High Risk by G.K. Parks (books for 10th graders TXT) 📕

I resisted the urge to speak. I wasn’t sure they could see me. I knew it was a trap. Why did I walk right into it?

“You realize you never asked us what we wanted,” the gravelly voice said. “Tell me, baby, you’re the same bitch from this morning, aren’t you?”

I grabbed a bottle of wine off the shelf and held it by the neck while I desperately searched for my gun.

The gravelly voice chuckled. “I guess that means you already know what I want. Why don’t you come over here and give it to me?”

A piece of glass crunched beneath my foot. I froze, but it was too late.

“Diego,” the gravelly voice warned.

The accomplice darted forward, attempting to grab me. I swung the bottle, smashing it against his temple. I felt the jarring impact run up my arm and through my shoulder. The bottle broke due to the force and cut my palm. Diego didn’t make a sound as he collapsed to the ground.

But before I even felt relief at having taken down one offender, the other one grabbed me from behind. His strong, thick arms encompassed my body and forced my arms down at my sides. For the briefest second, I thought I smelled menthol mixed in with the pungent smell of wine and spirits. How’d he get out of the cuffs?

“You’re going to pay for that. I’m going to make it hurt the same way they hurt me. You’re going to beg to die before I kill you. And then I’m going to laugh when I put a bullet through your brain.” He knocked me sideways into one of the racks, knocking more bottles to the ground in the process.

I struggled and kicked, trying to get free. Lifting my legs, I threw off his center of gravity. He teetered to the side, and I thought about the way he winced when he knelt on the ground. He hadn’t lied about an injured knee.

He tried to compensate for the sudden shift, and I drove the ball of my foot into his left kneecap. He howled, losing his hold on me and stumbling backward.

Spotting my gun, I dove for it, but he saw it first and knocked it out of the way. It slid beneath a shelf and disappeared into the darkness.

“You’re gonna pay for that, bitch.” He grabbed my leg and pulled my foot out from beneath me.

He was strong. I kicked him in the stomach or maybe his chest. I couldn’t tell, but he held tighter, dragging me across the floor toward him. Shards of glass cut into my exposed skin, and my clothes became soaked with tequila and rum.

He pinned me beneath him, hitting me hard with his elbow before switching to his fists. He tightened one hand around my throat and squeezed. I pushed against his chin, trying to get away from him. I shoved his mask up a couple of inches, exposing a grizzled chin and a small scar, but that had no effect on the stranglehold he had on me. So I went for his throat. I hit him hard, and he reared back, making a wheezing sound. He coughed a few times, and I used that opportunity to slip out from beneath him.

I’d just gotten to my feet when he eked out, “Grab her.”

Someone rammed into me from the side, knocking me into a shelf. Before I had time to recover, he launched his full weight at me. In the dark, all I could see were his hands spread out in front of him like Superman mid-flight, and then we crashed through the glass door of one of the coolers. Large shards crashed to the floor around me, and the sudden cold was a shock to my system, even as warmth ran down my face and neck.

My legs gave out, and I slid to the floor, one arm and shoulder wedged inside the refrigerator. My vision swam. Dark bubbles crowded out the tiny bits of light. I tried to push away from the door, getting snagged and caught. The tiny lightbulbs inside allowed me to see. Blood dripped from a few of the cans and pooled at the bottom. He must have been cut.

I tried to climb out of the broken door, my shoes sliding on the wet floor as pieces of glass scraped against the tile like pebbles on asphalt. Then two hands yanked me out of the cooler, and the world flipped upside down. I was barely aware of the laughter or the pressure easing from around my shoulder as they threw me to the ground. The pain came in waves as something warm and sticky spread down my back.

“What should we do with her?” one of the voices asked.

“I know what I came here to do,” Gravelly Voice said. “But she’s too much of a mess. It’s time you prove yourself. Finish this.”

“Look at her, man. She’s done. Let’s just go,” the first voice insisted.

“Shut up.” Gravelly Voice stomped toward me. “You said you’d do it. You already fucked up more times than I care to count. Now fuck her up.”

My gun, where was it? I needed to find it. Pulling myself to my hands and knees, I barely made it a few inches toward the shelf before I fell back to the ground, dizzy and in agony. I couldn’t breathe. My chest burned, and I struggled to suck in air. One of the men kicked me in the side, hard enough to flip me over, and I gasped, unable to scream.

Gravelly Voice crouched down over me as my chest heaved, and a gurgling sound came from deep within my throat. But I could barely hear it over my pounding heart. I tried not to panic, but I saw it in his eyes. He was