I glance over at the GTO.
The two cannibals are slumped in their seats. It’s too dark to see if they’re bleeding or… Without thinking, I blurt, “Did you guys just—”
“It’s best not to ask,” Red says, positioning himself between me and the front of the car, and flashing me the most sultry smile I’ve ever seen while arching what has to be a recently sculpted eyebrow, it’s that precisely shaped.
Before I can swoon, two men with handguns rush from the darkness, slowing when they see me and the Baldwins.
“Get behind me,” Red mutters in my ear.
He doesn’t have to tell me twice. I’m frightened but hiding it when I slide behind him. He’s much taller than I am, so I have to peer around his shoulder instead of over it.
“What’d you do to them?” the third cannibal demands, motioning at the GTO.
“Ask them,” Red says, tipping his head toward Giant and Wicked Eyes.
For some reason, I expect those two to step up behind Red as a show of force. They don’t. They lounge leaning against the GTO, amused smiles on their faces.
“Out of ammo?” Red asks.
“No,” the third cannibal snorts.
“Then shoot me already. I’m not armed.”
I mutter behind him, “Are you insane?”
“Quiet, pussy riot.”
“Don’t call me that!” I hiss. “Wait, are you talking about the Russian girl punk band?”
“Shh,” Red says. “Not now.” In a louder voice aimed at the two standing cannibals, he says, “Go ahead and reload. I’ll wait.”
I’m starting to realize Red really is insane. Or too smart for his own good. Me, I’m scared out of my mind. I’m pretty sure strong enough bullets can go through at least two people, if not three. My heart is thudding in my chest and telling me I’m crazy for standing here instead of running for it.
“They’re out of ammo,” Giant says lazily. He and Wicked Eyes don’t seem scared at all.
“Somebody do something already,” Wicked Eyes says to everyone. “I’m falling asleep over here.” To Giant, he mutters with amusement, “I’ll give you two to one odds on those two winning.”
“Them?” Giant chuckles. “No, man. Four to one. A quarter of our shares.”
“Half.”
“Deal.”
They bump fists.
I glare at them and whisper, “Why aren’t you guys helping your friend?!”
Wicked Eyes shrugs, “Who said he’s our friend?”
I gape at him in complete disbelief.
Red sighs audibly and is probably rolling his eyes, but I can’t tell because I’m cowering behind him. He mutters to me, “Go stand with them, Debbie Harry.”
I hesitate.
“Go already.”
I trot over to the GTO and hide behind the far side, worried about getting shot. Giant and Wicked Eyes barely look at me and they don’t bother hiding.
“Who’s first?” Red asks the two standing cannibals.
They don’t waste any time with small talk, hurling themselves at Red, who is half their size. Red ducks, kicks a knee with a savage crack, spins low, sweeps the leg of the other guy, and both cannibals are down on the ground, writhing in pain. From the sound of it, I think Red might have broken the first guy’s kneecap and the second guy’s ankle.
“Pay up, asshole,” Giant laughs, waving his hand expectantly.
“They looked like they could handle themselves,” Wicked Eyes says to himself, amused.
Red turns to me and flashes his luscious smile. That spicy rosewood scent of his tickles my fancy like he wants to put a bun in my oven.
“You okay?” he asks, brushing a thumb across my chin.
My skin lights with butterfly fire where he touches me and I blush. It takes a moment to collect my thoughts. Just when I have them in hand, I notice his thick lashes and dreamy eyes climbing into mine, and my thoughts slip through my fingers like so many rose petals.
“I asked if you’re okay,” he grins, his eyes half-lidded.
I giggle, “Um, yeah. Where, um, where’d you learn to fight like that?”
“I was a famous swordsman in a former life,” he winks.
“But you don’t have a sword,” I snicker.
“Check my pants. I’m like sheathed steel just looking at you, Debbie Harry.”
I know he’s referring to the punk rock icon. I’m totally flattered, but I say, “My name’s Mary. What’s yours?”
