Estranged (32 page)

They abandoned the car, leaving Josh
in the trunk. Kalei didn’t want to leave a man behind, but it was
Jenna who saw reason. “Terin don’ have nothin’ against him. He’s
jus’ another Estranged. SWORDE will find him and take him Downtown
where he’ll live happily ever after.”

Kalei threw the car into park and
turned to her sister. “Are you kidding? Josh has been with us since
we escaped Tusic. He knows where we’ve been, he knows how we’ve
been avoiding them— Terin is probably going to torture him for
information!”

Jenna raised an eyebrow. “If you think
Terin would use torture, then you clearly don’t know
him.”

Kalei was insistent. “Josh almost
killed his mother today. Do you think Terin will go easy on
that?”

“
And do you think we can
carry a corpse more than a mile through town and not get spotted?
’Specially with the cops houndin’ our trail? Don’ worry. What’s the
worst that can happen? So they throw Josh in a little glass tube.
So what? He’ll be a hell of a lot safer than either of
us.”

“
If that’s how you feel
about the tubes, then why’d you help me escape?”

Jenna looked away and unlocked her
door. “That’s different. You wanted out.”

“
And Josh
won’t?”

Jenna looked back at Josh where he lay
on the seat. “After what he’s been through, locked up is the only
place he’ll want to be.” She stepped out and walked to the back of
the car.

Kalei popped the trunk before she
exited the vehicle, then proceeded to pull Josh’s body out of the
back seat.

She had him halfway out and was
getting ready to pick him up when she noticed something. “Hey,”
Kalei straightened up and looked at Jenna, who still stood at the
trunk, moving junk around to make room for the body. “Where’s his
backpack? The kid never let the thing out of his sight.”

Jenna wasn’t interested. “Prob’ly
dropped it in the fight.” She finished what she was doing and
stepped back to admire her handiwork. “What does it matter?”
Brushing off her hands, Jenna walked over to Kalei and the body.
“Let’s get this over with.”

“
Fine.”

Together, the girls pulled out his
body and carried it over to the trunk.

For the first twenty minutes, they
didn’t say anything. The rain had started to pour in heavy sheets,
turning the world around them into a blurred dream and making it
hard to see anything further than five feet away. The water soaked
through Kalei’s sweatshirt and poured in through the eyeholes in
her mask, collecting in pools above her cheeks that slowly trickled
down the rest of her face, down her neck, and into her shirt,
blazing an irritating trail of tickling sensations. Kalei ripped
off the mask and threw it into the gutter.

“
How far is it?” she
asked.

Jenna nodded in the direction they
were walking. “About two miles. It’s in the Wadduck
district.”

Kalei grumbled a curse.

They took a few more steps, and then
Jenna said, “Forget about meeting Marley.”

Kalei looked up at her sister. “What?
I wasn’t even thinking about it. That whole district is swarming
with cops by now.” Kalei shoved her hands into her sweatshirt
pocket. “Shit, wonder if he was even going to show up.”

“
Hell if I
know.”

The conversation died, and they
continued walking to the sound of the beating rain.

It was about another mile when Kalei
noticed that Jenna was quivering. Her sister kept her chin tucked
close to her chest, but her eyes darted out into the rain,
desperate for something. It could have been that she was just cold
from the rain, but that didn’t seem to be it. Kalei might have been
wearing a soaked-through sweatshirt, but Jenna’s jacket, now that
it was zipped up, was waterproof. And all the walking was already
starting to make Kalei sweat beneath her layers. No, Jenna couldn’t
be cold. It had to be something else.

So Kalei hung back a step behind her
sister and watched. A few moments later when a pedestrian walked
out into the street, Jenna’s head shot up and she eyed the man
hungrily, but she quickly pulled her eyes away and looked at her
feet.

