As I lean against the counter, drinking my juice, I can’t help but feel so sorry for Laura. She must have one tough life, but then again, not tougher than Jade’s.
Jade’s addicted to drugs, that much I know. But what would make a person turn to drugs to begin with? The most frustrating thing about my visions, is that I only get a snippet of them. I haven’t been able to pinpoint why I get shown those moments in time.
Pushing away from the counter, I grab my bag and head to the front door. Locking it behind me, I make my way over to the car. Laura is sitting in the driver’s seat and the car is idling while she waits for me.
I get in the back and shut the door. “Seat belt,” she says sternly.
“Yeah, I know,” I bite back a little too angrily. Considering all the crap she’s going through in her personal life, I should cut her a bit of slack. “Sorry.”
She reverses out of the driveway, and gives me a quick nod of acceptance.
We drive to school in silence, and I spend the minutes looking out at the familiar streets, the same cars, and the recognizable house.
A beautiful black car pulls up beside us at the light, and I instantly identify it as the same one I saw when Dallas and I went to the mall. “Huh,” I sigh.
A gorgeous car like that is not easy to forget.
“You okay?” Laura asks from the front seat.
“Yeah, just thinking.”
The light turns green, and the sleek black vehicle peels away into the left lane and speeds ahead.
“Care to share?”
My eyes are glued to the way the car hugs the road. “Nah, it’s okay.” The car disappears, and I’m left still watching the direction it when in.
My head leans back against the headrest, and I close my eyes as we make the final few miles to school.
Suddenly, we’re hit hard from behind. We’re hit with so much force that my head jolts forward as my seat belt locks firmly into place. I hear glass shattering, and the crumping sound of the body of the car.
“Ahhh,” I cry in pain as I attempt to bring my hand up to rub my throbbing neck.
We’re hit again, with less force, but the impact still makes the car jar forward. My head whips to the side, smashing into something hard.
“What’s happening?” I call as a cloak of darkness quickly closes over me. “Laura?” I desperately shout. I get no reply, and my vision clouds over into total darkness.
There’s something dripping on my face, but my heavy arms can’t wipe at it.
There’s noise.
White noise.
People yelling. People talking.
“Be careful!” someone shouts. My weighted body is being moved.
I try to force my eyes to open, but the darkness isn’t letting me go. It has its hooks in me, and it’s not giving any part of me back.
“Be careful!” the same person yells again.
Flittering my eyelids open, then quickly closing them again, I’m laying down in the back of a car. A car with tall sides and a high roof. A van.
But it doesn’t look like the inside of an ambulance. It doesn’t have all the medical equipment and ambulance carries.
Trying to turn my head, I feel the ache and throbbing increase. “Ahh,” I cry in pain.
“There’s a doctor waiting for you. Don’t move,” says a faceless man.
My eyes flicker, then shut as I lose consciousness.
I just hope this is a dream and not a nightmare.
Opening my eyes, I look around. I’m in a light-yellow room, and the sun is beaming in through the large window. The room is light and breezy, almost like I’m in a resort.
Wasn’t I in the back of an ambulance? This doesn’t look like a hospital room to me.
I move to my side, where I see an opened door leading into a master bathroom. Perplexed, I slowly sit up in bed. “Crap,” I say as I rub at a sensitive part of my shoulder. Trying to turn my head, I feel the stiffness and an acute pain shoots up the column of my neck. Standing, I turn to see another two doors. One beside the bathroom, and one on the adjacent wall.
Heading to the one beside the bathroom, I open it to find a huge walk-in closet lined from top to bottom in jeans, t-shirts, shorts, shoes, everything. “What’s going on?” I ask myself. “Where am I?”
I don’t touch any of the clothes, because I’m not sure who it all belongs to, or even whose room I’m in. Considering the two doors in the bedroom lead to a bathroom and a walk-in closet, I can only assume the third is the way to get out.
My body is stiff and sore, so moving at a rapid pace is not possible. I get to the third door, place my hand on the handle and get . . . nothing.
It’s stuck and not moving. “Hello!” I yell and bash on the door. I’m met with silence. “Hello!” I scream even louder.
Panic rises through me as I realize I’m locked in this room and I can’t get out.
Pounding on the door, tears sting my eyes and tumble over as sheer terror ices my veins. “Hello!”
My relentless beating on the door only makes me tire quickly. Moving away from the door, I sit on the large bed and stare at the door with tears streaming down my cheeks.
A huge lump forms in my throat as the tears keep falling. My hands vigorously shake as questions keep coming at me. Why am I here? Why can’t I get out? Do my parents know? What’s happening?
The door unlocks from the outside; I spring to my feet and move as far away as I can get from the door. Looking around the room, I try to find somewhere to hide. I lift the edge of the blanket, and notice there’s no space under the bed. I try the bathroom, but there’s no lock on the door. I try the closet; there’s no lock on that door either.
I have nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide.
The door slowly opens, and I notice a bedside lamp. I try to snatch it off the top of the small chest of drawers, but it’s glued down. “Are you kidding me?” I shout.
I arm myself with the only thing I can, my shoe.
