“As sure as I can be without a DNA test,” I said.
We made our way through the thick branches and soggy leaves, squeezing our way between the broken doors. Empty plastic bags floated around our feet.
Other than the flooding, the store was in fairly good condition. The shelving units were all in their places, some of which were still stocked with goods.
“Looks like someone else got here first,” Nick said.
“Yeah, but they couldn’t take it all,” Bronx said raising a brow.
“Maybe they’ll come back for it,” Blair said twisting her fingers as she looked anxiously over her shoulder.
Nick cocked his head to the side. “Maybe they’re long gone. Packed up. Moved on, just like we’re going to do.” Nick looked at Danny. “Perhaps you should see if you can find your own bag. Get your own things.”
“Okay,” Danny said drawing out the word. He wasn’t sure if Nick was being serious or if it was some kind of trick.
Nick turned to face us and raised his arms up. “Well? What are you all waiting for? Let’s go shopping.”
Four
We walked up and down the aisles together. Nick and Blair were several feet ahead of us, looking at things on the shelves as if they were really shopping.
Blair grabbed a bottle of shampoo and shoved it into the already tightly packed bag. She probably already had a bottle or two stuffed inside.
“Maybe you should grab one,” Blair said jerking her chin toward the shelf. “That’s the expensive kind. Works amazingly.”
I swallowed hard and bit my tongue. Having silky hair full of body was probably the absolute last thing I was worried about.
We walked up and down the rows, some of the items looked as though they hadn’t been touched, and other items were completely out of stock. Medicine was gone. Feminine products and toilet paper, each only a few packages left. It appeared as though all of the meat products had been removed. Nothing had been left behind to rot.
“That’s weird,” I said stopping to stare at the empty cases and freezers. Jamie stopped, but the others kept walking.
“What?” Jamie said looking into my eyes. Bronx glanced at us over his shoulder but kept following Nick.
“Why would anyone bother to remove the meat from the store?” I asked.
Jamie shrugged. “Maybe people ate it before it went bad.”
“All of it? I guess maybe it’s possible, but we haven’t seen that many people.” I shook my head. It didn’t make sense. “That would have been a lot of meat for just a few people. Some of it would have spoiled before they got to it.”
Waves splashed up around my legs. Nick and the others had already turned to go down one of the aisles.
“We should probably catch up,” Jamie said lightly touching my hair. His fingertip brushed against my cheek sending a shiver down my spine.
I pressed my lips together and drew in a short breath. “We should.”
Bronx stepped out from one of the aisles, and I reflexively took a step back. He whistled and curled his fingers for us to join them.
I turned away from Jamie and walked over to join the others. The water splashing behind me let me know that Jamie was right behind me.
“We found lunch,” Bronx said avoiding my eyes as I neared. I was almost certain his eyes were focused on Jamie. “We should probably stick together.”
Blair and Nick were already digging into the boxes by the time we joined them. Danny was holding a box turning it in his hands as if he was trying to figure out if he should spend money on it.
“It’s free today,” I said smiling at him.
Danny chuckled. “Right. Hard to get used to. I always had to ask permission for things I wanted from the store from my parents.” He shook his head. “They never let us have anything like this.”
“All the more reason to have it now,” Bronx said slapping him on the back so hard his whole body jerked forward. “How old are you anyway?”
“Nineteen,” Danny said pulling his shoulders back.
Bronx narrowed his eyes. “And you had to ask permission every time you wanted to get something from the store?”
“My parents were strict,” Danny said with a shrug.
“And crazy,” Nick added. Nick eyed Danny for a long moment while he put some trail mix into his mouth. “You are just a boy.”
He hadn’t meant it as an insult even though it may have sounded that way to Danny based on his pinched expression. But to me, it sounded more like a realization… something he hadn’t seen until that very moment.
Everything was quiet except for the occasional package being opened. We were having our fill since nothing we were eating was from our packs. We’d even found a couple of long skinny bottles of water still on the shelves. Perhaps no one had taken them because they were lightly flavored with cucumber.
After Nick finished, he walked up and down the aisle as if patrolling the area. Or maybe he was just anxious to get back on the road. After all, we hadn’t covered much ground in the time we’d left my apartment.
Walking through the water and with waterlogged shoes wasn’t all that easy. In fact, I was pretty sure I was getting a blister at the back of my heel where the back of my shoe was rubbing against my socked foot. But it wasn’t like I could let that stop me. There wasn’t anything that I could let stop me.
“I need to use the restroom,” Blair announced turning to me as if she expected me to join her.
“Not alone,” Nick said shaking his head.
Blair raised her eyebrow and looked away from me. She was obviously much happier with Nick as her escort which was perfectly fine with me.
“I’m going to go too,” Danny said.
“Me too,” Jamie said.
Nick and Bronx exchanged a glance and Bronx nodded just before his eyes settled on me. I was about to tell Nick I didn’t need a babysitter but he’d already turned away.
Bronx leaned back against the shelving unit and crossed his arms. The second the others were out of earshot, he opened his mouth.
“What was going on back there?” he asked. “I felt like I was interrupting something.”