Kalei stepped up and shoved Jenna into
the nearest wall. “Are you going through withdrawals? Have you been
high this whole fucking time? Who did you get a high from, Jenna?
Who did you—” Kalei paused and her eyes subtly widened. She knew
who. Her brows snapped together and again she shoved Jenna against
the wall. “Did you get Josh high?” Jenna didn’t say anything.
“Fuck! What the hell is wrong with you, Jenna!”

Her sister bowed her head and grabbed
her arm with her other hand. She squeezed it tightly. “I’m
sorry.”

“
Fuck, what the hell am I
supposed to do with you, huh? Give me your gun. GIVE ME your gun!”
Jenna held it out and Kalei snatched it from her hand, careful to
pull back her darkness as she did so, in case the bitch tried
something. Kalei held up the gun. “I should just shoot you right
now and leave you for SWORDE.”

Jenna’s eyes widened. “Don’t! I can’t
leave—” She couldn’t hold Kalei’s eyes, though. She looked away and
withdrew into herself. “Please don’t, little sister...”

“
And why not?”

“
Because... because you
can’t do this on your own. You need me. I—”

Kalei’s rage threatened to overwhelm
her. This wasn’t her big sister Jenna anymore. This was the teenage
delinquent Shenaia, and Kalei sure as hell didn’t need her help.
“Really? Do I really need you? You were supposed to be my way in to
Tusic, and now we know how that went, so no. I don’t need you.”
Kalei raised the gun to Jenna’s forehead.

“
Hey!”

Kalei looked over her shoulder to see
a man several feet behind her, completely sure of himself despite
his bare, rounded torso, his flannel pajama bottoms, and a pair of
slippers on his feet. She could only guess that his confidence came
from the gun he was currently pointing at her. A woman shouted
something from the open door to his right, and he shouted back,
“Call the police, Ma.” To Kalei, he said, “Let the
lady—”

He didn’t even finish his sentence
before Jenna knocked Kalei’s gun away and took off running. Kalei
took another glance at the man and then ran after her.

The man shouted again, “Hey!” His gun
went off, and Kalei felt a burning sensation tear through her knee.
Her leg gave out and sent her sprawling to the ground.

Kalei heard the man’s slippered
footsteps approaching behind her. Furious, she rolled over and
yelled, “Are you an idiot?”

The man stopped a couple of feet away,
still pointing the gun at her. “Why were you attacking that woman?”
he demanded.

“
Atta—? She’s Estranged!
She’s going to kill someone!” Kalei found her gun on the ground
beside her and grabbed it.

The man shot again, hitting the
pavement two feet wide of where her gun had been.

Kalei aimed her gun at the man’s hairy
chest and roared, “Drop your weapon!”

He shifted his stance nervously, but
still managed to maintain his bravado as he bellowed, “You drop
yours!”

Kalei glanced down at her knee. She
couldn’t see into the dark hole his bullet had ripped through her
jeans, but she could feel that the wound was nearly healed
already.

She said to the man, “I don’t want to
shoot you. Now step back inside your home and let me do my
business!”

“
Why do you look
familiar... What? Are you a cop? Or SWORDE or somethin’? Let me see
some ID!”

A man’s scream tore through their
argument.

“
Jenna!” Kalei launched
herself off the ground and took off running. She heard the man
trying to keep up behind her, cursing as he discarded his slippers.
She turned a corner, then another, then hit a dead end. The scream
had come from the other side of the wall, but Kalei could already
tell that she wouldn’t be able to climb it. The cement was smooth
and slick with rain. There was no way she would be able to find any
footholds or traction. She bounced on the balls of her feet,
pressured by urgency, but filled with frustration and
indecision.

The man arrived behind her. He huffed
and puffed at the entrance to the dead end, then recovered enough
to shout, “This way! There’s a way around.”

Kalei ditched the wall and followed
the man.

He took her off to the right, and
after passing two more dead ends, they took another turn, which
brought them to a row of townhouses. And there, at the end of the
cul-de-sac, sat Jenna.

