Between the Cracks and Burning Doors: Book 2 of The Extraction List Series (4 page)

I had to get out. Dom kept his keys hanging on a hook by the door. In one motion, I snatched them from their place, swung open the door, and slammed it shut behind me.

When I ran down the church steps, I almost forgot to lock the front door. This was going to be my home and my responsibility for the next six months at least, and I knew I had better get used to it. The whole church fell to me. I looked up at it. It had a bell tower at the top. I laughed at myself, knowing that I didn’t even know how to get to it. How does someone take care of a bell anyway?

Better figure it out.

From the front yard, I could see up to our apartment window. When I looked out the window, it seemed as though I could see to the end of the world, or at least the street. The roof looked worn, and the paint looked like it used to be white. Now it was the color of an old woman’s stained teeth, remnants of the eye-catcher it used to be.

I vowed to find a way to make the church even better than Dom had left it. He would come home to a bright white building with a perfect roof. He couldn’t afford to make those changes before, but I would find a way.

But not today.

For the moment, I turned away and marched down the street, the church shrinking into the distance. I walked until I could look back and see no trace of it. I stuck to side streets, just as Dom had told me.

The buildings that surrounded me on both sides were peeling away from themselves, paint curling up at the corners like Dom’s old paperbacks; some even looked like they would sink under the pressure of my finger. I passed by a gas station with no cars in front of it. Each pump had a quickly scrawled note taped to it: “No gas here.” I glanced inside to see if at least the convenience store part was still open. It was, but the cashier stood in the building alone.

I passed by several other businesses, but they had no cashiers to speak of. A tiny bookstore had a crooked CLOSED sign hanging in the window. I let myself hope it was just closed for the day, but then I noticed the dust caked in its display windows.

There was not a single smile to be found on any of the people I passed. Their eyes were all fixed on the pavement in front of them, only briefly glancing up to make sure they didn’t run into anything.

In my situation, lack of eye contact was a good thing.

Flanked by strangers and old buildings, I tried to figure out what to do next. What would I do if someone came to the door of the church? Had the police seen me as they left?

One stupid slipup and it’s over.

What about his service on Sundays? Or his Bible study? I would have to keep the door locked. The parishioners would get the hint. But I couldn’t do that because that would mean his entire congregation would be gone by the time he got back.

I guessed I would have to have a very convincing story.

He’s the one who did this to you, he’s been lying to you this whole time. Whatever happens is his problem. You could just leave, find somewhere else to stay.

No. Maybe Dom had lied. Maybe I didn’t even know his real name. Yet he had been there for me more than anyone else ever had. Deserting him was not an option.

I turned down one more side street and stopped short. Before he saw me, I ducked behind the wall of a building and flattened myself against it.

What the hell?

I couldn’t believe what I saw. Around the corner from where I was hidden, I saw Nick, the lonely kid from Dom’s Bible study, handing a small plastic bag of little crystal rocks to a woman in a tight red dress who looked about as old as my mother. She threw a fist full of cash at him, so much that it spilled out of his tiny hand and he had to bend over to scrape it off the concrete. He stuffed the cash into a backpack and zipped it shut. The woman glanced around, shook his hand, and then marched out onto the main road, barely missing me. Nick was still hidden, standing in the side street.

Dom’s student was dealing heroin.

I marched up to him and grabbed him by the shoulder. “What the hell are you doing Nick?” He looked up at me, white and shaking.

He pulled away. “Get away from me, I don’t know you.” I panicked when I realized that he was right, he didn’t know me. He had no idea I had even been in the church watching his Wednesday sessions. There was no reason for me to know his name, other than the truth. And the truth was something I needed to keep to myself.

He started to run out of the alley but I blocked his way. I had to think fast. “I’m a friend of your mom’s. Again, what the hell are you doing?”

He looked at me quizzically. Smart kid; he wasn’t buying it. “How do you know my mom? I’ve never met you.”