“Oh, nothing.” I looked away from him. “I was just telling him how odd it was that all the meat was gone. Like everything… all gone.”
Bronx’s head bobbed up and down. “I see.” His eyes narrowed for a moment, and I wondered if he was going to question me further about Jamie. I didn’t even know what I’d tell him. “Is everything okay with us?”
I gulped.
“What? Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?” I asked.
Bronx took a step closer. “I thought there was something between us.”
Heat pulsed through my veins so fast my fingers tingled. My body’s reaction was a clear indication that there was definitely something between us. But I’d be lying if I said my body didn’t have the same reaction with Jamie.
Bronx was different. He wasn’t going to sit back and wait. He’d take what he wanted and probably move on quickly if the feelings weren’t reciprocated.
Jamie was wishy-washy. I didn’t have any idea what he wanted, and I was pretty sure he didn’t either.
“Things are weird,” I said wanting to smack myself. What the hell kind of response was that? “I mean, with traveling and all of us together.”
“I see,” Bronx said, and I didn’t think that he did. It looked as though he’d been punched in the gut. “You want space.”
I shook my head, but before I could say anything more, my brother and the others were standing at the end of the aisle watching us.
“Time to go,” Nick said.
Bronx jerked his thumb toward them. His jaw was stiff, and he was refusing to look me in the eye.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I should have been telling him how I felt. Explained. He deserved someone better than me, and so did Jamie. Neither of them needed someone like me to bring them down. Not in a world like this.
Ever since I lost my mom, I
wasn’t the same person. It was traumatic. Life changing, and not in the good way. There wasn’t enough of my heart left. It couldn’t endure any more breaks. I wasn’t even sure it could handle a slight crack in its current condition.
At some point, I’d have to explain to both Jamie and Bronx that things would never work. On some level they probably both already knew it. Maybe that’s why Bronx had seemed so distant recently, and Jamie was always flip-flopping and sending me mixed messages.
At the end of the aisle, we joined the others. Bronx still wouldn’t look at me, but Jamie was wearing a half-smile when our eyes met. When it started to fade, I wondered if he could see my thoughts through my eyes.
“What the fuck?” Nick muttered as he raised up his gun toward the front door.
I blinked several times noticing the shadow standing in front of the exit. He had a gun pointed at us.
“Step aside,” Nick said inching us closer, his gun drawn.
“I wouldn’t take another step if I were you,” a voice said, just as I felt a slight pressure at the side of my skull. Seconds later someone gripped my arm so tightly I knew it would leave a bruise.
I stopped in my tracks. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Jamie, Danny, and Bronx had too.
Nick spun on his heel, raising the hand with the pistol over his head. “Okay, okay,” Nick said. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble,” the man next to me said. “It’s just that we can’t let you leave.”
The woman next to Bronx laughed, her snarled pigtails bouncing with each vibrating snort. “We haven’t had any guests in a while,” she whispered loudly into Bronx’s ear. Her tongue snaked out of her mouth and licked his cheek. Bronx tried not to wince but failed. “I’m super excited to see what’s in store for you.”
“Ha! That’s funny!” one of them said laughing. He slapped his thigh. “In store!”
I swallowed hard as the man’s other arm curled around my waist. He nuzzled his chin tight to my neck and inhaled deeply. I could feel when he shifted his gaze upward in Nick’s direction.
My breaths quickened, and I threw my elbow back, digging into his stomach deeply. At first, the man laughed at my weak attempt, but his odd chuckles turned into coughs. When he recovered, he grabbed a fistful of my hair and twisted it.
“Put your fucking gun down!” the man shouted. He was so close to my ear it started ringing.
It was bad enough the vision in my one eye was still blurry from our incident with Danny’s family, but now I’d have to deal with this constant hum. I suddenly couldn’t even remember what it had been like to hear without the steady buzzing tone.
Nick slipped his pistol into his holster and raised his hands back up. He steadied his breathing keeping himself cool and calm. The complete opposite of what I was doing.
“What do you want from us?” Nick asked.
The whole group of them laughed, stopping the instant the man next to me stopped. “Let’s have a little fun before we get down to business.”
Five
My eyes moved slowly around the room trying to take in as much of it as I could. There had to be a way to swing things in our favor.
At the front door, there was one man. There was a woman next to Bronx and a man each by Danny and Jamie. The last man was behind me. Five of them as far as I could tell, but at the moment they clearly had the upper-hand.
They were armed, but our weapons would blow them out of the water, literally. Not that we were going to get a chance to use them. Even if I got the chance to use mine, I still had no idea how and I didn’t think I was going to intimidate this group by pretending that I did.
“Like I said,” Nick said swallowing hard, “we don’t want any trouble. We’re sorry we stepped into your territory. It won’t happen again.”
“Maybe I want trouble,” the man next to me said with a questioning tone. “It’s been pretty boring around here in our grocery store. We haven’t gotten a lot of customers as of late.”
His groupies snickered.
“What should we do with them, darling?” the man close to me asked, pulling me closer to his spidery thin body.
