Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
“Piece of cake.”
“Your hair is blue.”
It is?
Someone must’ve put something—or sprayed something—in my hair, although I don’t know how that escaped my notice. I’ll go to the bathroom and look later. Not now.
We stop, and I drop my tray on the round table next to Hunter’s. All the guys that were in my kitchen this morning loiter around, and I recognize the girl from the office—Codi. She sits to the right of Hunter, Mace and Coral in the chairs next to her. I sit on the table, facing Hunter, and stick my apple in my jacket pocket.
Picking up the new hamburger, I peel back the paper sleeve.
Hunter stares at me.
“Is it satisfying,” I ask him, “seeing me with no allies and you with all of them?”
“Why do you think that would satisfy me?”
Farrow drifts between us, reaching around Codi to grab a football.
“It was never that you didn’t have friends at home.” I take a small bite and then lift my eyes, staring straight at my cousin. “You just let Kade take them all.”
No one around is looking at us, but they’re quiet. Listening.
“You’d socialize as little as possible,” I say. “Skip lunch. You’d go listen to music in your car. Maybe kill time in the library.”
He tilts his head back. “I miss the library,” he muses. “Perfect place to be alone.”
Something about his tone makes me pause.
The girl in front of him moves out of his way as if reading a signal, and my stare flits from her to him.
He glances at Farrow, I turn to Farrow, and then…
Farrow launches his football across the cafeteria, and I watch as Calvin is already running, leaping into the air to catch it. It sinks into his arms, and for some reason, he collapses onto a table of lunch trays that he could’ve easily missed, students screaming and food flying everywhere.
People cheer and howl, the entire lunchroom erupting in chaos.
Calvin slides into a girl’s lap, covered in crap, and she cries out. “Get off me!”
I just stare, wide-eyed.
A teacher rushes into the fray. “Enough!” he barks.
But just as everyone’s distracted, Mace is in front of me, hauling me off the table.
“What?” I gasp as she throws me over her shoulder, her shoulder bone in my stomach knocking the wind out of me.
“Stop!” I scream.
But I can barely hear my own voice over the disruption Calvin has going.
Mace carries me out of the lunchroom, and I twist and turn, catching sight of a half-dozen pair of shoes walking with us.
“Let me go!” I shout.
How the hell can she hold me? She doesn’t have that much muscle on me.
They cart me down the hallway, to the right, and through a pair of double doors. I claw and scratch any wall I can reach, trying to grab door frames for leverage, but in less than twenty seconds, I’m standing upright again, my jacket is being peeled off, and my wrists are secured behind me. A long piece of rope is wrapped around my wrists, my spine pinned to a wooden beam that rises from the first floor to the second floor of the school library. I look up and around, noticing the lights are off, papers scattered around the floor, and chairs stacked on top of worktables. Old iMacs sit in various cubicles, and dust coats just about everything. Books still sit on shelves, but the place looks like it hasn’t been used in a decade. Or two.
Mace holds my jacket, reaching into the pocket and pulling out my wallet. She takes my cash, flipping though it with her fingernail. “Not much,” she tells everybody.
“Bitches like her get credit cards,” Calvin says.
Codi stands behind everyone, quietly observing.
“Leave the cards,” Farrow tells them as he takes my cell phone from Mace and tosses it to Hunter. “Shred the driver’s license.”
I dart my gaze to Mace. She slips my I.D. out of the wallet and pockets it with my cash.
“No!” I yell. Then, I shift my glare to Farrow. “You said I could ride.”
“You can,” he teases. “All you want. Just don’t get pulled over.” His eyes gleam. “Or you could be here for sixty days longer than you planned.”
Everyone laughs, and they all turn to leave, Mace throwing my wallet back at me.
I pull against the bindings, watching them go and leaving me in the dark. Mace pulls on my jacket. I growl.
Hunter remains, stepping in front of me to slip my phone into my jeans pocket. How could he just stand there while I got robbed?
“What did you do for their loyalty?” I spit out.
“Go home.”
I ignore him. “What have you been up to here? Hmm?”
He leans in, pulling the key Farrow gave me out of my pocket.
“Hunter…”
“Go home,” he whispers. “Killer.”
My heart flutters in my chest. Killer. People called me that when I was a kid because I was always racing. Skates, bicycles, dirt bikes, then my car, my motorcycle…