Chapter 23

I sped down the I-35 westbound towards Costco with my earbuds in and Green Day playing, this was the life: wind in my hair, music imploding my eardrums, nothing was more relaxing. Jack said he was gonna give Alex a bit of his cut since we didn't account for her in the initial divvying up of the cash, and I had given a portion of the mine to Miguel's friend since I didn't need as much, we had a god damned safe in our safe house with enough cash to buy California so being short a couple hundred thousand wasn't gonna break my heart. Pulling into the parking lot, I started the task of the century: finding a parking lot at 10:30 at night, luckily there was a lot to choose from. After parking my bike and opening a wormhole to let Jameson out to watch over it, and stretch his legs, I headed towards the store.

"Umm excuse me, sir?" Came from the bitch who took her job way too seriously.

"Hmm?" 'Seriously, you're not working for the secret service, you're a check-in clerk at a fuckin' Costco, slow your roll'

"Do you have a membership card?"

"Indeed I do."

"Can I see it?" She asked, so I took out the card and showed it to her, using every ounce of my willpower to not say 'I don't know, can you??'.

"Thank you, have a nice night."

"You too." 'Asshole,' I thought as I walked around the store, heading towards the back, they had nice clothes but I do my shopping on Amazon unless I'm just getting jeans. I got to the back and saw they still had their pizza in stock, so I grabbed two and put them in my cart. 'Next stop, soda aisle,' The thing about Costco is that it's a bulk shop warehouse, basically, so you don't go to Costco just for a bottle of soda or a slice of pizza, you buy an entire pizza and a case of 35, give or take, cans of soda. So, I got to the soda aisle and loaded two cases of diet coke underneath the cart, 70 cans of DC in total, and headed towards the checkout and hoping that a friend of mine was working. Funnily enough, she was, and she looked like she was one stupid question away from strangling someone, so I got in line and set my stuff on the conveyor and patiently waited my turn, like a good boy, and totally didn't want to throw everyone out of the store that wouldn't shut up.

"Welcome to -oh hey, Jake," Sofia said, scanning my stuff, and laughed at the amount of Diet Coke I was buying, "party or mateless gaming night?"

"Fuck off."

"Mateless gaming night it is, have fun," she said through laughter, she always teased me about being single but I honestly couldn't care less, I'd rather be single waiting for the right person than not be single and just be a hoe, of course, I wouldn't say that to her face, she was nice when she wasn't working, "how'd the job go?"

"Pretty well, authorities are still searching so I'm trying to lay low," I said and handed her a hundred dollar bill, "keep the change."

"What?"

"Happy birthday, Sof," I said and she looked like I had just told her the lottery numbers.

"You remembered! Bitch!"

"Of course I remembered, I wouldn't forget your birthday, mate," I said and waved goodbye before pushing the cart out towards the exit, and had to deal with another dickhead who took his job way too seriously. I showed him the receipt but kept walking so when he grabbed it I just let go and continued walking, I didn't care enough to wait and even if he called the cops I did nothing wrong, other than robbing a bank, but he didn't know that. I walked out towards my bike and willed it to shift, so now I was standing before my pickup truck with a two-ton dog looking up at me with the most adorable puppy eyes, so, I unlocked the bed and let the door down before loading the stuff in and then helped Jameson into the back, he wasn't a huge dog but he was heavy, as all hell hounds are, so, it wasn't exactly easy. After some effort, he was in the bed of the truck and curled up in a ball peacefully, I could easily watch him for a couple of hours, he was fucking adorable when he was sleepy.

"Sleep well, boy," I said, getting into the driver's seat, and got back onto the I-40 westbound, only there was a slight problem.

"PULL OVER THE VEHICLE!" I heard behind me, 'Shit, this looks like the trucks we were using. Well, either pull over and have him potentially recognize me, or try to lose him...Hmm, let's see how fast you can go, big boy,' I thought and floored the gas, earning a howl of approval from Jameson and the cop car speeding up the catch up to me. 'Hey, Jack, wanna help me out with a cop scenario?' I said over the link, and it wasn't long before the passenger seat was full of Jack and a couple of guns.

"What's goin' on?"

"I didn't feel like pulling over cuz I did nothing wrong, and now I have a cop chasing me."

"Is Jamey okay?"

"Yeah, he's in the back cuz he likes riding back there."

"Alright, we killing the guy or just getting him off your tail?"

"Just get him to stop following me and you're good," I said and changed lanes to prevent the cop from getting in that lane, and Jack opened the window into the bed and started shooting at him. The cop shot back, not surprisingly, but it was an M16 against what looked like an H&K VP40, which would hurt like hell, but not as much as an M16.

"Keep the bullets away from me while I'm driving!"

"I never thought I'd live to see the day where you say something like that," Jack said as he popped one of the tires on the cop car, making him veer off to the side.

"Oh shut it, do you want me to turn this car around?"

"Are you serious?" Jack asked and I sped up, now going a hundred thirty, and waited until the cop tried to get closer to us, and when he did I flipped a bitch as hard as I could, 'phrasing!', and hit the cop car with the back of our truck.

"Oh...that's what you meant," Jack said as we got out of the truck, I had crushed the front of the cruiser but luckily didn't kill the guy.

"Y-you-you're under a-arrest!" The cop said, limping out of the cruiser, I almost felt bad for the guy...' Keyword almost' I thought as I slugged the guy, knocking him out cold.

"If you're gonna be a cop, you have to have more confidence than me, and that isn't saying much! I have the confidence of a chicken nugget! It's not hard, to have more confidence than a chicken nugget!" I semi-shouted at the cop on the ground, Jack holding in his laughter, which was very obvious, and me not far behind him.

"You're giving yourself too much credit, I've never met someone who didn't think that chicken nuggets were delicious," Jack said, making me blush, so I slugged him in the arm.

"Shut up," I said as I got back into the driver's seat with Jack beside me, and started driving back towards home.

"You're blushing~.

"No, I'm not, fuck off," I said and tried to ignore it, which only made me blush more because he knew that pointing out that I was blushing only made me blush more.

"Yes, you are~."

"Keep this up and I'm going to kick you out of the car," I said and slammed on the breaks, which got him to stop, and allowed us to drive home in peace...until I realized that Derek was proposing tomorrow.

"SHIT!"