Wild Girl (Slateview High 2)

One

My heart hadn’t slowed down since the gun went off.

My ears rang with the echo, and even when I closed my eyes to block out the world around me, I could still see him. Flint, his eyes wide, face drained of color, his mouth slack-jawed. Blood spattered across the gravel of an alley I’d had no business being in.

Breathe, Cora. Just breathe. It’s over. It’s done.

I’d been repeating those words on a loop in my head for the past hour, trying to regain my footing on a world that suddenly tipped and tilted under me, threatening to send me spinning off into space.

Let it go. Stop thinking about it.

But I couldn’t just get over it, could I? How was that possible when I could still feel Flint’s hands on me, when I could still see the expression on Kace’s face when he’d looked the grungy, grizzled man in the eyes and murdered him?

Why wasn’t I more regretful about that? Why wasn’t I sorry he was dead?

What did that say about me?

In, out. In, out.

I sucked in a raspy breath as I sat on a chair in an abandoned old office building the boys had driven us to. The electricity had been turned off in the building, and it was drafty and cold. Orange streetlights flickered low outside the dusty windows, and noises from the world outside infiltrated the space—sirens in the distance, car engines rumbling, the occasional shout or raised voice. This part of Baltimore was run down and sparsely populated, and few people were out at this time of night, but every sound from outside put me on edge anyway.

My fingers felt stiff, and my skin felt almost numb, like I’d been outside in the cold for too long. Vaguely, I knew I was in shock, but I couldn’t quite get that thought to mean anything.

Whispered voices on the other side of the room rose over the random noises from outside, and I blinked, glancing toward the shadows where the Lost Boys stood in a huddled circle.

“We need to do something about Flint without Nathaniel hearing about this.”

“We get rid of the body. It’s not like Nathaniel will have any witnesses saying they saw us around the fucker.”

“Yeah, but you know he’s got eyes everywhere.”

Nathaniel Ward… Their boss.

He was a local crime lord who had his fingers in several different kinds of illegal dealings. The Lost Boys had been working for him for a while, doing relatively low-level tasks in his operation. Flint had been one of Nathaniel’s right-hand men, the liaison between him and the Lost Boys. What would Nathaniel do to the three boys if he found out they’d killed someone important to his organization?

Fuck. This is all my fault.

“Just dump him in the ocean. I mean, even if he gets found, it ain’t like they’d be able to pin it on anyone, and ain’t no one gonna be sad to see him gone.”

“Water will wash away all the evidence—fingerprints and shit.”

“Someone needs to pull the bullet from his head then.”