Arise (Book Three in The Arson Saga) (22 page)

Admit it. It’s okay to admit it.

Incredible.

He’s better than you. And he has Emery. Will he keep her safe?

Yes. I think so. I…hope so.

“He called me
brother
,” Arson uttered, not meaning to speak aloud. “Can I trust him?”

He had no choice.

He met Joel in the living room, seated beside Redd on the couch. She looked to be consoling him, a little too well. Arson’s ears picked up the sound of the shower, so he deduced that Kyro was responsible for the amateur rap beat currently on repeat in the bathroom. He approached the couch warily and said, “You’re probably not gonna believe what I’m about to tell you.”

“What?” they asked in unison.

Arson studied them and paused.

Joel’s left eye twitched. “After the day we’ve had, Arson, try me.”

“Emery’s okay.”

“What?” he asked, looking like he might pass out.

“She’s alive.”

“How do you know that?” Redd asked.

“I’ve seen her.”

“What?” they both replied.

“I have this connection to another person. A person with abilities like mine. Only he’s…” How could he put it delicately, without bruising his own already wounded ego? “He may be slightly more powerful than I am. He entered my mind…telepathically…and gave me a glimpse of her. They’re close, Joel. They’re going to find us.”

Joel looked at odds with the message. Was he capable of believing it?

“And he healed her too,” Arson added.

Emery’s father wrinkled his brow.

“Who did? Who could do this?” Redd wanted to know.

“His name is Adam.”

The investigator’s cheeks turned pale, bloodless.

“Redd, what’s wrong?” Joel probed, touching her hand before she got up.

“It can’t be,” she whispered, thinking it was only to herself. “He’s dead. It can’t be.” She shook her head and took a long sip of water, swallowing it with a forceful gulp.

“What?” Arson pressed.

Their eyes were drawn to one another as she replied, “Adam is my brother.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The stink of damp
city smog seemed to scrape the thin lining of her nostrils. Emery scanned the ground for a rock, which she planned to use as her tool for remodeling the thrift shop window. A gaudy, outdated sign hung on the front corner of the building, flashing what should’ve read CLOSED in bright pinks and purples, except the O and E didn’t appear to be team players. The cheap Plexiglas made her think of some veteran whom time had beaten and left behind. She forced herself to ignore the inner guilt lurking about, but the snapshot of that stupid sign wouldn’t let her. In some sick way it was reminiscent of Adam. And leaving his tired, bloodstained body sandwiched beneath sleet and massive black garbage bags in some bar alley had left her feeling…what?
What, Emery?
In need of reproach? Judgment?
She made sure to conceal him well, using torn sheets of cardboard and scraps along with the filled plastic bags. But maybe she’d left him three blocks back because of something else.
C’mon, Emery. Why? Why did you just drag him there, not even check his pulse?

Was it for his safety?
Laughable, but maybe
. Was it so she didn’t draw any more attention when she flung a hunk of rock through the window in order to find some decent clothes to keep warm?

Stop evading it
.

Was it because she knew there wouldn’t be a pulse at all? No, that wasn’t it either. She’d pulled him by his wrists, so she knew he was still alive, and that some part of him—his mind, at least—was awake. Somewhere; just not here. Why had he blacked out all of a sudden, anyway?

Really, Emery?
She knew she was trying to employ the supposed deity of scientific logic as a method of dodging the truth.
Why has he done anything? Why did the car start hovering? Why did insane amounts of energy shoot out from his hands? Why? Why? Why?
She couldn’t help but snicker internally at the thought that she might as well have been a freaking parrot.

The answer was a hard pill to swallow. And she knew the answer, long before the guilt or the question attached to that guilt arose. The answer—the stupid, unfulfilling
why—
was that she resented him for not bringing her mother back. So it was easy to leave him there, not knowing if or when his body would drift back, while she played the role of Danny Ocean. She swore that power of his still existed inside. Had he not tried hard enough, or was it that he just wanted to see the torment coil up in her stomach like a lead snake ready to slip her some venomous tongue without asking?

Arson would’ve brought her back, right?
she contemplated, already knowing the answer to that lame question too, already knowing Arson didn’t possess the ability to bring back the dead, not even if he did love her.

Not even if she loved him.

At last, she found a suitable instrument for her vandalism and chucked the jagged rock through the window, and when she did, it broke. What also broke was the dam she’d erected in order to keep the sorrowful memory of her mother’s passing contained. But her mind never had been the best architect.

