Cristina’s red-blonde head raised up from being pressed against the window. She rubbed her eyes and dragged the palms of her hands over her face and head like she was trying to wake herself up.
Then she noticed Anthony getting out of the backseat with the gun in his hand, pointed right at me.
“What—Anthony? What the hell are you doing?” Her voice began rise with alarm as realization set in. “What the fuck! Anthony, no!”
“Shut up!” he yelled at her from outside the car, his eyes still on me as well as the gun. “Now get your girlfriend out. I don’t need more than one bitch flapping her fucking jaws at me the whole ride.”
Without a thought, I swung Bray’s car door open and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her out faster than she could get out herself. The car coming toward us was so close. I pulled Bray against me and then pushed her around behind me. I looked up as the car neared.
“Don’t even think about it,” Anthony said, pointing the gun at me through the side window.
And just like with the last exit ramp, I watched as our last hope for help sped by at seventy miles per hour. Bray was shaking behind me, her fingers digging into my ribs.
“Thanks for the ride, man!” Anthony said just before he jumped behind the wheel and sped away with Cristina screaming curses at him from the backseat.
I watched until what were once my brake lights became tiny red dots in the distance and then blinked out.
“Son of a fucking bitch!” I punched at the air in front of me, wishing it was more than air. Then I turned to Bray. “Oh shit!”
She stood there trembling with her face buried in her hands.
I dropped the anger and became the comfort she needed. “Baby, come here.” I tried to pull her toward me.
“Leave me the fuck alone!” she roared, her hands falling straight down at her sides. She took several steps back farther into the grass. I followed. Tears shot from her eyes. “Just…just leave me alone.”
I knew she wasn’t mad at me. She just needed a moment. She just had a goddamn gun pointed at the back of her head.
She sat down against the grass, her hands shaking as if she were freezing. I crouched in front of her and rested my hands on the tops of her knees.
“What the fuck are we doing, Elias?” She looked up into my eyes, tears glistened on her cheeks in the bluish dark. “What the fuck are we doing here?”
I sat down fully and held her hands. “We can go home if that’s what you want. Bray, all you have to do is say the word.”
She shook her head no. She wasn’t sure of anything, just as I wasn’t. She asked me what we were doing here, but it was only a moment of realization. She knew that things were so much worse than getting robbed and left on the side of a freeway hundreds of miles away from home. I knew Anthony had little to do with what was going through her mind at that moment. He was just the messenger, a small and insignificant piece of a much larger picture that we were lucky enough to have forgotten all about for just a little while. This situation only brought back to reality the gravity of the bigger situation surrounding it.
“I don’t want to go back,” she said, raising her eyes. “I want to keep going. I just want to keep going.”
“Then that’s what we’re going to do,” I said.
I pulled her over into the throne of my lap and covered her with my arms.
To see more of the characters in REVIVING IZABEL, visit the author’s Pinterest page:
PINTEREST.COM/JREDMERSKI/IN-THE-COMPANY-OF-KILLERS/
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
OTHER BOOKS BY J.A. REDMERSKI
THE EDGE OF NEVER
THE EDGE OF ALWAYS
SONG OF THE FIREFLIES
(COMING FEBRUARY 2014)
-IN THE COMPANY OF KILLERS-
#1 – KILLING SARAI
#2 – REVIVING IZABEL
DIRTY EDEN
-THE DARKWOODS TRILOGY-
#1 – THE MAYFAIR MOON
#2 – KINDRED
#3 – THE BALLAD OF ARAMEI
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born November 25, 1975, J.A. (Jessica Ann) Redmerski is a New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. She lives in North Little Rock, Arkansas with her three children, two cats and a Maltese. She is a lover of television and books that push boundaries and is a huge fan of AMC’s The Walking Dead.
www.jessicaredmerski.com
www.facebook.com/J.A.Redmerski
www.twitter.com/JRedmerski
www.pinterest.com/jredmerski
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
Reviving Izabel Page 27