Smash & Grab: RELIC #1

by Maz Maddox

  -D

  PS: You don’t have to share these with Baha.

  I understood then why people called it a broken heart. It felt like my insides were falling into pieces as I read that stupid note. I felt stupid, angry, and irrationally hopeful that maybe it was a mistake. Like he was going to be smiling like a jerk in the car parked outside. Tears stung at my eyes, and despite trying to will them not to fall, they slipped down my cheeks as I hefted the heavy duffle onto my shoulder.

  Outside, Baha’s car was waiting, void of any Dalton. I got into the backseat, not wanting to be next to Baha while I tried to get my tears under control. Hot fury and embarrassment choked me as I sniffed back sobs, dashing my cheeks with my hand and grinding my teeth.

  He left me behind. After all of this, he bailed in the middle of the night and called his buddy to take me home. Shame tore at me like vicious piranhas, tearing little bits away one at a time as the loss sat on my chest.

  “Hey.” Baha’s voice got my attention. I blinked as he reached back and threw a packet of sealed tissues into my lap. “Don’t get snot on my seats.”

  “I can’t believe I was so stupid,” I whispered out loud, mostly to myself. The packet came open and I tugged a tissue free. “I actually thought he gave a shit about me.”

  Baha backed out of the parking space and got on the road, his dark eyes glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

  “After all that,” I lamented, not really caring that I was openly bitching to a large, angry man and hidden Spinosaurus about my heartbreak. “He just slips out in the middle of the night. Why the hell did he drag me out here? Why did he--” I bit my tongue.

  Kiss me. Tell me he liked me.

  Jesus Christ, I felt like such a child. Crying over a cute bad boy who got into my pants. I laughed bitterly.

  “God, I’m a fucking idiot.”

  “Stop bitching,” Baha said flatly.

  “Does he usually do this? Get bored of someone and send you to come take them home?” I blew my nose and exhaled, rubbing my temples from the inbound headache.

  “The only thing he does on a regular basis is be an impulsive dipshit,” Baha grumbled, glancing at me again. “But he doesn’t lie.”

  “Apparently he does.” I waved my hand around towards him, the car and the idiot in the backseat.

  “Him wising up that he couldn’t keep you safe doesn’t make him selfish. Him dragging you across the fucking country does, but as previously stated...he’s an impulsive dipshit,” Baha explained with a shrug. “Whatever his initial, jackass line of thinking was before last night wasn’t a lie or lined with ulterior motives. That’s giving him too much credit. Dalton is young and thinks with his heart and not his head. He’s stupid, but he’s not cruel. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I was beyond surprised that Baha was not only speaking to me, but defending Dalton. I tore at the tissue in my hand as I nodded.

  “Is he safe at least…?” I asked weakly.

  “Knowing him? No. He said he was going to go cause some trouble and take the heat off you.”

  That should have concerned me more, knowing that he was running into the lion’s den. Instead, I couldn’t help but laugh. Of course his plan would be to play the rodeo clown in this fiasco.

  “Won’t they just come after me once I’m back home?” I shut my eyes to let them rest. “They were trying to make me go with them to do fossil preparation work. Why would they just let me go?”

  “Hyena is like a dog with a bone. He focuses on what’s in front of him until the issue is dealt with. Right now, his target is Dalton and the fossil. You are not worth the manpower to go snatch up from New York without justification.” His eyes flicked to me. “Don’t sing to the cops that you were dealing with him, and he has no reason to think you’ll be a problem.”

  “Don’t the cartel people usually...chop off people’s hands and shit? Take their heads? What if I’m a loose end?” My temples pounded with misery and fear.

  “Did you steal money from him? Kill someone in his family? Are you an DEA informant? Then relax,” he grunted. “You don’t have the fossil, so he doesn’t care about you.”

  I sank down in the seat and watched outside. There was no doubt that Baha knew what he was talking about, but my stomach still rolled with the idea of being dumped back off at home to fend for myself. It’s not like it was a secret or overblown Hollywood plot device that the cartel was violent. I’d seen plenty of pictures of how bad it was down in Mexico. It made me shiver and feel cold.

