“So?”
“So, maybe it’s time you tried something new.”
Here we go. We’ve had this conversation a thousand times. Why he wants to have it again right now is beyond me. “I try lots of new things and I like it that way. Leave me alone.”
“Do you, though? Like it, I mean? Are you happy, mate?”
“Aye, I’m happy. Can we shove out now?”
“Fucking right,” Moth mutters.
Vinnie ignores him and lowers his voice to barely a rumble. “I’m serious. We have short lives in showbiz, and you’re blowing through yours like it’s nothing. What are you going to do when you wake up one day with nothing but your dick in your hand?”
“Go put it somewhere else.”
“Not funny.”
“I’m not laughing. I’m just not like you. I don’t need a wife and an anti-social cocker-poo to be content. I’m not built for that life.”
“You’venever tried.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You should call your brother more often.”
I blink, caught off guard by the pivot, aware of Moth and Raven melting as far from us as they can in the cramped space, adept at tuning out of personal conversations in bizarre fucking places. “I call Jack.”
Vinnie looks beyond me to scan our horizon, a flicker of respite before he’s on me again. “You should call himmore. He loves you.”
“You’re not giving me new information here.”
“I know, I’m just trying to stop you dying alone.”
“Nice.” I lean away.
Vinnie forces me back. “Promise me you’ll think about it.”
“Why?”
“Mal.”
I sigh. “Aye, dead on. But shut the fuck up about it, okay?”
Vinnie nods. My belligerence fades, and it’s my turn to assess the view, shutting him out—shutting itallout. I don’t want to think about Jack right now. Or the possibility that every notch on my bedpost takes me further from what I need:
Someone to smoke more than one cigarette with, and to forgive my stupid self every time my inborn Gallagher bluntness gets the better of me.
Someone to give a fuck if I don’t come home, wherever that is.
And I get my wish. The mood shifts, we need to move, and Vinnie’s out of time to pick apart my life choices.
We roll out of the ditch and start the tab north to the second location. It’s a quiet run, too quiet. Unease seeps into me with every stride, and I know the others feel it as the village looms on the horizon and we draw close enough to catch the shadows of patrolling men, the glint of their rifles in the moonlight. The building on our radar is deep in the settlement. We mapped the route and two alternatives before we got airborne.
Sticking to the plan, we split up.
I take Moth and Orion, Vinnie takes the others.
More creeping. More shadows.