Praise for Every Stolen Breath
“A thrilling page turner, engaging and beautifully written, Every Stolen Breath will leave readers breathless until the end.”
BRENDA DRAKE, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THIEF OF LIES
“Brisk pace, unexpected twists, and touching romance—Every Stolen Breath checks all the boxes! Do not miss this highly entertaining tale!”
PINTIP DUNN, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF YA FICTION, 2018 RITA® WINNER BEST YOUNG ADULT ROMANCE, 2016 RITA WINNER BEST FIRST BOOK
“In this impressive debut, Gabriel balances a high-adrenaline, high-stakes storyline with meaningful meditations on power and corruption, ego and greed, grief and guilt. Lia Finch is a complex, compelling hero whose courage and persistence will inspire readers everywhere.”
JAMES KLISE, EDGAR AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE ART OF SECRETS
“Fast-paced and taut, this book grabbed me from the very first scene and then didn’t let go. With a fascinating protagonist, and high tension from the start, this was a thrilling read.”
AMELIA BRUNSKILL, AUTHOR OF THE WINDOW
“A tense, atmospheric thriller that gripped me from page one. Lia’s quest to bring her father’s killers to justice is harrowing, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful. My heart is still racing.”
RACHEL LYNN SOLOMON, AUTHOR OF YOU’LL MISS ME WHEN I’M GONE
“Gabriel has crafted a thrilling narrative with twists and turns that left me gasping. As Lia struggles to maintain her grip on reality, it becomes impossible to know who to trust or anticipate what will happen next. Every Stolen Breath is a must-read for fans of YA thrillers.”
KARA MCDOWELL, AUTHOR OF JUST FOR CLICKS
“In this extraordinary and suspenseful debut, Kimberly Gabriel has created the hero the world needs right now—Lia Finch is unwavering, tough as nails, whip-smart, and honest. Gabriel’s fast-paced, tensely plotted novel will have readers holding their breath late into the night.”
KURT DINAN, AUTHOR OF DON’T GET CAUGHT
“A terrifying premise set against Chicago’s stunning backdrop, with a whip-smart protagonist and enough twists and turns to keep your heart racing to the very last page—Kimberly Gabriel’s haunting debut will take your breath away.”
DAWN IUS, AUTHOR OF LIZZIE, OVERDRIVE, AND ANNE & HENRY
BLINK
Every Stolen Breath
Copyright © 2019 by Kimberly Gabriel
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Blink, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546
Hardcover ISBN 978-0-310-76666-7
Ebook ISBN 978-0-310-76715-2
Epub Edition September 2019 9780310767152
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Any internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by the publisher, nor does the publisher vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Interior design: Denise Froehlich
Printed in the United States of America
19 20 21 22 23 / LSC / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Marc
because we always have been
and always will be
better together
CONTENTS
Praise for Every Stolen Breath
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Acknowledgments
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
One of these tourists is about to die.
They flock to Navy Pier from places like Plainfield, Iowa and Hartville, Ohio, where I’m sure they lead normal lives. But here, they become hoarders of magnets and sweatshirts and shopping bags plastered with Chicago emblems. They eat Dots ice cream, take pictures of the new Lakefront mansions, and ignore the warnings about walking in groups fewer than four.
They’re easy targets, all of them.
I pull my sweater sleeves over my palms and narrow in on a pudgy woman wearing pantyhose, tennis shoes, and monochrome blue. She’s easily the adult version of Violet Beauregarde from Willy Wonka after Violet turned into a giant blueberry. The woman bends over and picks up a coin from the ground. As if it will bring her luck.
A lanky guy with red stubble and a designer trucker hat almost trips over her. He swerves at the last second, stumbling over his own feet before smoothing out his flannel shirt and resuming his jaunty swagger.
They’re oblivious. It could be either of them, and they wouldn’t see it coming.
Of course, the second I mark them as potential victims, I can’t even blink without envisioning their beatings and how they begin. A fist in the back of the neck. An uppercut punch in the gut. The first hit comes out of nowhere—a seemingly random attack from a guy in the crowd. Then within seconds, dozens of teens appear, swarming the victim like a colony of flesh-eating ants—hitting and kicking to the death.
Just like they did to my dad.
A damp chill rustles through my hair as the wind skates off the lake behind me. My chest tightens, and I glance at my purse slumped beside me on the weathered bench slats. As tempted as I am to reach for my inhaler, today is not the day to show that kind of weakness. I pinch the bridge of my nose and remind myself to stay vigilant. Alert.
The day’s too gray to see the whole half-mile stretch from where I’m sitting at the end of the pier. Even the lines of the Ferris wheel towering over the middle look blurred as they push through a heavy sky. Still, I don’t see any reinforcement—police officers, a SWAT team.