  I was likely not going to be sleeping well for a while. I should probably move.

  Then, there was the growing hurt about Dalton that had taken on another flavor of pain.

  He didn’t leave me behind because he was sick of me. He sent his brother to come get me and take me home while he gallivanted off like a knight in spiky armor. Still. It hurt. It hurt not knowing if I’d see him again. Not knowing if he was going to be alright and feeling helpless as hell about the outcome. Dalton didn’t need my help staying safe, that much was obvious. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have a whole team behind him, waiting for him to come home.

  I felt foolish for hoping to see him again.

  Maybe back at Dinosaur World.

  More tears escaped silently as Baha drove me towards the airport. I opened my bag of Sour Patch Kids and tried to fill my sadness with the sour bite of candy.

  It didn’t help.

  Wherever you are, Dalton, just please, please be safe.

  DALTON

  This was so insanely not safe.

  But it was going to be fun.

  I’m not going to lie, I was a little disappointed at the piddly sum attached to my bounty. Apparently it only mattered by a thousand dollars if I was alive, and it didn’t count at all if the fossil wasn’t present. A thousand bucks is nothing to sneeze at, but if I was too much of a pain in the ass, someone was likely just going to shoot me for the trouble.

  Thanks to Royal’s intel, I was able to scope out some last known whereabouts of Hyena’s hounds, which wasn’t terribly far away from where Simon and I had fled to. It drove home how close we had come to running into those fuckers again after the last attack, and made my stomach twist.

  I couldn’t focus on the fact that Simon was so close to danger again. I needed to concentrate on doing what I did best:

  Being cute and blowing shit up.

  The plan was brilliant in its simplicity, rivaling most of my ingenious schemes. First, I had to draw the shit stains out of the building without getting myself shot. That involved a homemade bomb and their vehicles. Naturally, for this whole distraction to work, I would have to let them know it was their favorite handsome thorn in the ass who caused the chaos. I also needed them to see the fossil case so they knew I was still their target.

  Without Simon.

  Instead of waiting around after the ol’ Dalton Razzle Dazzle fireworks show for them to see me, I took a picture of me pissing on their front door prior to them returning to the location. Taking a selfie while peeing and holding the fossil case was really hard to do, but the angle was perfect. Then I printed it out at the self service kiosk at my local drug store, and taped it to their door.

  Now, not only would they be sans SUVs, but they’d know they had touched my pee when they used the door.

  Right?

  Genius.

  Unlike the movies, I didn’t rig the bombs to the car and set a timer. I prefer my explosives to be a little more raw. Instead, I taped them to a brick, got them ready for the show and threw them through their fucking windows. The bombs performed beautifully, busting the windows with shrapnel before engulfing them in angry flames. I took delight in the fire, cackling like an insane James Bond villain before speeding away in my stolen Toyota.

  Honestly, the plan was perfect. The execution was literal dynamite.

  So, what happened next was not my fault.

  The impact of the SUV slamming into my shitty little Toyota was like being in a ti
re and rolling down a hill. Except, the hill was covered in glass and the tire was filled with hammers. My world spun, my head making friends with the shattering window and my chest being squeezed by a band of plastic. The airbag exploded into my vision, powder flying out and stinging my eyes.

  My head was pounding when my car finally stopped spinning, the horn blaring in a low, dying sound as my hearing slowly came back. I could smell burning plastic, hear the car crackling as the plastic and glass shifted from the crash. In my haze, I knew I had to move, but it was hard to shake some sense back into my limbs.

  I grabbed my gun and kicked my door open, but was greeted with a glock to the face. The dude on the other end of the gun wore a sling over one arm and had a vengeful gleam in his eyes.

  And a huge scar across his neck.

  I had attacked the big papa Hyena when I had shifted. Because of course I did.

  I sighed and blinked some blood from my eye. “Shit.”

