The Last Deep Breath Read Free Page A

enormous shadows already starting to angle and stretch toward him.  Hollywood.

5
     
    In the dream Pax was beating the hell out of old man Wagner.  Grey was screaming for him to stop and throwing ineffectual punches at Pax’s heavily muscled back.  Blood had already begun to pool and lap toward Grey’s sneakers.
    Yellowed dentures lay cracked perfectly in half under the kitchen table, a thin broken red trail leading to them across the kitchen floor.  The old lady was in the other room sobbing and digging through the hall closet trying to find the shotgun.
    The eleven-gauge wasn’t there anymore, Pax had already packed it into the pickup.  Along with some stolen jewelry, about two hundred in cash, some old folks’ medication, a painting of boats that Pax liked, Grey’s small collection of comic books, Ellie’s couple of dolls and her pink backpack of clothes, some dog food and biscuits, and a picture that Pax said was of his mother but looked like it had been ripped out of a magazine.
    Grey woke then, but the dream kept unfolding before him.  He knew he couldn’t stop it.  It would have to run its full length whether he was asleep or not.  It wouldn’t end until he got to West 4 th .  He decided to take a swim and pushed open the gate with the sign NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY, SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK and dove in.
    Ellie was huddled in the corner clutching at her dog, a Shepard-Lab mix that whined as she held him but didn’t bark.
    This time, Grey aimed for Pax’s kidneys and worked them hard, but even that part of Pax felt covered in armor plating.  Pax ignored him and continued to draw his arm back slowly, with great deliberation, gathering all his strength from second to second as he breathed deeply and with all his focus hauled off and punched their foster father, Mr. Wagner, in the face again.
    The man was surely dead by now, Grey thought.  He’d stopped coughing and spitting and even moaning.  The bones in his face were crushed.  Lips torn in too many places to count.  One eye was gone.  The other couldn’t be seen beneath the swelling and bruising.  Nose had long ago turned to pulp.  And still Pax kept hammering.  Even if Wagner lived, he was going to wish that he hadn’t.
    Ellie made a noise of great happiness.  Grey looked back over his shoulder at her and tried to tell her not to urge Pax on, that it had already gone too far.
    Then Mrs. Wagner came running into the kitchen carrying a golf club.  She got two solid whacks at Pax’s skull with it before he turned and backhanded her into the sink, where she crumpled.
    “It’s enough,” Grey said.
    “It’ll never be enough,” Pax responded, but at least he got to his feet and moved off the old man.  He kicked the old woman twice and took his time washing his hands.  He looked at Grey and said, “Stop crying, it’s over.”
    Grey was about to argue that he wasn’t crying, but a stream of tears was dripping off his chin.
    “You’re twelve years old now, it’s time to man up.”
    That was one of Pax’s favorite expressions.  Man up.  He was fourteen and had grown more than twelve inches and put on thirty pounds of muscle in the last year, but when they’d first met three summers ago they were about the same size.
    Ellie crawled out of the corner and said, “He’s still breathing.”
    Pax said, “Yeah.”
    “Well, finish it.  And her too.”
    The three of them lasted on the run almost a month before two cruisers cornered them at a roadside motel almost six hundred miles away.  The shotgun was still in the back of the pickup or Pax might’ve tried to use it.  He’d been hanging the boat picture over the motel TV when the police kicked in the door.  Ellie’s dog didn’t make a move but the cops still tasered it and gave the poor mutt a heart attack.
    Mr. Wagner had lived and they were going to try Pax as an adult on a straight-up attempted murder charge.   The DA strong-armed Grey and Ellie, hoping to get them to say