by Richard Bard
The adults glared, the kids shrugged, and I felt suddenly exposed. I shrank to one side. As the boy began his circuit to deliver his message, my eyes were drawn to the end of the candy aisle, where two girls were trying on sunglasses in front of a mirror. They wore colorful Lake Tahoe T-shirts and antler caps, and were about eleven or twelve. I moved closer and pretended to study the candy selection.
“Dahhhling,” the shorter of the two said with a Southern drawl, turning her head left and right to admire her freckled reflection. She had a round face and a friendly expression, and wore an orange head scarf beneath the cap, its end flowing down her back like a mane. “Do they make me look radishing?”
Her friend sniffed but didn’t smile back. “The word is ravishing,” she said with a slight Latin accent. She had olive skin like my sister, bright blue eyes, and a figure that made me wonder if she was older than I’d originally thought.
She continued, “And it doesn’t matter which pair you try on, Strawberry, you’re still going to look silly with those antler ears.”
A chuckle crept out of me and both girls turned my way. I felt my face flush.
The first girl placed her hands on her hips and cocked her head so the antlers wiggled. “Somethin’ funny?” she asked, her mock stern voice unable to mask her smile.
I grinned. She giggled.
The other girl’s eyes went flat. She removed her own antler cap and placed it on a shelf of M&Ms, her gaze lingering on the candy. Unlike her friend, she had a full head of dark hair and her bright eyes were mesmerizing, but they did little to cover the crushing sadness that emanated from her. I could feel her deep pain. I’d inherited from my mom this empathic trait, one I’d long ago learned to trust.
I took a step forward and reached out to her with my mind, doing my best to wrap her in a blanket of peace.
Her lips parted in a quiet gasp.
Strawberry noticed. “Ellie, are you okay?” she asked, taking her friend’s hand.
Ellie hesitated, her eyes on me. “Uhhh, sure. I had the strangest—”
Our connection broke when the messenger kid stepped between us. “Time to wrap it up,” he said, ushering the girls toward the door. “Belle wants us on the bus.” He reached for Ellie’s arm to hurry her along, but Strawberry pushed it away.
“You’re not the boss of us, Deondre. Go bug somebody else.”
“Whatever,” he said, before moving on to the next group.
Ellie frowned at me. I knew she wanted to know more about what I’d done. Usually people couldn’t sense when I tried to help in that way, but she sure had. Fortunately, something stopped her from asking about it, and when Strawberry took her hand, she allowed herself to be pulled toward the door. But her gaze lingered on me.
I looked beyond them and saw several of the other kids had already exited. Lines were forming at the buses. I was running out of time, so when Ellie glanced over her shoulder right before walking outside, I had already disappeared around the aisle with my prize.
I waited until the chaperone checking names off a list was distracted before I slipped behind her and onto the bus. It was a plush touring coach with high-back seats. The air smelled of snacks and fast food and my foot crunched on a corn chip as I shuffled forward. The chatter was loud and lively, and as each of the kids ahead of me peeled left and right to sit with their friends, I wondered how I was ever going to get away with this. The sunglasses I’d grabbed helped, and the antler cap Ellie had discarded was a good fit, but these kids knew one another. I was a stranger. I lowered my gaze and made my way toward the rear. It seemed quieter there.
I was five rows from the back when Deondre rose from his seat and glared at me. “Where are my donuts?” he asked. It was more a command than a question.
My heart was halfway through its leap when a voice behind me said, “Right here.” There was a rustle of plastic wrap and a six-pack of mini powdered donuts sailed over my head. Deondre caught them and sat back down without a word.
“What a jerk,” a boy’s voice behind me whispered. “He made me buy those with my own money.” He leaned closer and added, “I wonder if he’ll notice the crushed Valium I sprinkled over them. Hah!”
