by S. A. Beck
If he only knew! Imagine his face if I showed him I can sometimes move objects with my mind. She looked at his handsome features in the streetlight streaming through the windshield.
His eyes roved from side to side, brow furrowed in concentration.
No, that would freak him out. Heck, it freaks me out. What am I, anyway?
Brett drove his Porsche down the length of the strip mall. Someone lay passed out on the sidewalk, his pockets turned inside out. Nearby, a man in a ragged overcoat staggered out of the all-night liquor store carrying a plastic bag. He lifted out a forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor, unscrewed the cap, and chugged it.
Moving slowly past the darkened façades of several stores, the fronts tagged with spray paint and the sidewalk littered with empty bottles and other trash, Brett and Jaxon approached the bar. A group of men in leather jackets stood in a loud, laughing circle, obviously drunk.
Brett slowed. A couple of the men stared, but nothing happened. Brett passed them and sped up, loping around to pass them again. One of the men gave them the finger.
Brett chuckled.
“How couldn’t you want to go out with me when I always take you to such classy places?”
“Well, you do know how to show a girl a good time. Pull in down the road there between the bar and the pawn shop.”
“Looks dark and crappy,” Brett said, a strange edge to his voice.
“That’s what we want, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
Brett slowed the car almost to a stop. They hadn’t yet turned into the darkened street. Jaxon turned to him in frustration.
“What’s the matter with you tonight?”
“I just have a bad feeling—”
A woman’s scream cut him off. Brett revved the engine, moved into the deep shadow beside the pawn shop, and stopped. In the brief moment before he switched off the lights, Jaxon saw a circle of figures about a block down the side road. Jaxon and Brett leapt out of the car, closing the doors quickly to cut off the car’s interior light.
They paused, letting their eyes adjust. They stood in the alley, the sides blocked by the bare concrete walls of the pawn shop and the bar. The raucous conversation of the drunks echoed outside the bar behind them. In front, the alley opened up into an intersection with a couple of run-down houses on the corners. Another block farther on, past darkened homes and a couple of abandoned lots, stood the circle of figures they’d spotted.
Jaxon blinked. That far? Had the scream really come from there? It must have been loud, a scream of sheer terror.
And she and Brett were the only two people who had come to check it out.
They had difficulty seeing. No lights shone in the alley, and the nearest two streetlights were broken. The closest light flickered from a streetlight half a block away from the circle of figures. The figures were shifting. Something was going on over there.
Another scream tore the night air.
Jaxon felt sure the scream came from that group.
Without exchanging a word, Brett and Jaxon moved forward, spreading out to give each other room to fight. Brett was good with karate and had the strength and speed of a varsity athlete.
And Jaxon? Well, Jaxon was Jaxon.
Jaxon felt the warm rush of adrenaline flow through her veins. No doubts, no insecurities, no flailing around to find the right words to say to make people like her—it was just her and her friend against the bad guys.
And as they approached the crowd, Jaxon saw just how bad they were.
Jaxon counted a dozen of them, and at first she was surprised to see they all looked to be high-school age. Briefly, she wondered why they weren’t at home in bed, but then she realized they’d come out looking for some fun, just as she had.
The center of the circle held their idea of fun.
A terrified girl, no more than fifteen, clutched at her torn shirt. Her jacket lay in a crumpled heap on the sidewalk. The guys all leered at her and made crude jokes.
Jaxon realized those sickos planned on attacking her right there on the sidewalk of a residential neighborhood.
They knew they were safe. No one would come running to investigate a girl’s scream in that neighborhood.
No one, that is, except Brett and Jaxon.
The two friends picked up the pace, closing the distance between them and the sickos. Jaxon curled her lip in disgust at the designer shoes and labels the boys wore. They were rich kids slumming in a bad part of town in order to find what they wanted without having to worry about angry victims who could hire private investigators and lawyers. Jaxon had lived in enough poor neighborhoods to know that an attack like that would barely be investigated.
They made it to within fifty yards before any of the boys even noticed them.
“Hey, look, fresh meat!” one said.
The other boys turned.
Between two of them, Jaxon locked eyes with the terrified girl. “Don’t worry,” Jaxon called out to her. “We’ll get you out of this.”
Jaxon was amazed to hear the strength and confidence in her own voice. Why couldn’t she sound like that in her normal life?
“Turn her over to us, and you won’t get hurt,” Brett said, an unexpected quaver in his voice.
What was wrong with him tonight?
One of the guys gave him a smug smile. “Funny, I was about to say the same to you.”
The punk turned and looked Jaxon up and down. “Not bad. Want to have some fun?”
Great. Besides Brett, the only guy who wants me is this pervert.
“Yeah, I’d like to have some fun,” Jaxon said, striding up to him as his friends chuckled.
