by Payne, T. L.
“Then we go to the next one,” Scott said.
“What about him?” Raine asked, pointing to their prisoner.
JJ thought for a moment.
“Hey, Brandon, you should stay here and make sure our guest doesn’t wander off and alert his buddies,” she said.
Brandon fixed JJ with a stony stare.
Raine looked from JJ to Brandon and said, “It would be very bad if he got away and told his guys. We might get killed. I’d stay, but what could I do to stop him from getting away?”
Is she playing to his ego? Smart.
Brandon’s shoulders relaxed. He looked from the prisoner to the exit door then turned to JJ and nodded. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t go anywhere. You’ll come back for me before you go to stake out the gas pumps?”
“Absolutely,” JJ said.
“Thank you, Brandon. We’ll see you soon,” Raine said, patting him on the shoulder.
JJ followed Raine through the hole in the glass and out the double-doors. She pulled her scarf tighter around her neck and headed into the wind.
“That was smart,” JJ said.
“What?”
JJ pointed over her shoulder. “The way you got him to stay behind.”
“He wanted to. He just needed an excuse that would save face. Besides, it was true. Someone needed to stay and I’m not a match for a dude that size,” Raine said.
JJ glanced over at her. She was more equipped than she knew. Common sense could take a person farther than brute strength sometimes. Raine knew how to think on her feet. She hadn’t been sure about Raine at first—she seemed so aloof—but the more time she’d spent with her the more she liked her. JJ wasn’t there to make a bestie either. She just wanted to survive this mess and make it to her family’s homestead.
JJ and Raine had to run to catch up with Scott as he headed north to stake out the Trader Joe’s. As they walked, JJ tried to picture life back at her childhood home. She imagined it wouldn’t be much different from when she was growing up. There would be morning chores, afternoon chores, and evening chores. Farm animals needed tending to, and they didn’t care if there was an apocalypse. She longed for those mundane tasks.
Chapter 24
Manchester Road
Manchester, Missouri
February 22nd
“We should stop at the Home Depot and let the others know to be ready when we pull up in the SUV. If we have to wait for them to get dressed and gather gear, we could lose the vehicle to the folks inside or more of Suit’s men,” JJ said.
“Suit?” Raine asked.
“The kid said that is what his crew calls him,” JJ said as they turned toward the home improvement store where Sheena and the others were staying.
“Let’s make this quick, okay?” Scott said as JJ pushed open the door to the stockroom.
“I’ll go in and locate Sheena and the others. I’ll be back with Lucy in less than five minutes,” Raine said.
Raine looked back at Scott and JJ as she walked away. She’d known them less than twenty-four hours and was about to trust them to lead a perilous, maybe foolhardy mission to steal a vehicle from a dangerous gang. Was she crazy? Did she have any other choice? Someone could get hurt, or even die. Was there another way to get everyone out of the city? If there were, she couldn’t think of any.
Raine found Sheena, Alicia, Lucy, and the others in the corner of what looked like a mechanical room. It was dark with no windows or skylights.
“I need to fill you guys in on our plan,” Raine said, motioning for them to follow her outside the room.
The group huddled at the end of the hall with saddle blankets wrapped around their shoulders.
“We need you to be ready to leave on a moment’s notice. We will pull up at the back door and load everyone in the SUV as quickly as possible. Can you be ready?”
Everyone nodded.
“Be careful,” Sheena said, wrapping her arms around Raine and pulling her into a tight hug.
“I will. You take care of that little guy,” Raine said, running a finger down DeAndre’s cheek.
“We’ll be ready,” Sheena said as they parted.
“I want to come. I can’t just sit around here doing nothing. It’s driving me crazy,” Alicia said.
Raine wasn’t sure what to say. She wasn’t exactly in charge. Who was she to say if Alicia could join them or not?
“Let’s go then,” she finally said. If it was a problem, she’d let Scott deal with it.
Lucy, Alicia, and Raine slipped out the back door. Scott and JJ were posted at each corner of the building.
“We’re ready,” Raine said.
Lucy removed her pistol from her coat pocket and held it down at her side.
“Let’s do this,” she said as she approached Scott.
JJ walked up behind them.
“Everyone clear on the plan?”
“We’re observing. When they go inside to scavenge, we sneak over and disable their vehicles,” Alicia said.
“As soon as we get both trucks disabled, we go for the SUV,” Lucy said.
“Right now, it should be parked at Sam’s Club,” JJ added.
“We’ll make a diversion. When the driver comes out, you and Lucy rush him from behind while Raine, JJ, and I come at him from the front. We’ll demand they hand over the keys to the vehicle. We hop in and speed off,” Scott said.
“It’d be nice to get some of that fuel,” Lucy said.
“It would, but that’s too great a risk. We need to get back to the Home Depot, get the others, and be on our way out of town before they know what hit them,” Scott said.
It sounded simple, but Raine knew it would be anything but. So many things could go wrong. The group they were going up against had a lot of weapons, while all they had to rely on was stealth.
This was crazy. Were they that desperate?