“Get in and get out.” The words spilled out like a confused prayer. She brushed her hair back, feeling the slimy snow seep under her nails to invoke an even more real chill. As she skimmed the rows of clothing in the dark, a new guilt was conceived: She was now a thief.

“First a lab rat, then a pariah, and now a thief. Great job, Emery.” It was so hard trying to find something halfway decent when everything just looked black. But there wasn’t a lot of time. The alarm was already blaring, and she gave it nine, maybe ten, minutes before the cops showed up. They’d start drilling her with stares and ugly questions she wouldn’t want to answer. And the cuffs… Her wrists felt sore again just thinking about them.

She fled down a few aisles and grabbed an array of things that looked like they might fit. She quickly got out of her clothes, not at all caring if some security perv would later return to it to feed some sick impulse. Emery just made sure to keep her face concealed by her hair. Survival outweighed any sense of propriety at this point. Thank God the jeans she’d grabbed fit. Not comfortably, but they’d do for now. She needed socks, desperately, and there happened to be an unopened package near the register at the front of the store. She scurried across the tile hunched over just in case any drifter across the street had gotten curious since the alarm sounded.

How much time was left? Eight minutes, maybe? She tore open the package with her teeth and retrieved a pair. After disposing of the soaked ones she had on, Emery slipped the clean socks over her frigid toes. It would take a few minutes for the blood to return, but now it would at least have a chance. There was a pair of boots that had been neglected at the counter also. They were one size too small, but since her heart beat against her sternum like a metal drummer on coke, she forced her wide feet into the narrow cave of the boot anyway, and ignored the claustrophobic squeeze.

An icy draft swept across her naked chest as she tied the laces.
Six and a half minutes. If you’re lucky. Hurry up!

She slipped into a t-shirt, forgetting all about a bra, and then threw on a second. With shaking hands, she pulled a sweatshirt from the collected pile. It was definitely a guy’s hoodie, but whatever; it was warm.

Her head jerked at the unexpected sound of footsteps outside. A middle-aged drunk stumbled past the thrift store with a beer bottle in hand. The bartender must’ve washed his hands of him. The gangly-looking figure hesitated at the entrance as she dropped to the floor, never knowing she could duck with such speed. He seemed tremendously bothered by the alarm. In no time, the apartments on the other side of the street came alive. Bedroom lights illuminated the windows, and a few tenants nosily gawked. Emery noticed her breath rise above her head as all of this became reality. She tried to inhale and exhale only when absolutely necessary, but at the rate her heart cruised, there was no way to control it. She glanced backward at the pile, not really knowing if what she’d collected would be enough to clothe Adam. When she turned her vision back to the front of the store, the drunk man had wandered off. The obnoxious alarm had probably gotten to him—like it was getting to her. It felt louder than being caught in the center of a mosh pit, in front of two mammoth speakers. Her eardrums kept adjusting as she leapt up and darted down the aisle.

The sign hanging from the ceiling appeared to read MENS, but she wasn’t sure.
Four minutes, Emery. Less than four minutes before they’re breathing down your neck and throwing you in the back of a cruiser.

She tore a number of thick cotton shirts from the rack, cutting her thumb in the process. Then she heard someone yell from a window, “Hey, somebody’s in there!” She snatched a few pairs of jeans and some Nikes that looked to be a size nine before the same lady yelled out the identical claim a second time, like she wanted every one of her neighbors to tune in to her discovery. Before Emery reached the window she’d used to crawl in, two car doors slammed shut.

“Crap! Crap, crap, crap!” It had to be the officers, just had to be. Had she miscalculated the minutes? Could she have been that far off? Or maybe this town rarely got any action, and authority figures actually did their jobs when they were supposed to, and she just hadn’t planned on such government efficiency. Whatever the case, two heavyset officers approached the front entrance with flashlights, peering through the glass like curious young boys standing outside Victoria’s Secret.

“I saw it, they was somebody inside. I swear they was.”

Would that nosy old bat fly back into her cave already?

Emery stuck one foot out into the alley, glancing back at the flashlight beams stabbing the dark. She only had a matter of seconds to make a run for it before Thing 1 and Thing 2 spotted her. Swinging the other leg over a triangular glass fragment still stuck in its frame, she was finally out. Emery fled and, after five seconds, realized the shard hadn’t missed her completely. Blood dripped down her shins as she kept pace down the skinny alley—which at one point had probably been considered a side road—nearly tripping over garbage bins and trash that had collected on the edges of the businesses to either side. The two cops had seen her, and one started chasing, while the other had finally gotten the alarm to shut up.

