She scooped Junie in her arms like a rag doll, ran across the dining room in a flash, and dove over a low wall that separated the foyer from the dining room. Junie sat in a ball, clutching the backpack to her chest, holding onto it for dear life.
“You know they don’t serve peanut butter in a place like this,” Junie mumbled.
“What?”
“My mom used to be a hostess, so I know. Your friend must have brought it from home. I think he likes you.”
She took Junie’s head in her hands and looked her in the eyes. “Listen to me. We don’t have much time. As soon as I’m gone, wait for the glass to break on the front window. Then go through it and run outside. Hide the backpack somewhere safe and go find the cops.”
“Cops? We don’t like cops!”
“This time we do. They’ll protect you. They’re holding back now, but they’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“When do I run, again?”
“After I’m gone, you’ll hear gunfire, but don’t be afraid. The bullets won’t be coming at you. A man will scream, and then glass will break. That’s when you run. After the glass breaks. Got it?”
Junie gulped as tears began to flow, but she seemed to pull it together. She sniffed and nodded. “Thank you, Em.”
“You should use a tablecloth so you don’t get cut,” she said, helping Junie put her backpack on.
“When will I see you again?”
“It might take me a while, but I’ll find you. Now cover your ears, and don’t scream when you hear gunshots. He won’t be aiming at you. Just wait for the glass.”
Emily heard the double doors swing open and smash against the walls on either side of them.
Emily took a breath and steadied herself for what she was about to do. The closer she got to a jump, the more it happened: time got slow and she got fast, but only for about fifteen seconds of her time immediately preceding a jump.
She felt the blue energy rise up through her body, telling her that it was time to act.
She sprang over the wall and ran at the gunman in a cloud of blue. She could see three bullets just leaving his gun, hanging in midair, with smoke trails behind them. She touched the bottom of each bullet with her finger as she zipped past them, then grabbed the wrist on the man’s gun hand and added a twisting force to it.
She turned her attention to the second villain who had been frozen in time, stepping through the double swing doors. There was another man in the kitchen behind him, but she didn’t see the pretty boy, Derek, anywhere. She grabbed the second man’s shoulders and spun him around so that his gun was facing the third man, who was not far behind. She gently touched the trigger finger of the second gunman, then moved to the third Loco and did the same with his trigger finger.
She dashed out of the kitchen and into the dining room, where she applied pressure to the underside of a table built to seat eight people, calculating the trajectory of its flight in her head.
She knelt on the ground, then curled herself into the fetal position and waited for the last second of the countdown to tick by. It did.
The jump pain hit as her body began to sizzle with blue lines of energy, like tiny lightning bolts crisscrossing her skin. A searing bolt of agony shot from the back of her skull to the center of her forehead, just as she was consumed by the blue fire and vanished.
* * *
Junie heard things happen just as Emily had described: first there were three shots of gunfire that tore through the ceiling panels above her, then a man screaming in pain, then more gunshots, then more screaming, then glass breaking, and a second after that, the alarm system began to wail.
She took a deep breath and ran to the front window, seeing a man on his knees holding his wrist, and two bodies a little further back lying on the floor, bleeding from their chests. She snatched a tablecloth, stepped on the wooden chair closest to the broken window, spread the tablecloth over the bottom of the frame, and climbed out. She heard sirens coming from the right, but she decided to go left instead, running as fast as her feet could take her.
TO BE CONTINUED in Chapter 2 of SHADOW GAMES
AMAZON BESTSELLING SERIES
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Shadow Games
Shadow Prey
Shadow Justice
LINKAGE
The Narrows of Time Series
Book #1
By Jay J. Falconer
www.JayFalconer.com
ISBN-13: 978-0-9840011-8-7
ISBN-10: 0-9840011-8-2
Friday, December 21
Tucson, Arizona
“Reckless. Undisciplined. Arrogant,” were the words Dr. Green posted to describe Lucas Ramsay’s thesis in the online science magazine called Astrophysics Today.
