Apparently the police officer thought so too. “I’m going to need to see the contents of your truck.” He didn’t wait for a response, striding straight towards the back end of our truck bed.
Our driver’s hands shot out, and two blue lights flashed. The police officer’s body made a smacking thud as he hit the pavement face first.
I froze in disbelief for a few seconds, staring.
He didn’t get up.
The gas station door squeaked open as the attendant gave in to his curiosity and stepped outside.
I saw my truck’s driver turn towards him. But the gas station employee was just a kid, maybe my age or younger. Way too young to die just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“No!” The roar erupted out of me unplanned as I shoved aside the wool blanket covering my lap then stumbled up to my feet and through the people packed inside our truck. My hurt shoulder burned in protest as I climbed over the tailgate then leaped down to the ground.
The drivers and gas station attendant all spun towards me.
“What are you doing?” I yelled at the drivers.
“You saw what he was going to do,” my truck driver answered, his expression hard.
I crouched beside the police officer, trying to find a pulse in his neck.
Nothing. Not even a hint of a heartbeat.
“Hayden?” Tarah held up one of the two flaps covering the back end of our truck.
“We need some healers,” I told her as I began CPR on the man, fighting to keep my own energy under control even as a breeze kicked up and swirled dirt around the gas station.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the tear in the side of the canvas bulge out, like someone was trying to peek outside through it. A kid or an adult? If any kids got curious…
I yelled, “Tarah, the kids. Don’t let them see.”
Whispers from the truck bed behind me. The torn bit of canvas closed again.
Two women crawled out of the nearest truck, jogging over to join me.
“Pamela—” The same truck driver who had hit the police officer with the energy orbs called out to one of the healers now.
“Shut up, Steve,” she replied, not bothering to look at him as she hastily pushed her chin length blonde hair behind her ear. I recognized her then as the same woman who had healed Tarah’s dad at the camp. The other healer looked like a real dragon lady, big hands proudly resting on her big hips like she not only enjoyed her size but also was used to throwing her weight around a lot to get what she wanted.
“Can you fix him?” I asked Pamela, standing up and getting out of the healers’ way.
“We can try,” Pamela muttered as she and the older woman laid their hands on the police officer, one pair of hands at his head, another pair on his chest, and closed their eyes.
After a minute, Pamela then the other healer opened their eyes and shook their heads.
“His heart’s too damaged,” Pamela said. “He’s gone.”
I stared at the man dead at my feet, and acid rose up to burn the back of my throat. A dead cop. At my feet. Murdered right in front of me by people I had helped free.
Tarah joined me. “Is he…?”
I nodded.
She drew in a long, deep breath. “I…I don’t think any of the kids saw.”
We needed to get out of here. Fast, before anyone else saw what had happened. I turned to the two drivers with the gas station attendant. “You two let him go and come help me pick up this cop.”
“What?” Steve asked. “We can’t let this kid go. The second we do, he’ll call the cops on us.”
“No I won’t,” the gas station attendant stammered. “I’m like you guys. Here, look.” He turned his hand up at the wrist where Steve held it. A tiny flame flickered to life on his palm. “See? I’m an outcast too. I mean, that is what you guys are, right? That’s how you hit him with those blue lights, isn’t it?”
“Like I said, let him go,” I repeated.
The other driver started to release the attendant. But when Steve didn’t budge, the other driver froze in place, his eyes shifting from me to Steve and back again.
Gritting my teeth, I crossed the oil-stained stretch of cement until only a foot separated the trio from me. I wanted to physically shove Steve away from the attendant, but he might retaliate with energy orbs or something.
So instead I stepped closer to the attendant, locking eyes with him. “These guys want to kill you for what you just saw. And they have ways to know if you ever tell.” That last part was probably a lie, but then again, who knew what kinds of spells they knew? Maybe it was the truth.
The attendant nodded fast, his eyes even rounder. “I won’t tell. I swear it.”
I searched his freckle covered face, weighing the odds though I knew I didn’t really have a choice here. I’d made a lot of crappy mistakes this year. No way was I going to add to that list by letting them kill someone else. “You heard him, Steve. Now let him go.”
“No,” Steve said. “He’s a witness. He’s seen our faces, our license plates. He’ll turn us all in before we can get five miles down the road.”
“No he won’t,” I said.
“How can you be so sure?” Steve’s eyes narrowed.
I thought fast then yelled over my shoulder, “Tarah, have we got any phones?”
Tarah hurried over and held out a pink phone that looked a lot like the one she used to have.
“Can you shoot a quick video of this guy creating fire in his bare hand?” I nodded at the attendant.
“Sure.”
Steve hesitated then let go of the attendant’s arm so he could raise his hand. The attendant took a deep breath, stared at his hand, and the tiny flame reappeared on his palm.
Tarah held up her phone and hit a button on the keyboard to start the recording, making sure to get the attendant’s entire upper body and face along with the evidence of his abilities.
“Okay. Here’s the deal,” I said to the attendant when she was done. “You don’t turn us in, and we won’t turn you in. Got it?”