“Now’s the chance. If you want to back out and go back inside, everyone will understand. I’m not going to sugarcoat things here. This is dangerous. So much could happen. But as you can see, it’s not safe in the city and walking isn’t working. We have to have the Suburban. If we pull this off, we could be out of the city in thirty minutes,” Scott said.
Not having to walk for hours in the cold was motivation enough to try to pull off the carjacking. She liked having a plan. She just wished they had one for after they stole the vehicle. Sure, they’d get out of the city, but to where? The place she needed to go was nearly eight hundred miles away. She wasn’t just being pessimistic about her chances of making it home to Florida. She was being realistic. They’d need to find a place to at least stay a few days to gather themselves and figure out where to go long term if the lights didn’t come back on.
“Are we ready?” JJ asked.
Raine rubbed her nose ring with her index finger. She wasn’t ready to fight armed men, but they needed to do this. “I’m ready,” she whispered.
“Me too,” Lucy and Alicia said in unison.
Scott waved a hand in the air. “Let’s go disable some vehicles.”
They walked from Home Depot back to the Sam’s Club using the same tracks they’d made before. Their footfalls didn’t sound as loud now that the snow was packed down. Scott stopped the group at the spot that Raine and Brandon had hidden when they were staking out the wholesale store previously.
“Let’s wait here a second and make sure nothing has changed,” he said.
He made a downward motion with his right hand, gesturing for them to crouch behind the bushes. Raine squeezed in between the bush and tree she’d used to conceal herself earlier and stared out over the parking lot. Everything looked the same as it had earlier that morning with one exception: the Suburban was parked beside the tiny mechanical building by the gas pumps. If only they could just walk over there and take it right then. She was so dreading trying to disable the other vehicles without getting shot.
“The kid was telling the truth about the Suburban. Let’s hope the other vehicles are wher
e he said they’d be,” JJ said.
“Let’s move on around the building. We are going to make our way through the woods and see if we can find a way to Trader Joe’s from the concealment of the trees.”
The group cautiously walked through the woods around the side of the Sam’s Club and behind a second building. Moments later, they came out behind the concrete sound barrier wall along Manchester Road across from Trader Joe’s.
Scott gestured for them to stay back as he leaned forward and peered around the wall. “They’re loading boxes into the back of the truck. There’s only four men that I could see.”
“There could be more inside,” Raine said.
“There could be. We need to wait and watch. There’s no good spot to observe from other than here. There’s one truck parked in the loading bay. I don’t see the other.”
“What if they don’t all go inside at the same time?” Raine asked.
“We’ll have to distract them somehow. I can work my way down to the end of the wall and cross the street down there, cut across and make some noise in the parking lot at the other end of the building. When they come to find out what made the noise, you guys run over and slash all their tires. If we’re lucky, they won’t even notice until they get it all loaded down and ready to leave. By then, we’ll be on our way out of the city,” Scott said.
“Why don’t we just steal the truck?” Alicia asked.
“Trucks get stuck easily in this much snow,” Scott said.
Lucy nodded. “And it won’t fit eleven people.”
“Unless you want to ride in the back,” Raine laughed.
Alicia hugged herself. “No thanks.”
Raine crouched behind the wall waiting for Suit’s men to all go inside. That was the best outcome in her view. Scott creating a diversion while they slashed the tires was a much riskier endeavor.
Time passed slowly. Raine stood and shifted from foot to foot trying to stay warm, but the cold wind had already chilled her to the bone. She was completely miserable. She wasn’t sure that her legs would still move if and when it was time to act.
Across the street, the men talked with ease and joked. They weren’t trying to be quiet at all. They really weren’t very security-conscious. Raine heard a door slam and whipped around. Scott leaned forward. He turned his head and smiled.
“Let’s hurry,” he said as he stepped from behind the wall.
Raine followed JJ and the group ran to a small clump of evergreens that lined the parking lot near the loading bay door. Scott dropped down to a crouch and gestured for the others to do the same. They waited and listened for over a minute before Scott stood and waved them forward. They made their way down the length of a retaining wall, stepped up, and ran to the corner near the loading bay. Raine pressed her back against the wall as Scott peered around the corner.
Without looking back, Scott gestured with his right hand for them to follow him. He hopped down beside the older model black truck and ran around to the driver’s side door while JJ raised the hood. Lucy stood guard by the closed door while Raine and Alicia ran to the end of the building to watch for anyone else approaching them from the side.
Within one minute, Scott and JJ had disabled the vehicle by removing the fuel pump relay switch and disconnecting the battery cables. Their hope was that when the truck wouldn’t start, Suit’s men would pop the hood and mess with the battery cables prior to checking the fuse box. It would be unlikely that they carried a spare relay switch so the vehicle would be out of commission even after they reattached the cables. All this would give Raine and her group time to make it to the location of the second truck, disable it, and still make it back to the Sam’s Club to take the SUV from the driver there.
That had been the plan. What they hadn’t planned on was the second truck barreling through the parking lot as they dove for cover behind a retaining wall.
Something’s wrong. It’s not supposed to be here.