“There is so much I’d love to do with them,” the woman said running her fingertips down Bronx’s chest. The muscles in his neck tensed, and even though he tried not to let his agitation show, both the man and the woman picked up on it. “I think he likes me.”
The man cocked his head to the side. “Of course he does. What’s not to like. Don’t you like her?”
Bronx kept his lips pressed tightly together.
“Go on, tell her. Don’t keep the woman waiting,” the man said tightening his grip on me as if somehow he thought Bronx could feel my pain. “She doesn’t bite… hard.”
The woman threw her head back and released a laugh that was more of a howl.
“Oh, don’t lie to him,” the woman said flapping her hand at the man like a rich woman displaying her expensive rings. She turned back to Bronx and looked him up and down as if admiring fine art. Her voice was deep and sultry, and it made my insides swirl violently. “I bite really hard.”
“Enough!” a man shouted as he walked across one of the conveyor belts at the registers.
Both the man and the woman let go of Bronx and I as the man jumped down into the water.
The man was at least six-foot-four, and he wore all black. He wore a ski mask that covered every inch of his face except for his almost black eyes.
“They’re a little, how can I put this,” the tall man who’d jumped down said as he tapped his chin, “rough around the edges.”
The tall man looked into my eyes. There was a softness in them that the others around us didn’t have. It was as though he was the lion tamer and he’d been given a pack of hyenas to work with.
“But they’re what I have so it’ll have to do,” the tall man said with a shrug. He turned to the man closest to me. “What was their crime?”
“Theft,” he answered quickly.
“And they used our bathroom,” the woman added.
The tall man rolled his eyes. “What did you take?” When no one answered quickly enough, he stomped his boot in the water spraying droplets in every direction. His volume tripled. “What did you take?”
“Just some food,” Nick replied.
The tall man crossed his arms. “How much? I need to figure how much to charge you.”
“We’re really sorry. We didn’t know any of it was spoken for,” Nick said.
The tall man drew in a breath that seemed to suck the oxygen out of the room. “How much did you say?”
“A couple boxes of bars, some trail mix, a couple bottles of water,” Nick said, the muscles in his jaw tightening with each word.
I’d never seen him look as nervous as he did at that moment. There was something intimidating about the tall man, and it wasn’t just his height. His voice was deep, his shoulders were broad, and it looked like bullets would bounce right off of his black attire.
“Shit, probably some other things I can’t even remember,” Nick said pressing his hand to his temple, but quickly raising it back up when he realized it had dropped.
“I had a juice box,” Blair confessed in a shaky voice. She was probably having flashbacks with what happened with Danny’s family.
The tall man nodded his head slowly. “Well, that doesn’t sound too bad, but the problem is this is my store and my goods. Nothing here was for sale. Seeing what you have with you, I think we can arrange some form of payment.”
“What exactly are you saying?” Nick asked.
“Nothing is free. One way or another you’ll pay for what you took,” the tall man said, and even though I couldn’t see his mouth, I could tell he was smiling.
“Can we just put it back?” Nick asked.
The tall man shook his head. “No. I have no way of knowing if you tampered with it.”
Nick’s shoulders slumped slightly. “So, what do we owe you then?”
; “Four guns, and two backpacks,” the tall man said.
Nick cursed under his breath. That would leave us with one gun, and three backpacks which could make things a bit more difficult getting to my grandma’s. Especially if we ran into more people like these jerks.
But what the store owner didn’t know was that we could go back to Danny’s place and gather more. Hopefully, Nick did and wouldn’t put up a fight over the payment.
“That price seems a bit steep for what we took,” Nick said raking his fingers through his hair. He lowered his hands, and I could see his hand twitching near his hip.
“I feel like I’m giving you a good deal!” the tall man said, his eyes widening with surprise. “I could recalculate, but there’s a chance it won’t be in your favor.”
Nick held up his hand. “No, it’s fine. It’s just you’re practically taking the shirt off my back and out there, well, I really need a shirt.”
“I understand that,” the tall man said folding his hands in front of his middle. “Something tells me that next time you walk into a store, you’ll think twice about stealing.”
“At least you’re not paying with your fingers,” the woman said slapping Bronx on the back.
Nick eyed the man for a moment before slipping the gun and the pack off of his shoulder. Jamie mirrored his movements and quickly removed his gun and backpack setting it down next to Nick’s.
“Two more guns, please,” the tall man said. He looked at me over his shoulder. “This is far better than what my employees would have charged.”
He glared at the man behind me. I quickly slipped off my gun and added it to the pile. Seconds later, Bronx did the same.
The tall man turned to him. “She would have been even worse.” The woman raised her brows and licked her lips, grinning as if she’d been given a compliment. “We good then?”
“I guess so,” Nick said holding the tall man’s gaze as he gestured for us to join him.
The man at the door stepped to the side and lowered his weapons. He bowed his head and tipped his invisible hat.
“Have a good day now folks. Thank you for shopping at Joe’s,” he sniffed hard as we walked by and I didn’t miss the redness in his eyes. “Come again real soon.”
The Red Sky Series (Book 2): Blue Cloud Page 3