The attendant nodded fast again. “I swear, I won’t tell anyone. That cop was a jerk anyways, always demanding free donuts and coffee like I owed him, just because he caught me smoking outside once when I should have been behind the counter. I ended up having to pay for all his freebie snacks out of my own paycheck every week when we came up short!”
So the police officer wasn’t a saint. That still didn’t make his death right.
And then I remembered fighting the guards at the internment camp, hitting them with energy orbs, uncaring how hard I hit them or where as long as they went down and stayed that way…and that night in the woods when Damon and sixteen others had died because of me...
I was the last person to judge Steve.
But I still couldn’t let him kill the gas station attendant.
Silence as Steve debated and I wondered what this situation might come down to. Would I have to fight, maybe even hurt or kill, Steve just to save the attendant? Would I have to fight the other driver too? Would the others in the trucks and maybe even Pamela, who seemed to know Steve, jump into the fight as well?
This could end in a bloodbath if Steve didn’t make the right decision.
Finally, after what felt like half an hour, Steve scowled but stepped away from the attendant. The other driver took a hint and also stepped back. Letting out a huge sigh of relief, the attendant immediately dug in the pockets of his slacks, found his pack of cigarettes, and lit up, his hand shaking as he took a long drag.
“Great. Now we’ve just got to move the cop,” I muttered, my stomach rolling and knotting like a tangle of snakes fighting to get free.
“What for?” Steve demanded.
“We’re going to put him back in his car and hope his death looks like a heart attack.”
I didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be saying any of this, and sure as heck didn’t want to have to cover up a police officer’s death. But we had to at
least try to cover this up. We were already criminals on the run from the government. If we stayed under the radar, we had a sliver of a chance of making it to safety. But if we became labeled as cop killers, there wouldn’t be a single police officer, sheriff, deputy or prosecutor in the country who wouldn’t want to see us all dead.
CHAPTER 9
Grunting a bit, we moved the dead man into the car, arranging the body so it slumped back against the seat. A heaviness grew inside me, like my body was slowly turning into stone from the inside out.
“Let’s go,” I managed to mutter, turning away from a scene I knew without a doubt would haunt me for the rest of my life.
What would Damon think of me now if he were alive?
I walked without seeing, heading by instinct for the back end of the nearest military truck.
“Hayden?” Tarah called out from a few yards away.
I stopped and blinked in confusion. She was behind the wheel of my own personal truck now, leaning out the open window, her elbow draped over its gleaming white side. I hadn’t expected to ever see my truck again. Someone must have been driving it for me at the front of the caravan.
Later I might be mad about some stranger driving my baby. Right now, it was like discovering my favorite floatie while I was drowning in an ocean.
I changed direction, heading straight for the driver side door. “Scoot over.”
I expected Tarah to argue about my hurt shoulder and how I shouldn’t be driving yet. Instead, she silently slid across the seat so I could get in.
I slammed the door too hard, rocking the truck as I started it. The familiar curve of the gear shift in my hand as I shoved it into drive was like coming home. But even that couldn’t remove the crushing weight on my back and chest. After everything that had happened over the last few hours, being back in my own truck’s familiar surroundings with the GPS’s calm voice calling out directions felt unreal, like I was still asleep in the military truck and dreaming all of this. But then two louder engines roared to life as the military trucks fell into line at our rear, reminding me that this was anything but a dream. It was real.
Lost in thought, I tried to steer with my left hand, and my shoulder zinged me a little reminder that I was still recovering from being shot.
I’d been shot.
I’d broken over a hundred prisoners out of an internment camp.
I’d just helped cover up the murder of a cop.
Muttering a curse under my breath, I switched back to driving with my right hand, ducking my head so I could gingerly scrub my gritty face with my left hand instead.
What was I doing?
I checked the GPS screen. Ten hours to go. All we had to do was get to South Dakota without getting caught. Then everyone would be safe and could figure out where they wanted to go next. We could do this.
The silence stretched out, filling the cab like a thick but invisible fog that ate up all the oxygen in the air between Tarah and me. It was probably better this way, though. If we started talking, then I’d start thinking. And thinking wasn’t a good idea right now, not after everything that had just happened. Better just to stay quiet, stick with the plan, don’t overthink it, maybe listen to some tunes to kill the awkward silence.
I reached for the radio.
Tarah sighed. “Want to talk about it?” Her voice sounded shaky and tight.
“Not really.”
“A cop’s dead back there. You must have some feelings about that.”
“Let me guess, you were going to become a psychiatrist just like your mom.”
“Uh, no, more like a journalist like my brother.”
“How is Jeremy? I heard he’s overseas covering the war?”
“He is. And quit trying to change the subject, because you suck at it.” She stared at me with those big, dark, all seeing eyes. “Come on, Hayden. I know you’re sick about what just happened too.”
“I thought you said I’m just a cold blooded serial killer. After all, I killed seventeen people, including my own brother. And no telling how many guards at the camp. What’s a dead cop to me?” That weight I couldn’t seem to shake was growing on my shoulders and chest.
