It took all of his concentration to keep his foot steady on the accelerator and the truck hovering at the speed limit. He clenched his jaw hard. The sound of his teeth grinding filled up the entire cab. He was still pissed off he was out doing this in the middle of the frigging night. His eyes were bloodshot. Lack of sleep and staring at the dark highway for the last three hours made them feel like he’d poured salt into them.
“You ain’t your own man, Lucas Hill. Your ass is owned by another. Just his bitch to jump when he snaps those meaty fingers and points,” he grumbled to himself.
He swirled another mint around in his mouth, hoping it hid the smell of the three beers he had earlier. He didn’t even want to think what would happen if he got pulled over. With his luck, it would be for something like speeding, not waiting the full three seconds at a stop sign, or not using his turn signal before changing lanes. He blinked twice and made sure to keep the truck in between the white lines. All or any of the minor screw ups would put him in the middle of a shit storm for sure. He had no desire to make headline news like other runners from committing some stupid traffic infraction. Jail time for drug running was stout enough, but he shuddered at the thought of what his sentence would be if some nosy pig poked his face inside the cooler and got the shock of his cop life viewing its contents.
A shiver of panic travelled down his spine, and he gripped the steering wheel of the inconspicuous black Dodge truck with a bit more force. While chewing on the well-worn spot on his bottom lip, he double-checked the side and rearview mirrors. Nope, he was safe. No blue lights behind him and no strange vehicles following either. Normal, sane people who lived normal, sane lives weren’t out at three o’clock in the morning. He let go of his crushed lip when the nasty rust taste hit him.
“Damn, another piece of my flesh offered to him. Damn!” he muttered after he swallowed the droplets of his own blood.
Lucas didn’t fear much in this world, especially not the frigging police or even a stint behind bars. He could handle both with ease. And it wasn’t like he sought out trouble; it just seemed to come to him. Like a damned homing pigeon or boomerang—it kept landing right on his lap, no matter how hard he tried to stay on the straight and narrow. His last six-month stint in Lafayette County, Tennessee, had been a walk in the park. A brawl with the bouncer at Gigi’s Strip-n-Tip landed him in the slammer after he got too friendly with a damned stripper. What a joke. How were you not supposed to touch all that flesh when it was in your face? When it was all said and done, he was convicted of battery after a dust-up with the bouncer. Lucas had some bruises, but the bouncer suffered a broken nose and was missing two front teeth.
Time spent in county lock-ups was a breeze compared to doing hard time like his old man was doing down in Tucker. The sorry excuse of a father would die behind the concrete walls of the maximum security prison.
His minor run-ins with the fat, slow, and lazy cops of the Southeast were as easy to handle as banging a virgin. Slip in, slip out, and leave a slight stain of blood behind as a reminder you were there. He didn’t fear the police, the court system, the frigging President of the United States. Not even God himself. There was only one person who set his guts on fire and turned his blood cold. The cold-hearted devil with black eyes and no heart ruled his life—and the lives of others—with an iron fist. Lucas feared the man enough not to even think his name inside his head, much less speak it out loud. If he made some asinine mistake tonight, and the contents of the cooler resting on the passenger floorboard were discovered, Lucas was a dead man.
No doubt. Dead, dead, deadski. Then someone else would be delivering his organs in the middle of the night to some sick, immensely wealthy business executive or international political leader, with enough cash to pay for new body parts on the black market.
