by Kim Briggs
Table of Contents
Title Page
Starr Gone (The Starr Fall Series, #3)
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Starr Gone
Book Three of the Starr Fall Series
Kim Briggs
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, places, or events is coincidental and not intended by the author.
If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case the author has not received any payment for this “stripped book.”
Starr Gone: Book Three
Copyright © 2017 Kim Briggs
All rights reserved.
ISBN: (ebook) 978-1-945910-16-6
Print: 978-1-945910-17-3
Inkspell Publishing
5764 Woodbine Ave.
Pinckney, MI 48169
Edited By Vicky Burkholder
Cover art By Najla Qamber
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. The copying, scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions, and do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Dedication
To my three little cherubs who aren’t so little anymore.
Dive in and make those dreams come true.
Chapter One
Starr
The rational part of my brain screams at me to kick Sami in the stomach. Kick her and send her flying across the room. The irrational part disregards any and all concern for my own wellbeing. The irrational part only cares that one of the friends I thought was dead is alive.
I tilt my head away from the whip and whirl around. “Oh my god! Sami!” I rush at her with my arms flung out. She shoves her palms into my chest. “I don’t think so,” she says and sends me flying backwards.
My arms flail wildly searching for something, anything to hold on to. Her reaction doesn’t make any sense. I thought she was dead. I thought she and Jody were dead. I mourned for them. I vowed to avenge their deaths. We should be celebrating not fighting.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Jody. Any concern I hatched for myself during Sami’s attack disappears.
Jody’s alive. She’s alive.
I leap at her, but Sami’s whip bites my kneecap. White-hot pain sears my leg, paralyzing me to one square foot of this dingy room.
I search Jody’s face for answers to a million questions. Questions I’m sure she has the answers to, but she avoids my gaze. “Jody, what’s going on?”
Sami sighs loudly. “You’re a smart girl, Starr. Figure it out.”
“No,” Frank grunts. “Get out of here.”
I raise my chin. “You did this to Frank.”
Sami smacks the whip in her hand. “I did.”
Stepping back, I place myself between the tip of her sick plaything and my best friend. “Why?”
Her lip rises in a snarl. “We were trying to find out where you were.”
“Why?”
“Once again you’re screwing up my life.”
Nothing she says makes sense. We were friends. Nighttime sleepovers, true confessions, best of friends. “I thought you were dead. I thought you and Jody were dead.”
She flicks her wrist. The snakelike tip bites my ankle. I stumble back. “Of course you did, because it’s all about you isn’t it?”
Hot liquid seeps across my foot. I show no weakness. You can’t with a predator. “I don’t understand. We’re friends. We’ve always been friends. I’ve never done anything to you, to either of you.” I search Jody’s face, but she still refuses to look at me.
“We’re friends?” Sami snarls. “Do you know how much I hate you? Every day of our friendship I hated you.”
The piercing fangs of her words hurt more than a whip ever could. The air in my lungs whooshes out of me. “Why?”
“Because you’re Starr,” she snarls. “You’re tall, blond, blue-eyed, with that girl next door wholeness. Guys love you. Girls want to be you. I’m sick and tired of hearing, ‘Starr this, Starr that.’ I. Hate. You.”
“Sami,” I plead. “I never meant to hurt you. I had no idea you felt this way. Why didn’t you say anything?”
Her lip curls as if she’s found a most distasteful piece of lint on her shirt. “Of course you didn’t do anything. That was the problem. You’re so freaking perfect. You’re so freaking nice. You never want anyone to be upset with you—you make me sick.”
I swipe away an errant tear. “Why would you be friends with me if you hated me so much?”
She slams her whip on the floor. The tip grazes my stomach. I backpedal away, clutching the whip wound that doesn’t hurt anywhere nearly as much as her words. “I had to be friends with you. You were the IT girl—it’d be social suicide if I weren’t friends with you.”
I spin around to Jody. She drops her eyes, but I won’t let her go. Not this time. “Jody, do you feel the same?”
She avoids my gaze. She looks at Jude. She looks at Frank. She looks everywhere and nowhere and never at me.
“Don’t talk to her. You know she doesn’t like to hurt anyone’s feelings. She hates you too.”
Sami’s words crush me to the floor. “Why... why didn’t you say anything?”
She smashes the whip down. The uncoiling and recoiling hisses through the room. “What the hell could I say?” she roars. “Starr, stop being you? Leave some guys for the rest of us?”
I stiffen. She goes too far. “That’s a lie. You were the one with the boyfriends. You were the one with the guys all over you. It was always you and the boys, not me.”
She steps toward me, her whip slithering behind her. “Guys liked me because they knew they could get a piece. Even Frank settled for me when he couldn’t get you.”
