Justice Keepers Saga - Books 4-6

Chapter 7-2

She handed him a bill.

His face twisted into something haggard, and she heard the soft sound of a hiss pass through his lips. “What the hell is this?” he asked, shaking the money at her. “God damn Canadian currency? Do I look like a bank?”

“Exchange it!”

She got out of the car with a sigh, reaching up with one hand to scrub a palm over her face. i***t man, she thought, making her way toward the crime scene. People"s lives hang in the balance, and he quibbles over minutiae.

Idiot man,People"s lives hang in the balance, and he quibbles over minutiae.One of the officers turned as she approached. He frowned, then looked her up and down. “You"re the Justice Keeper?” he asked. “"Bout time you got here. The situation"s getting out of control.”

Craning her neck, Anna squinted at him. “Yeah, that"s me,” she said with a curt nod. “Next time, I"ll try to be more punctual after you fail to call me before charging headlong into an unknown scenario.”

“Listen-”

“What"s the situation?”

As she approached the side of the police cruiser, she saw a young man standing in front of a window that looked in on the convenience store. He was tall and slim with a dark complexion, and even from this distance, she could tell that he felt cornered. “We asked him to let us tend the wounded,” the cop said.

She noticed another pair of teenagers in front of the laundromat. One was lying flat on his back with a blood-stained face. The other was on his knees a few feet away, hiding his face in his hands.

The officer who had decided to take on the role of her liaison stood behind her. “The kid wouldn"t let us approach,” he said. “We tried anyway, and he threw up some energy field. Bullets won"t pierce it.”

“You tried to shoot him?”

“He left us no choice.”

Clenching her teeth, Anna shut her eyes tight. She tossed her head about in disgust. “Of course you did,” she said. “From now on, you don"t make a move without my say-so.”

Kevin was still cowering in front of the window, staring into his palms as though he couldn"t believe what he saw there. The kid was on edge, frightened. There was no telling how the Overseer device might have messed with his brain chemistry.

“Kevin?” she called out.

He looked up.

“I know you"re frightened,” Anna began. “It"s okay; no one"s going to hurt you. The device you"re carrying is dangerous. We just want to help.”

“You can"t take it.”

“Kevin, we-”

The kid thrust his palm out, pointing the strange Overseer device at her, and she had to admit that it was difficult to ignore the urge to draw her weapon. “It"s mine!” he said. “I won"t let you have it.”

Anna sucked on her lower lip, then bowed her head to him. Thin strands of red hair dangled over her cheeks. “Sweetie, that device is going to kill you. It"s already started to affect your mind.”

“I know, but…” Kevin"s words came out in a harsh squeak. “I don"t know why, but…I have to hang on to it. I feel it in my head.”

feel“I"m going to come closer now.”

“No!”

In the blink of an eye, he had a hand pointed toward her, and she almost expected to see the rippling energy of a force-field. Luckily, he was still able to control himself. “No one with weapons gets anywhere near me.”

Anna drew her pistol from the holster on her hip. She set it down on the hood of the police car. “No one"s going to hurt you, Kevin,” she assured him. “We"re all going to put our weapons down, aren"t we?”

The four men who stood on either side of her remained perfectly still, each aiming his weapon over the top of one of the vehicles. Not one was willing to follow her lead. Companion be praised this was a small town; a larger city would have had SWAT teams here by now.

Anna felt her cheeks burn with furious heat. She took a deep breath to calm herself. “Put your weapons down,” she muttered under her breath. “The kid is only a danger if we threaten him.”

The officer who had greeted her – a tall, well-muscled man who now stood on her immediate left – eyed her before speaking. “With all due respect, ma"am, we do that, and he might decide to flatten us.”

Tossing her head back, Anna rolled her eyes at the clear blue sky. “Oh yes, because your bullets have been so effective thus far,” she mocked. “Put your guns down; I"m not going to say it again.”

soOne by one, the four officers lowered their weapons to point at the ground. Anna heard the odd muttered complaint, but they were wise enough to take direction when she forced the issue.

Kevin seemed to relax, lowering his hands. He was bent over, refusing to look up at her. “They need help,” he said, gesturing to the other two boys. “I swear to god I didn"t mean to hurt them.”

Anna glanced over her shoulder.

The two men on her right holstered their weapons and made their way around the police car. In a few seconds, they were trotting across the parking lot, crouching down in front of the fallen boys.

Anna maneuvered through the narrow gap between both cars, and when Kevin did nothing to object, she started a slow march forward. With any luck, she would be able to defuse this situation before it got any worse.

Anna licked her lips, then lowered her eyes to the ground. “It"s okay, Kevin,” she said, moving forward with her hands in the air. “I won"t hurt you. We"re gonna take you up to Station Twelve and-”

She sensed someone on the store"s roof.

The officer who had greeted her suddenly pointed his g*n upward and fired with a c***k! c***k! c***k! Just like that, the delicate cease fire that she had worked so hard to build fell apart.

CRACK! c***k! c***k!Kevin raised a hand, and the air before him started to shimmer like ripples flowing across the surface of a pond. The two cops who were tending to the wounded boy looked up and reached for their weapons. “No!” Anna screamed. In her mind"s eye, she saw the cop behind her aim for Kevin.

She threw herself down on her belly just before the g*n went off with a thunderous roar. Bullets slammed into the force-field, but instead of bouncing off, they just hovered there. She had never witnessed anything like it.

Kevin gestured, and the force-field…pulsed, flinging each slug back in the direction it had come from. There were screams from behind her, the sound of shattered glass. Oh, Bleakness take her! This had been going so well!

