Before the Devil Knows You're Dead by Michael Ledwidge

Author:Michael Ledwidge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2003-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

IT WAS STILL DARK when the city first came into view. Now twenty miles north of it, they topped a highway rise and through the windshield, it was suddenly there, outlined in pin-prick, connect-the-dot lights. It seemed tiny and perfect and unreal in the distance, Coglin thought, like the paperweight skylines they sold to tourists down in Times Square.

Wonderland, Coglin thought, sipping the coffee he’d gotten when they’d stopped for gas half an hour before.

Through the looking glass and back.

The SUV they were driving was a luxury one, a new, black Cadillac Escalade that had tinted windows and leather seats. It had been rented with a stolen credit card by one of Angel’s associates the morning before and had been left in the lot of the pre-arranged hotel. When Aidan had laid eyes on it, dark and gleaming in the corner of the lot, he’d given Angel a broad smile and clapped him on the back.

“Class, boy,” he’d said. “I knew there was a reason we’d taken you on.”

Aidan, Travis and Angel now lay sunken in the dark, creamy leather of the back seat and behind them, under some hotel blankets, were the assault rifles.

There were five of them. The three they’d paid for as well as the two they’d taken off the white supremacists slain in front of Aidan’s trailer. Only one had anything wrong with it, a cracked stock where two of Aidan’s bullets had ripped through the hard plastic.

The M-16s were military issue, Travis had told Coglin when they were transferring them from his truck to the back of the SUV. They hadn’t been modified in any way, he’d said, and when set on autofire, they could empty a twenty-round clip in less than five seconds.

With them were several clips and two rectangular, metal boxes, like toolboxes, brimming with the rifle’s .223-millimeter rounds. They were stacked alongside a couple of police scanners and a laptop, some cell phones, black ski masks, black gloves and the thin, heavy layers of three Kevlar bulletproof vests.

Coglin reached out and turned the rearview mirror at himself for the hundredth time.

He was completely bald now. Everyone had agreed that altering his infamous appearance was necessary to the success of the operation, so Lisa had ended up shaving his head with Aidan’s electric razor in the hotel bathroom before they left.

Hey, psycho, he thought, shaking his newly shiny head with a dumbfounded expression. What the fuck’ll you do next?

He tilted the mirror back and turned around in his seat. His uncle was sleeping soundly. Travis was on the other side, his tall, longhaired Viking-like form struggling to stretch out, trying to nap. Between them, Angel was lighting a cigarette, the match illuminating the gold in the youth’s grim smile.

He turned and looked over at Lisa driving, her green eyes leveled ahead in fierce concentration, looked at the long, red nails she rested against the steering wheel’s leather. The ones that less than two hours ago had gouged the deep scratches he wore now on his back.

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