You’d think a tweet with the date and coordinates of the next attack would alert them all. It’s not like the code was hard to figure out. But when I called the city’s Anonymous Tip Hotline, the operator dismissed me like I was some delusional kid flipping out over a random comment she’d found on the Internet. She assured me she’d pass my note along and reminded me the Death Mob era was behind us. Then she hung up before I could think of an articulate rebuttal, leaving me sitting there, mouth gaping like some taxidermized fish.
Even Detective Irving neglected to call me back—not that he actually proved his competency after my dad’s death. Apparently, like all city officials, he’d rather sit behind his desk and adamantly deny that the Death Mob’s Swarm has been lying dormant for the last two years, waiting for the right moment to reemerge.
By now, at the very least, this place should be littere
d with undercover agents snapping their telephoto lenses at every potential perpetrator—something part of me knew would never happen. CPDs become predictable like that. And with their tendency to botch everything, maybe it’s better I’m here alone, armed with an iPhone and the perfect opportunity to prove everyone wrong.
It wouldn’t be the first time a high schooler had to jolt adults into action.
I check my phone’s battery life. According to a witness, the first teen who hit my dad had two silver spikes pierced through his bottom lip. For attackers that operate on anonymity, the lead was rare. Not that Detective Irving thought so. He claimed it was hearsay. Said he needed tangible evidence. Pictures. Videos. Clear shots of their faces.
I scroll through the images I’ve already taken. Enough to rival any tourist. And while I haven’t seen Lip Spikes, that doesn’t mean there aren’t others already here, blending in with the crowd.
Raising my phone again, I imitate the tourists. I angle and fidget with my screen like I’m capturing something picturesque and click. The walkway ahead. The plaza to my right.
Down the pier, a small group clusters beside the mini cruise ship. A captain and first mate stand at the end of a carpeted ramp, greeting each tourist climbing aboard with a reassuring, artificial smile. I zoom in on the third crewmember, who stands at ease. His eyes shift around, like he’s searching for any sign of disturbance. For something about to begin?
I snap a shot and scrutinize it. His age is right—between fifteen and twenty-one. But nothing else fits the Swarm’s profile. He isn’t alone. He’s not masking his identity.
My breath hitches, making the inhale shallow and unsatisfying, as I chuck the phone into my bag. I close my eyes, relax my shoulders, and curse the weather for changing too quickly this year. Air in. Air out. Slow. Methodic. My lame attempt at convincing my body that breathing isn’t so hard.
A phone chimes next to me.
My attention snaps to a girl approaching from the left. She sits beside me on the bench. Nineteenish. Bronze skin. Copper-colored hair slicked back in a tight ponytail. Her oversized scarf conceals her neck, half her face. Sunglasses. A local—likely hiding her identity.
I jerk my eyes away. Take another deep breath. Pinching the pendant on my necklace, a tiny four-leaf clover imprinted on a silver disk, I twist the chain around my finger. Scan the crowd.
An older group near the hot dog stand cackles at the vendor telling jokes in his fake Italian accent. The popcorn guy next to him takes money from three girls—all too young—and scoops popcorn in one continuous motion. A thirty-something couple takes selfies by the railing.
A half-dozen other couples and families loiter around, but the crowd is still sparse, still filled with tourists. None of them are Swarm material except Copperhead next to me and the teenage boy twenty feet to my right.
Without turning my head, I risk another glimpse. He’s still sitting hunched over at the base of some monument. Eighteenish. Broad-shouldered. He jams his hands inside the pockets of an oversized Chicago hoodie like he wants to be mistaken for a tourist. Headphone wires disappear beneath the hood concealing half his face. He’s been sitting like that for over an hour. Even though I’ve snapped a dozen pictures, I can’t stare at him longer than a few seconds at a time without getting a piercing pang in my gut.
“Will you sign a petition to preserve our city’s parks?” A short, pixie-like girl holding a clipboard tight against her chest addresses Copperhead, who doesn’t look up, like her headphones make her impervious to solicitors. What I wouldn’t give for headphones right now.
By the time I grab my book and bury my face in it, Pixie Girl has already turned toward me.
“Do you like our city’s green space?”
I keep my head down, cuing her to move along, but Pixie Girl is undeterred. Just my luck.
“We’re collecting signatures today to stop the Lakefront Project from selling off the parks along Lake Michigan. We had a city ordinance dating back to 1919, which protected that land . . .”
I make the mistake of looking up. Pixie Girl has long, narrow ears sticking out of her short blonde hair. She wears shimmery eye shadow. At this point, I have to assume she’s embracing the whole elf-image thing.
She misinterprets my glance for interest, and her eyes ignite with fervor.
“. . . should belong to the city, not wealthy businessmen and bureaucrats with their million-dollar homes . . .”
“I’m only sixteen,” I say, unable to tolerate any more of her rant.
“You can still sign. This is just a statement of support indicating—”
“Not interested.”
I’m about to tell Pixie Girl that fairies don’t exist when her face flattens. She shoves the clipboard toward me. “I’m out to collect three hundred signatures today.”