She was crouched over a man’s body,
crying. Bags of groceries spilled out everywhere around the man; a
bright red apple had rolled away into the gutter, jars of olives
were smashed and spilling out of the bags that once held them, and
a box of cereal had been crushed beneath his fall, and an explosion
of brown, processed morsels covered the road, growing soggy and
swollen in the rain.

Jenna knelt amidst this carnage of man
and food, leaning over the corpse with her face in her hands as her
shoulders bounced with quiet sobs.

Kalei put away her gun and walked
over. “What the hell did you do?”

Jenna raised her head from her hands,
her face red and puffy. “I didn’t do it, Kalei. I swear!” She
sniffed, her eyes falling back to the body as she started
murmuring, “I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it, I’m so sorry, Kalei...
I didn’t do it...”

Kalei followed Jenna’s gaze. The man’s
hair fell past his ears, plastered to his face beneath the pounding
rain. The muscles in his arms were lean and he sported a healthy
tan... he couldn’t have been any older than his mid-twenties. And
he would never get a chance to see thirty.

The bare-bellied guy came up behind
Kalei. “Oh shit.” He raised his gun and aimed it at Jenna. “Put
your hands behind your head!”

Kalei ignored him and walked over to
her sister. Quietly, she declared, “This is the second time,
Jenna.” She reached down and grabbed Jenna by the shirt. “THE
SECOND FUCKING TIME!”

Jenna was shaking from head to toe.
Her face contorted as it squeezed out a stream of snot and tears.
“I didn’t do it!”

“
Are you shitting me right
now? You have NEVER been in control, you hear me! The darkness has
made you its little bitch, and now you are trying to tell me that
you didn’t do it?” Kalei pointed to the man on the ground. “Take a
long look, Jenna! YOU did this! No one else. You! And your stupid
addiction!”

Jenna stared at the body, her eyes
glossed over and dazed. “I didn’t do it...”

Kalei straightened up and pulled out
her gun. “I’ll see you later, Shenaia.”

Her sister didn’t protest as Kalei put
the gun to the back of her head and pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Death

The vigilante was in shock at first.
Then, when Kalei moved away from Shenaia, he seemed to return to
his senses with renewed energy; pointing, waving his gun, shouting
– the whole bit. Kalei told him to call SWORDE and ducked down a
side alley to dry heave into the gutter. The image of Jenna’s blood
and gore on the pavement was burned into her mind’s eye. When she
heard the sirens coming, she wiped the spittle from her mouth,
steeled herself against the image, and headed in the opposite
direction. She knew that what she had done was right. Her sister
had killed a man, probably not the first, but definitely the last.
Kalei had made sure of that. Her action was justified. She refused
to believe it any other way.

Kalei didn’t know where she was
heading; there was nowhere for her to go now. And she didn’t care.
She let her feet carry her where they wanted. When she met another
person on the street, she just pulled her hood lower and changed
her route. None of it mattered. Jenna didn’t matter, her family
didn’t matter. None of it mattered. There was nothing she could do
for any of them. She saw what had happened with Josh and his mom.
She didn’t want to lose it like he did, to endanger her husband
like that. Better to just let SWORDE handle it. She was done with
this game.

She didn’t know how long she walked.
The rain eventually slowed to a stop, and the streetlights came on,
their light reaching all the way up to the heavy clouds, casting
them with a faint, orange glow. But while the added light made the
wet streets shine and glow, their brightness made the shadows all
the darker. And Kalei’s feet preferred the shadows.

Eventually, she found herself at a
ladder, hanging within arm’s reach and built into the side of a
cement wall, extending all the way up to the roof of the relatively
short building. The rungs were worn and familiar to her, and,
without putting another thought to it, she began to
climb.

At the top, she found that the roof
was already occupied. A man sat on the far side of the small,
square roof, leaning against the wall of a taller, adjacent
building. It was Marley. He looked completely relaxed, legs crossed
beneath him, brown jacket over his shoulders. Now that he was a
Detective, he seemed to have taken the liberty of growing some
scruff along his soft jaw.