I faked a cough to cover up my chuckle, looking away as Deondre stuffed one of the powdery pastries into his mouth. The seat behind him was empty but I didn’t want any part of it, so the kid behind me took it. When I glanced back at him, the pudgy boy winked from behind a pair of thick-framed glasses. The baseball cap he wore didn’t quite cover the bandage that wrapped around the back of his skull. I winked back.
The energy at this end of the bus was subdued, and that’s when I realized the kids sitting here were part of the group of ill children I’d noticed earlier. I didn’t need to reach out my senses to feel their sadness. I saw it in their vacant expressions.
No one paid much attention to me—until I reached the back row and Ellie and Strawberry looked up. Strawberry screwed her face into a question mark, and Ellie’s eyes narrowed. Five seats stretched across the rear of the bus. The girls occupied the two on the right while a pair of boys sat in the two on the left. The only empty space was in the center—in plain view of anyone looking from the front.
I glanced over my shoulder to see if I’d missed a free spot, but the high-back chairs made it impossible to tell. Besides, I knew I’d checked every seat on my way past. My mind wouldn’t allow me to miss that sort of thing. I stuck my backpack into the overhead rack. When I turned back around, the seating arrangements had changed. Strawberry was now in the center seat. Ellie scooched over beside her. Our eyes met and she patted the empty window seat next to her.
“Hurry up,” Strawberry said in a conspiratorial whisper. She motioned toward the front of the bus. “Here comes Belle.”
The stout chaperone was pulling her way up the steps. I slid past the girls and took the seat by the window.
Strawberry leaned around Ellie to get my attention. Of all the kids in the back section, she was the only one with a smile. “Welcome aboard,” she whispered. Her eyes narrowed. “Hey, aren’t those the sunglasses I tried on?”
I hesitated. It had always been hard for me to make friends because kids didn’t usually get me. At school they called me Brainiac, which hurt, even if it was true. After a while I’d stopped trying to fit in and had grown accustomed to keeping to myself.
But for my plan to succeed, I needed to make friends. The bus’s engine started. I craned my neck over the chairs to see Belle had taken her seat. That meant I didn’t need the glasses for now. I took them off, held them out to Strawberry, and spoke for the first time since my murderous rampage the week before. “I think they make you look radishing.”
Her face beamed. She put on the glasses and tilted her head this way and that. “Dahhhling.”
Ellie rolled her eyes. She still wouldn’t smile.
I removed the antler cap and handed it to her. “This was yours. You left it.”
“I left it on purpose. It’s silly.”
She was right, of course. But I thought about some of the tough spots my family and I had found ourselves in, and said, “Sometimes silly is all you’ve got.”
Her expression softened. She tucked the cap into the seat pocket in front of her. I pulled a pack of M&Ms out of my pocket, opened it up, and offered her one.
She stared at it. “I love those.”
“I know,” I said, popping the candy into my mouth. “That’s why I grabbed them.” I tilted the open bag over her hand as an offering.
Her lips parted as if she was about to question how I could know anything about her, like she was considering the brief connection I’d made with her in the coffee shop. After a moment, though, she simply opened her palm and accepted a few candies. Strawberry reached out and I poured her some, too. That’s when I noticed half of one of her pinky fingers was missing. Both girls sized me up while they munched.
“You’re strange,” Strawberry said between bites.
Ellie said, “But in a
good way.”
They don’t know the half of it, I thought as I prepared myself for the barrage of questions I expected to follow. The questions didn’t come. Instead the girls exchanged a brief look and settled back in their seats.
The bus turned onto the road. I glanced out the rear window as we pulled away from the motel. My stomach tightened and my eyes got moist. Ellie must have noticed, because I felt a swell of emotion from her like what I’d feel from my mom when she sensed I was upset. I liked Ellie immediately because of that. She nudged me and motioned toward the bag of M&Ms. I emptied the last few into her palm.
“I’m Alex,” I said over the rumble of motorcycles rolling into the motel’s parking lot.