“Why are they here and not at the fitness center like the kid said?” Scott asked.
“You think the kid got away and warned them?” Raine asked.
Scott removed his knit cap and ran a hand through his thinning, brown hair.
“God. I hope not. How much do you trust Brandon?”
“I… I just met him a couple of days ago,” Raine said.
Scott threw a hand in the air. “Shit.”
“We don’t know that the kid got away. They could have finished early and came to help their friends,” JJ said.
“What do we do now?” Lucy asked.
Scott puffed out his cheeks and blew. He turned and rose to one knee, peering over the top of the retaining wall. Raine’s heart raced. If the men saw him, it would be all over for them. The only other cover would require they run across four lanes of the road, and then they’d almost certainly be mowed down by rifle fire.
“Let’s just wait and see if they park and go inside with their friends,” Scott said.
“What then?” Raine asked.
“We disable their truck and beat feet over to the Sam’s Club,” he said, lowering himself back down behind the wall.
“What if they have radios and let the guy with the Suburban know something's up? Wouldn’t they call him for a ride?” Lucy asked.
“I’ve not heard anyone on a radio. Have you?” Scott asked.
Lucy shook her head. “No, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a way to communicate with one another.”
Scott lifted his shoulder in a half-shrug. “We have to go off the information that we have and assume that the guy at Sam’s Club knows nothing.”
The truck pulled up and parked beside the loading bay.
“Dennis said Digger put off the meeting until tomorrow, so we don’t have to be in such a hurry now,” a husky male voice said.
“I bet that means they’re still at war with the KO14s,” a second male voice said.
Raine heard the truck doors slam.
“Let’s hope Digger’s gang wins. If the BMFs win, they ain’t gonna be satisfied with just trading with us. Those mothers will roll in here and take over,” the husky voice said.
The door to the service entrance banged and the talking stopped. Scott rose and stared in the direction of the loading bay.
“I think they both went inside.”
“We need to hurry then,” JJ said as she stood.
“I should check it out…”
“We need to hurry,” she insisted before turning to the others. “Wait for us over there.” She pointed to the sound barrier wall across the street.
Raine wanted to protest, but JJ and Scott were gone before the words formed in her mouth.
Lucy stood and pulled on Raine’s coat sleeve. “Let’s go.”
Between gasps for air, Raine listened for the sound of the men returning to the trucks or gunfire. When she reached the wall on the other side of Manchester Road, she pressed herself hard against it and tried to catch her breath. She was trembling uncontrollably.
Lucy stood pressing her shoulder against the wall and peering around the corner. Her right arm was bent and the pistol ready to fire if the men came for them. Lucy’s jaw was clenched and her brows were furrowed as she stared back toward the trucks. Raine envied her bravery. She wondered if she would have more courage if she had a weapon of her own. She clutched her pipe wrench to her chest. She hoped none of those men got close enough for her to use it.
Lucy stiffened and stepped back, bumping into Raine and nearly knocking her over.
“What’s wrong?” Raine whispered.
“They're coming,” Lucy said.
Raine took a step away from the wall, planted her feet, and raised her pipe wrench to ready for an attack. A second later, JJ appeared followed quickly by Scott.
“Go! Go! Go!” Scott said.
Raine couldn't stop looking over her shoulder as they made their way back to Sam’s Club. She expected someone to jump out from behind a tree and point a gun in her face at any moment. Her ner
ves were fried. The sound of their footfalls seemed magnified one hundred times more than their trip there had been. The fingers on her right hand went numb from gripping the wrench so tightly. She so badly wanted this nightmare to be over. What she wouldn’t give to be home, sitting by Aunt Gwen’s pool right then. If she ever made it out of Missouri, she vowed she’d never even visit another state that got this cold again.
A large snowflake landed on Raine’s nose. Great. More snow. It had warmed up some the day before and Raine thought maybe the snow would melt, but that hadn’t lasted long. She sighed and tried to stay in the path that they’d made on their way there.
“How long do you think it will take them to realize someone tampered with their trucks?” Lucy asked.
“When they pop the hood and see that their battery cables have been cut off,” JJ said.
Chapter 25
Sam’s Club
Manchester, Missouri
February 22nd
“Is that a car?” Raine asked.
JJ cursed under her breath and picked up her pace. When she pushed into the clearing beside the Sam’s Club, she stood with her mouth open staring at the empty parking lot. Scott bent over at the waist with both hands on top of his head. They’d just missed them.
“Do they know?” Raine asked.
“I don’t know how they would,” JJ said.
“We need to find out where they went,” Scott said, turning back toward the woods.
“How?” Raine asked.
“We need to follow them. We should be able to follow their fresh tracks in the new snow,” Scott said.
“What if we’re seen?” Lucy asked.
“We’ll try to stay concealed. We can use the abandoned vehicles as cover whenever possible. We need to get the SUV now, before they figure out what is wrong with the trucks and get them fixed,” Scott said as he turned toward the road.
They walked in the tree line to Manchester Road. When they reached the street, Scott held up a hand and halted them.
“Let me scout ahead and see if I can find their tire tracks.”
