Brighter Than the Sun - Darynda Jones Page 0,38

in the towers aim their rifles.

I can’t let it end too soon. I need the guards on the absolute edge. The razor-sharp one where their trigger fingers flinch in reflex.

A guard is yelling through a loudspeaker, ordering the men to get on the ground. Most listen. Some do not.

Jerry Lee reacts in the exact fashion I expect him to: He freezes. His eyes round in utter panic. He can’t understand what they’re saying, and when the tower guard fires a warning shot into the yard, he is paralyzed.

Two shots are all it takes for the men to stop. Several are already bloody, but even those men get down. I’m already down. Have been since the whole thing began. But Jerry Lee is not.

I almost feel bad for using him as bait, but I know procedure. I also know the guard in the tower. I chose him quite purposefully. A former marine sniper, he’s an excellent shot.

When he aims closer to the ground by Jerry Lee, the only one left standing, I spring into action. My plan is tricky, but not impossible, because one of the things I’ve learned to do with the hours upon hours I have to think is stop time. I can’t do it for long, and I’m not really sure if time actually stops or if I go into another dimension for a short period. Another time zone.

Either way, just as the guard aims and pulls the trigger, I slow time. I don’t actually stop it until I see the bullet slicing through the air. It’s going to hit about two feet from Jerry Lee’s feet. I dive for Jerry Lee, cringing at how much that tackle’s going to hurt him when time bounces back.

“Sorry about this,” I say before knocking him to the ground. Then I position myself perfectly, hold my breath, and release time.

It bounces back with a vengeance, but I’m too busy letting a bullet rip into my skull to notice. Even for me, it’s a lot to take. I strain against my natural inclination to grab my head and curl into a fetal position as it presses about half an inch into my gray matter and exits the other side. I also fight the inclination to mutter holy shit and son of a bitch and what the fuck was I thinking?

It shatters my skull. Sends fragments onto the grass.

The alarms continue to blare. The inmates are ushered inside, and the entire place is put on lockdown as they call an ambulance.

O’Connell, the guard I helped out during the mini-riot a few years back, the sniper with one of the longest recorded shots in marine history, is the first to get to me. Deputy Warden Neil Gossett is next. He’s in a suit and tie. I laud him for coming onto the yard with no protective gear. O’Connell holds a towel to my head. I can only hope it’s clean.

I stay put, feigning unconsciousness. Wishing I wasn’t having to feign it, because my head is pounding. Probably because half my brain is lying on the grass.

When the ambulance comes, I leave my body and watch as they load me up and drive me to the hospital. And since I’m supposedly comatose, I stay out of my body so that I pass all the coma tests they do. I check on Kim. Amador, Bianca, and the kids.

But I watch Dutch. I watch her work. I watch how she is with people, both alive and dead. She is incredible. Her energy infectious.

I’m in Las Cruces, searching every dive they have when she summons me a few days later. I appear by her side instantly. Only she’s asleep when I get there. She doesn’t even know she’s doing it. She’s probably never known she was doing it. Summoning me.

And something happens. Something exciting and new. She pulls me into her dream. It’s strange at first. Disorienting. It’s like walking on Jell-O through fog, and then the veil is pushed aside and she’s there.

She’s in bed even in her dream. She’s kicked off her sheets. They’re wrapped around her calves. Her hair is in tangles over her face. Her head thrown back. Her spine arched. Both hands are clutching the sheet beside her, her fists locked tight, her knuckles white.

I step forward. Push a strand of hair out of her face.

She shudders when I touch her. When an electric current passes between us. As far as dreams go, this one is killer. Her breasts strain against the T-shirt