I glance over at Frank, who’s looking down at the floor. Then I get mad. Then I get pissed. “The only one to blame here is you. It’s always been you.”
She moves closer. Something sinister darkens her eyes. “No, Starr. It’s always been you.�
��
My stomach roils, but I will not show her weakness. She feeds on fear. I step in front of her. It’s the best way to hide my fear, to pretend to be the confident Starr I always pretend to be, the Starr she hates so much. “Why did you do this to Frank?”
“I told you we were trying to find you.”
“Why?’
“Our paths took an unfortunate turn. As we were leaving the leadership exam, the test proctor approached us. He was very interested in our qualifications and wanted to train us.”
While General Treadwell was enlightening me about my future assassin duties, the test proctor was recruiting Sami and Jody. “I thought they killed you.”
Sami spits air out of her mouth. “Of course you did. You thought you were the one they wanted. We were the ones they really wanted, not you.”
“Sami, Jody,” I look back and forth at them, begging them to believe me, “they want me. Whatever they told you was a lie. They’re using you to get to me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong Starr. They want us. The Organization has no idea we’re here right now.”
The Sami I know, the Sami I love has to be inside this beast. I just need to give her what she wants. What she always wants. Power.
“Sami, I’m not your competition. I don’t want anything to do with the Organization.”
“Oh, I know that,” she replies. “They never wanted you in the program, but they want you now. Turns out that somebody never told her ‘best’ friends that she was the heiress to a Fortune 500 company, Jessica.”
I look at Jody. Her eyes skitter away, her shoulders gripped with betrayal. But Sami... Sami reeks of violent promises. “Sami, Jody, you have to believe me. I never intentionally kept it from you. I ran away from that life. I didn’t want that life. Frank didn’t even know.”
She laughs, all twisted and choked rust. “Oh, well, if Frank didn’t know that makes it okay.” As she paces, the whip slithers in and around her legs. A cobra poised to strike. “The last few weeks have been the best I’ve ever had. We’ve been trained to fight, to interrogate, to kill. Then all of the sudden, you become the Organization’s top priority—everyone is on high alert. Imagine my surprise when I discover that the guy I thought was hot but you acted like you couldn’t stand the sight of winds up in hiding with you.”
I hide my reaction. I will not give her Christian. He’s mine. I will protect him at all costs. “He has nothing to do with any of this.”
“Wrong again Starr. Christian is getting blamed for everything—all our disappearances. The general anticipates that if somebody, even the police, find Christian, you’ll be close by. So your little ‘boyfriend’ is in deep shit.”
My stomach wrenches at thought of Treadwell and the Organization getting their hands on him. He barely survived the last time. His torture this time would be the end of him, the end of me. I would turn into the very killer Treadwell wanted me to become.
“What’s even more ironic is when you showed up with Frank and him at the church where Jody and I were running our first surveillance mission.” She points at Jude, his face without a hint of emotion. “I begged two innocent church girls to invite these two cute boys to the dance because I was too nervous to ask,” she says, fanning herself with her hand. “Of course, I wasn’t dressed like this.” She sweeps her hands over her hips—tight red corset, thigh highs, and boots that Sami herself labeled “fuck me” boots. “It was so easy. No real effort on my part at all.”
A rush of motion surges at Sami. Jude attacks her linebacker style—right to the gut. She twists. He wraps his arms around her. She spins out of reach. Her cheerleader movements make her fast, capable of evading throngs of pawing hands even from trained assassins. The whip bites his left cheek. He doubles over gripping his face. His training leaves him no match to tender facial attacks.
“Take this,” Sami says, shoving the whip into Jody’s hand. Jody glances at me. Her hand closing around the handle, white-knuckled. Sami sucks in a giant breath, pushing a few loose tendrils out of her face. She reaches behind her back. My heart sinks when she pulls out a gun and points it at me. “I’ve had enough of this conversation. I’ve had more than enough of you.”
I stare down the barrel. It is a mesmerizing, deadly thing.
“Sami, what are you doing?” Jody stammers.
“I’m eliminating our problem.”
An assassin would deliver a swift kick to her hands. An assassin would masterfully leap into the air, sweep her legs out from under her, grab the gun mid-air, and restrain her with a zip-tie. Alas, I am not an assassin.
“Sami, you’re not a killer. You’re too good a person to do something like this.”
She snorts. Actually snorts. “Wrong again Starr. What’s with you? I’ve never known you to be wrong about so many things.”
“Sami,” Jody whimpers. “You’re just supposed to scare her back into hiding.”
