Page 82 of Reckless At Raleigh High
“I can’t find Alex. Where is he? I’ve been looking all over for him.”
Zander looks confused. “Huh. Haven’t seen him in a while. I assumed he was watching you dance with that nerd, plotting out how he was gonna kill him.”
“Uh…oh,” Halliday mutters, tucking her hair behind her ears as she extricates herself from the cage of Zander’s arms. “Uh, shit. I saw him going outside before. Things got so tense with Jake and Kacey that I just figured he just needed to get some air or something. He hasn’t come back in?”
Sick to my stomach, I scream at myself for being polite and dancing with Gareth. I should have made sure I had eyes on Alex before I did anything. He seemed to cool down so quickly before. I’d thought he’d just put Jake out of his mind, but obviously I missed what really happened.
Shit.
Alex went after Jake the moment I turned my back and looked away.
“Come with me,” I command. “We need to find him. I have ahorriblefeeling about this.”
Halliday leads the way. Instead of guiding us toward the gym’s main entrance, she heads for the emergency exit I considered fleeing out of earlier. No one notices as she pushes the bar and the door opens a crack, just enough for the three of us to slip out one at a time into the cold. The moment I take my first step outside, my heel sinking right into the snow, a blood curdling cry pierces the night and my blood runs cold.
“What the hell wasthat?” Halliday asks. Zander and I trade glances;weknow perfectly well what it was. Unlike Halliday, we’ve both heard the sound of a person in extreme pain before. We both know that a strangled cry like that, one that sounds so similar to a tortured animal, can easily come from a human being if they’re suffering enough.
I don’t stop and wait for them. I rip my shoes from my feet and I take off, flying in the direction that horrific cry came from with fear clawing at my insides. The snow and ice feels like it’s burning the soles of my feet, it’s so cold, but I don’t stop. A maze of pathways cut through the snowbanks the cover the basketball court behind the gymnasium. I pick the first pathway I come to and I run along it, as fast as my legs can carry me.
My lungs are on fire, my heart surging like a piston as I come upon…fuck! A dead end.
“ALL RIGHT! ENOUGH!”
The yell comes from the right. It sounds so far away and so close at the same time, distorted by the huge swathes of snow that rise high above my head on either side of me. This is madness. I’m never going to find my way to Alex in time. Behind me, Zander yells my name. “Stop! Fuck, Silver, wait! If you get hurt, Alex is gonna put me down.” He almost barrels into my back when he rounds the corner, Halliday right on his heels.
“I need to get over this snow! Help me!”
Zander shakes his head. “No way. You can’t climb this shit. It’s rotten, you’ll fall straight through.”
He’s right. The snow is old and loose, clumped together in chunks. The moment I try to climb up the side of the snowbank in front of me, my bare foot pushes straight down, catching on a sharp branch that slices into my skin. This won’t work. We need another plan. There’s no other way to get across the basketball court, though.
“Ready, Moretti?”
The voice sounds closer this time. Way closer, even though it’s far quieter than the shout we just heard. Zander’s head whips around, his eyes narrowing into slits. “I’m not joking around, guys. You really gotta wait here.” He takes off, sprinting in the direction of the voice…and of course I am right behind him.
I’m not hanging back, waiting in the sidelines to see what happens, when Alex needs me. No fucking way. Zander skids as he comes to a fork in the pathways, chooses the left path, then changes his mind and goes reeling down the one on the right. The soles of my feet scream in pain—I’m not sure if it’s from the cold or if I’ve torn them open on the ice and the gravel compressed into the snow. All I know is that it hurts, and I have no choice but to keep on moving.
We turn a corner, and then another, and then thereareno more corners. We stumble out into an unexpected clearing, and there, in its center, Alex is lying on his side, staring off into space as Jacob Weaving extends his arm and aims a black, sleek gun at his head.
NO!
The scream never makes it past my lips.
Fog clouds on my breath as my lungs empty. It feels as though I’ve been kicked right in the solar plexus and every single one of my ribs has just been shattered.
Alex…
Alex is going to die.
There’s no time to do anything. I’ll never reach him in time. It feels as though the very air itself is trying to hold me back as I take off across the clearing toward my boyfriend. Jake’s finger hovers on the trigger. He hasn’t even noticed me, racing as fast as I can toward him. It wouldn’t make a difference if he did. My only thought is to get to him before he can pull that trigger and end the life of the guy I love. I have no idea what I’m gonna do once I get there.
Jacob sneers.
“SILVER, NO!”
Behind me, Zander’s desperate yell echoes up and up, louder and louder each time it repeats itself. I witness the moment Jacob makes the decision. I see his index finger slowly begins to squeeze the trigger…
And there, behind him, a dark figure emerges from the shadows.