“I did not say I agreed with that theory about all those deaths last summer. And all those guards were still breathing just fine when we left the camp last night.”
The weight eased up a bit. I glanced at her. “They were? You’re sure?”
“Yes. Pamela checked on them to be sure they wouldn’t need any life saving healing. She didn’t want their deaths on her conscience, either.”
I cleared my throat. “Good. That’s good.”
She continued to stare at me. After another minute of silence, she said, “Hayden, just stop with the macho act already, okay? I know you care. And I know you didn’t kill all those people last summer either.”
“Actually I did.”
Her mouth dropped open, closed, opened again as she struggled for a response. “You…you did?”
I nodded once, shifting as the invisible weight grew by a couple more pounds on my shoulders.
“What happened?”
“Does it matter? I was there. People died because of me. End of story.”
“Of course it matters. Accidents happen a lot when outcasts are first learning to work with magic. If you—”
“It wasn’t an accident, Tarah. I meant to use my abilities that night.”
Her mouth snapped closed. Then her chin jutted out. “I know you, Hayden. You might have intended to use your abilities that night when the anti-magic guys showed up and started a fight, but you never meant to kill anyone. You were probably just trying to help protect your brother and his friends and lost control. It happens.”
Her blind faith stunned me, actually rocked me back against the seat. I looked at her. She meant what she’d said.
I didn’t know what blew me away more—that she was so determined to believe in my innocence, even when I’d just told her I was the bad guy—or that her guesses about what really happened that night were so dead on. How could she still know me so well even after all these years?
But in the end, it didn’t matter what she thought of me. I would never be able to escape the fact that even accidentally killing a whole bunch of people didn’t make them any less dead. And their deaths would always be on me.
My throat got so tight it felt like invisible hands were choking me. “Thanks for the faith, but I don’t deserve it. I’m not the white knight you’re making me out to be.”
“Yes you are. Look at what you did last night! You just marched right into that camp and saved all those people—”
“No, I saved you. All the rest of them were just an accidental part of the process.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes. “You are so full of crap. Why don’t you want to tell me the truth about that night?”
“Because I don’t want to talk about it at all.”
It hadn’t been long enough, and even thinking about it still sucker punched me in the gut. Remembering that night made me feel like I didn’t deserve to be alive. Damon was the one who should have survived, not me. His destiny was to lead others. Mine was to always come in second best at everything except maybe basketball.
But mostly, I didn’t want to talk about it because I just wanted to forget it ever happened.
“Well, I want to talk about it.”
“God, you’re a spoiled brat. You always think you should get what you want in life? News flash. Most people don’t.”
Her eyes narrowed. With a huff, she crossed her arms and sat back in the corner.
This time, the silence felt even worse. I lasted all of five minutes till I had to break it. “Look—”
“No, no, it’s fine. Obviously you don’t want to talk about it. Especially with me.”
“You know, you like dishing out the questions about the past, but I don’t see you answering any.”
She scowled and stared out her window, her stubborn silence proof that she understood
exactly what I wanted to know.
My fingers drummed on the steering wheel. “Well? How about it, Tarah? Are you ever going to explain why you stopped hanging out with Damon and me? What was the deal? Were we too boring for you all of a sudden? Not cool enough? Did we wear too many colors and not enough leather and spikes and black nail polish for your taste?”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s such crap and you know it.”
“Then why’d you turn your back on us like we were nothing? You never even bothered to try and give us a reason. One day we were all best friends, the next it’s ‘I’m sorry, I can’t hang out with you guys anymore.’” I shot her a quick, furious glance. “We were best friends for years, Tarah. Didn’t we deserve at least an explanation?”
She made a disgusted sound. “Gee, Hayden, I never realized you cared so much. Especially when the very next day you had zero trouble replacing me with Kyle the Vile for your new BFF.”
“I did care. A lot. And Kyle was my dad’s idea, not mine.”
She frowned at me for awhile, blinking fast, thinking so loudly I could almost hear it. One corner of her mouth tightened. “I’m sorry. I really am. I…didn’t handle the whole thing very well.” She shrugged one shoulder. “What can I say? I wasn’t the most mature fifth grader, I guess. I saw you do something you shouldn't have been able to do one day, and me and my big mouth blabbed about it to my dad. He got all excited, started doing research on human evolution developing extraordinary abilities, told my mother where he got the idea from, and she freaked out. She thought I was either lying or confusing fantasy with reality, and that playing all those medieval knights games with you guys was retarding my developing maturity or something. Next thing you know, we're all doing family therapy sessions and I was forbidden from ever hanging out with you guys again."
I glanced sideways at her. "What exactly did you see me doing?"
She shrugged. "Floating in your sleep. You fell asleep in the woods one day while we were waiting for Damon to go and bring back some snacks back to our hiding place. We were doing a dragon recon mission, I think." One corner of her mouth twitched. "She was probably right. It was time for all of us to grow up. I just wish I could have handled it all better."
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