Revoked by Blaze Ward

Author:Blaze Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781644702901
Publisher: Knotted Road Press

CHAPTER 28

Joie ended up riding in a pickup truck on the passenger side of the bench, rather than being ducked down in back of a sedan like she’d been expecting. It helped that Uno had a big hacienda outside of town, so they were quickly alone on the drive out. He’d left the windows down, so she had to be careful that the baseball cap he’d given her to wear didn’t blow away.

Outside, the machine looked like one of those mid-rwentieth-century International Harvester pickups. Inside, she suspected that most police cars couldn’t keep up. It was amazing what you could do when you had a bed of batteries across the bottom providing weight and the technology to print and crimp steel into any shape you wanted.

If the Pedros had wanted, they probably could have moved to Los Angeles and made a fortune in one-off car designs.

But that would have involved breaking up all the families, moving away from all their friends. Joie had only now begun to understand why he never had. She had a lot of catching up to do at this thing called living.

Outside, the afternoon was starting to wane.

“So are you back in the business now?” Uno asked as he drove.

Joie thought about it a bit before responding.

“I don’t think so,” she finally said. “At least I don’t want to be. The only people who could fix me could just as easily implant bombs or something next time they wanted to turn me off. A little charge of plastic explosives contained inside my head and they could turn my brain to mush, whenever or wherever.”

“Should I start looking for some other folks that might be able to build you replacement parts you could trust?” Uno asked.

She turned to stare at him, mouth open.

“That shit didn’t come out of a lab in Virginia, Joie,” he noted. “Enough folks have advanced arms like that now that someone is building them, at least at a workshop level, if not a factory somewhere. Or at least the parts. Maybe in Mexico. Maybe Vietnam or someplace in Asia. Sure, it wouldn’t have all the polish, but you might know a guy who could help with that, too.”

She remembered to close her mouth before she caught any flies.

What did it say that the people most wanting to help her had to break the law to do it? Granted, The Pedros were used to that. But even Celeste had opened herself up to all manner of criminal liability if Kehoe decided to be an ass. A bigger ass than normal.

“Maybe when I get back,” she said.

He nodded, accepting that as an implicit promise that she would come and visit them when she was done with whatever it was at wherever she was going that might be the root of all her problems.

Assuming she wasn’t in a prison somewhere.

They fell silent.

Not long after that, Uno turned into a long driveway that wrapped around a few hills and up into a small canyon where enough water accumulated to make things green.

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