Sami glares at Jody. Jody withers into her broken shell. “Hiding won’t do any good. She’ll just show up again. We need to get rid of her. I want her gone.”
“You can’t. That’s not the Organization’s way,” Jude says. Blood seeps from a gash on his cheek. Sami always left a mark on her conquests, though never quite like this.
She slides backward. “And what do you know about it?”
Jude shoves his hand into his cheek, deliberately wiping off some of the blood as if it’s some sort of act, as if we’re watching a scene from a movie. He tilts his head while he studies his stained palm. My own head tilts as I watch him. His jaw pulses. It’s the only emotion he reveals when he raises his bloodied open palm to her. An offering of sorts. “I was trained by them. What you’re doing is wrong. It’s not the Lord’s way.”
She raises her chest. Her mounded flesh billowing in the air. “I don’t work for the ‘Lord.’ I work for the General.”
His lip rises in a half smirk, as he shakes his head. “General Treadwell wants Starr alive. He won’t be happy if she’s dead or if you harm her in any way.”
I can’t tell whose side he’s on, and honestly at this point, it doesn’t matter. He’s captured her attention. I inch behind Frank.
“He’s not going to find out that it was me.”
He throws his head back and laughs. “He’ll know. The Jonathon Drive church threw the party downstairs. The very church that sponsors the Organization and your ‘program.’ Nothing happens that General Treadwell doesn’t know about.”
“He doesn’t know we’re here,” she stammers, but uncertainty clouds her face for the first time.
“He knows everything,” he says. While she’s distracted, I untie Frank. Thankfully, she used rope. No zip-ties. Her special program didn’t teach her everything. “I didn’t see you at training at headquarters.”
“We didn’t go to headquarters until a few days ago.”
“I thought you said you were trained by the general.”
“I never said we were. We were trained by Lieutenant Barnett.”
Barnett. Who’s Barnett? Another assassin trainer? Another testosterone riddled man willing to kill or worse to get what he wants? A man capable of anything—assassinating a presidential nominee, bombing a public building, disrupting present and future political elections....
“I didn’t think he trained recruits. He’s in charge of logistical analysis,” Jude says.
Jude’s knowledge of the Organization is much more extensive than he let on.
Sami swallows. “He doesn’t normally. He said Jody and I were a special project, but we met General Treadwell.”
“When?”
“The day of the exam.”
“That was the last time you saw him?” he says, raising his voice with just the right amount of incredulity. “Then let me warn you Starr must not be touched.”
At the mention of my name, her eyes pin me in place, just like those helpless freshies who used her locker during cheerleading tryouts.
“Listen, whoever you are, I am here for one reaso
n and one reason only—to eliminate her. I will kill anyone who gets in my way,” she warns. She strolls over to me. My heart leaps into my throat. I envision myself throwing a hammer fist to the side of her skull, but I can’t seem to find the courage to follow through with it. Fear paralyzes me. “I’d like to pretend I’m sorry about this, but I would be lying.”
She raises the gun and pulls the trigger.
Chapter Two
Starr
“No!” Screams erupt from every direction as a deafening shot shatters the room. I’m sent spiraling off to the side. Hot liquid soaks my shirts. Frank hugs me to his chest as he buckles and stutters. A second shot follows in close succession. I look up in time to see Di pointing something at Sami, then Jody. They crumble to the floor.
Di slips something behind her back. I wonder dully if she shot them.
Christian slides next to me. “Are you hit? Are you hit?” he mouths to me. I nod because I think I am, but I’m not sure. The ringing in my ears numbs my hearing, my brain, my mind. Frank’s body crushes me as he rolls off to the side.
Blood drenches my shirt, my hands, Frank’s back, Christian’s hands.
“Oh my god, she shot you? Where? Oh my god, where?” I cry. He shakes his head “no”. He says something but I can’t make out what it is. Then I realize Frank hasn’t moved. Blood pours from his abdomen. I yank off my hoodie and bunch it into the wound. “Frank, are you okay?” No response. “Come on. Talk to me.”
His pupils shift into a slow, lazy focus. “Starr, is that you?”
I nod. “Frank, you’ve been shot.”
“That’s nice,” he says. Then his body stiffens, his pupils clock dials. He tries to sit up, but it’s not much of a battle; he’s lost too much blood. “Are you hit? Are you okay?”
I push him down. I try to be gentle. I try to be cautious of wounds, but he’s fighting me, and he needs to calm down, and he needs help, and I need to take care of him, but he’s making it so hard to be gentle and cautious. “No, you blocked me.”
With that knowledge, he sinks to the floor. A smile spreads across his face. “Good.”
Di drops down beside me. “Help’s coming. They’ll be here soon.”
“That’s nice,” he sighs.
