AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“On the ground!” the officer shouted furiously. I nodded and put my hand to the phone to take it out. And I knew as I did so, as I saw the officer reach for his baton, that I’d made a huge mistake.
“Hands on the floor!” he roared, and I heard, dimly, from far away, Malik’s voice saying, “Jake, it’s just a—”
But before she could finish, his baton came down on my hand, the hand reaching for the phone. My wrist, and the baton behind it, slammed into my bad side, whacking against the wound with a force that made me drop like a stone—no longer caring about the phone in my pocket, no longer caring about anything except the red-hot eruption of agony radiating from my side.
“The phone!” I tried to say, but I don’t think the words made it out of my mouth. Perhaps I screamed. I don’t know. I don’t remember. All I know is that I saw an explosion of dark stars and a pain so intense I can’t even describe it shot through every part of my body. And then I passed out.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13 DAY ONE
Babe.” It was Gabe’s deep, soft voice in my ear that woke me, and I blinked and then turned my head to see him lying next to me in the rumpled sheets, the sun bringing out peat-colored lights in his black hair. He was smiling lazily, with that grin that pulled at the edge of his mouth like he couldn’t help it, and my heart clenched with love and longing.
“Hey, honey.” I rolled over to look at him, drinking him in, running my hand over his smooth shoulders, down the ridges of his ribs to his hip, feeling the heat of his skin and the hardness of his muscle and bone beneath my fingers.
“I love you,” he said, and I didn’t know why, but it was as if something inside me was hurting, cracking. Something was wrong. Why did those familiar words hurt me like a knife in the side, like a physical pain in the flesh beneath my ribs?
“Gabe?” I asked. “What’s wrong?” But he only shook his head.
“You gotta wake up, Jack.”
“I am awake,” I said, but even as the words left my mouth, I knew it wasn’t true, and Gabe was still shaking his head, moving away from me. I reached out for him, but he was already slipping away. “Gabe,” I said, and it came out like a sob, “Gabe, no, please wait, wait for me.”
“Wake up, Jack,” he whispered, and I tried to scream: No, no, no, I don’t want to go back.
But it was too late. I was awake now, properly awake, and I could feel sun—actual sun this time—on my closed lids. I was back in the real world. The world in which Gabe was gone, and the pain in my side was sickeningly literal. My heart ached. The dream had felt so real, so unbearably real—and I hadn’t wanted to wake up.
Something felt different, though. For the first time in… I couldn’t remember how many days, the surface beneath my shoulder wasn’t hard and cold ground, but the spongy softness of a bed. There was a strange distance to the pain, which yesterday had been sharp and immediate enough to take my breath away. And I was warm—almost too warm.
I opened my eyes. The room was bright—blindingly so—and for a moment I just blinked, trying to figure out where I was. I seemed to be in some sort of… tent? The walls were made of a kind of curtain material. Only, no, not a tent—because there was a ceiling, and a double-glazed window behind the bed.
Before my aching head could figure it out, I realized something else—I wasn’t alone. In a chair beside the bed was Hel, scrolling through something on her phone.
I tried to speak, but only a croak came out. It was enough. Her head came sharply up, and an unmistakable expression of enormous relief flooded her face.
“Jack! Oh, thank God. Don’t try to talk, sweetie. You’re in hospital. You’ve been—well, you gave us a pretty good scare, to be honest.”
I swallowed. My throat was dry as a bone, and I felt more than a little sick. I tried to pull myself up the bed, but I seemed to be tethered by something attached to my hand, and the movement made my side ache and twinge in a decidedly strange way. After a moment’s struggle I gave up and let myself sink shakily back into the pillows.
“Am I under arrest?” I managed, or at least, that was what I tried to say. It came out more like a slurred, croaky ama underess?
Hel understood, though, and shook her head.
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure, but nobody’s said you are, and there aren’t any police here. That Malik woman came past, while you were asleep. She wanted to talk to you, but the doctors sent her away.”
I coughed, and she jumped up and poured some water into a flimsy plastic cup, then held it to my lips. I took it, swallowing the flat, warm water like it was vintage champagne, and then coughed again, trying to clear my throat.
“Where’s Cole?” My voice was oddly hoarse, my nose and throat raw in a way I couldn’t explain. Was I coming down with something?
“I don’t know,” Hel said regretfully. “Malik didn’t really tell me anything.”
I let that sink in, trying to process. Was Cole in custody? Had he escaped? If he had, how long had he been on the run?
“What time is it?”
“It’s…” Hel looked at her phone. “Ten thirty a.m. Just gone.”
I put my hand to my temple, trying to do the mental maths, though the simple sum made my head hurt. The movement gave me a painful twinge in the back of my hand and when I looked down at it, I saw that the thing I had taken for a tether was a cannula taped just below my wrist, its snaking tube attached to a drip bag.
My last memory was of chasing Cole down the stairs, then being tackled by that police officer. It had been just gone midnight.