  “Yep,” Hyena said, then knocked me the fuck out.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Simon

  “What?” Baha snapped into the phone and immediately pulled off of the highway.

  I was nursing the stomachache I had given myself after eating an entire bag of Sour Patch Kids, so the jolt made me moan slightly in agony. Baha punching the steering wheel kept me from making another noise, since I was worried I had caused the reaction.

  “That fucking dipshit!”

  Dalton.

  I sat up in the backseat, watching Baha as he pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. His jaw was ticking as he ground his teeth, listening to the voice on the other end.

  “Do you know where they took him? Can you track his phone? Shit! Where was he taken?”

  Taken? My stomach curled in on itself in terror. I listened to Baha making plans with someone, probably Montana, before hanging up. He gripped the steering wheel with one hand, his knuckles white.

  “They have him, don’t they?” I swallowed. He didn’t answer, but I knew I was right. “What are you going to do?”

  “Go find him,” he said, his voice dark with anger as he jerked the glove box open in the car. He turned and threw an envelope at me. “Your plane ticket and some cash are inside. Call an Uber and get to the airport.”

  “W-what can I do to help?”

  “Get out of my car and let me find him, that’s what you can do.” Baha turned and locked eyes with me. “He made me promise to get you home safely. That’s what he wanted: you safe. Keep your head down, don’t talk to anyone and don’t fucking let him down.”

  I wanted to protest, to demand that I stay behind to help. Did he really expect me to just leave after learning that Dalton was in trouble? I knew I had to help, like it was what was keeping my heart beating.

  But the cold reality of the situation crashed into me like a blast of arctic wind. I felt like my lungs turned to lead. It wasn’t like I was a fighter or knew how to shoot. What the hell could I possibly do to help Dalton?

  I would be in the way.

  My hands shook as I grabbed my duffle, pushing the passenger door open with my free hand. As I leaned back to pick up my plane ticket, my arm brushed up against the side of the duffle. It was...hard. Like there was a rock inside--

  I grabbed the zipper and ripped it down, shoving the flaps away to look inside. Nestled in my clothing was the fossil with a note on top:

  Give to Grumpy-saurus. :)

  “Oh my God,” I said in a rush. “The fossil is in here.”

  “What?” Baha reached back and grabbed the duffle, jerking it forward to look inside. “What the fuck? Why do you have it?”

  I plucked the note off and showed him. “I didn’t know I did.”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “No, this is good!” I yelled, gaining a heated glare from the note’s namesake. “We can use this as leverage. Hyena wants this, right? This is our ticket to finding Dalton!”

  Baha inhaled through his nose and looked at the fossil again. “What the fuck do you mean “our?” You’re still getting on a damn plane.”

  “I’m the paleontologist that worked on this. I know this fossil.” I said evenly, trying to keep my voice from wavering under his cold stare.

  “Like hell.”

  “Let me do this,” I pleaded. “Dalton saved my life twice.”

  “And putting you in danger kind of makes that pointless, don’t you think?” Baha hissed. “You’re a fucking liability--”

  “I love him!” I set my jaw and didn’t break eye contact. This guy might be a badass mercenary Spinosaurus, but I was a pissed off scientist who was head over heels for a punk raptor with pink hair. I’d stolen a fossil, run from bad guys, broken into a park and stared into the eyes of a prehistoric beast. I was not giving up without a damn fight.

  “I’m not sitting by if I can be useful,” I said, fury boiling in my gut. “Dalton needs me, so I’m going to help.”

  Baha narrowed his eyes and snorted.

  I scooted forward in my seat. “Can Royal track me if I get taken to wherever they’re holding Dalton?”

  “What makes you think they’ll take you to him and not just kill you?” He sounded completely unamused, but the fact that he hadn’t shoved me out of the car counted as a victory.

  “Because I’ll know where the fossil is. You’ll keep it, of course. I’ll meet up with Hyena, tell him that if I can see Dalton and make sure he’s alive, I’ll take him to the fossil once we’re released. As long as I can be tracked, you’ll know where Dalton is.”

