Drago groaned.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “How are you doing?”
“Not too good. If it were raining pussies, I’d get hit in the head with a dick. I’ve been shot twice, kicked, and drug across a sea of trash like a slab of meat. And to top it off, I’m tossed in the back of a truck with a cop and a—”
He hesitated, waiting for me to tell him not to say it. I didn’t have the energy.
“A darkie.”
An improvement, however minor.
“Thanks for that, I think.”
He chuckled. “Man, you’re all right.”
“For a darkie.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.” He laughed some more.
“How can you laugh when these white trash, cracker assholes are going to torture and kill us and bury us out in the desert, where no one will ever know what happened to us?”
“I got no one who cares, so that last part is no big whoop.”
“I care.”
Drago laughed again. “Yeah, thanks for that.”
“Mack’s in a bad way.”
Drago stopped laughing. “He’s a friend of yours?”
“Yeah, a good friend, a great friend.”
“I guess we’ll just have to get him to a doctor.”
He said this so casually, with so much confidence, I chuckled at the irony.
His big paw came up and rested on my shoulder. I took a full second to realize the implication. He had freed himself with the knife.
Roy Boy and Slim Jim jumped in the truck and started it up. The engine roared up in the cab. We were off to the warehouse.
I chuckled.
“What’s funny?” whispered Drago.
“You.”
“That right?”
“Yeah, because you’re touching a darkie.”
We both laughed out loud. He jerked his hand back out of sight.
“What’s going on back there?” asked Roy Boy. Then to Slim Jim, he said, “You better check ’em. We screw this up and we’re gonna be the ones takin’ a cold dirt nap.”
Slim Jim couldn’t talk with his broken jaw. He had to be in enormous pain and hating me for it. He leaned over as Roy Boy steered the truck down the driveway ramp and bounced into the street. Drago’s weight pressed into me, as I craned my neck to see into the driver’s compartment, all while trying to keep us off Mack. I caught Slim Jim’s eyes. After a long hateful look, he turned back and nodded to Roy Boy. He hadn’t seen Drago’s free hands.
Sunlight came in through the windshield. I figured the time to be about noon. Eight hours to get away and find Marie and Eddie. Who was I kidding? Nothing would keep them alive until eight o’clock.
Drago’s hand found mine behind my back. He cut the flex cuffs and the feeling rushed back in my hands. He’d used the dirk that the biker had failed to find on him when they searched us. The same biker who was too homophobic to check my crotch when he searched me. I had depended on that. The derringer was safe.
“You got a plan?” whispered Drago.
“I’m working on it.”
“You don’t have much time.”
“Do you know where this warehouse is?”
“Twenty minutes or so, up in Cajon Pass, at the dead end of a dirt road called Whitehall.”
Out the window, buildings and treetops flashed by. Roy Boy drove us up to Baseline, then went west. He took us in and out of side streets, avoiding the freeway and on up into the Cajon Pass. I couldn’t wait much longer to make a move. If we made it to the warehouse all would be lost. I’d waited too long already for Mack. He needed a hospital now.
The derringer had only two shots, against two prospects with large guns. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I couldn’t, in cold blood, just shoot them both in the back. I couldn’t do it. And if I threw down on them, I would only give them a chance to overpower me. I’d get one shot off, and if the other held his mud, he’d have time to shoot me.
My only option was to shoot Roy Boy without warning. Shoot him right in the back of the head instead of his back. He’d crash the van. If we survived, I would have one shot to hit Slim Jim. I had to do it. Too many lives depended on it.
I wiggled around until I had my hand down the front of my pants. Drago whispered in my ear, “Hey, buddy, now’s not the time or the place.”
He must have been giddy from blood loss.
“You ready?” he asked. “We’re gonna have to jump them in the next couple of minutes or it’ll be too late, we’ll already be there. And to tell you the truth, I don’t feel so hot right now.”
“We’re not going to jump them. I have a gun. Just gimme a minute, would ya?”
“We don’t have that kinda time. Gimme the gun, I’ll do it.”
“No, I got this—”
Drago reached around and, before I could react, he smothered my hand with his big mitts and snatched away the gun. He didn’t hesitate like I would have. He rolled to one side, extended the derringer, and fired right through Roy Boy’s backseat.