almost okay

SEVERAL DEATHS IN
THE FAMILY
Chapter Seventeen: This Pain In My Heart Isn't Gas

The HHR was still running.

I hurried over and opened the driver's side door, pulled Felina out then carried her over to the grass behind the curb. I held out little hope, but figured there was an outside chance that she could be revived and there sure as shit wasn't anything I could do for her, so I might just as well leave her here where the EMTs could find her. The sirens were getting louder.

As I got back into the rental, I saw the beer truck driver coming up into the intersection walking gingerly towards the stalled Escalade that I'd shot up. “Make sure they get this girl some help!” I yelled at him, pointing towards her. I jumped in the car, dropped the trans into reverse and shot backwards up the street. I was hoping to avoid anybody IDing the plate. Traffic was light and there had been no cars approach the intersection from behind during the three or four minutes of time that had elapsed since the first shots rang out.

Once I'd put some distance between me and the scene, I jerked the emergency brake, broke the steering wheel hard to the right and the HHR went into a controlled spin, the tires complaining and tossing up smoke. I dropped it into drive as soon as I'd spun a one-eighty, released the brake, then shot up the street.

After fifteen minutes or so, I figured I had avoided being followed. I'd been zizagging through neighborhoods until I came out in an industrial area somewhere across the freeway. After pulling over, I got out of the car to assess the damage.

I could only find one bullet hole in the driver's side, in the fender just in front of the door. Felina had been driving with the window down and luckily they hadn't shattered it with a shot into the door. The window on the passenger side was gone.

I drove aimlessly for a while, got lost in traffic. The tears streamed down my cheeks, my eyes blurred, the image of poor Felina as she looked at me and drew her dying breath burning into my brain. Suddenly, my eyes began to focus and I noticed an auto parts store in a strip mall up ahead. I swung the car into the parking lot, put the shotgun and our bags in the trunk, locked up and went inside.

“Where's the touch up paint?” I asked the cashier on my way in.

“Aisle twelve,” she said.

I picked up a can of silver and got in line. All I could think about was how those two thugs knew exactly when we were going to be leaving. Even I hadn't made up my mind until late last night. And if they knew we were in the house, why not just kick in the door and shoot us?

“Will this be all?” asked the cashier when it was my turn to pay. She was cute, but looked extremely bored with her job. So bored in fact, that I was damn near invisible to her. She didn't seem to notice the redness of my eyes, the tears still wet on my cheeks, or the swirls of blood on my pants and shoes. Neither did anybody else in the place.

“Um, do you have gum somewhere?” I asked.

She pointed to my right. There was a rack with candy and I picked up a pack of sugarless cinnamon. “This too,” I said.

I popped a stick of the gum in my mouth, paid, then walked back out to the car. My mind was starting to clear from the fog of the adrenaline by then and I was thinking more logically. It had to have been Amelie. That was the only scenario that made any sense. Amelie was the only one who knew where we were and he must have approached the Gonzalez gang figuring to give me up, thereby saving poor Felina from the likes of a felonious monster like myself while picking up a little spending cash in the process. He probably didn't want to be involved after the fact, so whatever deal he'd made kept them out of his house, just patiently waiting outside like cats ready to pounce on an unsuspecting mouse.

The thought of that tranny bastard coolly passing their car every morning when he left to go to work, passing by it again when he came home at night, then chitchatting with us on into the evening while Felina helped him with his wig and nails, even drinking and laughing with us, all the while knowing that any day I might be dead by the time he got home...well, it began to make my blood boil.

When I got to the car, I took out the chewed gum and stuffed it into the bullet hole, smoothed it over with the tip of my finger as best I could. Once it had dried, I'd give it a quick shot of the paint. Not exactly a perfect repair, but I figured from five to ten feet away, nobody would know the difference. At least it wouldn't obviously look like the car had been shot at. I could get the window fixed if I was lucky enough to make it out of San Antonio.

Amelie kept a little magnetic dispenser filled with his business cards on the front of the fridge, and some time during the course of that last week I'd pulled one out and noticed that his real name was Lee Masters. That card was in my wallet.

It was hard to blame Lee for what he'd done. I was guessing that he probably never dreamed that when it all went down Felina would be dead and I'd be the one walking away. But he would've had to have been stupid not to take into account that he was putting her in harm's way. He surely must have realized at some point that there was a good chance the Gonzalez people would kill us both.

Which is why I decided that before I went on to San Antonio, Lee Masters deserved to die.



Read Chapter One
Read Chapter Two
Read Chapter Three
Read Chapter Four
Read Chapter Five
Read Chapter Six
Read Chapter Seven
Read Chapter Eight
Read Chapter Nine
Read Chapter Ten
Read Chapter Eleven
Read Chapter Twelve
Read Chapter Thirteen
Read Chapter Fourteen
Read Chapter Fifteen
Read Chapter Sixteen