I racked my brain, trying to think of any information I could that might convince him. Unfortunately, I could only think of one thing. “Your parents are never home. They’re always out selling stuff because they both lost their jobs and they don’t want to lose your house.” I hated to bring it up but I had to get him to stay around long enough to listen to me.

Nick’s face fell toward his tattered white sneakers. I could tell his situation wasn’t one he wanted to talk about, especially not with a stranger. “What’s your name?”

I looked down at the pavement under us, and ran my hand through my hair. I had accidentally told Dom my real name and that had worked out, but this time I might not be so lucky. “Jack. Now, will you tell me what the hell you are doing with that garbage?”

“Why, do you want some?” I glared at him and snatched his bag out of his grasp. “Hey, that’s mine! You gotta pay for that.” His face went white, making his freckles look like black little poppy seeds.

I threw open the bag and dug my hand through the wads of bills until I found something hard. Sure enough, there were eight more bags resting at the bottom. “We’re going to get rid of this. Right now.” I gathered the bags and walked toward a nearby garbage can, but I felt two hands clasping onto my shirt, and I found myself dragging the weight of a ten-year-old boy behind me.

“No, you can’t! She’ll kill me. Please, I can’t go back without that.”

I stopped and turned to face him. “Who? Someone’s making you do this?” Nick’s flushed, tear-stained face looked up at me. My voice softened. “Please tell me, I want to help you.”

He sniffled as he talked. “Maureen. I live with her. There’s a bunch of us. We sell her stuff and she lets us stay with her. Says we’re a family. I gotta earn my keep though. If I come back without selling those bags, she’ll kick me out. I got nowhere to go.”

“What about your parents?”

He hesitated, and glanced around avoiding my eyes. “Haven’t seen ‘em in three months.”

Even as the words came out, I knew they shouldn’t. “Just come stay with me. And you don’t have to do anything for it.”

Nick shook his head, hard and fast. “You don’t understand. No one leaves. Once you’re in, you’re in. If you’re out…well, no one gets out.” His face stiffened, almost like he thought somehow she could hear him. “Maureen’s real nice though. Feeds us and we all have a bed. She even sometimes reads to us before we go to sleep. Real nice, I swear.”

I felt my skin get hot, and my limbs start shaking. Sweat formed at my temples, and I tried to slow my breathing so I didn’t scare him. The woman had a bunch of kids in her house and they were too scared to leave. But like Nick, they probably thought they had nowhere else to go. What kind of person traps children at their weakest moments and has them sell drugs?

“Take me to her.”

“You can’t, I’ll get in trouble.” Nick turned to run but I grabbed him by the shoulders.

I kept my voice as steady as I could. “I just want to talk to her. I can get you out of this. You don’t really want to be doing this, do you?” Nick stared at me for a silent minute. I played on the only piece of information I could. Again. It was cruel, but I had to get him away from this woman. For Dom. “Your mom wouldn’t like you doing this, would she?” Nick shook his head and looked down at his shoes. I held out my hand. “Then take me to her and we can work this out.” He left my side to grab the backpack and then took my hand and squeezed it tight.

As we rounded the corner of the alley and out into the street, he tugged my hand toward him. We stopped and when he looked up at me, he said the absolute last thing I expected, “You got any weapons on you?”

I didn’t answer for a moment. When I recovered from the shock, I shook my head.

“You should.”

I had no choice but to take his word for it, so we stopped by the only store that was still open on the street: a hardware store. I had Nick wait outside while I combed the aisles, searching for just the right thing to defend us against a woman I’d never met. The light bulbs had grayed over, barely lighting the room, and I wondered if he would be able to replace them once they went out completely. The bins of tools, nails, and screws were sparse, but at the back of the store, I saw it: a switchblade knife. I stared at it, black with a design etched onto the blade similar to the fake tattoo Dom had given me. I picked it up and it felt heavy in my hand.

For some reason, the look on Nick’s face told me that one wouldn’t be enough. Or maybe it wasn’t Nick’s face—maybe it was the fact that my palms were sweating and I had zero idea what to expect. I picked up a second knife, holding both of them in the palms of my hands.

