“Can you fix him?” I asked Pamela, standing up and getting out of the healers’ way.
“We can try,” Pamela muttered as she and the older woman laid their hands on the police officer, one pair of hands at his head, another pair on his chest, and closed their eyes.
After a minute, Pamela then the other healer opened their eyes and shook their heads.
“His heart’s too damaged,” Pamela said. “He’s gone.”
I stared at the man dead at my feet, and acid rose up to burn the back of my throat. A dead cop. At my feet. Murdered right in front of me by people I had helped free.
Tarah joined me. “Is he…?”
I nodded.
She drew in a long, deep breath. “I…I don’t think any of the kids saw.”
We needed to get out of here. Fast, before anyone else saw what had happened. I turned to the two drivers with the gas station attendant. “You two let him go and come help me pick up this cop.”
“What?” Steve asked. “We can’t let this kid go. The second we do, he’ll call the cops on us.”
“No I won’t,” the gas station attendant stammered. “I’m like you guys. Here, look.” He turned his hand up at the wrist where Steve held it. A tiny flame flickered to life on his palm. “See? I’m an outcast too. I mean, that is what you guys are, right? That’s how you hit him with those blue lights, isn’t it?”
“Like I said, let him go,” I repeated.
The other driver started to release the attendant. But when Steve didn’t budge, the other driver froze in place, his eyes shifting from me to Steve and back again.
Gritting my teeth, I crossed the oil-stained stretch of cement until only a foot separated the trio from me. I wanted to physically shove Steve away from the attendant, but he might retaliate with energy orbs or something.
So instead I stepped closer to the attendant, locking eyes with him. “These guys want to kill you for what you just saw. And they have ways to know if you ever tell.” That last part was probably a lie, but then again, who knew what kinds of spells they knew? Maybe it was the truth.
The attendant nodded fast, his eyes even rounder. “I won’t tell. I swear it.”
I searched his freckle covered face, weighing the odds though I knew I didn’t really have a choice here. I’d made a lot of crappy mistakes this year. No way was I going to add to that list by letting them kill someone else. “You heard him, Steve. Now let him go.”
“No,” Steve said. “He’s a witness. He’s seen our faces, our license plates. He’ll turn us all in before we can get five miles down the road.”
“No he won’t,” I said.
“How can you be so sure?” Steve’s eyes narrowed.
I thought fast then yelled over my shoulder, “Tarah, have we got any phones?”
Tarah hurried over and held out a pink phone that looked a lot like the one she used to have.
“Can you shoot a quick video of this guy creating fire in his bare hand?” I nodded at the attendant.
“Sure.”
Steve hesitated then let go of the attendant’s arm so he could raise his hand. The attendant took a deep breath, stared at his hand, and the tiny flame reappeared on his palm.
Tarah held up her phone and hit a button on the keyboard to start the recording, making sure to get the attendant’s entire upper body and face along with the evidence of his abilities.
“Okay. Here’s the deal,” I said to the attendant when she was done. “You don’t turn us in, and we won’t turn you in. Got it?”
The attendant nodded fast again. “I swear, I won’t tell anyone. That cop was a jerk anyways, always demanding free donuts and coffee like I owed him, just because he caught me smoking outside once when I should have been behind the counter. I ended up having to pay for all his freebie snacks out of my own paycheck every week when we came up short!”
So the police officer wasn’t a saint. That still didn’t make his death right.
And then I remembered fighting the guards at the internment camp, hitting them with energy orbs, uncaring how hard I hit them or where as long as they went down and stayed that way…and that night in the woods when Damon and sixteen others had died because of me...
I was the last person to judge Steve.
But I still couldn’t let him kill the gas station attendant.
Silence as Steve debated and I wondered what this situation might come down to. Would I have to fight, maybe even hurt or kill, Steve just to save the attendant? Would I have to fight the other driver too? Would the others in the trucks and maybe even Pamela, who seemed to know Steve, jump into the fight as well?
This could end in a bloodbath if Steve didn’t make the right decision.
Finally, after what felt like half an hour, Steve scowled but stepped away from the attendant. The other driver took a hint and also stepped back. Letting out a huge sigh of relief, the attendant immediately dug in the pockets of his slacks, found his pack of cigarettes, and lit up, his hand shaking as he took a long drag.
“Great. Now we’ve just got to move the cop,” I muttered, my stomach rolling and knotting like a tangle of snakes fighting to get free.
“What for?” Steve demanded.
“We’re going to put him back in his car and hope his death looks like a heart attack.”
I didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be saying any of this, and sure as heck didn’t want to have to cover up a police officer’s death. But we had to at least try to cover this up. We were already criminals on the run from the government. If we stayed under the radar, we had a sliver of a chance of making it to safety. But if we became labeled as cop killers, there wouldn’t be a single police officer, sheriff, deputy or prosecutor in the country who wouldn’t want to see us all dead.
CHAPTER 9
Grunting a bit, we moved the dead man into the car, arranging the body so it slumped back against the seat. A heaviness grew inside me, like my body was slowly turning into stone from the inside out.
“Let’s go,” I managed to mutter, turning away from a scene I knew without a doubt would haunt me for the rest of my life.
What would Damon think of me now if he were alive?
I walked without seeing, heading by instinct for the back end of the nearest military truck.
“Hayden?” Tarah called out from a few yards away.