Eye of the Sh*t Storm by Jackson Ford (most romantic novels .txt) 📕

did. “This is a kid who can turn a whole building into a live wire. He’ll fry you the second he sees you.”

It’s a long moment before the woman replies. “You may not believe this, but I hope you don’t have to die today. It’d be such a waste.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m well aware of what Leo can do. But I do know him, and I don’t think he’d be willing to get you killed.”

“Please. He can hit you with a lightning bolt faster than you can pull the trigger.”

“Who said anything about pulling a trigger?”

The woman steps into view then, looming over Reggie. Against the still-bright sky, her face is a dark silhouette.

She’s holding something in her hand, and Reggie has to let her eyes adjust before she gets a good look at it. When she does, she stops breathing.

It looks like the plastic remote control for the Scalextric race car set she had when she was a kid – like a pistol without the barrel, an oversized trigger protruding from it. It’s a remote detonator. Reggie’s seen plenty like it before. The woman’s finger rests lightly on the trigger.

Reggie has gone cold again – and it has nothing to do with the woman’s ability.

The woman taps the bottom of the detonator. There’s a small box bolted onto the body, one no bigger than a thumb. Like the dot at the bottom of an exclamation point.

“Accelerometer,” the woman says. “Thirty dollars off Amazon, and a couple of hours to wire up correctly. If it detects sudden movement – if I drop the unit – it activates. Sends the same signal as if I pull the trigger.” She shrugs. “I don’t really know what would happen if I was electrocuted, so I hedged my bets.”

The woman nudges the object she placed underneath Reggie’s shoulders.

Another cough bursts out of Reggie again, painful and frail. She can’t look away from the woman’s eyes. She expects them to display madness, insanity, but what she sees scares her even worse.

Determination.

Clear, defiant purpose.

“They’ll be here soon,” the woman says, letting the bomb trigger drop to her side. She looks towards the distant basketball court. “Let me know if I can make you more comfortable.”

FORTY-SIXTeagan

Something’s wrong.

I’m not talking about Reggie’s kidnapping. Or the flood. Or the number of people tonight who want us dead. All of that is seriously messed up, but that’s not what I mean.

I’m talking about the homeless camp under the freeway.

We’re hustling our way through the maze of scaffolding, alongside the river channel. The camp isn’t empty, far from it – despite the dozens of groups we passed on the way, there are still plenty of people here.

They are packing up their stuff: clothes hurriedly being shoved into bags, shopping carts filling up, people darting back and forth under the shadow of the freeways. But I expected everyone to have cleared out already, because what the fuck else do you do when there’s a huge flash flood inbound?

“Annie?” I say.

“What?” she snaps. She’s already irritated, mostly because every single person we passed has tried to tell us about the flash flood.

“Can we stop for a sec?”

“Kind of on the clock here, Teags,” Nic says, stepping over a steel scaffolding pole, turning to help Leo.

“Yeah, I know, I just need a second.”

We have to keep moving. There’s not a lot of time to fuck around here. But it’s like a cut on the roof of your mouth, one you can’t stop tonguing.

So despite our little situation, I take a look around me.

A real good look.

A woman strides across our path, a mane of scraggly red hair framing a panicked face. She wears a grey tank top over a long, flowing skirt, edged in mud, and she’s shouting: “Casey! Has anyone seen Casey?”

Two men to my left, one of them sitting propped up against part of the scaffolding, the other bent over him. The sitting man is passed out, a thin slick of drool on his chin, his hands splayed on the concrete, twitching in a way that reminds me of Leo. His pal shakes him, yelling at him to get up, that he can’t carry him. Since he has a crutch under one arm, that’s probably true.

A dog zips past, barking hysterically. It vanishes into the network of scaffolding, only to reappear a second later. Its eyes are wild, panicked.

A man at the entrance to the sewer tunnel, where Annie and I went to use the bathroom. He’s hanging out, yelling directions at a friend. “—torches or anything? The lights went out and—”

Another man, down on his knees, desperately trying to get two crutches underneath him. His dirty jeans are cut off at the right knee, and the leg below is a mess of crusty bandages. As I watch, he almost gets himself upright, loses it, comes crashing back down.

A panicked group of people over to our right, milling around one of the makeshift platforms lashed to the bamboo scaffolding. There are people on the platform, but the ramp they rigged to get up there has collapsed. Next to them, a short distance away, some insane jackass is playing a guitar, staring blankly into the flames of a cookfire, like everything is just dandy.

People. Everywhere: people. And not just a few. Hundreds.

They aren’t leaving. Not nearly fast enough.

Maybe it’s because I came in here with Grant and Alvin and Lucille, but I had this idea that there were people in charge at this place.

Alvin sounded so sure about this place having some sort of order. Like it was a coherent community that would look after itself no matter what. But that’s not true. It’s not even close to true.

“Teagan.” Annie is furious now. “What the hell are you doing?”

I slowly look back at her. “Annie… these people…”

“What about ’em? We—”

She’s interrupted by a tug at her sleeve. It’s a little girl, ten or eleven, with neat braids hanging down her back. She’s wearing an old red hoodie over jeans