Lucas couldn’t help but stare at those twenty-nine letters filling the screen space on his aging laptop. The display was covered in lingering dust, with scratches spreading across its surface. Every time he opened the unit, it seemed like they were multiplying in the dark.
The screen looked like he felt—tired and worn out from years of abuse. But regardless, the marred surface didn’t obscure the words making his stomach ache and churn. He wanted to close the laptop and forget he ever saw the article, but he couldn’t. His career was now circling the black hole of ruin and he knew there’d be no escape.
He sat on the edge of his bed in the apartment he shared with his foster brother Drew, wondering if life could get any worse. He ran his bare feet across the tile floor, letting the coldness penetrate the skin. The drab green Army surplus blanket scratched at his thighs, so he tossed it aside, making a clear path for the chilly Tucson air to surround him. The burn of his senses was welcomed; he figured it would help etch this moment in his mind for all of eternity.
Life was about to take a wicked turn south now that his public disgrace was official. He needed to remember how he got here and why—the exact moment when history changed and swallowed him alive.
He looked down at the laptop, seeing Dr. Green’s summary staring back at him with vicious intent. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, hoping the words would magically disappear when he brought his attention back to the screen.
Lucas counted to ten, then opened his eyes.
They were still there—bold and harsh, not like any words he’d read before. Sure, he’d enjoyed plenty of scathing reviews of scientific papers before, but never one aimed squarely at him.
Dr. Green had a knack for tearing theories apart with a few choice phrases. The man’s reputation as a self-righteous prima donna was legendary. So was his literary temper. The retired eighty-year-old physicist was revered as a god in the realm of theoretical physics. His words alone could spark endless research grants and guarantee immortality in the annals of science. Or they could be used to kill a career.
Like mine, Lucas thought, knowing his humiliation had gone global, coursing through cyberspace like a malevolent force hell-bent on global annihilation.
Until a minute ago, Lucas had been proud of his thesis titled “The Laws of Physics Are Merely a Suggestion.” He thought it was a brilliant take on inter-dimensional connectivity theory. True, his paper on quantum linkage stretched the envelope a bit, challenging mainstream science at every turn, but the work was sound and he could prove it. All he wanted was a chance to be part of the conversation.
Of course, now that the senior editor had shit all over it, no respected scientist on the planet would consider it, not without reaping the whirlwind that was Dr. Green.
Lucas’ heart sank. The glimmer of respect he’d worked painstakingly to build during his first two years as a physicist was now being swallowed by an ever-expanding digital black hole. A gnawing sensation was building in the pit of his stomach, somewhere between nausea and hunger.
There was simply no way to recover from a debacle of this magnitude. Not after the world’s most famous physicist called your theories “pure speculation founded on nothing m
ore than adolescent fantasy,” and then blasted it across the Internet for all to see.
He closed his eyes again for another ten count, trying to untangle the knot swelling in his gut. It was useless. The knot grew unchecked. The only way to change things would be to travel back in time and stop himself from pressing that damned SEND button on the keyboard. All it took was one snap decision made in the wee hours of a brisk December morning to ruin everything. What the hell had he been thinking? He wasn’t ready. Neither were his theories. He should’ve known this would happen.
He groaned, chastising himself for being impulsive and undisciplined. His foolish arrogance would now harm not only him, but his family, too.
He let out a slow exhale, then shut the laptop quietly, trying not to wake his foster brother sleeping in the bed across from him. It seemed to work. There was no sign of movement from under the pile of covers. Just the usual rumble of disjointed snoring.
Drew was a noisy sleeper but Lucas had gotten used to it over the years. Others might complain or walk away, but he didn’t. He had no choice, really—you never give up on family. Or maybe it was that he didn’t want to have a choice, since Drew was one of the few good things in his life. Lucas would never walk away from the one person he trusted above all others. The one person who always had his back, no matter what came gunning for them.
