Pacifier

🌹Della🌼

We left the hotel but we left Conway hanging there, left the body of that stranger on the floor. Left the blood stains, just as we left, stained with blood.

Sam checked the car before he unlocked it, checked all underneath, just in case the stranger had seen us arrive, just in case anyone had predicted we might leave and left a last ditch attempt at wiping us out.

But there was nothing and Sam shrugged his shoulders as he opened the door for me. Looked over me with a smirk and said something about how it was probably for the best no one saw us.

Not when our skin and our clothes were still stained with blood. Not when we looked like we'd been dragged through hell and then kicked out, still smirking about the man on the door.

"Car bombs are a you lot thing anyway," he said as he sat down on the drivers side and started the engine. I didn't say anything, just smirked and rolled my eyes at him.

He'd told me that a couple times now, that blowing shit up was a bottleman signature. If it was it wasn't something I'd been taught.

"Isn't it dangerous leaving him there?" I asked instead, my eyes on the road as we drove. Watching the traffic out the window, making eyes at anyone who pulled up beside us, feeling scarier than I really was and enjoying it.

It was funny to see the expressions of strangers who looked my way and looked long enough to notice.

To notice the blood on my features. A pretty girl like me looking the way u did now, my eyes sparkling with mischief as somebody else's blood matted my hair.

"Nah lass," shrugged Sam, "if they didn't come back last night then naebody else is lookin for him an they've given up,"

"So he's useless then?" I asked leaning on my fist so that my cheek squished, growing bored of the shock in strangers eyes a little too quickly.

"What?" asked Sam, I wasn't sure whether it was the boredom or something else which surprised him the way that it did.

"If they've stopped looking for him an they think he's dead... Hardly a useful hostage is he,"

"He's Vans hostage lass not mine, dont care what they want do with him am just doin as am told..." shrugged Sam, dropping a packet of cigs into my lap, "You shunt worry yourself wi it either," he said, offering me a smile as he watched me take a ciggy out.

"But..." I started, thinking better of it for a moment, deciding I'd rather light my cigarette than speak, lighting it up and looking back at him, one brow raised so he knew I wasn't giving in. "Where are we going?" I asked changing my mind, "and is that really how you work?"

"Aye lass..." he said, "better not knowin," he said with a shrug, "believe me, its a lot fucken better not knowing..."

"Where are we going?" I asked again, recognising the streets outside and thinking it was a little odd he should be driving so casually so far into enemy territory. "This is the Reids side of town..." I nodded to a corner shop I recognised, one whose store room was packed full of smuggled drugs and whose basement was a munitions production line.

We had them too but that little corner shop was the one everybody knew because it was the easiest one to walk into and walk out of with a gram of coke and some spliff. No one bothered raise their brow at you, you just slipped your money over the counter and you wandered straight back out.

The police knew of it but they turned a blind eye.

Once a lad in school claimed hed gone in and bought himself a gun, one of the other lads had called bullshit and then he'd pulled said gun from his skinny jeans and threatened to fire it.