Strike (47 page)

I smile. My mom remains unchanged by the apocalypse.

Room 315
, I text back.

Soon we're all here, except Rex, who's still sleeping off his roofie cola. My mom, Heather, Kevin, Chance, Gabriela, Bea, and Wyatt—we're all giddy and broken and exhausted. My mom demands that we get out of the jumpsuits, and that leaves the guys running back to their room in tees and boxers to get more clothes.

“What happened?” Kevin asks, all excited like we're going to tell him about a movie we saw.

I just shake my head. “We got out alive.”

“It was amazing! It was all BOOM BOOM BOOM CRASH.” He makes explosive noises and jazz hands, right up until my mom sees my face and puts a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Sorry,” he mutters. “But it was.”

“Where's Jack?” my mom asks, but her face says she already knows. She always did.

“Leon—” I start. But I can't go on. I just shake my head and let the tears fall.

My mom covers her mouth with her hand, and for just a moment, she looks like a girl only a little older than me and in love with a dashing rich boy who shows up every weekend with gifts. Then her face squeezes shut, a mess of wrinkles that arrived too early, and we're both crying.

“And what happened to Leon?” Heather asks.

I look up, swallow down the sorrow, and meet her eyes, hard. “I shot him ten times or so. Pretty sure it finally killed him.”

She nods. “Don't think anyone would blame you for that.”

My mom pulls me back into the hug, and I melt into her. The sobs jerk out of me, and I let it all out into my mom's shoulder. All the things I repress, suppress, whatever—they're burbling up. All the faces I've watched as they passed over, the eyes suddenly gone far off. Every pull of the trigger, every splatter of blood across a shirt, every mouth so surprised to find that it can't talk anymore. Some of
the people died angry, some died fighting, some died sad or crawling away. A few died laughing, as if at some private joke. Leon died satisfied, I think. I saw it on his face. He knew what he'd done.

And that's what I don't want to become.

I've been trying, so hard, all this time.

And the fact that it still hurts this bad, that I still cry like this, like my heart is breaking . . . I'm no Leon Crane. I'm a Cannon. And I'll never see my daddy again.

We've got the two cars packed up and ready to go. I was able to choke down some breakfast at the free buffet, and so far it's staying put. You can only live on milk shakes for so long before you have to eat your damn fruits and vegetables again, especially when your mom's breathing down your neck. I don't mind a bit, even when she brings me tomato juice with a stern frown.

Everyone else at the hotel is talking about the explosion last night, about the mall sales they're missing today. The news keeps showing fire trucks at dawn, bright lights and smoke. They don't mention the Valor logo painted on the trucks' shiny red sides. No one managed to capture the actual event on camera, and no one seems to know what happened. I'm already sick of hearing the words “gas leak.”

“Can we get out of here?” Chance asks. “The waffle bar is great and all, but I'm losing my appetite.” He points at the screen, and it's a commercial for Valor Savings Bank with Vikings riding eagles toward a pile of gold.

We all stand up and walk out, although Wyatt gets so sick of waiting for Kevin to hobble along that he scoops him up and carries him like a baby. It feels like a million years since I shot him, but really it's only been a week. Outside the hotel, we just stand under the awning like idiots, because we haven't discussed this next part.

“So where are we going?” Kevin asks, like we're planning an awesome road trip.

“Hold on, and we'll find out,” I say.

I grab the keys from Wyatt and pop the trunk of the burgundy sedan, and everyone gathers around me. The bag my dad showed me last night is right where he said it would be, along with a bunch of other crap. He left so much stuff, in fact, that I'm starting to think he walked into that mall expecting to die. We have more guns, more Valor gift cards, and printed directions to a cabin in the wilds of North Carolina. Scrawled across the top in unfamiliar handwriting is
SAFE HOUSE. BRING WATER.

“Works for me,” Chance says.

“I just want to get out of Crane country,” Rex adds.

But now everyone is looking at me like it's my call, so I nod. “Let's do it.”

