Wild Ones Read Free Page B

drivers licence and over
five hundred dollars in cash. I hesitated for a few seconds, then
pocketed the money. The drivers licence told me the name of my
assailant-slash-victim. Cade Grantham.
    I slid it back
into the wallet and picked up the stolen coat and my bag, and
headed out, locking the door behind me. I dumped the wallet and
keys for the pickup in a nearby drain, and gave the coat and twenty
dollars to a homeless guy that hung around a couple of corners down
from my flat. Then I set off towards the bus stop in the centre of
town as the sky began to lighten and the birds started their
morning chorus.
     

Part 2
Millie
I
     
    This kind of
stuff doesn't happen to me. I've never been abducted by aliens or
bitten by a shark or shot or beaten up or any of those shocking and
terrifying things that have happened to other people. I'd never
been in any actual danger before in all my twenty-three years.
    Up until now,
of course.
    I've always
considered myself to be a good girl. Not in the Catholic school
virgin sense of the word - ha! that would freak my liberal parents
out no end. But I have always tried to be kind to people, and do my
job to the best of my abilities. I'm a barista, which basically
means I make a lot of coffee. Not the most glamorous of jobs, but
it was a steady income, and I met a lot of new people. I lived with
my cousin Maddie, in a two bedroom flat a few blocks from where I
had grown up, and where my parents still lived. Maddie had arrived
on my doorstep a few weeks back, pale and exhausted, and I had
welcomed her with open arms. We had been best friends since we were
five, though her life had always been a lot more interesting than
mine. Her mother and mine were sisters, so we looked fairly similar
- we both had long dark hair and blue eyes. But Maddie's parents
were wild and crazed (according to my mother) so Maddie had come to
live with us when she was five, and had stayed with me until about
six months ago. She had set out to find her wayward parents, and
from the sounds of things had found a lot more than that. Maddie
was a natural born shit magnet (her words, not mine). I was the
cautious, boring one.
    Ah,
you're thinking. I was too trusting, too naive. I climbed into a stranger's car . Well, no I did
not. I am neither trusting nor naive. I climbed into no cars,
walked down no dark and empty streets, swam in no shark infested
waters (I'm not sure why the sharks keep popping up - maybe it's
because I am currently staring at a pair of incisors that would
make an adult lion sob). I did none of these things.
    This shit came
out of nowhere.
     
II
     
    I should have
known something was up when those two stunningly gorgeous guys came
into my little coffee shop and ordered two lattes. Firstly they
looked seriously out of place. This was strictly a student hangout,
and those two men were not only jaw droppingly beautiful (yes, I
said beautiful) but they were very well dressed too. I'm talking
expensive fitted suits that looked like they were moulded to their
bodies. And what bodies. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, but not like
those beefy guys who spend their lives in the gym guzzling 'roids.
These two had more of a swimmers build, fit and strong. I was
instantly appreciative both of their attractiveness, and of the
incongruity of their presence amongst what could only be called the
scruffier elements of student society. Always the professional,
however, I smiled politely, tried not to drool, and served them
their coffees. The second thing, which seemed a bit odd at the
time, but not nearly as odd as the explanation for it which is
currently staring me in the face, was that they didn't actually
drink the coffees. They just stood there and held them while they
glanced around the room at the motley collection of grubby
intellectuals and drunken thugs that seem to attend university
nowadays.
    It was almost
closing time, and I was looking forward to a soak in a hot bath and
a glass of wine, and not necessarily in