Page 5 of Rune
Things had just started to get a little boring around here.
Leave it to a woman to shake shit up and make it interesting again…
CHAPTER TWO
Carmen
“Okay. Alright. You’re okay. Everything’s gonna be alright.”
There was no rationalizing with my panic, though, as my gaze frantically moved from the rearview to the side mirrors, sure I was going to see a motorcycle come flying out of nowhere to chase me down. Or gun me down.
But I pulled away from the curb, white-knuckling the steering wheel, made it down one side street, then the next, with no headlights following me.
I reached for the button to crank up the air conditioning. My whole body was drenched in sweat.
I’d like to claim it was just from the run for my life, but it started before that. Before the guy grabbed me like it was nothing, then pulled me against him. Before I even raised that gun and took aim.
It started all the way back to the second I slipped into my ‘about to commit a crime’ outfit back at home and had been soaking through my clothes ever since.
Because, well, I wasn’t a criminal.
I certainly wasn’t a killer.
But, God, some people just didn’t deserve to keep walking around this world after what they’d done.
Still, I clearly hadn’t been ready.
I knew it when I walked up to the open clubhouse gates. Every inch of my body had been shaking like a leaf, so bad that my back molars were sore from knocking together.
I should have turned around, regrouped, come back when I wasn’t so terrified.
As if that day could ever happen.
That was what pushed me through. I was never going to be ready. Not to put a bullet in a stranger. That just wasn’t who I was.
And yet… that was exactly what I’d been meticulously plotting to do for months. Almost a year at this point. Ever since I learned that…
“Stop,” I told myself, shaking the thoughts loose.
Those weren’t going to help.
Besides, I had more pressing things to think about now.
Like how the guy had now seen my face.
I’d opted out of wearing a mask in case anyone was around. Surely, a bunch of bikers would have had a red flag go up if they saw someone all decked out in black with a mask on approaching their home.
I figured if all went to plan, he wouldn’t be, you know,aliveto point me out in a lineup. Or, more likely, hunt me down and murder me himself.
A dying animal sound escaped me as I pulled up to a red light and pressed my forehead to the steering wheel.
How,howhad things gone so sideways so quickly?
I’d been plotting it out in my head for months. I had a whole detailed plan. I was going to walk in there, find him, tell him who it was for, then shoot him. That’s it. Simple.
Except there was nothing simple about taking a life.
I guess that was kind of the whole point, wasn’t it?
