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xxv. Therefore I Ache
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For the first time in a long time, Blair Cameron was back to being the getaway driver.
John B proposed to drive, but he didn't insist much on it because he knew that, once the prima-donna girl put her mind up to something, there was no talking her out of it.
A mixture of her trademark impulsiveness and the undying fear to keep her sister and best friend alive with a bounty on their heads was inevitably what drove her to madness, say behind the wheel of an old truck that belonged to Terrance's crew. Speeding through the dark streets just fast enough for them not to lose a precious grain of sand in the hourglass, but slow enough not to get noticed by the authorities. The last thing they needed was to raise local eyes.
Terrance was sitting behind him, with the other man and Cleo squeezed besides him. John B, too, was sandwiched between her and Sarah, who was immobile in the passenger seat, still angry at the other two. "Home sweet home. Take us to your mansion, Miss Fancy-pants," he whistled.
Sarah rolled her eyes; Blair did, too. She looked back at them and gave them a semblance of a smirk (more a grimace than anything), then rounded the corner that pulled up to the Estate. "All right. This is it," John B said, and they lowered themselves in the trunk and pulled the tarp over their heads. He glanced at Blair and sighed.
"You lied," Sarah clenched her jaw, arms crossed in front of her chest. Her sister didn't crane her neck to meet her eyes, but Sarah addressed her anyway. "Both of you."
"We are very aware of that, and we are very sorry," John B apologized as though he owed it to her, which inevitably made Blair scoff in irritation. "And we shouldn't have gone," he added.
She scoffed again; he coughed melodramatically. "What?" Blair hissed. "I'm not going to apologize for this. Sarah, we owed John B at least that. Help him find the gold. And it wasn't like we were in danger, nobody else was there," she told her sister, eyes never wavering from the street ahead of her, hands tight around the steering wheel.
Sarah shook her head incredulously. "Is the gold even there?" she asked, annoyed.
"Uh . . . I think so," John B grimaced.
"You think so?" Sarah repeated, stunned.
Blair shushed them as they pulled up to the Estate's security guard, leaning an arm against the windowsill and smiling. She had a dirty, dark green cap over her head, a bandana around her neck, lashes that were still wet and ugly bruises on her face. Nobody would suspect her to be the same girl that use to parade around in multicolored sundresses with Dior sunglasses and a beaming smile, all teeth.