“Call me—”
“What the fuck are you still doing here?” a hoarse voice grates from the darkness, somewhere in the trees across the road.
I clench my teeth in fear, but Red casually turns to face the newest arrival. All I see is his silhouette. The new guy is big. Not as big as Giant, who’s almost too big, but larger than Red and Wicked Eyes, and he’s dripping alpha male confidence. I can feel it coming off him in agitated waves as he strides into the road.
“We need to get the money and go,” Alpha says.
That wakes up Giant and Wicked Eyes, who jump into motion.
Alpha freezes when he sees me, stopping in the middle of the road.
That’s when I see the blood. In the moonlight, it’s almost black. I tell myself it’s motor oil, but that tangy coppery smell hits my nostrils and I have no doubt what it is. I also see slick black smears on Alpha’s face, which is mostly shadowed, except for his burning bright eyes.
“Who’s this?” he commands, glancing at me.
Red says, “We found her in the trunk.”
“Is she with them?”
“No!” I blurt, not wanting to end up like the four cannibals. “I was just—! I ran out of gas! My motorcycle is back a ways! I was looking for help when I found the car. Those other guys tried to kidnap me.” My voice trails off as I say it. This is more crazy than I’m used to, and I’m used to quite a bit.
Alpha strides up to me and grabs my chin hard, turning my face this way and that.
I can’t see his face because the moon is behind him, but I feel his hard eyes burning into mine with brutal disdain. I can’t decide if I like it or despise it, but it’s clear to me that this man doesn’t give a damn what anyone else thinks, least of all me.
“Careful,” I warn, offended.
“Who cut you? Was it them?” He obviously means the cannibals and the scratches on my face. “If it was them, I will fucking—”
“No!” I interrupt, not wanting Alpha to murder anyone in front of me. I can’t take any more drama tonight, let alone that level. “It was these bitches at my high school.”
“Bitches?” He grunts in frustration, like if I’d said men, he might hunt them down and kill them. Don’t ask me how I know, I can just feel it, which is totally weird because I don’t know this guy and he doesn’t know me, and it’s hard not to take the look on his face as anything other than hate for me and the rest of the world.
I sigh, “Emily and her snooty cheerleader entourage. They jumped me today. You should see what I did to them,” I lie like I got more than zero good hits in. “It’s fine. I’ll heal.”
Alpha growls, “What the fuck are you doing out here?”
“I told you, I ran out of gas.” Are those tattoos on his neck? Hard to say in this light. When he releases me with a savage grunt, I feel and smell wet blood on my jaw from where he was touching me, like I’ve been marked. I don’t know how else to explain it.
“We need to bail,” Alpha says to his men.
The other three men busy themselves zipping up duffel bags of cash in the trunk.
Red says, “Let’s take her with us.”
My chest seizes briefly at the idea. These four mysterious men and their money? Taking me who knows where? To do who knows what? Let’s just say, this girl knows how to dream!
“We’ll take turns,” Wicked Eyes says, sounding entirely entitled.
“Hey!” I warn, as if any of these four guys would ever listen to what little old me had to say, but I say it anyway.
Am I disappointed? Of course I am! So what if these guys are obviously outlaws?
“This is our problem, not hers,” Alpha adds. He barks at me, “Do you have a phone?”
“What?!” I can’t figure out why he’s asking.
“Do you have a phone?!” he snarls.
“Yes! No! I mean, I don’t have any minutes! It’s a Cricket.”
“Take mine. It’s in my pocket,” he commands.
“What?!”
“Reach in and get it! I lost my gloves. I don’t want to leave any DNA.”
I’m mystified.
“Stick your hand in my pocket and take my goddamn phone!”
“Okay,” I whine, staring at his pants. “Which pocket?”
“The left one.”
I reach for it.
“The other left!” he barks.
“Sorry.” I pull on the appropriate pocket. His pants are rather tight. “Should I? Or do you want me to?”
“Quit fucking around and take it!”
