Gathering Dark, Candice Fox [inspirational books for students .TXT] 📗

going to deny I arrested you, or that Jessica came with me,” Tasik said. “I’ve been playing this game a long time, Emily. You know that. All I have to tell them is that you slipped your cuffs to the front, as I knew you would do, and you waited until we were in a quiet backstreet in Koreatown so you could fake a seizure in the back of the car. Sanchez and I stopped to assist you, you attacked her. Took her gun and killed Sanchez, then made me put her in the car. You forced me to drive up here into the mountains, where you confessed to killing Dayly. You told me you’d dump me and Sanchez in the same spot you did her.”

Jessica tried to keep her breathing even, stopped trying to move. She knew she had to regain complete control before she launched her attack on Tasik. She couldn’t groan, couldn’t struggle. While he thought she was unconscious, he might delay finishing her.

“She’s down there?” Jessica heard Sneak ask. “You threw her down there?”

There was silence. Jessica didn’t need to hear an answer.

“I’ll tell them I was lucky enough to overpower you,” Tasik said. “But you put up a good effort.”

Jessica felt blood running from her mouth, down her limp arm, onto the seat. She opened her eyes a crack. She wondered if Tasik kept a backup weapon in the car’s glove box, only a couple of feet away from her. Most cops she knew did.

“You know that Ada and Blair are onto the money,” Sneak said. Her voice was lower, thinner than it had been. She was losing hope. “You’ve got to, right? You know we’ve been asking questions. You saw us there at the gas station with the maps. You know Ada and Blair will be heading there right now, to San Jasinte. They might get there and get the money before you, while you’re wasting time here with us. Let me go. Leave me here so I can find my child. Go get the money and run.”

“I’ve got time,” Tasik said. “I’ve been monitoring Ramirez’s texts. He thinks he’s got another three hours until he breaks through. Best case scenario for me is the two parties run into each other and there’s a shoot-out, and I walk in to find the cash sitting by a neat pile of bodies, waiting for me. Lemon and Ramirez won’t be expecting Maverick and her goons and Harbour. But no one at all will be expecting me.”

“What if Ramirez’s wrong?” Sneak said. “What if they break through early and you turn up and no one’s there?”

“Fine. I know where everyone will be tomorrow. Lemon and Ramirez will be loading a plane they’ve booked to get to Mexico at an airfield near there. Maverick will be at her club. She’s not leaving. Not with her business interests in the area. And Harbour will be at her apartment. She’s got a kid. She’s not going anywhere. I’ve been in her apartment before, and I know she can fight, so this time I won’t be messing around.”

“You,” Sneak said. “It was you who broke in.”

“I was trying to scare her off,” Tasik said. “Scare both of you. It didn’t work. If you could put up less of a fight tonight than she did, I’d be really grateful. But this has to look authentic, so we’ll need to play around for a little while, at least.”

He pushed open his door, walked behind the car and opened the door beside her. Jessica heard Sneak yelp as the man grabbed her.

“Enough talking,” Tasik said. “Let’s start.”

BLAIR

I turned awkwardly and started moving down the ladder, and spied in the mess of items near the edge of the hole a long barbecue fork with a wooden handle. I pretended to trip, grabbed at the mess, swept the fork and some other items into the hole with me.

“Watch it, Neighbor.”

“Sorry,” I said. In the darkness at the bottom of the ladder, Fred had a flashlight pressed into his palm, giving off a soft glow. I pretended to examine my ankle for scratches caused by the near fall and slipped the handle of the barbecue fork into my shoe, pulled my jeans down over the top of it. Mike and Ada climbed down the ladder and stood quietly in the dark. Fetid air, heavy with a metallic taste, the unmistakable reek of human waste and stagnant water. I could hear the breaths of the people around me. They were shallow, fast, measured: the breathing of people who had done this before, people who had sat in cars outside banks in balaclavas, waiting for the doors to open. People who had waited in the bushes near the guarded entries to stash houses. Thieves. Hunters. Some silent consensus was reached, and I was grabbed and guided along a gloomy dirt tunnel braced with untreated wood. Ada was beside me, Fred ahead and Mike behind us. The dirt tunnel ended in a smashed concrete curve of wall. I climbed through, was shoved to the right on a path. I could see nothing beyond the edge of the path, but some primal awareness told me we were walking in a narrow tube with one horizontal surface on the right meant for traversing the passage on foot. My arm brushed pipes and ridges in the wall in the dark, and I reached up experimentally at one point and touched the concrete ceiling, felt rubber tubing, spokes, more pipes.

“Keep moving,” Ada whispered, poking me in the ribs with her gun.

We moved at a painful pace in the dark. Now and then Fred slid his palm slightly off the flashlight, illuminated the next few empty yards of sewer. I couldn’t bear the silence.

“No one has been who they say they are in this,” I said quietly.

“What?” Ada said.

“You,” I said. “I thought you were genuinely helping us find a missing girl. I thought you were paying your debt to me.”

“Well, you’re an