Page 24 of Drowning in the Deep
I held my breath, waiting for him, listening. While I still grasped the chemicals in my hands, I was nervous, fully aware of where the shotgun hung on my back and where my pistols were in their holsters. If those douchebags attacked my brother, they’d pay. Every single one of them.
A moment later, Vin was back. I could see his white teeth gleaming in the dim light as he approached me, not even breathing heavily. It hadn’t even been a minute yet.
“What the fuck?” I asked him. “They’re dead?”
“Dead as fucking doornails.” He had that wild look in his eyes that almost made me feel sorry for the Latvians. “Yep, and those assholes in the barn are none the wiser either. We can turn on the light now.” He continued to beam at me, brighter than the stars above us.
“How?” I had to know, even though I should really be concentrating on the task before me now that I could turn on a light without having to worry.
Vin rocked back and forth on his heels. “I’ve been practicing my aim.” He made a noise like a knife flying through the air—twice. “Right through their fucking windpipes. Poor bastards never knew what hit them.”
“Fuck,” I murmured. “You really are a lunatic. You know that?”
His smile grew wider. “Yep, I know. But I’m your lunatic.”
“Thank the lord for that. There’s no way in hell I’d want to be on the other side of a battle zone from you.” I would’ve patted him on the shoulder if my hands weren’t full of vials with deadly chemicals sloshing around in them.
Now that we could turn on a flashlight, I was ready to go. Vin pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and turned the light on. We backed up further into the shed, even though there shouldn’t be anyone around who could look in through the open door and see what we were doing.
The light made it so much easier. I confirmed that I did have the chemicals in the correct hands, so I would’ve been fine if I had done what I thought I needed to do, but it felt better to know for sure that we would have some time to run away.
Walking over to a nearby shelf, I set my bottles down and pulled out some of the chemicals the Savages had been using to make their drugs. It was easy for me to tell what was what, even without labels on these particular containers.
“What the fuck are you doing exactly?” Vin asked me.
“It’s pretty simple. You know how meth heads accidentally blow themselves up all the time?” I asked as I began to mix the substances.
“Yeah, I’ve heard about that,” he said.
“Well, I’m purposely mixing the chemicals they accidentally mix to make those explosions,” I told him. “Now that these two substances are mixed here, as soon as I pour that vial into this one and the other bottle into that one, well, we will have about a minute to get as far as we possibly can away from here before the light show starts.”
“Shit,” Vin said, shaking his head. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Come on, man. You have to remember that summer we made all that meth in that shed out by the cabin down by the lake?” I asked him, about ready to make everything blow up.
“Not really,” Vin replied. “I mean, I definitely remember the meth, but I’m not sure I remember much else. To be fair, I was doing a lot of meth at the time.”
Snickering, I turned and looked at him. “Well, that’s where I learned what to mix and what to never mix. You ready to run?”
Without answering me, Vin backed up toward the shed door. We both knew which direction to run in so that we’d be in position to join the melee once it began to unfold.
Once I could see he was far enough away from me that we weren’t going to be tripping over one another, I made my last mixture, splashing one container of chemicals into the other, and then both of us took off running as fast as we could, not worrying about our footfalls as we hightailed it back to the tree line.
By the time we got behind the trees, both of us were breathing heavily from the sprint. We locked eyes, and then a second later, the entire shed blew, lighting up the sky and making the ground beneath our feet shake.
“Holy fuck!” Vin started laughing as we both got our guns ready. Latvians poured from the barn and the house, still probably thinking it was an accident. If the bodies on the porch didn’t tip them off that they were under attack, the gunfire would. All around them, muzzles flashed in the darkness as my men stepped out of their hiding places.
The battle was on.
CHAPTER17
ELISA
Sara poured me another daiquiri, and I plopped down on the couch, only half caring if it splashed onto the fabric, mostly because I wanted every ounce to get into my mouth.
It was my third—or maybe my fourth—drink since I’d gotten home from work a couple of hours ago, and I was beginning to feel it. In a good way. At least, that was what I kept telling myself.
My thoughts kept returning to Daemon and whether or not he was going to call me back after he got done doing whatever it was he’d been doing when I called him. I hoped I hadn’t made him mad telling him not to drive and talk on the phone at the same time. It hadn’t sounded like he was on speaker phone, which meant he’d been holding the device and driving at the same time, and that was never a good idea.