Chapter 5
FRANCESCA WAS ON HER FEET the moment the door closed behind Doc. She rushed into the adjoining room to find Ahmed and Sarafina sitting on the couch. “Gather your things,” she said as she rushed past them to the rear bedrooms. She called out, “Alex?” The rooms were empty. She checked the bathroom. He wasn’t there. By the time she was back in the front room, Tony, Marshall, and Lacey were waiting, and Ahmed and Sarafina were donning their backpacks. “Where’s your brother?”
“He wasn’t with you?” Sarafina asked, pulling out her earphones.
Ahmed said, “I was watching TV. When I turned around after a while, he was gone. I thought he went to see you because I remember he was standing by the door to your room.”
“Oh, Dio. He heard everything!”
“He couldn’t have gone far,” Marshall said, moving toward the front door.
“What do you mean, he heard everything?” Ahmed said. “What did he hear? Where—?” He gritted his teeth and stopped himself from ranting. His nostrils flared. “I’ll find him.” He followed Marshall toward the door.
Francesca was right on their heels.
Tony placed his bulk between them and the door. “Hold on. You can’t rush out there.”
Sarafina said, “What’s happening? Why did he leave?” She picked up a smartphone from the coffee table. “And why did he leave his phone?”
“He left his phone because he didn’t want anybody to track him,” Marshall said.
Francesca tried to shoulder past Tony. “Move!”
***
Tony didn’t budge. There was no way he was going to let them out there. He didn’t need his cop instincts to see the situation was spinning out of control. Even though traffic had begun to move, scores of people were still out there. With a two-million-dollar bounty on their heads, Tony and his friends couldn’t take any chances. “Everybody calm down,” he said. “We’ve got work to do, and it ain’t gonna get done if you lose your heads. So we’re gonna take this nice and slow—”
The door to the adjoining room burst open. Two guards rushed in with guns drawn. Doc followed and slammed the door closed behind him. His eyes were huge and he was out of breath. “A biker gang,” he said between gasps. “Heading this way!”
Tony’s chest tightened. The cries of alarm from people outside shoved the tactical side of his brain into gear. “Move!” he growled, shielding Marshall, Ahmed, and Francesca with his body as he motioned them toward the hallway leading to the rear exit.
Ahmed was the first to react to the order. As the two guards moved toward either side of the window, he beelined to his sister and yanked her from the couch. She squeaked as she grabbed her backpack and the two of them ran toward the hallway.
Francesca couldn’t move. Her face was ashen. “Alex! I can’t—”
“No time,” Lacey said, pulling her along.
Marshall took Francesca’s other hand. “We’ll find him. I promise.”
Tony exchanged a glance with Doc.
The old man was shaken. “I-I was trying to protect you.”
“This ain’t your fault, Doc. Either way, it ain’t safe here. You should come with us.”
The lead guard, named Butler, flattened himself on the wall between the front door and the window, his Glock semiautomatic pistol held in a two-handed grip at his chest. “He’s right, sir. You need to get out of here.” He motioned to the other guard. “Sanders will stick with you. Baxter and Schmidt are posted in the next room, and I’ll cover your exit from here. Our vehicles are out front so the gang will expect us to hole up here until help arrives. That’ll give you the time you need to slip out the back.” He nodded to Sanders. The plainclothes military operator peeled from his position and led the way down the hallway.
Doc’s face was drawn and tight, but he nodded and started after him.
Tony moved to follow when he saw a shadow move across the window. “Down!” he roared as he dove behind the couch.
The explosion blew the door across the room. The floor shook, part of the ceiling crumbled, and smoke filled the air. A second explosion sounded from the room next door. Tony’s ears rang and his chest felt hollow from the blast wave. He fought against the shock and pushed to his feet, blinking against the cloud of dust and debris.
Sunlight filtered in from the open doorway, and a silhouette stepped into the space. The shape turned toward Butler’s prone form and unloaded two blasts from a sawed-off shotgun into his body. When another shadow appeared on the balcony behind the man, Tony’s body moved on instinct. He charged like a linebacker, shouldering into the first man and lifting him off his feet as they plowed through the doorway. The shotgun went flying. Then Tony and his human battering ram shoved the second man against the balcony rail so hard that the biker cartwheeled over the edge.
