From the pain in my side, I could tell that the knife had cut through shirt and skin already. It wasn’t bad, so I knew it was just a warning. For now. If threatening me bothered Kaden, he didn’t show it. His hands held steady, and he wore an electric smile that had a lot of juice behind it. Maybe he was a psychopath, I thought. Maybe that’s why he was still smiling.
The thought jarred me from my surprise. We were making contact, albeit barely, and so I opened my inner sight and forced a connection. Immediately, the world dropped away and I found myself in the center of Kaden’s being. Thoughts, emotions, memories swirled around me, pressing down with crushing, liquid weight. I knew a few tricks. I knew how to stir up the worst shit someone had ever done. I knew how to bring up a tidal wave of guilt that could drag someone deep. It might buy me some time, if Kaden didn’t drive the knife home first. I might even get away.
I reached deep into the stormy waters of memory, dragging a psychic hand through them, drawing up the worst thoughts and fears I could find: Kaden slapping his mother during a fight; Kaden teasing Austin, knowing about his friend’s crush and enjoying Austin’s suffering for a moment; Kaden slipping a hand down the front of Temple Mae’s jeans and hearing her breath roughen and hasten. And more and more, all the awful things I could stir up. At the center of that storm, I watched and waited, and when it was going full swing I released the psychic connection.
Only a moment, maybe two, had passed, but Kaden’s breathing was ragged, and now his hand did shake. The tip of the knife scored my side, opening a jagged, superficial cut, but staying close enough to kill me. In my peripheral vision, I could see tears on Kaden’s face. So, he wasn’t a psychopath. But he also wasn’t incapacitated.
“They told me you’d fuck me up,” he said, his voice so distorted that I barely understood him. “They got me ready.” His hand jerked, seemingly uncontrollably, and the knife slid and opened another inch-long slash. “Now hand me that fucking shoe and put your fucking hands on the fucking lockers.”
He was crying now, but I didn’t trust the crying to stop him if I tried to escape. He could cry and cry and cry, but all he’d have to do was shove the knife forward about two inches and I’d die on the floor of the girls’ locker room. I passed him the shoe.
Kaden shook the loafer, and something small and hard rattled inside it. He dumped it onto the ground, and before he scooped it up, I saw what it was: a flash drive. Then Kaden’s hand closed around it, and he shoved it into his gym shorts.
A flash of pained realization ran through me: the flash drive. That was what Makayla and Mr. Big Empty wanted from me. Lawayne had told me they wanted something. The sheriff had warned me too. And it had been sitting here inside an old shoe for days. Frustration and disgust flooded me; River had led me right to the flash drive days go. If I had been smart, I would have found the flash drive. I might have understood what was happening. Now, though—
“No stupid moves,” Kaden said, grabbing the back of my shirt and spinning me around. The knife never left my side. Marching me towards the front door of the locker room, Kaden glanced from side to side, as though expecting someone—or something—to jump out at him.
“They warned you about me?” I asked, not bothering to lower my voice.
“Shut up.” He jerked viciously on my shirt.
“What else did they say? Did they tell you why they want that flash drive?”
Tightening his grip, Kaden rotated his wrist, drawing the collar tight around my neck to choke me. “I said shut the fuck up.”
With strangled effort, I said, “I thought you were my friend.”
I couldn’t see Kaden’s face, but he unwound the impromptu noose around my neck and, in a harsh whisper, said, “I am your friend, but you’re in deep shit. We both are. So just don’t say anything.”
“Vie?” Austin called from the boys’ locker room. Judging by the sound, he must have come closer to the coaches’ offices. “What’s going on? You ok?”
The knife dug deeper into my side. Kaden’s breath was hot against my ear. “Tell him everything’s ok. Tell him to go back and wait by the front door.” I was silent for a moment, and Kaden said, “Vie, you might be my friend, but if it comes down to you or me, you know what I’m going to choose.”
I did; enough of our psychic connection remained for me to know that, whatever else was going on, and no matter how much guilt he might feel, Kaden believed his life was on the line. Most people, whether they wanted to admit it or not, wanted to stay alive, no matter what the cost. I couldn’t blame Kaden for being human.
I could, however, play along just enough to find an opportunity to escape.
“Vie?” Austin called again, worry in his voice.
“We’re fine,” I shouted back to Austin. “You still watching the front door?”
“No, nobody’s around. You need some help?”
Kaden jerked on my collar again, and I said, “No, get back up and watch the door. That’s the deal.”
Austin grumbled, but the sound of his footsteps on the tile echoed back to us as he moved away. Kaden waited just a moment longer, and then he shoved me forward at a run. We charged the length of the locker room, burst out the door, and skidded into a turn in the hallway. My tennis shoes squeaked on the linoleum, and the smell of cafeteria lunch—sloppy joes: tomatoes, sugar, and vinegar—hit like a fresh wave after the funk from the locker rooms.
Without hesitation, Kaden launched us both forward again, and we barreled into the closest set of emergency exit doors. I had a momentary flicker of hope: the alarms would go off; someone would come to investigate. But no warning bell sounded, no lights flashed. I risked a frustrated glance back at the warning stickers; so much for school safety when you depend on public funding. As the doors swung shut behind us, though, I caught a glimpse of someone watching us: Colton.
In shorts and a t-shirt, I felt like the Wyoming wind cut me to the bone. It was only October, but it might as well have been December. My breath exploded in frosty clouds, the same bluish-white color as the empty sky. Our feet pounded along frozen pavement and asphalt. The air had the cold, dead smell of deep winter, not the familiar crisp of autumn, and I took that to be a bad sign. Even if I managed to get away, I could freeze to death before I got somewhere safe. If I was going to escape, I needed to do it before they took me outside of town.
To my surprise, Kaden swung around the building, heading to the back of the school instead of to his car. The seams of my shirt stretched and groaned with the strain as he forced me into the turn. We were headed towards the nature lab, that expanse of wood behind the school that was set aside for small-scale science projects and nature walks and whatever else the teachers could dream up. That was my chance, I realized. I could lose him in the trees, break out on the other side, and disappear into the neighborhood.
As we came around the rear of the school, I took my chance: Kaden shoved me into a turn, as he had before, but this time I was expecting it. I moved into the shove, adding my momentum to it and turning to gain a better angle. In doing so, I put myself in the perfect position: my elbow came up and cracked sideways into Kaden’s jaw. He let out a pained grunt, wobbled, and slammed into the school’s brick exterior. Righting myself, I laid on the speed as I turned to study the distance between me and the nature lab. I didn’t dare risk tripping now because if I fell, I wouldn’t have a second chance.
That was when something like a wrecking ball crashed into the side of my head. I felt a pop, like my head had detached from my body, and all of the sudden I was only aware of the pain in my head. Anything below the shoulders just vanished; I didn’t even realize I had fallen until I saw that I was staring up at a sky the color of—
—River’s eyes—
—ice. I tried to get up, but a wave of pain and dizziness rolled over me. Exhaustion too—the bone-deep exhaustion from projecting myself into the other side. I struggled against it for a minute, determined to hold back the crashing darkness, and then it was too much. I settled into it, sinking deeply, darkly, quickly. But not before a face swam into view over mine, and a signal flare of panic went up somewhere in the darkness of my brain because Fred Fort was looking at me down the barrel of a service revolver.