Nick was clear that I needed a weapon. But there was one problem that I hadn’t shared with him that made all the difference: I had no money. Not a dime. All I had grabbed when I left the church was Dom’s keys.

The shopkeeper’s gray hair hung in his eyes as I entered the store. His lips could barely manage a slight smile, and the second his lips had curled upward they had sunk back down again. There had been a picture on the counter of him with his arms wrapped around a beautiful white-haired woman in a blue dress. Both of them were grinning ear to ear.

I wondered where his smile and that woman had gone.

The store was barely still open. How could I steal from the man? His sadness was contagious and I couldn’t imagine adding to it. But I needed to help Nick, plain and simple, and if she was as dangerous as he said she was, I needed a weapon to do it.

I took careful, defined steps toward the door. The only sound I heard was my shoes tapping against the wooden floor.

By instinct, I started walking toward the cash register, like any other time I found something I wanted in a store. Only this time, the items happened to be hidden in each of my pockets.

I made a sharp left toward the door.

He made brief eye contact with me and I almost cracked. I felt words of apology try to burst from my lips and I had to will my hands to remain at my sides instead of throwing the knives on the counter and running out the door.

The shopkeeper must have known. My hand reached for the doorknob when I heard a deep voice behind me. I could hear the spit and age rattling in his throat when he said, “Hey, kid.”

I turned.

“Take care of yourself, okay?”

Maybe it was something in my eyes. Maybe my hand shook more than I thought. But that old man knew that I was desperate for something, and he decided that I needed it more than he did. Despite his business falling apart around him, he let me walk out with something that belonged to him.

I nodded as I slipped out the door.

Nick was waiting on the porch. “Hurry, she may not even be there anymore. If you want to meet her, we gotta get moving.”

I fell in step with him as we headed farther down the street. “Where are we going anyway?”

“Birch Street, right at the edge of town. She lives in a big white house. Three stories tall. Really pretty.”

“The house or the woman?”

Nick’s cheeks flushed. “Both, I guess.”

Nick was a good foot and a half shorter than I was but he moved his little legs as fast as a mouse running from a cat. I had to practically jog to keep up with him.

We passed right by a police officer and my stomach cramped. I guessed I would have to get used to the feeling that I could get caught at any moment. I swore I could feel him staring at me. My face had to be on every news channel and in every paper by now. I could feel him searching for the face of the wanted teen.

But whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it, and we kept moving. Nick didn’t speak the whole way. Every once in a while, he would look up at me, but I pretended not to notice. He kept his hands gripped tightly around the straps on his backpack.

Nick hadn’t been kidding about the house. Like everything else in town, the paint was peeling off, and the porch looked like it had seen better days, but the majesty of the house itself was still there under the mold and worn shutters. A big red door stood at the top of the stairs, a mouth waiting to swallow us whole. “Well, we’re here. I hope you have more of a plan than just me getting you here. If that’s it, then your plan kinda sucks.”

I scoffed. “Thanks.” But I couldn’t help but smile a little. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out.”

I hoped I was right.

We were about to climb the porch steps when the big red mouth opened and a woman in a sequined blue dress burst through it. The strap on one side barely clung to her shoulder, and the armholes sagged so low that I could tell she wasn’t wearing a bra. The skirt of the dress dragged behind her on the ground, but she stood tall, holding the front of it in her hand. “Nick! Hello, my darling. Please come here.” Nick took small steps up the porch toward her. I followed.

When she reached him, she bent over and, holding his face in her hands, placed a gentle kiss on his forehead. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Jack. Jack, Maureen.”

My breath caught in my throat. I don’t know what I had expected Maureen to look like, but the woman in front of me definitely wasn’t it. Barely sixteen, her dark green eyes stared at me, looking me over from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head. Her lashes were so long that I swore they swayed when a breeze drifted by, and the only thing more stunning were the eyes they protected. Her dark hair was pinned back in a bun, but two sections fell gently in her face. “Jack, welcome. Would you like to come in?” Her smile was bright and penetrating, and I suddenly felt ridiculous having brought two stolen knives to defend myself against the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.