Every time he yells at me, something explodes in my chest. Fear? Arousal? I can’t tell, but it’s intense. No man has ever made me feel this way before. It’s intoxicating.
“Take the damn phone!”
“Alright, alright!” I carefully slide my fingers into his pocket, feeling for the phone. My fingers bump something hard and large. It’s not just hard, it’s—
He grunts.
“Is that your…?” I’m afraid to say it, but I swear I can feel his heartbeat throbbing against my fingers.
“Take the fucking phone,” he groans.
I hastily dig deeper and find the sharp corner of what is most definitely not him, I mean, is most definitely a phone. I slide it out.
“It’s a burner and it has plenty of minutes. Get rid of it as soon as you get help.”
“Why?”
“Just get rid of it!”
He’s already off and running, grabbing a black duffel bag of cash from the trunk of the GTO, zipping it, and strapping it over his shoulders. The rest of his pack does the same and chases after.
Red trails in the rear and hollers over his shoulder, “Hey, War Paint! Don’t let those cheerleader bitches get you down!” Obviously, he overheard my conversation with Alpha. “Next time they come at you, bomb their lockers!”
“What?!” I laugh, not sure if he’s kidding.
He might not be. He stops long enough to blow me a kiss.
It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen and I pretend to snatch it from the air and press it against my lips.
He smirks, “I’d love to blow you more than that, but that’s your job!”
“Shut up!” I laugh.
He salutes me and says, “See you around, War Paint!” He throws something. “Here, catch! You look like you need it!”
“Need what?!”
A small dark blur sails toward me and I snatch it flapping out of the air. There’s just enough moonlight to see it’s a stack of twenties. About a half inch of them. I’ll have to count it later because I’m ready to swoon as I watch him sprint after his friends down the road back the way I came. Not ready to say goodbye, I trot after them, but they’re impossibly fast and I couldn’t catch them if I tried. Minutes later, four fast shadows blast past me, engines screaming.
The four motorcycles I saw earlier. They don’t have any lights on. How can they see when it’s this dark? I can barely see my hand in front of my face, but they’re racing down the road like it’s daylight. What, do they have night vision or something? Are they actual werewolves?
No, I snicker to myself. That is totally ridiculous.
Everyone knows there aren’t any werewolves for real real.
I’m just letting my imagination run away with me.
I wish they had let me run away with them.
When the sound of their motorcycle engines fades to nothing, I look at the burner phone in my hand. At least they didn’t strand me when they abandoned me. I punch in 911. Before I can hit the Talk button to connect the call, I see blue and reds sparkle, gemming the dark woods behind me. That was quick. I haven’t even talked to the 911 operator. Then I hear the helicopter.
Oh, crap.
I’m standing here with two injured men and two more who might be dead. If you include the blood on Alpha’s hands (the same blood he left on my jaw), there might be even more dead people in the woods. I smear the blood off my jaw with the inside sleeve of my leather jacket.
Time for me to run!
Straight into the woods where I can hide until the commotion blows over.
Chapter 3
Turns out the sheriff’s department helicopter has night vision cameras like every other police helicopter these days. They find me within minutes hiding in some bushes. They also find the coke or meth or whatever it was I’d taken from Dwight and Shayla’s trailer still in the pocket of my leather jacket. I totally forgot about it.
The sheriff isn’t too happy about that.
I am. It makes the perfect cover story. When they get me to the sheriff’s office, they don’t mention the car or the cannibals, but they do grill me about what I was doing in the woods in the middle of the night with drugs and $2,320 in twenties.
I almost blurt out, “How much?!” in surprise, but don’t. Instead, my heart sprouts angel wings and flutters around inside my chest for a few moments as I think about that handsome devil Red. Tonight he gave me more money at one time than I’ve ever had altogether in my entire life, and he did it like an afterthought. Such a charmer.
When the deputies press me for an answer, I play dumb and say it’s my life savings (it is now), and I was hitchhiking and hid when I heard what I thought was gunshots on the road.