“I’m armed!” I yell at whoever is about to walk in.
I have a death grip on my shoe, no one is going to touch me.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” says a male’s voice in a calm tone.
“I’m going to hurt you!” I yell at him. He comes into the room and closes the door. “You?” I say, but don’t ease up on my pose. My hand is high, ready to smack him with my shoe.
“I apologize for the way you’ve come to me.”
It’s the guy from the mall. The one I saw getting ambushed down at the dock. “You’re not dead,” I say, swallowing back the spit gathering in my mouth. My heart is palpitating and my hands are shaking, but I will do what I need to get the hell away from here.
He holds his hands up to me, trying to show me he’s not a threat. But a threat is exactly what he is. Why would he bring me here? “No, I’m not dead, thanks to you.” He slowly moves over toward the window, and sits on the bench beneath it. He sits, and still has his hands up in defense. “I promise, I won’t hurt you.” I look to the door, and inch toward it. “You won’t make it a foot outside that door.” He points to where I’m looking. “There’s a security guard there.” I frown at him and I’m taken aback by his words. “Please, see for yourself.”
With my raised shoe, I tiptoe over to the door. When I open it I’m faced with this guy who’s huge, and scary. He draws his gun on me, his eyes glued to mine.
My body shakes in response to having a gun pointed at me.
“Put it away,” the guy from the mall booms at the guy with his gun drawn.
He immediately holsters it, and goes back to just looking scary not actually threatening me.
“What’s going on?” My hands shake so much it looks like I’m trying to swat someone with my shoe.
“Please, put your weapon down,” the mall guy says with humor in his voice. “I won’t hurt you, and neither will anyone else.”
Backing away from the door, I slowly lower my hand, but smash my body up against the wall opposite mall guy. �
�What’s going on? How are you still alive?”
He scrubs his hand over the stubble on his chin and smiles at me. “Please, sit. Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
I stay rooted to the same spot. “You don’t own me,” I spit toward him.
He chuckles and shakes his head. “Well, about that.”
“You don’t own me!” I yell at him. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Look . . .” He takes a deep breath. “Please, just sit so I can explain what’s happening here.” He motions between us.
“I’ll stay where I am.” I raise the shoe again. He chuckles and quickly catches it before it turns into a laugh. But I don’t see anything funny about this situation. “What the hell is going on?”
“My name is Jude Caley.”
I look away from him for a second. Jude Caley? I know that name. I try to search my memory of where I’ve heard his name before. “Where do I know you from? Other than the mall?”
“I may have a small reputation.”
I look to the door where the guy with the gun is. “You think?” I sarcastically say. “I’d say if you have to hire people with guns, you’d probably have more than a ‘small reputation.’”
“I really like your sass,” he says and laughs again.
His laughing does nothing to soothe me. As a matter of fact, it scares me even more. A man who surrounds himself with people with guns, and says he has a small reputation is most likely the devil or the devil’s apprentice.
“I don’t give a damn what you like about me. Just tell me what I’m doing here and what you want with me.”
“You’re an important person to me, Lexi.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I know a lot about you. But, you did tell me your name when we met at the mall.”
“Just tell me what you want with me.” I throw my shoe at him in frustration. He ducks and it hits against the window, which doesn’t shatter. Ugh.
He stands, picks my shoe up and holds it out to me. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He prods the shoe closer to me, but doesn’t move. He’s waiting for me to crawl closer to him and take it.
“Throw it.” I point to the floor. I have no doubt if he wanted to cause me pain, the bed between us wouldn’t even be an obstacle for him. He’d get to me in a few leaps, and hurt me. But he hasn’t done anything threatening, other than actually keeping me locked in here.
He throws my shoe gently, and it lands with a small thud on the floor. No use in me using it as a weapon. I slide it on, but don’t move away from the wall. “What’s happening?”
“The day at the mall, you told me not to go to the docks because it was an ambush. There’s only one way you could’ve known about it, and that was if you were aware of who I am, and my business dealings.”
“I still have no idea about your business dealings. Though judging by the fact there’s a guy standing outside my door with a gun, I’m guessing your business doesn’t exactly file a tax return.”
He smirks and he gives me a small nod. “Let’s just say, you’re not too far from the truth.”
“Hmm, figures.”
“As I was saying, I started to think about you and your warning to me. That night, the business associate I was supposed to meet called to confirm I was going. I became suspicious of what was going to happen, so I sent one of my other men down there, and . . .” he stops talking and shrugs his shoulders.
“He was killed instead of you?” I ask, completely horrified.
“He understood the dangers of the job.”
“You sent someone else down there, and he was killed because you didn’t go?” I head over to the bed, and sit on the edge. I stopped one man getting killed, but he sent someone else who took his place.
“He understood the d . . .”
“Bullshit!” I stand and shout at him. “Bullshit. You gutless piece of shit. You sent someone else who died. I saved you, and you sent someone else to die. You could’ve saved him, you could’ve . . .”
“I had to see if it was an ambush, like you said it was. And it turned out, you were right.”
“Of course, I was right, you idiot. Why do you think I would’ve warned you if I wasn’t right?”
