“What’s your name, Miss?” he says.

“Camille Rivera,” I say, swallowing hard.

“Officer Schultz,” he says, pointing at his badge. “Come here, Camille.”

I walk around the car so we’re both standing in the glare of the headlights.

As I get closer to the cop, I realize that he’s younger than I thought—probably only about thirty or thirty-five at the most. He’s got close-cropped blond hair, buzzed at the sides, and a tanned face. His uniform is stiffly starched.

He’s smiling at me, but I’ve never been so scared of someone in my life. He’s literally holding my fate in his hands, in the form of a plastic bag of pills.

“Do you know what this is, Camille?” he says.

I look at the pills. They kind of look like Flintstone’s vitamins—stamped in the shape of school buses, pale yellow in color. So I’m guessing it’s Molly.

“Yeah, I know what they are,” I say. My voice comes out in a croak.

“Illinois has strict laws against MDMA,” Officer Schultz says, his voice low and pleasant. “Possessing just one tablet can result in a felony conviction. Fifteen or more tablets means a mandatory minimum sentence of four years in prison. I’d say you’ve got about a hundred and fifty tablets here. Plus the ones in your brother’s pocket.”

“Those are mine, too,” I say. “He didn’t know what it was. I asked him to hold it for me.”

There’s a long silence while the officer stares at me. I can’t read the expression on his face. He’s still smiling a little, but I have no clue what that smile means.

“Where do you live?” he asks me.

“On Wells Street. Above Axel Auto. That’s my shop—my father’s shop. I work there, too.”

“You’re a mechanic?” he says, looking at my clothes.

“Yes.”

“You don’t see a lot of girl mechanics.”

“I doubt you know a lot of mechanics at all,” I say.

It’s not the best moment for sarcasm. But I get so sick of the comments. Especially from men. Especially the ones who don’t trust me to work on their car, when they wouldn’t know a piston from a plug.

Luckily, Schultz chuckles.

“Just one,” he says. “But I think he’s ripping me off.”

The silence drags out between us. I’m waiting for him to slap the cuffs on my wrists and throw me in the back of his squad car.

Instead, he says, “Axel Auto on Wells Street?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll come see you there tomorrow.”

I stare at him blankly, not understanding what he means.

“Get your brother home,” the cop says.

He drops the pills into the backpack and zips it up. Then he throws the bag in his trunk.

I’m still standing there, frozen and confused.

“I can go?” I say stupidly.

“For now,” he says. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

I get back in my car, my heart thudding painfully against my ribs. My mouth tastes like metal, and my brain is screaming at me that this is very fucking weird.

But I’m not going to argue. I’m drowning in trouble—I’ll take any life preserver thrown at me.

I just hope it’s not an anchor in disguise.

2

Nero Gallo

It’s Friday night. I’m waiting for Mason Becker outside an old abandoned steel mill in South Shore.

This place is a fucking trip. It’s right on the water and so huge that it’s bigger than the whole of downtown Chicago. And yet it’s completely deserted—abandoned since the 90s when the steel industry finally collapsed.

Most of the buildings have been demolished. You can still see the U.S. Steel sign all covered with weeds. It looks like the end of the world happened, and I’m the only person left around to see it.

Actually, this whole area is kinda shitty. They don’t call it Terror Town for nothing. But that’s where Mason wanted to meet, so here I am.

He’s late, as per fucking usual.

When he finally drives up, I hear his car before I see it. His engine is knocking. He drives a crappy old Supra, with a big long scratch down the panels where his ex-girlfriend dug her keys into the side of his car.

“Hey, why you so early?” he says, sticking his head out the window and grinning at me.

Mason is tall and skinny, with curly hair and lightning bolts shaved into the sides of his fade.

“You’ve got the wrong spark plugs,” I tell him. “That’s why your car sounds like a lawnmower.”

“Man, what the fuck are you talkin’ about, I just got these changed last week.”

“Who did it?”

“Frankie.”

“Yeah? Let me guess, he gave you a deal.”

Mason grins. “He did it for a hundred bucks and a baggie of weed. So what?”

“So he used the wrong plugs. Probably pulled ‘em out of somebody else’s car. You should’ve had me do it.”

“Will you fix it?”

“Fuck no.”

Mason laughs. “That’s what I figured you’d say.”

“So.” I slide off the hood of my car. “What do you have for me?”

Mason climbs out of the Supra, popping the trunk so I can take a look. He’s got three FN-57 pistols, a monster .50-caliber rifle, and a half-dozen .45s in the back.

They’re all different makes and models, the serial numbers crudely filed down. It’s not as nice as the stuff we used to get from the Russians, but they’re not exactly talking to us right now, seeing as we killed their boss a couple months ago. So I need a new supplier.

Mason brings his guns up from Mississippi. That state has about the friendliest gun laws in the country. You can buy whatever you like from pawn shops and shows, and you don’t have to register it after. So Mason has his cousins pick up whatever we need, then he brings them up the pipeline of the I-55.

“If you don’t like those, I can get others,” Mason says.

“How many cousins do you have?” I ask him.

“I dunno. At least fifty.”

“Does your family ever do anything but fuck?”

He snorts. “I sure don’t. I like to keep with tradition.”

I look the guns over once more. “This is good,” I tell him. “I’ll take it all.”

We haggle over the price for a while—him, because he’s still trying to get Patricia back, regardless of what she did to the side of his car, and he probably wants to buy her something nice. Me, because he made me drive way the fuck over here to this ratty-ass neighborhood where the trash is blowing around like tumbleweeds.

Finally we agree, and I hand him the wad of cash. He transfers the guns to my trunk, into the hidden compartment I built under the spare tire.

If some bitch ever keyed my Mustang, I’d chuck her in the lake. I love this car. Built it up from blocks, after I crashed my Bel Air.

“So,” Mason says, once business is done. “What are you doing tonight?”

“I dunno.” I shrug. “Nothing, I guess.”

“Levi is throwing a party at his house.”