They believe me about that part.
I ask if it was gunshots.
That’s when they get weird and shifty and turn the topic back to me. They ask where I got the drugs.
I’m like, “Someone gave them to me?”
“Can you give us a name or a description?”
“A short guy at a bar?” Dwight is short, and the trailer may as well be a bar most nights.
They’re like, “You don’t look old enough for bars. Are you a minor?”
And I’m like, “Coal and gold, dude. Coal and gold.” I mime like I have a pickax. “When the veins play out, I’m down by the river panning by hand. Then it’s drifting to the next town looking for prospecting work wherever I can find it, you know?”
They don’t think that’s funny, and they’re like, “What happened to your face?”
“Fight with a girl over a boy.” I don’t say who.
They believe that, but they’re like, “Who’re your parents?”
“Don’t have any,” I say truthfully. “I lost them when I was ten.”
They ask a hundred other questions about where I live, who takes care of me, and gabba, gabba, hey.
I say nobody and nowhere, which is basically true.
They drop that topic and ask me about Dwight’s stolen motorcycle, which they found, obviously. I left it on the side of the road in plain sight. Guess who reported it stolen?
I’m like, “What motorcycle?”
They’re like, “Is your name Mary Angerman?”
And I’m like, “Courtney Love?”
They don’t like that answer, or the next ten names I give them, so they stop asking.
Since I’m not talking, some sleepy deputy calls CPS. Nobody wants to come out and get me in the middle of the night, so I end up in the drunk tank. Get my own private cell. At least it’s quieter than Dwight and Shayla fighting back at their toilet of a trailer.
Oh, the irony.
I lay there alone, a warm blanket of wicked sensations comforting me as I think about my four dark saviors. Red, Giant, Wicked Eyes, and Alpha. Those boys were this girl’s fantasy made flesh. I wish I’d seen more
of theirs. Too bad I’ll never see them again. That night, I yearn for what might’ve been had they taken me with. Trapped in this cell, fantasy is all I have.
What a way to spend my sixteenth birthday.
Oh, did I not mention that?
I guess my sweet sixteen got lost in the shuffle of the shit storm that is my life.
Silly me.
At least Red gave me a birthday gift. Assuming I get it back and it doesn’t go into the evidence locker or wherever.
The next morning, CPS shows up and has me shipped off to juvi. Guess I was wrong about running away from my problems, and “they” were totally right. I just ran into a much bigger one that won’t let go.
Chapter 4
“KICK THE BITCH’S ASS!”
That bitch is me. I’ve been locked up in Juvi for the past three days. My limp pink mohawk hangs over my eyes like unruly bangs. They don’t let us have product here in lockup. Did you know hairspray is a deadly weapon? All you need is a match.
“KILL HER!”
“MAKE THE BITCH BLEED!”
The screeching hyenas throwing shade in my face right now are my best frenemies here in juvi. The Constance Q. Montforte Juvenile Detention Center, to be exact. Don’t ask me what the Q stands for, but with a dusty old name like that, I’m thinking add a U, a couple Es, and one other letter. I’ll let you guess which one.
“Fucking slut! Stole my shampoo out the shower!” the big white hyena snarls as she charges.
“You weren’t using it,” I snark then dodge.
It’s true. Queen LaQueefa’s straw blonde hair is matted and clumped in oily locks. She thunders past, her large arms missing me by a mile.
I’ve always been fast on my feet because I was born running. Still moving, I try to break out of the surrounding circle of girls in orange jumpsuits. They shove me back into the ring. So much for my escape plan. Guess I’m fighting my way out like always.
“Get back here, slut!” the Queen screams. “I’m gonna tear your tits off!” She whirls and hurls her claws at me like she means it.
I duck under and punch, a pink flash as I attack.
Rich Boys vs. Poor Boys (The Cruel Kings of Castle Hill Academy, Book 1) by Devon Hartford kd103 Page 3