The Murder Complex
Page 23
I pull him gently to the side, and clear off the shelf as fast as I can. Paint cans. Old rags. A tornado of dust.
And a breeze, like the taste of cool freedom on my lips. I shove aside a roll of wire and that is when I see a vent leading directly outside.
“Zephyr! Zephyr, give me your club!”
I swing hard into the metal grate. It puckers, so I do it again. Again and again and again, until the bolts pop loose and a small window to the outside is staring back at us.
Freedom.
The door splinters. They’re pounding on it.
My mother stumbles past me and drops to her hands and knees.
She turns, just before she crawls through. Our eyes meet.
“Zephyr, let’s go,” I say. I turn to him. When I look back, my mother is gone.
The pounding on the door grows louder.
“You first,” he says. He reaches his hand out to help me. Instead of taking it, I place my gun in his palm and close his fingertips around the cool metal.
“Meadow!”
I lean down and hold his face with shaking hands. “You’ll find my family, won’t you, Zephyr? You’ll find a way out, and you’ll go to them?
“Of course,” he says. “Now let’s go, Meadow, we need to go now!”
“I love you, Zephyr James.” I kiss him once. “Go on.”
He crawls through. It takes all my strength not to follow him.
As soon as his feet disappear, I fit the vent grate in place. I lever the club across it, then the shelf, and everything else heavy enough. I can hear Zephyr’s fists pounding the metal, hear him screaming my name.
I unsheathe my dagger and face the door. I imagine Peri running up to me on the beach. I imagine Koi, his focus and his love. I remember the one thing I have always known all along. I am not my mother’s daughter. I do not run from fear, but dive into it headfirst, the way my father taught me.
The door splinters. I close my eyes.
Count to three. Relax your mind. Now survive.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LINDSAY CUMMINGS lives in Texas with her family, including two dogs, one wolf cub, a draft horse named Dan the Man, and a silly little quarter horse named Clue. This is her first book.
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CREDITS
Cover art copyright © 2014 by Matt Roeser
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COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
THE MURDER COMPLEX. Copyright © 2014 by Lindsay Cummings. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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The text of this book is set in 11-point Adobe
Garamond
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data TK
ISBN 978-0-06222000-4 (trade ed.)
EPub Edition October 2013 ISBN 9780062220004
14 15 16 17 18 TK 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
GREENWILLOW BOOKS
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