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

“And Dayly,” I said. “You saw that man up there. The old man. He’s been suffering. How long has he been there? Weeks? Dayly was a part of that. I thought she was different. But Dayly and Lemon and Ramirez did that to him so they could get down here.”

“So Dayly’s a heartless piece of trash, like her mother,” Ada said. “You’re a whole lot more surprised than you should be, Blair, if you want my opinion. I don’t know how you’ve maintained your faith in people all this time. You’ve been locked up longer than I ever was. You should have learned in the can that deep down inside, everybody’s just out to get their cut.”

Fred stopped suddenly ahead of us. Ada dragged me against the wall. There was a pause, and then a voice rippled down the tunnel toward us from up ahead.

“Dayly?” the voice called. I recognized it as belonging to Officer Lemon.

Fred dropped to one knee, let the flashlight fall by his side, and started firing in the direction of the voice.

JESSICA

The pale moon was hanging low. Jessica glimpsed it through the windshield as she sat up, threw open the glove box, and searched for Tasik’s personal weapon. Nothing. The car’s service manual. Her bloody hands danced over the interior of the car, looking for her own weapon. She glimpsed Tasik outside the car, struggling with Sneak, his big fist raining down on her. One gun in his holster. The other nowhere to be found. Jessica didn’t risk opening her door. She slid across the car and onto the dirt road, but the sudden rush of blood to her head after the blow to the face made her stagger, roll her ankle on a rock. Tasik heard her and turned.

He left Sneak and launched himself at her, slammed her into the side of the car. Jessica hit the ground. His boots on either side of her, blows hammering downward. She turned under him, struck upward and kicked out, got his knee and sent him sideways. Sneak was there, bashing him in the head with her fists, clubbing downward while he pot-shotted her in the ribs.

Jessica pulled herself into a half crouch beside the car, prepared to straighten, to fight again. The gun had fallen from Tasik’s jeans but it was lost in the dark, and a shot would be impossible anyway. Sneak and Tasik had tangled together, Sneak an obvious prison fighter, gouging the man’s face, clawing with her nails. Jessica backed into the car again, started it up, and slammed it into reverse. Then she waited, her hands gripping the wheel, until the inevitable happened. Tasik overpowered Sneak. Got her good in the temple with a long, straight blow. Sneak rolled away on her side, gripping desperately at the dirt while her world spun. Jessica slammed her foot down on the accelerator.

A wet crunch. That’s how she would think about it later. The kind of sound a bag of bones and water would make if someone dropped it from on high. The car ground to a halt in a cloud of dust only a couple of yards from where Tasik had stood. The man himself had been shunted backward, thrown into the dirt maybe twenty feet away. She hadn’t hit him hard. But what she’d done had been effective. Jessica got out, went to Sneak and helped her to her feet. Sneak wandered forward in a daze, stepping toward Tasik, hardly looking at Jessica. The officer went to the man on the ground.

“Tasik”—Jessica’s teeth were locked, her voice a low growl—“you’re under arrest.”

Jessica bent over the groaning, coughing, writhing mess that was Detective Al Tasik on the dirt, the two of them illuminated by the car’s headlights. Jessica turned the cop on his side to let him recover. His ribs were surely broken, and he was drifting in and out of consciousness, but he would survive. Jessica was so relieved as she clipped the cuffs onto Tasik that she didn’t even hear the car door slam shut behind her. It was the beep of the horn that startled her, brought her back to reality. Sneak was sitting in the driver’s seat of Tasik’s car. She assumed Sneak must be about to bring the car closer to assist Jessica in hauling the man into the back seat. But Jessica stood and watched, dumbfounded, as Sneak reversed the car back a good ten yards and beeped again.

Jessica looked blindly into the headlights.

“Sneak?” she called.

Sneak revved the engine. Beeped again.

“Sneak.” Jessica put a hand out, begging, her fingers spread. “Don’t do it. Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!”

The cruiser burst to life. Jessica threw herself out of the way, and heard that hard, wet sound again as the car crunched over Tasik’s body. Jessica held her head and watched helplessly as Sneak reversed over the man and then ran forward over him again. On the second reverse, Jessica uncurled her rigid body and dragged herself to her feet. Trying not to look at the mess on the ground before the car, she staggered in shock toward the driver’s-side door.

Sneak rolled the window down slowly, watching Jessica from the corner of her eye. Her hand appeared with Jessica’s phone in it. She dropped the phone out of the side of the vehicle and rolled the window up again.

“Sneak,” Jessica warned. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you leave me h—”

Jessica watched the car jerk into a hard three-quarter turn, the red brake lights burning dusty clouds as Sneak sped away.

She looked at Tasik. The man’s body lay in a twisted heap on the road nearby. Jessica picked up her phone and looked at the screen. The reception bar was empty.

“Fuck my life,” she said.

BLAIR

Ada shoved past me, her gun blasting, bullets from her and Fred hitting the walls of the tunnel ahead, making white sparks. I turned to run and Mike grabbed my arm. I made a swipe for the barbecue fork riding against my ankle