Flashback by Justine Davis (classic reads .txt) 📕

to just survive long enough for Kelly to get us back together. This kind of life…it was something we never even knew existed, let alone dreamed about.”

Alex knew he still grieved for his sister, who had tried so hard to take care of him after their parents died. Had tried so hard it killed her. Her death had been tangled up in the decades-old mess that had finally been revealed by Alex and her friends last year, and Justin finally had the truth he’d fought so long and hard for. But it didn’t change the simple fact that his sister was dead and he missed her.

Not knowing what to say about such endless pain, she instead reached out and took his hand. “If she’d made it,” she said, her voice quiet, “you wouldn’t have cared about this kind of life. It’s just…window-dressing. Family, and their love, that’s the real thing.”

He squeezed her fingers in response, a silent appreciation for her words that she’d learned to interpret. But he kept looking over toward Washington.

“Back then I never thought about this place much, what happened here or how it affected people throughout the country.”

“You didn’t miss much,” she said. “A lot of the time it’s not a very pretty process.”

“Yeah.” His voice was a little tight. “Now I have to play political games with the rest of them.” He let out a compressed breath. “Can we get out of here?”

“You bet,” she said quickly.

They were back in the car and headed for the main gate before Justin spoke again. “It’s not that I’m jealous,” he began.

“I never thought you were. It’s just not your world.”

“But it is yours.”

“A small part of it. A part I’m happy to avoid whenever possible. I don’t—Uh-oh,” she said, cutting off her own words. “What’s up here?”

Justin leaned forward to look ahead, where a blue, medium-size bus, canted at an odd angle, appeared to be blocking the driveway into the club parking lot. “Looks like a breakdown. Or a flat on that bus, whatever it is.”

“That’s the club shuttle bus,” she said. “It picks up people who don’t take their cars into the city, but want to squeeze in nine holes at lunch.”

“Nice lunch break,” Justin muttered.

“It also brings inner-city kids out to use the tennis courts and the pool,” she said mildly.

“Oh,” Justin said, sounding a little abashed.

She had to halt the car at the driveway, which was almost completely blocked. The driver of the shuttle was in front of it, scratching his head in puzzlement.

Some of the passengers had gotten off, others, mostly kids, were still aboard but clearly getting restless. She saw a tiny face at one window, a wide-eyed little girl who looked on the verge of tears.

Alex sighed and opened her door. The closer she got, the clearer it became that Justin’s guess of a flat had been accurate. Three, in fact; the left front and the next set of double wheels behind that. Justin walked toward the flattened tires while she headed for the pacing driver, who seemed at a total loss.

“What happened?” she asked him as she got close. It was a young man, barely out of his teens, she guessed, and he seemed more than a little flustered.

“Had to be something in the road,” the man said, sounding a tiny bit defensive, “for all three of those tires to go flat at once.”

“Did you hear it?”

“Heard a thump kind of sound, that’s all.”

Alex looked up the road, back where it had come from. About a block back, she saw something lying in the outside lane. She couldn’t see what it was, but it was long and narrow, and protruded out a good three feet into the traffic lane. If the bus had come down that lane, it had to have gone over that thing. She’d go look at it, once everything calmed down a little here.

Justin walked over to her. “Tires are shredded,” he reported succinctly. “Definitely not just a blowout. I’m going to check the undercarriage.”

She nodded, and turned back to the young driver. “Have you called for help?”

“Uh, no, not yet. Guess I should, huh?”

Ya think? Alex muttered inwardly, but she only nodded; he was probably just rattled. And it could have been worse; he could have overcorrected and ended up rolling the bus, and then they really would have had a mess on their hands.

“Then we should probably get these folks offloaded,” she suggested.

He nodded quickly, and Alex suspected it was the “we” that had done it. He’d just felt alone, that’s all, she thought.

She glanced back up the lane and frowned. She’d changed angles and could now see that the elongated object in the roadway had teeth. Literal teeth.

A spike strip? Here?

Adrenaline shot through her. There could be no other meaning. This was no accident. There was deadly intent behind the placement of that piece of metal designed for one thing and one thing only: stopping any oncoming vehicle.

A new urgency filled her, and she had to work to keep her voice even and cheerful as she turned back to the bus and its occupants.

“Okay, everybody,” she called out to the people on the bus, focusing on the restless kids. “Let’s get you all inside so you can start having some fun instead of sitting out here on this bus.”

A cheer went up. Happy chatter began as they filed off the damaged vehicle.

Alex gestured them over to the sidewalk.

She glanced once more at the spike strip. She’d have to tell Justin. Since his first instinct had been to check the undercarriage of the bus, he knew something wasn’t right about all this. But why would somebody go after a bus like this?

Unless…the bus wasn’t the target.

Alex’s every nerve went on alert. The only targets she knew of here and now were her and Justin themselves. But nobody had known they were coming here. Had they been followed? She hadn’t thought so, and Justin hadn’t noticed a tail either, but—

An image, vivid and sharp, cut off