Sometimes in the middle of the night, he’d lie in bed and just listen. The rhythm of Drew’s night sounds was comforting, finding its way across the room and landing softly on the petals of his heart. The snoring had become a soothing reassurance in an otherwise chaotic world. Knowing his brother was nestled safely in the bed across the room was a constant reminder that all would be right again in the morning, as long as the two of them stuck together.
Lucas unplugged the laptop from the wall socket and put the thin-profile device on the floor next to the bed. He slid his body under the edge of the covers, hoping to catch another ten minutes of shuteye. Maybe his stomach pain would subside if he lay still enough and let the thoughts of disgrace melt away against the backdrop of Drew’s breathing.
A split second later, he felt something crawl across his shin and down the inside of his right calf. “Holy shit!” he screamed, tossing off the covers.
A brown scorpion the size of a hockey puck sat on the sheet, with its venomous stinger arched high above its back. It had crawled into his bed, searching for prey.
Lucas grabbed one of the sneakers from the nightstand between the twin double beds and smashed the creature with such force that he jammed his right wrist, but the four-inch beast was still alive and coming his way.
“Die, you bastard!” he shouted, whacking the invader three more times, until its front claws, stinger, and eight legs stopped moving. He hated the stealthy night crawlers almost as much as his adoptive father did, and would’ve gladly used a bazooka to kill it.
“Geeze, Lucas. Did he owe you money or something?” Drew asked, sitting up in his bed. He used the tip of his index finger to pry the sleeper crust from the corners of his watery Italian eyes. His curly hair was flat on one side after pressing against the pillow all night. Some of it had fallen forward, covering his forehead and one eye. His olive skin was usually perfectly smooth, but right now it was covered in temporary wrinkles, matching the creases in the pillowcase.
“Sorry, bro. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“You didn’t. I was awake already,” Drew said, yawning and stretching, which showed off his stout chest and thickly muscled arms. If it weren’t for the car accident that crushed his legs, he could’ve easily passed for a collegiate athlete, or maybe even a pro.
“Anyway, sorry about that. Not like I had much of a choice. Look at the size of this thing,” Lucas said, using the cardboard backing from one of his notebooks to scoop the carcass into a plastic cup. “You’d think we’d be safe on the third floor.”
“Not with the way those things can climb. They’re relentless.”
“I’d give anything to have a few of Dad’s sonic pads to spread around. Those things worked perfectly,” Lucas said, thinking about his father and the device he’d designed specifically to deal with scorpions. “If it wasn’t for the damn EPA, every house in Arizona would have them by now. And we’d probably be rich.”
“Yeah, all he needed was another chance.”
Lucas carried the remains to the bathroom and dumped the creature into the bottom of the toilet and gave it a middle-finger salute. He saw a two-inch black cockroach lying on its back next to the tub, with one set of legs still kicking. It crunched louder than he expected when he stepped on it with the heel of his left foot. He used a Kleenex to pick it up and toss it into the toilet and used the same sheet of tissue to wipe the creature’s runny blood and guts from his foot.
“And we wouldn’t be living in this dump either. We’d have a big house with plenty of room for Mom,” he said loud enough for Drew to hear in the next room.
“Still, you can’t beat the price.”
“Maybe so, but that’s beside the point. We wouldn’t need free rent if they hadn’t killed his invention,” Lucas yelled, flushing the john to send the pair of mangled carcasses swirling around the bowl and into the sewer. He emptied the toilet a second time for good measure before returning to the bedroom.
He took a seat on his bed across from Drew and continued, “He could’ve solved the problem with the dogs. But no . . . all it took was one scathing report from the EPA and the investors go running for the hills. Don’t they know science is all about trial and error? Bunch of wimps. All Dad needed was a little more time. He would’ve worked out the bugs. No pun intended.”
Drew nodded. “Sometimes, all someone needs is a second chance.”
