chapter 11

“He has a point. You got shot four times.”

“Six times, actually.” I touched the spots on my body like a prayer. “Drive-by shooting. It was apparently meant for him, but I stepped out of the house at the wrong time, and boom. They decided to settle for his daughter instead.”

“That’s not supposed to happen,” Mona said, frowning. “We’re not supposed to be fair game.”

“It’s not a game to them though, to guys like that. Those assholes don’t care if we’re innocent or not. They’ll hurt us if it gets them what they want.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you.”

I waved it away and stared out over the yard. I didn’t remember much from the aftermath, but I remembered it happening vividly: the black truck that pulled up, the guns that appeared in the windows, the way I screamed, the pain as it flared, the weird, almost calm knowledge that I was going to die. Then black, then waking up in the hospital, in pain, very, very angry, and all the rehabilitation, the surgery, the bullshit. It took months to g