Jaxon gave him a straight kick to the solar plexus—nothing fancy but effective enough. The air gushed out of his lungs with a whoosh, and he flew backward to land hard on the pavement.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jaxon spotted a dark shape rushing her. She spun, throwing a roundhouse kick. The guy saw it at the last second and ducked back, bringing his hands up to protect his face.
Jaxon ended up kicking him in the hand, which made him spin around and slap the guy next to him across the face. Both stumbled away.
That was a new one. Marquis would be proud of me.
Brett dove into the fight, then Jaxon had time to look only at what was coming right at her.
There were so many! The teens came at her all at once from all directions, obviously used to ganging up on people. They probably came joyriding through poor neighborhoods all the time looking for someone to pick on.
They were picking on the wrong person.
Jaxon became a flurry of martial-arts moves. She didn’t try to hold back. She didn’t dare. She spun low, ducking under a punch that would have cracked a few of her teeth, extending her leg to sweep an arc that knocked the feet out from under two of her opponents. Then she leapt and spun to give an uppercut to a guy trying to grab her from behind. She didn’t even get the satisfaction of seeing him fall because that instant, another fist came flying at her, and she had to flip the guy over her shoulder, conveniently hitting the next idiot diving toward her.
Through the melee, she spotted the girl being hustled away by three of her attackers. Jaxon busted through the crowd, knocking down anyone in her path, and cut them off.
The three guys snarled and pushed away their prey, who fell to the street, whimpering.
They spread out and approached Jaxon slowly. One came right at her while the other two edged toward her from the sides. Jaxon heard the thump of fists hitting flesh not far off. Brett sounded too busy to help her.
That was fine. Jaxon had been helping herself all her life.
As expected, the three attacked her all at once. They looked as though they had some training.
She ducked the first punch, barely blocked the second, and got the third right in her gut. It would have bent an ordinary girl double and left her tossing up the remains of her dinner.
An ordinary girl, but not Jaxon.
Hurt
like hell, though.
Jaxon grabbed her opponent by the shirt and struck him in the head from one side while undercutting his opposite leg with her own. He flipped over sideways and hit the pavement with a loud thud. Jaxon spun and barely managed to block the guy to her left as he punched for her throat.
Her throat—a nasty technique Marquis had told her only to use if her life was in danger. Those guys didn’t want to just hurt her. They wanted to do some real damage.
That got proven the next instant when she took a kick in the small of the back. The force of the blow pushed her into the grasp of the guy in front of her, who tried to pin her arms to her side.
Big mistake. It would have worked if she really was as weak as she looked. Instead, Jaxon whipped her arms up, breaking his hold. His arms splayed to the side, leaving him wide open for a direct hit to the face.
That put him down. Jaxon spun on her final attacker, only to get kicked again, that time in her side before she completed her move.
She absorbed the glancing blow with a grunt. Jaxon lashed out, smacking him in the face. She stepped forward to hit him again as he backpedaled, but she got tripped up by the guy on the ground, who was flailing about, trying to grab her.
A quick downward kick solved that problem, and a combination of blows finished off the problem standing in front of her. As he fell, she looked at him with a bit of respect. He’d blocked two of her strikes only to get downed by the third.
Martial arts are too popular in California. There’s competition on these streets.
Jaxon looked around, suddenly aware that the street had gone silent.
The attackers were disappearing into the shadows in all four directions, leaving her alone with the girl. Most of the thugs had already left.
Brett was nowhere in sight.
“Brett?” she called out, peering down the darkened streets as the last of the teens limped away. “Brett!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.
She turned to the girl. “Did you see where my friend went?”
The girl shook her head. Her eyes were wet with tears and her cheeks streaked with mascara. She struggled to speak. “C-could you… take me home? It’s not far.”
With a last look around, Jaxon helped her up.
“This way.” The girl paused to pick up her jacket.
Jaxon looked around again. “Brett! Where did he get to?”
“Thank you so much for helping me.”
The girl shuffled down the road with Jaxon at her side.
“Could you speed it up a little?” Jaxon said impatiently. “Sorry, but I have to find my friend.”
“I was coming home from the late shift at 7/11. I just got off the bus, and they jumped me. They were going to…” She broke down sobbing.
“It’s all right now. You’re safe.” Jaxon rubbed her shoulder then looked around again. “Brett!”
“Please don’t shout. They might come back.”
“Are we at your house yet?” This girl’s taking forever just to walk down the street!
“Just a little further.”
“Where?” Jaxon hated to hurry the poor girl along, but she had to find Brett. He might still be fighting those guys somewhere. Beating them had been hard enough when she and Brett had been fighting side by side, and she didn’t want to think what might happen if he was facing them all by himself.
The girl gestured vaguely down one of the side streets. Jaxon took her by the crook of the arm and hustled her that way.
“Please, they hurt my leg when they pushed me down.” The girl started limping. She hadn’t been limping before.
“Which one is your house?” Jaxon asked.
“The one at the end of the street.”