Wyatt is driving the burgundy sedan, and I'm in the passenger seat. Gabriela and Chance are in back, plugged into their iPods. I flip through the radio stations for a few minutes, hoping to hear some more informative news about the mall. When I finally find something, they confirm that it was a gas leak. An act of God. A horrible accident, and right before one of the biggest shopping days of the year. There's no mention of other malls across the country. Who knows how many cells took down their local Black Friday shrine to capitalism? Maybe when I fire up my dad's laptop later, I'll finally learn the real news. When I hear the Valor jingle, I flip the radio off.

“Wait. I almost forgot. Happy Thanksgiving!” I say.

Wyatt puts his hand over mine. “Happy Thanksgiving to you, too. I guess that means we can stop for lunch someplace that serves turkey?”

“You are a walking appetite,” I say.

“Your milk shake brings all the me to the yard,” he answers.

Something buzzes, deep in my dad's bag, which is on the floorboard between my feet. I dig down and pull out six identical burner phones, each marked with a number scrawled on a piece of masking tape. Figuring out his phone system is right up there with figuring out the darknet: something to do later, when everything is calm and safe again. I have to open several of the phones before I find the one that has a
1
on the text icon.

When I click it, I see that
Welcome back to the land of
the living, old man
was the last text my dad sent from this phone. The time stamp is 10:13 p.m. on the night that we saw the figure by the truck at the old Cannon house and turned around. It's a 404 number, which means Georgia. Atlanta. Possibly Candlewood.

Thanks, son. Glad to be back
, it says.
Now when do I get to meet my Patsy? She puts on a good show, even without her Valor camera. Love, Devil Johnny.

I go cold all over and stare at the phone like it's a bomb. For just a moment, I'm aware that my dad was the last person who touched it, that our fingerprints are overlapping now. And that he actually contacted the most dangerous man in the world, as far as I'm concerned.

A dangerous man who's supposed to be dead and clearly isn't.

A dangerous man who just implied that he knew Valor had tapped me for assassin duty and that the button on my old mail shirt was actually recording or transmitting my every word the entire time I was on Valor duty. And that maybe he was watching all along.

Well, before I faked my own death and buried it in Wyatt's yard under the body of my ex–best friend. And there's something else I have in common with my dad: I killed both of our best friends. And that gives me an idea.

I waited so long to respond that the screen went black, so I reactivate it and text back, S
he's dead. Leon Crane killed her. Died in Candlewood Mall last night. Sorry.

“Who is it?” Wyatt asks.

I don't want to lie, but I'm not ready to tell the truth, so I tell a half-truth.

“I'm not exactly sure.”

The car speeds through the sunny morning, swooping past farmhouses and valleys and trees and up the biggest mountain I've ever seen. I open the window enough to smell the crisp air, and when I look down, I feel a little scared, but in the good way—the way a roller coaster or really high elevator might scare you. But when the phone buzzes in my hand, the real fear descends, heavy as a thick blanket.

Did you kill yourself again, Patsy? Did you learn that trick from me?

And then the phone . . . rings.

My heart is going to burst out of my chest, and everyone but Wyatt is staring at me, and the phone won't stop ringing and ringing and ringing.

I snap the phone in half and throw it out the window.

Find me now, Devil Johnny.

I'm free.

Books are like pajama boners, by which I mean they can be very troublesome to deal with. Thankfully, I had help with mine.

Big thanks to my family for support, enthusiasm, hippo hugs, and the gift of heated mattress pads.

Big thanks to my agent of awesome, Kate McKean, for constant supervision. I mean
guidance
.

Big thanks to the publishing team at Simon Pulse: Liesa Abrams, Sarah McCabe, Regina Flath, and everyone else who had a hand in setting this baby on fire.

Big thanks to everyone who bought, read, gifted, reviewed, rated, touched, checked out, or otherwise interacted with
Hit
. I hope this book makes you happier than Matty with French fries.

ALSO BY DELILAH S. DAWSON

Hit

Servants of the Storm

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE

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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition April 2016

Text copyright © 2016 by D. S. Dawson

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Book designed by Regina Flath

The text of this book was set in Dante MT Std.

This book has been cataloged with the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-4814-2342-7 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-4814-2344-1 (eBook)