The first man grappled to break away, but Tony’s fist cracked his jaw and sent him sprawling to the ground. When the man went for his holstered pistol, Tony grabbed the shotgun and blasted two rounds into the man’s chest. Gunfire erupted from the parking lot below, and Tony dove to the ground as bullets tore up the wall behind him. Screams and shouts filtered through his numb eardrums. More shots echoed from the breached room next door.
Gotta move!
He was crawling for the door when a long-haired biker with a red bandana popped onto the balcony from the far stairwell. The guy held a revolver in either hand, and as soon as he spotted Tony on the ground next to the guy’s fallen gang brother, he charged while unloading a fusillade of wild rounds.
Tony rolled for cover behind the still twitching body. One bullet zipped so close to his face that he felt the superheated disturbance in the air. He discarded the short-range shotgun, reached under the biker’s bloody leather vest, and yanked the pistol from its holster. He hefted the .50-caliber Magnum Research Desert Eagle—one of the most powerful handguns in the world—and fired two shots. The slugs hit center mass, sending the attacker flying backward into a bloody heap. Tony rummaged under the first dead man’s vest, found a spare magazine for the Eagle—and a fragmentation grenade.
Yes.
He pocketed the magazine and grenade just as two more men popped from the far stairwell. Pounding boot steps behind him announced the bikers were about to flank him. He sprinted back into the room and scooped up Butler’s service weapon as he raced down the hall.
After cracking open the rear door, he peered in both directions. It looked clear. He slipped outside and closed the door behind him. The inner courtyard and swimming pool area were deserted, but he hesitated. His friends should be in the rear parking lot by now, and hopefully they’d found a getaway car. If they hadn’t, and the men behind him caught up to them, there’d be a bloodbath. Marshall had told him privately that the reward on their heads included a dead-or-alive proviso: two million bucks if they were brought in alive, or a million if the bounty hunters delivered only their heads. It was apparent the bikers were looking for a quick million. Of course, the reward included Jake, so the assholes were gonna come up short when they delivered their bloody sack of booty to whoever was paying the bill. Hell, without Jake, there might be no reward at all.
Except if it weren’t for Jake, we wouldn’t be running for our lives in the first place.
He stuffed the two pistols into his bel
t, retrieved the grenade, and pulled the pin. With his ear pressed to the rear door—one hand on the knob and the other gripping the grenade—he waited. The gunfire in the room next door went silent, and he realized the hole in his plan. If the attackers in the other room had just finished off the two remaining men on the protection detail, they could storm onto this rear balcony any second. His heart nearly stopped when he caught a flicker of movement from a window across the courtyard. A hand was aiming a cell phone camera at him. Others were doing the same from the safety of their own rooms.
“Son of a—”
Movement on the other side of the door. Then a harsh whisper, “Check the bedrooms!”
Tony imagined the group of men moving cautiously down the hallway. They’d step over two of their dead friends on the balcony and likely didn’t want to be next. He heard one of the bedroom doors crash open, then a second, and that’s when—despite the cameras—he released the spoon on the grenade.
One Mississippi...
Two Mississippi...
Three—
He yanked open the door, tossed the grenade, slammed the door shut, and took off running.
The explosion shook the balcony but he never looked back. He pulled out the Desert Eagle and bounded down the stairwell two steps at a time. When he reached the ground floor he cut across the pool area, dodging tables and overturned chairs. Food, drinks, towels, and pool toys lay scattered on the surrounding deck. The air smelled of chlorine and gunpowder, and debris rained from the explosion above.
“Down there!” a voice shouted from over his shoulder.
He dashed down the walkway between the buildings before anyone could draw a bead on him, but angry shouts and pounding boots told him the survivors of his trap were coming fast. He shoved through the door separating the courtyard from the rear parking lot, and plunged into a heaving nest of activity.