The Forum by Marie Reyes (short books for teens .txt) 📕

"What about the others? They're dead, aren't they? We left them, and now they're dead. I heard gunshots. They got shot." Piper was a quivering mess on the floor.

Kristen wasn't ready to believe that. If she thought for a minute that they had died because of her, she didn't know what she would do, so she used logic. "We can't go back inside. The best thing we can do, is get help. I need you okay. Stay strong." They were both crying, both on the edge of breaking down.

"Help," Piper shouted and Kristen turned towards the road to see someone coming towards them. They must have heard the gunshots. Maybe everything would be okay after all.

"Don't move unless I say so." The man held up a handgun in their direction. Kristen thought for a moment that it might be a plainclothes police officer, or an off-duty cop. She had never seen this person before in her life.

"No, you have to help us. Someone shot at us. The missing girl on TV, she's in there." He had a weapon; he could help them.

"I want you to come with me, and if you even think of running, I will shoot. Understand?"

"I don't... who are you?" Piper could barely speak.

"No more questions." He yanked Kristen by the arm towards his car, which was parked haphazardly on the sidewalk, whilst keeping his gun trained on Piper. They both complied, too shocked to comprehend what was going on. He patted them both down, confiscated their cell phones, and tossed the rucksack aside before forcing Kristen into the front passenger's seat, and Piper into the back.

"If you alert anyone, or try anything, I will end you, you hear me?"

They both nodded.

"Good." He started the car and pulled away.

"Where are you taking us?" Piper asked meekly. She hated that he could tell how scared she was.

"You see, unlike Connor, my motivations are quite different."

"What do you mean?" Her voice didn't even sound like her own, but more like a small, frightened child.

"You wouldn't see me killing girls because I got rejected, because I couldn't get laid. We may have worked together, but I have no respect for that."

She couldn't believe she hadn’t even considered the possibility that there was more than one killer. Two people working together. It hadn't even occurred to her. She thought she was free. She thought that maybe they would be okay. Who the hell was this guy? If Connor had killed Bryony Finch, was this the person that killed her father? This wasn't the man she had gone on a date with. Had this man offered her to Connor like a prize? Using a grieving daughter as a token, or had he sought her out? She needed answers but was too terrified to ask them.

They turned onto a main road, and as Kristen listened to him speak, she wondered what would happen if she grabbed the steering wheel and pulled the car into the path of oncoming traffic. Would they flip over the central reservation, crash through it, or just crash into it? Potentially, they could all die, but surely the odds were better than whatever this man had in store for them. His words started to sink in. They had worked together. That was why the victims were different? Connor's motivations would explain the murders of Bryony Finch and Isabella Torres. What were this man's reasons?

She finally found the courage to speak. "Tell me, what is your motivation? I want to understand."

"Have you ever had someone talk to you like you're a piece of shit?" he asked.

"What?"

"You heard what I said."

"I... no, I don't think so."

"Okay. Here's an easy one. Have you ever been treated like crap by your boss?" She went to answer, but he carried on. "Have you ever been blamed for things that aren't your fault, over, and over, and over? Day after day after day. A never-ending hamster wheel. Busting your ass while the rich get richer, and the suckers like us get left in the dust. I'll tell you who is worst of all. Customers. These are everyday people, like you and me. You'd think they'd have a little compassion. Don't think they don't know how little we earn, yet they treat us like their whipping boys, just because they can. They get off on it. They can say what they want to us, no holds barred. Oh, and have I heard some vile shit in my time.

Anyway, when you hear people talk about how useless you are, multiple times in one day, five days a week, that is when you start to believe it. Then there comes a point, when you can barely get out of bed in the morning, when you're spending a fortune on anti-depressants, booze, whatever will get you through the day.

One day, I was talking to this guy, oh was he a piece of shit, let me tell you. I spoke to him for hours over the course of two weeks. He made my life hell. Finally, I'm just straight with him, call him out on his shit. I accuse him of fraud. I know his claim is bogus, and when I lay out all the evidence, he knows, I've got him.

Anyway, guess what the guy says to me? I'll tell you. He says, 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.' And so I did. Being nice got me nowhere, so I turned it back on them. That was justice, I can tell you." The man had barely taken a breath, babbling like a cokehead.

"I get it," Piper said. "I lost count of the number of times a customer brought me to tears. I just wondered, what I had done to them to make them hate me so much."

Kristen stayed quiet, wondering if the empathy Piper