The plumber's van smelled like defeat and old french fries.
Chloe drove with a stiff, furious precision, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
She hadn't said a word since the Great Pizza vs. Paste War of twenty minutes ago.
The silence was so thick you could have used it for ballistic gelatin.
Jax, laid up in the back with his newly casted leg propped up on a pile of greasy rags, finally broke it.
"So," he said, his voice cheerful and utterly oblivious to the storm clouds gathering in Chloe's eyes.
"This is fun."
"A little road trip for the Misfit Toys."
Jinx, riding shotgun, just snorted.
"Yeah, a fun road trip to our new luxury accommodations at the Grand Ruin Hotel."
Michael, wedged in the back between Jax's leg and a toolbox that smelled faintly of C-4, just stared out the grimy window.
They had left the familiar, almost comfortable decay of Brooklyn and were now deep in the forgotten industrial guts of the Bronx.
The buildings here weren't just abandoned.