“Here’s the problem I had after my employee was killed.” I cringe at the mere word of ‘killed,’ especially considering it could’ve been avoided. “The problem I had was, well . . . you.”
“Me? Why am I problem?”
“Not are, but were.”
I huff out a frustrated breath and shake my head. I’m on the brink of yelling at him again, but I have to stay focused and try to figure out what exactly happening, so I can get out of here. “Just tell me what’s going on.” My jaw clenches and I tighten my hand into a fist.
“How would you know I was going to the docks, considering you don’t know who I am? I sat in my office for hours, trying to figure it all out. Trying to find a connection between you and me. Are you an associate’s daughter, or possibly a mistress, or even maybe a wife to someone?”
“You do know I’m only sixteen?”
“Seventeen in a few days,” he cockily replies.
The hair at the back of my neck stands to attention. This guy is super creepy and weirding me out.
Standing, I back away from him. How does he know my birthday is in a few days? What else does he know about me? “How . . . how do you know?” I clear my throat. My voice deceives the confidence I had, now I’m a shell of nervousness.
“I know your birthday is in four days. I know your mother is Judge Wren Murphy, and at the moment she’s the sitting judge in a case where she’s been threatened, and so have you.”
“I have?” I ask. “That’s why I have Marcus.”
“I also know, your father, Clinton Murphy is her bailiff. I know the high school you go to. I know your best friend is Dallas Riley, who is a freak about the color purple.”
My mouth opens, and I find it hard to speak. A strangled grumble escapes, but nothing more comes out.
“Would you like me to continue?”
It takes me a few moments to find the ability to speak again. He remains quiet, just keeping his eyes on me. “How did you find me?”
“The mall. I had my people hack into the surveillance, and I watched the moment your friend pushed you into me. I watched it over and over again. Do you know what intrigued me the most about that moment?” He waits for me to answer, but all I can do is shake my head. “She pushed you into me, I caught you so you wouldn’t fall, and for the smallest amount of time, your eyes blanked. Like you weren’t even there. It’s not a long space of time, less than a few seconds, and not enough for someone to notice.”
“But you did.”
“Not to begin with. I watched the tape at least fifty times, if not more before I picked up on it.”
“What exactly did you pick up?” Man, I’m feeling so vulnerable. I think he knows the secret I’ve been so desperate to hide.
“I noticed when I touched you, you went blank. You ran away, then you stopped and came to find me.”
I move from foot to foot, uncomfortably. If he knows, how many other people know too? “And?”
“You have a gift, Lexi. Don’t you?”
“Right now, it feels like a curse.”
“You didn’t answer my question. You have a gift.” This time it’s not a question. It’s a definite statement. He’s not asking, he’s declaring what he knows. “And that makes you very, very special.”
“How?”
He smiles at me, and shakes his head. “You have no idea the potential you hold.”
“Potential?”
“You may see it as a gift, as do I. But others may see it as much more than that.” I scrunch my brows at him. “Your gift has the potential to make you a weapon.”
Ice covers my exposed skin and dread fills my lungs as I feel the blood drain from my face. My body shakes; my breath gets caught in the back of my throat.
A weapon.
“I’ll never do anything to hurt anyone,” I whisper. “Never.” With my back to the wall, I sink to the floor. I never thought of myself as anything more than just me, Alexa Murphy. I’m not a weapon, hell I don’t even want to have this damn gift I’ve been given. “I don’t know how I got it.” I hug my knees and burst into tears. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“I know you don’t. But the fact is, someone will figure it out, like I did and they’re going to want you to use you for their own personal gain.”
“Is that why you took me? To use me?” I look up to find him still sitting on the bench seat beneath the window.
“You’re useful to me, Lexi. Very useful, and I won’t hurt you. But I will use you to benefit myself. And in return I promise to look after you.”
A weapon.
Shocked, and frightened I sit on the floor cradling my legs. “I don’t believe you. You’re going to hurt me,” I say adamantly.
“If you do what I want you to, then no, I won’t hurt you.”
“And if I don’t cooperate with you?” I lift my head and arch my brow at him in defiance.
“You don’t want to know the answer to that.”
“So, you will hurt me?”
“I’ll hurt everyone important to you, but no, you I won’t touch. Because you’ll have to live with the aftermath of refusing to help me.”
I stare at him blankly. He’s basically just said he’ll hurt everyone I love and let me live with the consequences. As I’m staring at him, tears well in my eyes, and fall over. I suck back the sob so desperate to escape. Spit is gathering in my mouth while I stare at the man who now controls my future. “If I do what you want?” I ask trying to hold back my cries.
“Then everyone you love keeps breathing.”
“You’d kill everyone to teach me a lesson?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“You’re . . . you’re . . .”
“I’m a monster. But I always keep my word, and I swear on my life, I will never harm you.”
“Because I’m too valuable to you.”
“Yes,” he answers candidly.
“And what if, whatever this thing I have goes away the way it came to me?”
His left eye slightly twitches and his lips thin into a straight line. “We’ll revisit the conditions if it ever occurs.”
The Gift: The Butterfly Effect, Book 1. Page 7