted for the back of the lot, the furthest away from everything that I could get under the circumstances.

I hadn’t made it but half of my intended distance when the bomb detonated.

I hit the ground and rolled underneath an old Ford pick-up missing its wheels and covered my head.

Dirt, debris, and metal started to fly.

I closed my eyes and hoped that I was far enough away from her car that it wouldn’t penetrate the metal shielding me.

I was wrong.

***

Frankie

“Where is your sister?” I asked, looking around, finally coming back to myself.

The dog from earlier whined at the stairwell door in front of us, and Luca put me down as he called for his sister. “Cora?”

I reached for the stairwell door once I was down on my own two feet, and the dog bolted.

“The dog…”

Luca looked in the direction the dog had went and cursed when he began to follow.

I did, too, coming to a stop at floor five where Luca held his hand out and said, “Don’t move.”

I didn’t.

Couldn’t, really.

Because there was a dead guy on the floor, his neck obviously broken.

Luca didn’t bother sparing the man a glance as he continued up the stairs.

It was then, while I was standing there and trying to calm my breathing when I heard the quiet whimpers.

“Oh, fuck,” Luca said. “Shit, shit, shit. Frankie, go get a doctor.”

I did as requested, poking my head out of each level until I saw a doctor in his white coat.

“You!” I screamed and pointed. “Come with me! We got hell and chaos in the stairwell.”

The doctor stopped at the dead man once he’d joined me in the stairwell where Luca was, but I shooed him away. “Not that one, he’s already dead.”

The older man in his late forties ignored me.

He stopped, felt a pulse, then shook his head before moving farther up the stairs.

There, we both found Luca frantically trying to remove tape from Cora’s wrist—her obviously broken wrist.

And, just sayin’, Cora wasn’t home.

She was in a trance-like state, and her eyes were blank.