“Stop!” the cop ordered.

Emery didn’t look back, didn’t even inspect her cut. She just kept running and running, the shrill sound of the alarm somehow still alive inside her head.

Adam was gone. Emery’s fatigued chest rose and fell. Loud, angry music echoed from the bar to her right, intensifying the ringing in her ears. Leaving him unwatched for so long hadn’t been part of the plan, but the cops had screwed up her little covert operation. Although, it was to be expected. She was thankful the fatter officer had enlisted in the chase and not his partner. To lose him, she sprinted for nearly half a mile, rounding corners and vanishing down back streets, all the while trying to recall which alley Adam was in.

And now, after playing ghost for nearly an hour, and with pain shooting up her heels, she had returned to the correct craphole alley, only to learn Adam was missing.

She wanted to scream, but that wouldn’t be smart. She wanted to punch the Dumpster in front of her eyes, but that wouldn’t be smart either. She chose this moment as the opportune time to examine the cut behind her knee. It measured roughly an inch, and the blood didn’t seem to be spilling out in record numbers. A scab would soon form around the sliced pink flesh. But for some strange reason, the pain in her feet hurt more than the cut. She sucked the tip of her thumb and spit out any blood that was left. Wasn’t much, but she wanted to keep it clean.

Just then, the bar door swung open, and an unkempt biker staggered out into the night.

They made eye contact, but neither spoke at first.

The door shut. He pulled out a pack of smokes, lit one up, and examined both the clothes in her hand and the dyslexic outfit she had on.

Emery threw the hood over her head and sank back into the shadows.

“Where’d you get the clothes, dolly?” he asked, making a smoke ring with his breath.

She didn’t answer.

“Awfully cold to be out here by yourself.” In between puffs, she glimpsed his disorienting, yellow-almost-green smile. His leather boots seemed to crush the dirty snow beneath them as he leaned his big body against the filthy brick wall. “Not in the mood for talkin’, are we?”

“To strange older men in bar alleys? Not really.”

He stroked his grandfather beard, and the tattoos crawling up his beefy forearms came into view. “Just ’cause I’m of an older crowd, that makes me, what…suspect? That make me dangerous?” he asked, blowing smoke in her direction.

There was a certain kind of slur in his words. She was all too familiar with it. It was the kind of slur that took over a man’s speech just a little bit before it took over everything else in a man’s body. It was the kind of slur she’d seen infect her father and the crooked trucker Bruce, and she had a clenched gut that told her it had already taken control of this biker’s night too.

“I’m gonna go,” Emery said, leaning out of the shadows. She didn’t mean to make eye contact with him again.

“What’s the rush, dolly?” he replied, stroking the cigarette with his tongue.

“I just got lost, that’s all. Let me go, and it’ll be like you never saw me.”

“What makes you think I’d want that?” He flashed a smile then waved his hand in the direction of the street. “Say, who them clothes for?”

“Me,” she said with a waver in her voice.

“Right. All that cotton for a pint-size jailbait like you? I was born at night, but not last night.”

She tried walking past him, but his monstrous grip tugged at her hand before she could pass. His enormous frame now stood like a gatekeeper between a dead end and her escape.

“Let me go,” she spat.

“I never meant to hurt her, see? I just wanted her to love me back? Was it too much to ask the tramp to love me back?”

She glanced up without an answer. She swore she saw the devil in his eyes. All her life she’d wondered if the devil really lived behind the choices people made, or if that was just what certain folks wanted to believe. But here, and now most of all, it all seemed to make sense.

She didn’t want to scream, but there was no other way out. “Hel—”

“Shut up, now! Don’t fight it!” His giant palm squelched her plea from fully leaving her mouth. He slid his nose up and down her neck, taking pleasure in the scent. “Niiiice.” She dropped the clothes, attempting to free herself. She broke one of her nails while scratching at his skin, but all her efforts did were make him laugh. He snatched the cigarette from between his lips and pressed the tip into her wrist.

It hurt like hell, but she didn’t scream. She wouldn’t give this a-hole that kind of satisfaction. She just wanted to find Adam. She wanted to go home, to wake up from it all. She had never wanted to be kidnapped or drugged or manipulated or burned. She just wanted to find Adam and get out of this town.