“You got that right, brother,” Lucas said, moving Drew’s wheelchair closer to the bed. He waited for him to slide his frail legs over the edge and onto the floor. “Need any help?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“No, I got it. Just give me a minute.”
Drew used a handlebar hanging from the ceiling to prop himself up against the side of the raised bed. He was able to stand for short periods, but couldn’t walk, at least not without assistance. He turned around and sat in the wheelchair, then looked at the floor. “What were you doing with the laptop?”
Lucas paused, taking a moment to think. “Nothing. I woke up early and couldn’t sleep, so I was just reading Dr. Green’s blog. Checking out the new submissions and his reviews, You know, to kill some time.”
“Anything interesting today?” Drew asked, bending down to get the computer.
Lucas grabbed it, holding it out of reach. “Just the usual half-baked theories submitted by wannabe scientists. Nothing nearly as cool as what we’re working on in our lab.”
Drew sat upright in his chair. “Maybe someday we’ll publish one of our theories on that website. Then we’ll be as famous as Dr. Green.”
“No thanks. It’s better to stay off the grid. Remain anonymous. Prehistoric dinosaurs like Green steal people’s ideas all the time and cash in. The shitty thing is, people like us can’t do a thing about it. After all, it would be his word against ours, and who are we? Right now, we’re nobodies. You don’t even have your doctorate yet, and I’m just starting my career.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Drew said with a perplexed look on his unshaven face.
Lucas tossed the laptop to the farthest corner of his bed, making sure Drew couldn’t reach it easily. “Trust me. You don’t want to be famous. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. If you ask me, it’s best to be the brains behind the scenes, and not the person out front in the limelight.”
A shiver ran down Lucas’ spine and he wrapped his arms around his rail-thin, nude body—a stark contrast to his foster brother’s handsome Mediterranean looks and muscular upper body. Lucas hated his red hair and freckles, but at least he had blue eyes. One redeeming feature at least. Well, that and his prominent dimples, something his adoptive mother cherished. Howeve
r, they didn’t do much for his confidence, not with the prominent cheek scars nearby.
He shivered again, inwardly cursing the ancient heating system in their apartment. Most people didn’t realize that even in the desert, the nights turned chilly. He walked four steps to the end of the room, where the in-wall HVAC system was installed, and rubbed his hands over the rattling output vents. “Hardly anything coming out of this piece of crap.”
“What’d you expect? That thing’s probably older than Sputnik.”
“Even so, you’d think Kleezebee’s Super could find a way to keep this thing working. We could hang meat in here.”
Lucas returned and slipped on a pair of navy blue boxers and a long-sleeved faded red t-shirt with ARIZONA printed on the front of it.
Drew pulled out a neatly rolled pair of socks from a custom-built dresser compartment under the bed and tossed it to Lucas. They had raised their mattresses four feet off the ground, using 4x4 redwood posts and birch plywood from their dad’s workshop. Storage space was at a premium in their five-hundred-square-foot apartment.
Lucas walked to the study desk to see what yesterday’s mail had brought them. Three envelopes were sitting on top of the last pile, face up, with fresh postmarks and no doubt, a swatch of Drew’s fingerprints. All three were from someone in the medical field.
“More bills for Mom? Are you kidding me?”
“They keep multiplying,” Drew answered, his brow furrowed.
Lucas opened the first envelope and almost puked when his eyes locked onto the invoice’s grand total. “Twenty-two grand for three days in urgent care?”
Drew rolled next to Lucas in his wheelchair. “Good thing you had them send the bills here. If Mom finds out, she’ll have another heart attack. I doubt she’d survive another one.”
Lucas opened a second bill—it was even more. He slammed it onto the pile, face down.
Drew snatched the invoice and looked at it with eyes wide. He gasped. “Fifty-two thousand?”
Bunker: Boxed Set (Books 1, 2, and 3) Page 52