Kevin ran around the side of the convenience store. Before she could even raise her voice, he was gone. Damn it! Rage flared within her. Couldn"t those idiots keep their trigger fingers still for one f*****g minute?

Damn it!Anna got up.

She ran back to the police car, jumping to land on the roof. Crouched down upon the steel, she inspected her surroundings. One of the cops – the one who had greeted her – had taken a wound to the shoulder. A second officer was tending to him.

Ignoring the prickle of sweat on her brow, Anna shook her head. “Get him medical attention,” she ordered. “Stay with him until the ambulance gets here, then follow me in the cruiser.”

The other officer looked over his shoulder, frowning at her. “There"s not much back there,” he said, gesturing in the direction Kevin had fled. “Some woods and then the high school, but that"s it.”

“That"s where he"ll go,” Anna muttered. “He"ll know the area. Right now, his self-preservation instincts are nearly impossible to ignore. There have been cases like this one before. If we can keep him calm, he"ll be all right, but spook him and the instinct to use the device kicks in.”

The wounded cop was staring up at the sky with tears on his face. “The woman…” he said, tossing his head from side to side. “On the roof…I saw her…A woman in a ski-mask.”

In the calamity, Anna had almost forgotten. She"d had the briefest glimpse of a tall figure standing on the roof just before the Bleakness took everything. Where that person had gone was a mystery to her, but it was hardly her primary concern. Someone had to get to Kevin before he did any more damage.

Anna slapped a hand over her face, groaning into her own palm. “So you"re first instinct was to shoot at her? What part of "don"t frighten the boy" was so hard to understand?”

The man grunted.

“Never mind,” she said, hopping off the cop car and turning away from them. “Get him help. I"ll go after Kevin. Back me up as soon as you"re able, but for the Companion"s Blessed Love, learn to restrain yourselves.”

Kevin would have a significant lead on her by now; she was going to have to rely on a little creativity if she wanted to close the distance. Anna took a second to survey her surroundings. There was a large blue van parked right in front of the convenience store. That would do nicely.

Anna ran toward it at full speed, then jumped and – with Keeper strength – easily crested the back end. She landed crouched on the top. Then she was charging headlong for the strip mall.

Anna leaped, somersaulting in midair. “Keeper girl!” She landed on the rooftop and resumed her frantic sprint. “Able to leap modestly-sized buildings with the aid of conveniently-positioned props!”

Behind the store, a small yard was surrounded by a chain-link fence that had been mangled. There was a great big hole in the mesh; Kevin had gone this way. A single elm tree stood tall and proud with branches that had sprouted green leaves.

Anna threw herself from the rooftop.

With a little help from Seth, she twisted gravity so that "down" was now a horizontal line that would carry her across the yard. She flew with her arms outstretched, releasing the Bending as she neared the tree.

Catching a branch with both hands, Anna swung back and forth like a pendulum. Have to maximize the arc, she thought. The motion left a wonderful lurching sensation in her belly. She reached the peak of her swing and released the branch.

Have to maximize the arc,Tucking her knees into her chest, Anna back-flipped over the chain-link fence and landed poised on the other side. Dozens of trees rose up in front of her, packed so closely together they provided adequate shade from the sun.

She ran into the woodland.

In the distance, she could see a shadowy figure moving among the trees, following a twisting path as it snaked through the forest. “Kevin!” she shouted. He paused for half a moment. Then he was gone again.

Keepers were several times stronger than the average human being, which meant they could run like a demon when the need arose. She raced down the path at a speed that would leave most people gasping after thirty seconds.

On the far side of the woods, the trees gave way to a small field where she found yet another mangled fence. Beyond that, the red-bricked wall of James Polk high school stood with windows in all three stories.

anotherShe saw a door that had been ripped off its hinges, its frame mangled – Kevin was really racking up some impressive property damage – and beyond that, a wide hallway with yellow lockers in each wall stretched on to a distant stairwell.

Anna resumed her sprint.

Cool air slammed into her as soon as she passed through the door – the people were already using their air-conditioning system – and then she was running down the hallway. There was no sign of Kevin. He must have turned a corner or…

When she paused to catch her breath, she noticed something odd. The door to every classroom was shut except for the last one on her left. Her instincts said that something about that was a little too convenient, but if the kid was running on adrenaline, he likely wouldn"t be thinking about concealing his trail.

She reached for the g*n on her hip and found nothing.

Anna squeezed her eyes shut. “Of course,” she said, starting down the hallway. “You left it on the hood of a police car! Jena catches word of this, and I might not be keeping that shiny new promotion.”

She approached the door.

Inside, she saw nothing but an empty classroom with desks arranged in neat rows and a bulletin board on the back wall. There were pictures of this world"s great literary figures – she recognized Shakespeare but none of the others – along with motivational posters proclaiming the same slogans that had annoyed the crap out of her as a teenager. Attitude was the key to success and all that. “Kevin?” Anna called out.

She crept into the room with a hand pressed to her stomach, turning her head to get a good look at every corner. Why she bothered was beyond her. As a Justice Keeper, she could sense her surroundings without having to use her eyes.

The desks were separated to form an aisle that ran through the middle of the room. Blinds over the windows filtered the sunlight into thin streams. Anna made her way to the back of the room, looking for a closet or a cupboard or any place where Kevin might be hiding. She found nothing. Something about all this felt odd…Why would a teacher leave this one door open when all the others had…

The revelation hit her like a smack to the face.

She had walked into a trap.