Page 32 of Violet Spark
Wait, I happened to have a glove.
Pulling the VR gear from my back pocket, I tugged the wrinkled fabric over my bandaged hand. At least this ruined technology would be good for preventing more scratches.
I reached through the pokey wood to fumble for the handle. Maybe he’d just gone for a relaxing afternoon drive into the mountain, got into a bit of a fender bender, parked out of the way while he got a lift to find a tow…
My heart beat too fast, making my head spin, and the shadows crowded way too close.
The door was locked.
I tugged again. But of course it was locked. People locked their car doors when they…left to do other things. Other things, like abandoning their vehicle on an empty road through the desert while they did…those other things—
“Ms. Taylor, step away from the vehicle.”
I shrieked as the voice and the bright white light hit me at the same moment.
Then everything happened so fast, so damned fast.
My gloved hand on the Mazda spasmed, and a flash of purple eclipsed the white. The door sprang open, flinging me into the thorny branches.
I was pinned there for a terrified heartbeat—as a body slumped out of the front seat into the dust.
Sandy-brown hair. Skin even more pale than before. Blue eyes faded to gray. A dark, circular pucker of flesh in his forehead.
Dead.
Brayden was dead.
I screamed again and thrashed against the spines holding me prisoner. My phone slipped from my hand, arching toward the corpse of my would’ve-been boyfriend.
No. No no no. This wasnotthe quest I’d chosen.
Ripping free from the thorns, I fell into the dust, scrabbling for that little light of my phone.
My right hand closed over the hard rectangle as my horrified gaze locked on Brayden. When he’d first pulled into the Desert Freeze parking lot, I’d imagined a glimpse of his future—what could’ve beenourfuture—and now…
Nothing at all. I tore my focus off him, saw another piece of tech—wait, I had my phone already—a second phone. I grabbed that too, suddenly not sure which was mine.
I lunged away, each panting breath almost another scream.
“Ms. Taylor, stop! Imogen—”
In my distracted horror, I’d forgotten the interruption. I’d been so focused on the Mazda, I hadn’t even realized another car had come up, and now its headlights were glaring over my little Fiesta.
And Raymon Dane was glaring over me. In his black suit, he looked like an undertaker coming for Brayden.
Like a living personification of Death.
I scrambled backward, my right hand full of phones and dust, my left numbed from the tight glove.
The unpowered, ruined glove that had flashed purple—
“Stay right there,” Dane snapped, his accent sharpening with his tension. “Don’t move.”
Bodies in motion stay in motion.
Move it or lose it.
Try or die.
