Paulie’s grin nearly made his eyes slant as he barked out a laugh. “You thinking of switching sides there, champ?”

Alongside the car, I gave a halfhearted shrug. “It seems to me-five-a guy’s gotta-four-look out for himself-three-you know?”

Both Paulie and Jimmy stared at me like I’d lost my mind.

“What you countin’ for?” Jimmy asked as Paulie’s eyes went wide, the gears engaging somewhere inside his skull. There was no question as to who was the smarter of the two.

“No reason-one.” I blew a kiss at Paulie as I slid the grenade through his open window. It landed in the floorboard with a solid thump, and I didn’t hang out to see how they took it.

No cover on the street, I ducked low and ran with my hands over my head. My only consolation for waiting so long to bug out was that having burning pieces of steel embedded in my ass was nowhere near as painful as swallowing a load of bullets.

You gotta look for the good in things.

The car went up with a roar. Shards of it peppered my back, knocking me flat on the street as a wash of heat whipped past. I barely felt the ground when I hit, the barrage of fiery bee stings lighting me up from behind. I wasn’t winning this game of pin the tail on the jackass.

I kept my arms over my head and my cheek pressed against the cold road until the ping of shrapnel stopped and I didn’t feel the bite of it any more. Through the tinny hum in my ears, I could hear the crackle of the flames that had engulfed the car. Couldn’t hear much else though, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before sirens rang out in the night. Bugs had the cops in his pocket and he’d be shaking them like his keys to get them out here to see what happened.

Up on my feet, I took a quick glance at the damage. Couldn’t see much, but I imagined the whole of my back looked like what I could see, speckled with glimmers of silver and dots of red. My trench coat was pinned to my skin by metal debris and blood. It felt like a really bad case of sunburn, but it wasn’t too bad.