“Fucking hell.” Her entire body stiffened. “You have to take it back. Give it back. You can’t cross him, Gabe. You can’t.”
Didn’t she understand? We would be long gone before he even suspected me. “That’s why we’re leaving tonight.”
“I can’t leave tonight. That’s not happening.”
I jerked back to stare at her. “What the fuck do you have to stay for? You and me and Bump are going. There’s nothing here for us anymore but fucking death when Moses finds out.”
“Baby ...” Jorie bowed her head. “I ... I gotta tell you—”
“Holy fuck, you guys. Come see this. This Katrina bitch sounds way fucking bad!” Bump yelled from the living room.
Jorie jumped off the bed. As she strode for the door, she looked over her shoulder at me. “I got shit I have to handle before we leave town. We ride out this storm, and then we’ll figure it out. Okay?”
“Jorie, no. We go now.” It wasn’t debatable. I was doing things my way.
“If you go now, you go without me.”
Her words hit me like a two-by-four to the chest, knocking the wind out of me.
“How the fuck can you say that?” I called after her, but she’d already slammed the bedroom door. I dropped my head into my hands. “What the fuck is going on?” I asked the empty room, but no answer came.
I couldn’t leave without her and Bump. No fucking way.
* * *
The storm hit fucking hard, way worse than any of us expected.
I rode it out with Jorie and Bump in the bathtub of our shit-box bathroom, with me lying on top of the mattress covering them. The wind roared so loud, I felt like I was standing in front of a train. Glass shattered. Shit flew. The entire building vibrated until I was sure it was going to fall apart and leave us in a pile of rubble.
But it didn’t. Miraculously, we all survived without injury.
And that’s when shit got really, really fucking bad.
“I have to go get us some water. We need water. Why the fuck don’t we have water?” Jorie said, slamming the empty cupboard door for the dozenth time.
We hadn’t prepared for the hurricane, and we were shit out of luck. Not to mention thirsty and hungry after hours on end hunkered down.
“You two stay here,” I told her and Bump as I reached for the doorknob. “I’ll get supplies and come right back.”
“Gabe, no. What if—”
I shook my head once, and Jorie cut off her sentence before she could say the one thing I didn’t need Bump to know yet.
Her younger brother looked between us, his eyes narrowing. “What the fuck is going on? You’ve both been acting fucking weird.”
Jorie glared at him. “We just went through a hurricane. Anyone would act weird.” She glanced back at me. “Be careful. Please.”
I nodded. “I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere.”
* * *
When I returned to the apartment two hours later, it was eerily quiet.
“Jorie?” I called, but there was no answer.
“Bump?”
Apprehension made my blood run cold. I dropped two gallons of water, a bag of food, and the duffel, which I so far had refused to let out of my sight, on the floor, then ran to the bedroom and checked the bathroom.