The thought of packing crossed his mind before he opted to leave everything behind. With any luck he’d leave this crappy place for his crappy apartment in the city. The liquor in his system was making him a little woozy, but he still had the presence of mind to crack the door and study the parking lot before he stepped out.

There wasn’t any one thing that increased his paranoia, but his gut told him he was on borrowed time. He walked as fast as he could to his sister’s car and took it slow out of the parking lot. To throw off anyone following him, he headed north out of Slidell to the Causeway toll bridge, which would have less traffic than usual at this time of night. The woman at the toll booth to the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway barely looked at him as he handed over his money, and he gripped the wheel as he started driving the nearly two dozen miles of elevated roadway.

He relaxed as he hit mile ten and leaned in to turn the radio on. Wondering why he hadn’t thought of this course of action before now made him want to slap himself, but all he needed was to tell Hicks everything, and he’d be back to where he was before he met Christina Brewer and fell for her grand plan. Whatever happened to Carol Verde likely wasn’t bad enough, but that crazy bitch was out of his life for good.

The song that came on made him smile, but that happy feeling disappeared as the car passing him sideswiped him hard enough to make him fishtail badly. Heart pounding, he overcorrected and went over the guardrail on the left-hand side of the road. The splash came quickly, and he panicked when the waters of the lake plunged him into total darkness.

“Fuck,” he said as the coldness hit his legs. It didn’t take long for the water to go past his chest, and he couldn’t find a way out of the car. He hit bottom and took one last breath as he pulled on the door handle. The burning in his lungs made him open his mouth, and he gagged, choked, his chest bursting. His hands fell away from the seat belt, his body jerked as it tried for a last gasp of air, and his last thought as he saw the shapes of two people looking down at him from the bridge was simply… Fuck.

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