Jaxon ground her teeth in frustration and pulled her along. The girl dragged her feet and limped more, which just made Jaxon’s impatience grow.
Once they got a couple of doors away, Jaxon let her go. “Sorry I can’t stick around. I have to find my friend.”
“Couldn’t you at least walk me to my door?” the girl asked.
“No. It’s right there. I really have to go now.”
“But—”
“Good night!” Jaxon growled and stalked off.
After she made it half a block, she felt guilty and turned around.
The girl was nowhere to be seen. No lights were on in her house.
Jaxon trotted back toward the girl’s house but saw no sign of her or anyone else.
Must have left the lights off, afraid someone would know she was inside. I can’t deal with her now. I have to find Brett!
She sprinted back to the scene of the fight. No one. Brett’s Porsche still sat in the alley. Jaxon hurried over to it and found it untouched.
Damn, why couldn’t she have a phone like everyone else in the world? Her foster parents had this weird idea of staying away from technology whenever possible and forbade her to have a phone except when she went out into the city alone, and of course they didn’t know she was out right then.
She peeked her head around the corner to view the front of the strip mall. The drunk with the forty ounce sat slumped against a wall only a few feet away, mumbling something to himself. Only a couple of guys still stood in front of the bar, quietly smoking.
She called out to them and asked if they’d seen someone matching Brett’s description.
“Sorry, babe, but if you’re lonely…”
“Whatever.” Jaxon sighed and turned back to the darkened neighborhood.
Where could he have gone? Think!
The guys had scattered in all directions. Could they have taken Brett with them? Or perhaps he chased some of them?
Jaxon had no idea. She jogged around the block, seeing nothing. Then she increased her search by a block and made another loop.
Still nothing.
She continued to search, a cold pit of fear growing in her stomach.
Chapter 4
July 8, 2016, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
4:30 PM
* * *
Jaxon tried to stay awake as the science teacher droned on. She’d been up searching for Brett almost until dawn, fruitlessly running around that filthy neighborhood for any sign of him or their attackers. Several times, she returned to the Porsche, hoping he would be waiting for her there, but all she found was some guy trying to break into it. She gave him what he deserved, not that it made her feel any better.
At long last, she had to break off the search. It was past four in the morning, and her foster parents woke up ridiculously early. She got to a main road and hailed a cab. Since Stephen and Isadore were as stingy with pocket money as they were with her phone and Internet use, she only had enough to get partway home. She had to jog the last five miles as the sky to the east brightened from black to pink to pale blue.
She made it back home and climbed up to her room only minutes before hearing her foster parents moving around the house. She changed into her pajamas, slipped into her bed, and pretended to be asleep until Isadore came to wake her.
Jaxon managed to convince her to let her use her phone, claiming she had forgotten a homework assignment and needed to call a classmate. That got her a lecture, but at least it also got her the phone.
She called Brett. No answer. She texted him and held onto her phone for as long as she could. After breakfast, Isadore asked for it back, but she told her foster mother that she was still waiting for a reply. That managed to get her the phone until she had to leave for school. She almost burst into tears as she handed over her phone without having heard from Brett.
She was sick with worry by the time Isadore drove her to school. As soon as she got there, she rushed around the halls looking for him but didn’t dare ask anyone. He wasn’t in the student lounge or the tables outside or his homeroom. Nowhere.
Just before the class bell rang, she passed two kids she recognized from Brett’s golf team and overheard one say to the other, “I called Brett’s phone three times this morning and couldn’t get him, and now
it says it’s switched off.”
Jaxon’s blood ran cold. She hovered nearby, hoping to get more information, but the two boys moved on to another subject, clueless about the real reason they couldn’t get a hold of the captain of their team.
The rest of the day was a queasy blur. A few people commented on Brett’s absence, but nobody thought to ask her. With Brett gone, she had turned invisible again.
To everyone but Courtney. The cokehead taunted her at lunch as usual, but Jaxon barely heard. She just stared off into the distance, wondering what had happened to her one and only friend in that horrible city while Courtney’s insults just rolled off her unheard. Eventually, Courtney gave up, and Jaxon was left alone.
It wasn’t until almost the end of the school day that the students heard anything. Before the final bell rang, the entire school got called into the auditorium.
The principal, Crystal Dennison, stood on stage, flanked by most of the teachers. They all looked somber. The golf coach, a big, beefy man in his sixties whose name Jaxon had never bothered to learn, was wiping his eyes. In a numb haze, Jaxon took a seat with the other kids.
After everyone was assembled, the principal stood up. The room fell silent. Ms. Dennison looked around at the kids and struggled to speak. Finally, she got the words out.
“I’m afraid I have some very bad news. One of our students, Brett Lawson, was found dead early this morning.”
A gasp went through the room. Jaxon slumped in her seat. The whole room took on a distant, unreal quality. She felt as though she was watching a bad movie. The principal went on, her words sounding as if they were coming from the end of a long, echoing tunnel.
