Mom’s arms were on the other side of the chair from where Rachel and I stood, but if she were hoping to get away, those ropes had to go next.
Glancing near the legs of her chair told me no more ropes lay on the far side.
I thought she might be waiting for a better chance, but then I realized that this was it. For the first time since I’d arrived, no one held a gun to her head. Continue reading The Executioner: Part 7
Haley parked the car by the side of the road. As we got out, I couldn’t help but notice who wasn’t there–Jaclyn, Cassie and Julie. And that sucked because Cassie could have chopped them to pieces, Julie could have told them to stop, and had a pretty good chance that they’d listen, and Jaclyn…
Jaclyn could have done something. Physically, she was the only one of us who was in Prime’s army’s league. Plus she was a whole lot faster than any of them.
I couldn’t say that we were doomed, but part of me would have felt better knowing they were with us.
Continue reading Targets: Part 22
Off to our left, bright red beams lanced the ground, and then raked across the building I’d been in. It didn’t look like much–a concrete block with brown, wooden siding on the edge of farmland.
When the beams hit the back of the building, it exploded. I wondered if Travis had hit a gas line or if they had had an armory back there.
Continue reading Targets: Part 21
He lay on the road. Then he pulled himself up, and limped to the side.
He sat down in the front lawn of an old white house that hadn’t been painted in at least twenty years. Most of its paint had flaked off the wood.
With luck, no one lived there. Continue reading Targets: Part 20
I did something stupid. I looked back.
The big, bald guy handled the door differently than I had. He leaned in and hit the metal edge of the door with his shoulder, smashing it out of the frame, and the frame partly out of the building.
Turning my head forward, I ran across the lawn toward the car. Continue reading Targets: Part 19
Minutes later, Haley drove Night Wolf’s car to the far end of the hangar and into the tunnel. Rachel rode in the front with her, and I sat in the back.
We came out in the forest. The “rock” closed behind us, and we followed the access trail out of Veterans Memorial Park.
Once we got to the road, Haley accelerated, moving ten to fifteen miles per hour faster than the speed limit at every opportunity.
Continue reading Targets: Part 14
As telepathic contact ended, I became aware of the world around me again.
Haley had taken my hand, and in a quiet voice said, “Can we go over there?” She nodded toward a spot away from the main table where we’d been sitting.
With Sean standing behind our chairs, I could guess why.
Continue reading Targets: Part 12
“I’m going to take it and let everyone listen,” Daniel continued.
He clicked a few buttons on his keyboard, and the view from his monitor appeared on the big screen, covering most of the wall.
The switchboard program showed a list of callers (ten reporters in the last five minutes) and voicemails, followed by information about the current caller. This amounted to:
Caller: Unknown
FBI Notified. Tracing…
Daniel answered, “This is the Mystic.”
Continue reading Targets: Part 10
Even the most obnoxious people will stop arguing when they know the building they’re inside is about to explode.
In theory, at least.
“What?” Julie asked.
Sean looked from me to Lucas. “You’re kidding, right?”
From behind him, Sydney said, “Sean!”
“No. And now it’s twenty-three seconds. Go!”
Above us, something in the ceiling crunched. Continue reading Targets: Part 9
When the message ended, I clicked back to the communicator’s main menu to find that Daniel and Haley’s calls had made it to the League communicator too, and that they’d left messages.
Deciding that I’d have to look into why there would be a lag between the League phones and League communicators, I was about to listen to Daniel’s message when the communicator started to ping again.
It identified the caller as Lucas Hardwick.
Continue reading Targets: Part 5