I look at Copperhead, wondering how she escaped this persecution.
Impatient, I grab the clipboard and sign my name. Pixie Girl smirks, curtseys. “Thank you for your support.”
As she skips off to find her next victim, I glance down the pier toward the city. My pulse races as I realize I can no longer see the entrance to Festival Hall or the beer garden fifty yards away. People are milling. The crowd has grown thicker in the last few minutes.
I profile the crowd. Two families—definitely tourists. Three more scattered clusters, all traveling in packs. But this time I see loners. A boy facing the lake, watching the waves. Baseball cap. Head down. I count four others like him leaning against the railing. They stand at least ten feet apart. Two of them talk without looking at each other. One listens to music. The fourth watches his phone as if it might ring. As if something is about to happen.
All these people who fit the Swarm’s profile seem to have materialized out of nowhere in the time Pixie Girl forced me to sign her worthless petition.
I grab my phone and steady my hand. With my best attempt at looking both casual and self-absorbed, I hit record. I take a panoramic video of the teeming crowds. I capture the boys at the railing. One of them turns his head, and I zoom in on the left side of his face. I get the kid at the base of the statue again. His exposed nose and chin. At the last second, I flip my phone around and smile as if recording myself commemorating my Labor Day weekend at Navy Pier. In doing so, I capture the girl next to me. Even if they’re all disguising themselves, it’s enough to incriminate at least some of them.
I jam my book into my bag and throw the strap over my torso, eager to head back toward the city. Get the hell off this pier before the attack breaks out. This has always been the riskiest part. I can’t get trapped at the end of the pier. The water is behind me. It’s too high to jump.
Clutching my phone, I head toward my escape on the north side of the pier, a narrow walkway by the parking garage that’s isolated from the main stretch. But three steps in, a group of guys—five of them—masked by hats, hoods, and sunglasses round the pier’s grand ballroom, heading toward the lake and the bench where I’d been sitting moments ago. Each of them looks massive and, worse, enraged.
Blood drains my body, leaving me numb and useless when I see the two spikes piercing the lead guy’s bottom lip like fangs.
The guy who killed my dad.
They’re closing in.
My hands shake. I struggle to hit record. As I do, Lip Spikes lifts his chin, giving me the best shot I’m going to get.
I turn back toward the main stretch and halt. Another cluster converges from the pier’s south side, blocking both exits. I scan for the best way out only to find the boy with the oversized hoodie at the base of the monument, staring.
At me.
His eyes are paralyzing. They look colorless—or gray, I can’t decide. They are fascinating and strange, eerily bright. For the tiniest of moments, I don’t even notice the expression behind them. But when I do, my stomach drops. His glare is sharp and piercing, like he hates me, like he knows what I’m doing, what I’ve already done.
He flips a cell in his hand.
/> Everything in me tightens.
Buzzing and ringing surround me. Teenagers wearing heavy clothing—hats, sunglasses, scarves, hoods, gloves—circle the pier. My gaze flickers between them. Half of them are tucking their phones away. The other half seem to be checking them, the lights of their screens peppering the fog with little blue orbs. The buzzing is deafening. I want to cover my ears and curl into a ball against the railing. I want to crawl under the bench and hide there.
I dial 911 and hit send.
And then I stop breathing. I realize now why the boy is staring at me.
It’s not because he knows what I’ve done. It’s much worse than that.
The Swarm isn’t after a tourist.
They’re after me.
CHAPTER 2
Someone screams.
The noise is so loud and animalistic, my knees buckle and I collapse. I cover my head with my arms, bracing myself for a hit.
Curled into a ball, I’m vaguely aware of people shrieking and fleeing. I listen for footsteps charging me, but the pounding of my heart echoes in my head and mutes the world around me. This is it. I’m going to die. Petrified. And alone. Knowing in my final thoughts that I failed my dad and everything he stood for.
A low, muffled rumble of jeering and yelling emerges like a balloon. It pops, and the noise is overwhelming and terrifying and coming from someplace else. Dozens of them horde in a riotous circle around their victim forty feet away.
A bubble of air bursts from my mouth. They aren’t after me. But the tiny rush of relief is replaced by a new wave of limb-numbing fear.
These are the people who murdered my dad. They beat him beyond recognition. The Swarm’s enormity hits me as their thick wall of bodies huddle together, a deadly drove with one primal aim. Pressure coils around me, wringing my insides, strangling my throat though I know, better than anyone, that this is the worst time to panic.
I close my eyes and force myself to breathe, draw air into my lungs. I count down. Three. Two. One.
Swiping my phone, I scramble to the back of the bench. I stay low and peer through the wooden slats as dozens of them shove each other to get closer to the attack. Every hoot and scream makes me flinch. More emerge and join the chaos. Where were all these people hiding just moments ago, before the first hit?
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