  Baha’s jaw began ticking again as he looked out the window, his thumb tapping the steering wheel. He didn’t comment on my plan, and rotated himself back around in his seat. When he turned the key and started the car back up, I didn’t know what to expect. We didn’t drive very far, only further up the road to a massive truck stop. He got out of the car and barked for me to follow him.

  Naturally, I sprang out of the car as commanded, standing beside it as he popped the trunk and started rifling through some bags. I peeked over just a moment to see a small cache of guns in a duffle, next to a box with small, compact bricks and even a set of Kevlar vests. Did this guy have a military arsenal in this sedan?

  Baha pulled a small metal case from a bag and shut the trunk, before turning on his heels and walking towards the truck stop. I trotted after him, not sure what the hell was about to happen. People parted ways as Baha stomped through the place, bypassed the snacks, state themed shirts, rows of figurines of Native Americans walking with horses, and pushed into the men’s restroom.

  Since this was a larger truck stop, it had a full locker room style set up with showers, changing areas and bathroom stalls. The smell of bleach and cleaner hinted that the place was well maintained, and I could imagine that a hot shower after being on the road in a semi would be a godsend. Baha led us to the locker area, with most of the metal compartments devoid of any locks. It must have been a slow day, because I only spotted one or two locks hanging on the wall of tiny doors.

  Just like with any locker room set up, there were long benches for people to sit, and that’s where Baha motioned for me to take a seat.

  “Take off your shirt.”

  I blinked up at him but did as I was asked. “Are you going to like...put a wire on me?”

  Baha fished a small, metal loop the size of a dime out of what looked like an earbud case. In the middle of the tiny ring was a metal ball, which he twisted to let one side of the circle loose. He handed it to me, which I took and examined. It looked like a simple ear or nose ring, like the ones people get right after their first piercing.

  “Are you going to pierce my ear?” I chuckled. “I don’t know if I could pull that look off.”

  It was a joke, but when Baha pulled out a needle and started cleaning it with a disinfectant wipe, I felt blood drain from my cheeks.

  “Uh…”

  “It has a tracking device built into it and a small mic. Royal can track you and I’ll be able to hear y
ou.”

  “I can’t just...hide it in my shoe or something?” I pleaded.

  “Don’t be a pussy. This was your idea.”

  “My idea didn’t involve getting needles shoved into my ear. And don’t be chauvinistic. You’re better than that.”

  Baha tossed the wipe away and opened another one, handing it to me. “Not your ear.”

  “Pardon?”

  “They’ll notice a new piercing on your head if it’s guys who’ve seen you before.”

  I shook my head and shrugged helplessly. “Then...where are you planning on piercing me?”

  Baha frowned at me and motioned to my bare chest. “Take a wild guess, genius.”

  “My...nipple?” I hissed, crossing my arms over my chest like he was going to attack them. “Are you fucking nuts?”

  “It’s either your nipple.” He held up the needle and twisted it in his meaty fingers. “Or your dick. Your choice. I’m not going to be gentle either way.”

  “Just...just pierce my ear! Who the fuck will know?”

  He bent at the waist to stare at me like a parent with a bratty child whose patience was thinning. “You want to help Dalton?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Are you going to keep whining, or are you going to prove to me that you're worth my brother’s affection?” He dropped his voice. “Because my brother’s not allowed to date little bitches who cry about getting their fucking nipple pierced.”

  Wow, ok. Hard sell. I swallowed and exhaled slowly, cleaning off my right nipple with the disinfectant wipe.

  “This isn’t even the weirdest thing I’ve done over the past two weeks,” I told myself. “Breaking into Dinosaur World is still at the top of the list. And petting a raptor. And the se--” I glanced up at Baha and cleared my throat. “Ok. Ready.”

  Baha squatted in front of me and sat back on his heels. His large hand pressed against my chest, pulling the skin around the target tight.