Page 80 of Theta

"You don’t wish it was Cal here instead?” I ask.

He frowns at my question. "Fuck no. He'd never listen to me, for one, and I'd have to spend the whole time keeping his big fat stupid head down so he didn't get it blown off."

I snicker. "You're not giving him enough credit."

He sighs, rolling his eyes. "I know. He's every bit as competent as the rest of us. He's just got that reckless impulsiveness." His face clears, brightens. "Plus, if it had been Cal, we wouldn't have discovered that we're in love with each other."

"True."

His smile becomes a smirk. "He also doesn't possess the world's finest backside."

"How do you know? You're straight. Maybe he does."

"Does he?"

I grin, lean into him and clap my hands onto his ass. "Nope. But you do."

Sirens go wee-wah wee-wah wee-wah, distant but approaching. Killian's eyes flick from my face to over my shoulder. "We should go while the getting is good," I say. "I don't think being interrogated by the Sardinian police would help us a whole lot."

"Considering there are…" he looks up, counting, "fifteen? Fifteen bodies in a morgue somewhere that point back to us? I'm inclined to agree."

I blink at him. "Fifteen?"

He hauls me toward the low-slung, blacked-out Audi four-door sedan parked diagonally across the narrow lane. "I hope the keys are in this thing." he leans in the open driver's door. "Aha! They are." He swings in. "C'mon. Il Carabinieri are gonna be here any second."

I jog to the car, slam closed the two rear doors as I round the trunk, and slide in next to Killian. The second my ass touches the seat, he guns the engine, and we scoot toward the dead-end with a bark of tires; the abrupt jerk forward swings my door closed, and then he jams the car into reverse and backs down the narrow lane. As soon as we reach the intersection, he pulls a squeaky-clean J-turn, twists the rotary shifter dial to D, and guns the accelerator, bolting us forward with a squeal of rubber.

I cover his hand. "Hey, easy. Drive it like you stole it, and they'll think you did."

He doesn’t reply but backs off the speed. We make a left away from the hostel just as three Sardinian cop cars zip past, lights flashing blue.

I'm still stuck on the number fifteen, mentally. "The original three goons," I mutter, ticking off three fingers. "Eight at the flat, that's eleven." I scrub my face with a palm. "Eight. We took out eight back there?”

"Time flies when you're having fun?" Killy quips; I glance around but have no clue where we are, and neither does Killian, I don't think.

I ignore his joke. "Plus those four—that makes fifteen. Jesus."

He rolls his eyes at me, pulling to a stop at an intersection to allow a gaggle of clucking and cackling mid-thirties American women to cross. "I can do basic math, you know. Such as adding three plus eight plus four."

I rest my hand on his forearm. "I know. It just seems like a lot."

"It is." He frowns, shakes his head. "I'm trying not to think about it, to be honest. It's easier mentally to just sort of pretend they're paper targets back at the compound. Things get dicey up here," he taps his temple, "if I think about them as people."

"How did they get to us so fast, Killy?"

A shrug. "I don't know. How many kill squads does this Pugli asshole have just…waiting around in various European cities?" He pauses, gripping the steering wheel in both hands as we wait at another intersection. "Do you think it's the cars?"

"The cars?" I echo, thinking. "I mean, maybe?"

"From what I've heard, he's paranoid as hell. So it'd follow that he tracks his people."

I frown harder, my mind racing. "How long was it from leaving the flat in their car to that squad showing up?"

Killian's brow furrows; he's definitely just turning at random, now, winding us aimlessly across Olbia. "Ummm…? A few hours at most? I was gone for, what? Three hours, max?"

I shrug, nod. "About that."

"So from putting Enzo into the car to this last round of jackholes showing up? Four hours, at most, although I admit I wasn’t exactly watching the clock.”