Page 95 of Stay Dangerous

I smiled back, because it was impossible not to. “Can’t wait.”

Pooh lifted an eyebrow, before kissing Pilar on the cheek. “I’ll leave you both to it, then.”

On the Other Side

Rico

“Look,Iwon’tpretendto get what the fuck y’all been through the last couple a days. All I can say is, each and every one of them niggas is either dead or finna be. So I’m asking–nicely–for y’all to shut the fuck up when the cops ask you what happened and how you got here.”

There was a reason Fredo spoke for both of us. My first instinct was to lie. My second instinct was to threaten.

I didn’t know how to be soft. And after a weekend of bullshit, murder, and mayhem, I didn’t have the bandwidth to try.

It was six of us piled into an old utility van. Six of us, barely breathing, the same dead look in our eyes.

But I was talking to the two girls huddled into the back corner. One of them I knew from around the way; the other was a girl I’d never met before that day. We were around the corner from Saint John’s, the county hospital in South Kenton. It wasn’t the best, but they would still do their due diligence, and I neededto know if I was adding two more to my body count, or if they would do what I needed them to do.

The girl I knew nodded and held the other girl to her. Autumn had said there were five girls, including herself, when she first woke up in the boiler room.

We were only able to save three.

“What about her?” the girl I knew asked, gesturing to Autumn.

I glanced to my right. Fredo sat with his legs spread. Turk lay completely still, his head in Fredo’s lap.

Autumn straddled Turk, both hands steadying his left arm.We figured his arm was broken in a few places. He passed out a few times from the pain.

“She’s safe with us. On my mama.” I turned back to her, and she glared at me for a long moment before she nodded and began to shuffle out of the van with the other girl.

“Thank you,” the other girl whispered, but I couldn’t accept that. Guilt had been nagging at me for hours. How the fuck could I not see this shit coming? How blinded was I? Putting in work, all hung up on Snow, that I ain’t see the writing on the wall.

I slid the door closed, wincing when pain tore into my chest.

I looked down, and fresh blood poured out of the bullet wound. A twenty-two, a baby foreal. Autumn dug the bullet out and we packed it as best we can. I sent another prayer up to Ma as I climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled back onto the street, toward the freeway.

The girls could show up to a hospital and get care.

We couldn’t.

Not in Kenton.

“Can you make it?” croaked Fredo. I knew he was worried, because if he wasn’t, he would have kept his words to himself.

After what I had to do.

“Yeah, Fred. I’m straight.”

I wasn’t straight.

I was so lightheaded I had to keep pinching myself.

It was still dark outside. The dash read four-thirty. The only lights on the freeway were the few cars coming and going.

I just had to get us to San Joaquin. They were building up the town, but it was small enough. And there was a big ass pile-up right outside the town, so maybe the police were still occupied with that.

Too occupied to deal with us.

The weekend started off so good.