Win (Windsor Horne Lockwood III #1)(56)

Trey’s eyes stay on mine. He isn’t fooled. He knows what I am. “No.”

“Then how about that million dollars?” Bobby asks.

My vision is still blurry. I am dizzy and hurting. I am no better off than I was a few seconds ago.

“He’s lying to us, Bobby. The million dollars isn’t real.”

“But—”

“He can’t let us live,” Trey says, “just as we can’t let him live. Once he’s free, he will hunt us down. Forget the police—we would have to spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulder for him. He’ll come after us, with all his resources.”

“We can still try to get the money, can’t we? Let him wire or some shit. Then we shoot him in the head?”

When Trey shakes his head, I realize that I am out of time and options.

“This was all decided the moment we grabbed him, Bobby. It’s us or him.”

Trey is, of course, correct. There is no way we can let the other side live. It is too much of an unknown. I will never trust that they won’t come back for me. The same, Trey has realized, is true for them.

Someone has to die here.

We cross the George Washington Bridge and are now picking up speed where Route 80 meets up with Route 95.

I truly wish I had a better plan, something less guttural and primitive and ugly. The odds of this working are, I admit, slim, but I am seconds from death.

It’s now or never.

I slump my shoulders as though defeated.

“Then let me just confess this to you,” I say.

They relax just the slightest bit. I don’t know whether that will help. But at this stage I have but one option.

If I go for Bobby, Trey will shoot me.

If I go for Trey, Trey will shoot me.

If I surprise them and go for the driver, I just may have a chance.

Out of nowhere, I let loose a bloodcurdling scream. It sends hot jolts of agony all through my skull.

I don’t care.

They both, as I anticipated, startle back, expecting me to jump toward them.

But I don’t.

I spin toward the driver.

My plan is crude and base and not very good. I am going to get hurt badly no matter what. I could bring out the broken-eggs-omelet metaphor again, but really, is there a point?

Trey still has the gun. It hasn’t magically vanished. He’s startled, yes, but he recovers fast. He pulls the trigger.

My hope is that the suddenness of my move will throw off his aim.

It does. But not enough.

The bullet hits me in the upper back below the shoulder.

I don’t stop my spin. My momentum carries me through. I keep a thin razor blade in the cuff of my right sleeve. Bobby didn’t notice it as he searched me. Almost no one does. It shoots out now at the wrist and into my palm. I have the razor blade in my right hand, and while the driver is going at seventy-one miles per hour—yes, I see the numbers lit up large on the dashboard—I slice his throat to the point of near decapitation.

The van lurches hard to the side. Blood sprays from his artery, coating the inside of the windshield. I feel the warm contents of his neck—tissue, cartilage, more blood—empty out onto my hand. My left arm snakes through his seat belt harness so I can be somewhat braced for the upcoming collision.

I hear the gun go off again.

This bullet only grazes my shoulder before shattering the windshield. I grab the steering wheel and spin it. The van jerks off the road and teeters onto two wheels.

I close my eyes and hold on as the van flips, then flips again, then crashes hard into a pole.

And then, for me, there is only darkness.





CHAPTER 20



All superheroes have an origin story. All people do, when you think about it. So here is the abridged version of mine.

I grew up in privilege. You know that already. What you may consider relevant is that every human being is snap-judged by their looks. That’s not exactly an earth-shattering observation and no, I’m not comparing or saying I had it worse than others. That would be what we call a “false equivalency.” But the fact is, many people detest me on sight. They see the towheaded blond locks, the ruddy complexion, the porcelain features, my haughty resting face—they smell the inescapable stink of old money that comes off me in relentless waves—and they think smug, snob, elitist, lazy, judgmental, undeservedly wealthy ne’er-do-good who was born not only with a silver spoon in his mouth but with a forty-eight-piece silver place setting with a side of titanium steak knives.

I understand this. I, too, sometimes feel that way about those who inhabit my socioeconomic sphere.

You see me, and you think I look down on you. You feel resentment and envy toward me. All your own failures, both real and perceived, rise up and want to target me.

Even worse, I appear to be a soft, easy, pampered target.

Today’s teenagers might dub my face “punch-worthy.”

Inevitably, all of the above led to ugly incidents in my childhood. For the sake of brevity, I will talk about one. During a visit to the Philadelphia Zoo when I was ten years old, decked out in a blue blazer with my school crest sewn onto the chest pocket, I wandered away from my well-heeled pack. A group of inner-city students—yes, you can read into that as you might—surrounded me, mocked me, and then beat me. I ended up hospitalized, in a coma for a short time, and in a suddenly interesting life cycle, I nearly lost the same kidney Bobby Lyons had so recently pummeled.