The Endless Road to Sunshine - Nicky James Page 0,146

Skylar, where are you? I’m coming. I promise. I’m coming, okay? I’m not mad at you. I’m sorry I sent you away. Please. I don’t know where you are.”

“He’s…” Skylar made a strangled, frightened noise. He grunted and coughed. A gurgled moan followed, and I clenched my phone until the plastic creaked. “Stop,” he cried out a moment later. “Please. Jason… Jason?”

“I’m here. I don’t know where you are.”

“Jason! Jas—” My name was cut off by another grunt, another groan. A dog barked in the background, and I heard Reggie yelling, telling it to shut up.

I screamed Skylar’s name over and over, but all I got in response was a muffled cry.

Reggie’s voice came back on the line. He sighed. “Such a pity he doesn’t know how to take it like a man. Whimpering. Crying. Pathetic. I think he pissed himself. Disgusting. I have to go now, Jason. I have work to do. Morgan had a system, but to me, it wasn’t efficient enough. Too clean. Too fast. I think you didn’t learn a thing, did you?”

I was blubbering and crying, and Skylar’s strangled moans grew quieter in the distance like Reggie was walking away. There was a thumping sound like he was climbing stairs or descending them. The dog barked again, closer that time.

“I’d like you to reevaluate your life, Jason. Think about your future. This doesn’t have to happen again.”

“No, please. I don’t know where—”

The phone clicked off, and an agonizing roar climbed my throat, filling the room and echoing off the walls. It was inhuman, raw and filled with devastation.

Someone caught my arms and pinned them to my side, and it was then I realized I was lashing out, punching the ground and anything in my way. White-hot anger curtained down around me, blocking out the world and reason.

Levi crouched, but I shot my legs out, kicking, thrashing, screaming. He was faster and pinned me down, grabbing my face and holding so tight I couldn’t get free. I heaved and spat and fought anyhow.

But I was outnumbered and stuck. Relenting after a few minutes, I snarled, glaring back at Levi.

“Listen to me. The police are on their way. I just called them. What did he say? Where is he?”

Tears rolled down my cheeks as defeat flooded over top of the anger. All my tightly wound muscles let go at once. “I don’t know. He’s going to kill him.”

I heard Skylar’s voice in my head again. Scared. Strangled. Weak. Begging me to help. Skylar. Oh god.

Then something knocked into me. A thought. A realization. A single insignificant sound in the background I’d registered yet dismissed during all the chaos.

A dog barking. A dog.

Like someone had pulled the curtain back in my mind, I remembered the day in the food court when Reggie and I had had coffee together and he’d shown me a picture of a stray dog who’d wandered onto his property.

The dog. The picture.

I closed my eyes, trying to see it again. The details were foggy and unclear. A house with white, clapboard siding off to the side. Rundown. A gravel driveway. Some sort of dilapidated building in the background. An old garage maybe? And, in the distance, a tower. A water tower.

I thrashed again. “Let me go. Let go of me. Get off. A tower. A tower. Where’s the town’s water tower?”

I searched Hunter’s face, white with fear. It must have been Maverick restraining me from behind. Hunter shook his head, eyeing the other two like I’d lost my mind.

Levi tried to hush me, but I growled. “He’s at a house near a water tower. Let go of me.”

Maverick’s grip loosened, and I pulled free, scrambling away.

“The cops are coming,” Levi said. “Just relax for five seconds, and they can—”

With my arms free, I tackled Levi, shoving him to the ground and landing on top of him. I was savage and angry and desperate. Plus, I had the element of surprise. With all my rage, all my fear, all my pent-up fury from having lived through all the shit with Morgan, I fought my best friend until I found his keys and tore them free from his coat pocket.

Then I was off the ground and halfway down the hall before anyone figured out what was happening.

Levi yelled. The sound of thumping feet trailed after me like a herd of elephants. Perhaps I’d been driven to irrationality, but I already had the deaths of enough people on my conscience. There was no way I could survive