Rival Read Free Page B

collapses in a heap on the concrete floor, face
frozen with that shocked expression.
    And then it's just the two of us,
staring at each other, breathing hard.
    I’m numb. All I can feel is the heavy
weight pressing me down. Did all that really just
happen?
    Sirens blare, echoing off the walls,
like a police car has turned into the parking garage.
    Are our attackers dead? Are we in
trouble? It was self-defense, obviously. But are there security
cameras to prove that?
    My mind spins as I shove the guy off
and sit up.
    I hear Erick’s footsteps as he runs
toward us and remember—he was fighting the girl. Where…? And then I
see her body, crumpled in a pool of blood, leaning against the
concrete wall.
    Erick’s words are distant, even though
he’s right in front of me. "We've got to get out of here," he
pants. He's roughed up, bloody and bruised on one side of his face,
and his shirt is torn.
    "There's no time." Emily rises from her
crouch, glancing around like she's looking for a place to
hide.
    I push to my feet. "Shouldn't we talk
to the cops—?"
    "No!" they both cry, silencing my
question before I can finish.
    Three people are dead. I think so,
anyway. We can’t just walk away from this.
    But Emily and Erick only seem to want
to escape. The sirens are getting even louder, making my
already-aching head throb even worse.
    “ Where’s your car?” Erick
demands.
    I point to my ride. "This is
me."
    My cycle is tucked between two cars,
and I wheel it out quickly. With the time and parts I've put into
the engine, I know I can outrun the cops if I need to. But I’m
still not sure this is the right thing to do.
    Emily's eyes go wide. "You have a
bike?"
    I can't tell if it's admiration or fear
in her voice. I straddle the cycle, still unsure about just leaving
a crime scene. Those guys attacked us, not the other way
around.
    Erick trots off toward his big silver
truck and the four-wheeler in back. There's no way he's getting
that thing out of here unnoticed.
    Emily stands closer to me, poised on
the balls of her feet like she’s ready to run. The whole time she
was fighting off our attackers, she was fierce. But now, her eyes
are big and luminous. She’s afraid.
    Seeing her like that makes my insides
clench.
    Erick tosses something at her, and she
catches it by reflex as it slams into her gut. A mud-splattered
helmet that matches her jeans.
    “ Get her out of here,”
Erick orders me.
    “ Why don’t we just tell the
truth about what happened?”
    "We can't…" Emily’s indecision and fear
is obvious in her hesitant words. She holds the helmet in one hand.
“Please, can you take me home?”
    I care about her. It’s the overriding
factor that makes me jam my helmet down onto my head.
    The sirens are so loud now that I can't
hear anything, especially with the helmet on. Lights start flashing
on the walls. I kick the bike on.
    Erick says something to her, but he’s
in profile to me and I can’t make out his words. Something passes
between them. A family thing?
    Then she pulls on her helmet and throws
her leg over the bike behind me.
    "Hold on!" I shout.
    I jam it into gear and blast up the row
of the parking garage. I go up, because I know the cops will be
looking for someone going down, past them. Fortunately, this is one
of those one-way garages.
    On the next level, we buzz through the
rows of cars, then descend through the empty exit ramp. The cops
haven’t blockaded it yet.
    I speed through the mall traffic and
onto city streets and suddenly we're clear.
    Emily clings to me the whole time. Even
with everything else going on, the three dead people back in the
garage, the police chasing me, I am still so intensely aware of
her.
    There's going to be hell to pay later
tonight. Coming off an adrenaline rush like this will throw my
joints out of whack. I may not be able to walk tomorrow.
    She’s got a lot of explaining to do.
Who were those guys, and why did we run?
    But at this moment, with her arms
around my