Page 50 of Summer's Edge

TWENTY-FOUR

Edge

Tracking the ones that got away from the burning farmhouse took us the rest of the night and well into the next day. Funny how fast and how far men can run when they’ve got nothing to lose. Or everything to lose, actually.

The two guys that got away had help though. Someone picked them up on the side of the road. But we found them anyway. Hiding in a huge compound surrounded by barbwire topped metal walls and so much noise coming from inside it sounded like there were hundreds in there.

Much too many for even us to take.

The place was surrounded by tall pines that gave us plenty of hiding places to watch and wait for an opening. But it never came. The gate in the metal wall stayed firmly shut, no one came or went and the noise of the many people talking and music playing on the other side of it didn’t die down.

I volunteered to go in and find out what I could but was shot down.

“We only take risks like that when there’s no other way,” Cross said.

For some reason, it sounded like the best praise I’ve ever gotten from him.

In the end it was decided that we’ll need a bigger force to hit the compound. A fight for another day, in other words.

All the way back to Pleasantville—actually for the past two days—I fought the urge to call Summer. Stringing her along isn’t fair. On top of everything else, at the rate we’re going in this war, I probably won’t see thirty. My arm got grazed by a stray bullet. Five inches to the left and it would’ve gone straight through my heart. Two inches up and one to the left and it would’ve gone through my neck.

I never used to worry about shit like that. I used to laugh it off, enjoy the scar and get real drunk to celebrate surviving another day.

Now all I can think about is Summer mourning me when I die.

So it’s no fucking surprise I lost the battle and texted her when we were about five miles out of Pleasantville. The minutes while I waited for her to text back, watching the phone instead of the road, seemed to drag for eternity.

Truth is, if she hadn’t texted back, I’d still show up at her door. But I figured she deserved more respect than that.

Heryesmeant more to me than I’ll ever admit to anyone.

We entered Pleasantville the same way we left, coming in from different directions, in no more than groups of two. Ruin didn’t ask any stupid questions when I said I’m going in alone.

I took the shortest possible route to Summer’s apartment building and parked out back, by the dumpsters. Only two of the apartments in the old brownstone walkup where she lives are rented out, so I wasn’t surprised that all the lights were out.

What did surprise me was that no one had fixed the lock on the bar window. And that it was wide open besides. I figured Ice would take me telling him about that easy access to Summer’s building more seriously. But it’s no matter. I’ll fix it myself first thing tomorrow morning.

For tonight, she has nothing to worry about because I’ll be with her.

The light on her floor is busted.

And the door to her apartment is wide open, the room beyond it illuminated only by silver moonlight.

Maybe she’s hiding inside, waiting for me to find her.

“Summer!” I call out as I step inside, blood whooshing in my ears from how hard my heart’s beating.

She doesn’t answer no matter how hard I hoped she would. No matter how much I wanted to hear her voice. No matter how fiercely I wished my worst nightmare wasn’t coming true.

I quickly check the apartment anyway. She’s in none of the dark, cold rooms. There’s a pile of ash on the dining room table and about five butts, extinguished right there on the tabletop. It makes me so mad I see red, even though ruining her table like that is the least of the bad things that happened here tonight.

I call her cell next, hoping against hope she never came home tonight and something else spooked the smoker from her apartment.

It just rings and rings. The sound of her voice on the voice mail makes my heart burst in the kind of pain I haven’t felt since I watched my parents get killed. The kind of pain I haven’t let myself feel because I never got close enough to anyone to feel it after that.

Yet here I am, my hands actually shaking as I call Ice.

“Summer’s gone,” I tell him. “Someone took her.”

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