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Nick wakes to a gun under his chin.
“You high?” Luciana asks, her familiar accent calming his racing heart. Not by much admittedly, but a little.
“No.” He shakes his head.
“You seen Calvin?”
“No,” he repeats, gently pushing the barrel away with two fingers.
She tucks the gun into her holster. “Good. I’d have to torture you if you had.”
Nick groans, unable to help himself. Without asking, he knows what’s happened. Cal fucked up and was in the wind.
From the beginning, Nick had warned him that getting entangled with the mob would be bad idea. Being a drug deal was one thing when your only interaction with your source was handing over the cash for this month’s goods; rising the ranks was something else. But they hadn’t been actual friends since high school – not since Cal became a dealer and Nick became his most loyal customer. Sometimes their relationship echoed those innocent days, and he was more involved with Cal’s business than any other customer, but that didn’t make them friends. That didn’t make Cal listen to him.
“What did he do?”
Luciana turns on her heel. “He stole. Misdirected delivery of a shipment – bosses think he cut a deal with some rivals.” She opens the drawer of his dresser, tossing poorly folded shirts into a pile. “They also think you know what happened.”
“I don’t.”
She glances over her shoulder. “I believe you. Which is why we’re leaving.”
“Won’t that just cause more problems for me?”
She shams the drawer shut, dumping the pile on his bed. “Bag?”
He shakes his head. “Seriously, Luci – I’m not cut out for the fugitive lifestyle.”
She raises her brows. “Would you rather die?”
His expression says it all.
“Then get a bag, pack it, and let’s go.”
He sighs. When she opens her mouth – inevitably to scold him for hesitating – he drops to his knees, pulling a duffle bag out from under his bed. “What about you?” he asks, grabbing the clothes she’d collected.
“Cal screwed me over too,” she answers. “Not as much, but I handled him, and I should’ve known.”
“But we didn’t know anything,” he says, heading to his closet for some jeans. “I mean, they can torture us all they want but they have to realize that at some point, don’t they?”
“And? Just because we don’t know what happened here, we know too much to have failed this.”
He pauses midway thru stuffing jeans into his bag. “I didn’t sign up for this.”
“Too bad.” She nods at his bag. “You done yet?”
Nick zips up his bag and goes to sling it over his shoulder when he realizes he’s still in PJs. “Can I put on pants first?”
She rolls her eyes, turning her back. He changes as she looks out the window. It’s hasty – his shirt is stained, the knees of his jeans are ripped, his socks are fished out of the laundry hamper, and his shoelaces are frayed. “Done,” he says, completing his look with the duffle bag.
“Good.”
She grabs his hand, dragging him through the rented house he shares with Cal. Shared. It seems safe to assume neither of them will be coming back here, although if they did at the same time, Nick would punch him. Thanks for fucking up my life, asshole. A voice that sounds suspiciously like Alicia’s argues in the back of his head that he was one who fucked up his own life. He started doing drugs, he failed rehab time and again, he moved in with his drug dealer.
“I’m not going to see my family again, am I?” he asks, tossing his bag in the back of Luciana’s car and climbing into the passenger seat.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” she says, starting the engine. “We’ll be a distant memory in a few years, but I wouldn’t recommend coming back to Los Angeles.”
“Then where do we go?”
She cranes her head as she reverses out of the driveway. “Mexico.”
“Passports?”
“Got them.”
“Is that our final destination?”
She snorts. “Not likely. Too many connections down there, but it’s a start.”
He picks at his thumb, processing the information. His lips twitch upwards as a thought pops into his mind. “If we’re going to Mexico, do I get to meet your family?” Nick shrugs in response to her quick glare.
“Estúpido.” Even if he hadn’t taken Spanish in High School, he gets the gist. “Yes, we’ll meet my family,” she starts, the sarcasm sharp in her voice. “We’ll also elope on a chapel off the highway and have our honeymoon in Peru.”
He hums. “I’ve always wanted to visit Peru. Seems like it’d be a nice place.”
“Then it’s a plan,” she deadpans.
“If we survive the trip,” he says. “Speaking of… You’re sure we’re not being followed?”
Her eyes flash to the rearview mirror. “Yes. We have two hours to get out of LA.”
“If we’re lucky, we might just make it,” he muses wryly, watching as the car in front of them breaks hard. Packing had been a pulse pounding event but the evening rush hour was already lulling him into boredom.
“A two hour head start is a two hour head start, regardless of traffic.”
“Great, great.” He wets his lower lip. “So, you figured out the timing and the documents, but did you make a plan for my withdrawals?”
“Vicodin in the back.”
His head hits the back of his seat. “I’d be lucky to marry you.”
The noise Luciana makes is half-scoff, half-laugh. “Smartest thing you’ve said all day.”
“You try waking up the way I did.” She might have, actually. Not waking up to a gun, but if she isn’t lying about not knowing Cal’s plans, then she’d have been in hurry to figure out next steps.
Although she’d never claimed to be officially assigned to Cal, the assumption had been easy to make. She’d showed up with dark eyes and a hard set job, acting simultaneously as handler and bodyguard when Cal started getting more important jobs. Compared to the rest of his associates, Nick actually liked Luciana. She was fiery, she could crack a good joke, and she’d never looked at him like gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe.
“Oh, I’m so sorry I stop for coffee on my way to save your ass,” she shoots back.
He smirks. “It’s a good ass.”
“Mine’s better.” He doesn’t doubt it; if it weren’t for the adrenaline, he might’ve tried to imagine it. Her voice prevents him from trying. “Do you want coffee?”
“We have the time for that?”
“We have time for the McDonald’s drive-thru.”
His brows raise. With as understandably rushed as she’s been, he thought she’d been joking. “Can I get one of those pies too?”
“If you shut up until we’re out of LA, sure.”
“Deal.”