Fathom by L. Standage (spanish books to read .TXT) 📕

“Just a little bit farther…” he muttered before screeching onto a side street. The cops followed.

“We’re going to jail, we’re going to jail,” I said, my anxiety turning into hysteria. Calder turned again, tires whining amid a chorus of more bellowing horns. I screamed. “We’re going to die!”

“Shut up. We’re going to be fine.” He turned a corner again, then another, where we came upon a used car dealership. He careened into the used car dealership lot, plastering me to the side of the window, and hurtled into an empty space. We were sandwiched between two other cars in the lot, one of them the same color as ours.

I sat frozen in my seat until Calder ducked, reached over, and pulled my head down. We waited behind the dashboard as the sirens blared along the road. They passed us by.

“Okay, get out now. No, on this side.” He grabbed the bag of mail, opened his door, and climbed out, keeping low to the ground. When I got out of the car, he shut the door, then flattened himself on the pavement and dragged himself underneath the car beside us. I cringed but followed. The gravel scratched and ground into my skin as I pulled myself further into the tight space underneath the black, greasy engine.

The sirens returned. I gasped and recoiled, as if pressing myself harder into the ground would keep us from getting caught.

“Stay calm,” said Calder. He put his hand on my arm. “It won’t be long before they figure out where the car is.”

The sirens passed. I exhaled and relaxed, my energy waning.

“Why’d you ask about the wind earlier?”

“Needed to make sure it would blow away the smoke from our tires. This trick doesn’t work if you’re sitting in the lot with a smoky car.”

“Oh.”

“Come on.” Calder wormed beneath the car. Weak, shaking, and sore, I dragged myself after him, but he didn’t stop after coming out from under the car. He continued his army crawl under the next car, and then the next. By the time we reached the end of the row, the sirens had come and gone only once more, and we were so scratched, smeared, and filthy, it was unlikely anyone would be able to recognize us, let alone the police.

“We need to get to a phone,” said Calder. “I left the mobile at the house.”

I got up and pulled my askew tee shirt back into place. I tried to brush myself off but gave up. It was pointless.

“Let’s go,” he said. We took off at a jog.

“Where are we?” I asked as we crossed a residential street full of dilapidated houses.

“I don’t know. Somewhere south of Oceanside, I think. I’ll be keen to get away from here as soon as we can.”

He had a point. The neighborhood looked rough. There were broken windows in the houses, crooked and rusting weathervanes, and garbage cans sitting along the side of the street, bursting with garbage. Graffiti covered the fences and the rancid odor of a blocked sewer floated in the air. What if we got stuck here after the sun went down?

I grimaced as I passed a car pockmarked with what looked like bullet holes and slowed down.

“We can’t stop now,” Calder called over his shoulder.

“… I’m so tired.”

“You’re not much of a runner, are you?” he asked as he slowed to a walk.

“Not really. I guess I should probably get in shape.”

“It’s not your shape you need to worry about. It’s your endurance.”

I smiled. He almost paid me a compliment.

“Why don’t we just take the car home?”

“We can’t. The patrol cars will be watching for it.”

“Don’t you guys have another car hidden around here somewhere?”

“We did, but not around here,” Calder replied. “One of them was a rental. We already returned it. Another is in storage near the house and the van is at home, along with Samantha’s car. Or is it your car?”

“It’s mine.” I sighed and tried to slow my breathing. “Some trip to the supermarket, huh?”

Calder shrugged. “Predictable these days.”

“How do you shake it all off so easily? I feel like my heart is still going a hundred miles an hour.”

“Again, you need to work on your endurance. We didn’t even run half a mile.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.”

He gave me a teasing smile.

“I’ve been around this kind of thing for most of my life. I learned about the existence of merpeople when I was quite young.”

“Do they have merpeople in Scotland?” I asked.

He nodded. “In one of the lochs near where I grew up.”

“Right, of course—” I stopped, horrified at myself. He didn’t know Cordelia told me about his ex-girlfriend. I didn’t mean to say anything about it. In my surprise, it just slipped out. Hoping he missed my meaning, I switched gears.

“D’you…d’you have family still in Scotland?” I asked.

“Yeah. My mum. My da died a few years ago.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head. “I’m over it.”

I doubted that. My dad was still alive, and I didn’t think I’d ever get over not seeing him at home with my mom every day.

“There’s a petrol station,” he said, nodding ahead. “We can call Eamon.”

We stood at a gas station pay phone—a thing I thought would no longer exist because of cell phones. These particular pay phones had seen better days, but they worked well enough to save our butts. Calder held the phone to his ear, his eyes filling with worry as he listened to Eamon talk.

“He says they can’t leave the house yet,” he said to me.

“Why not?” I asked. He held up one hand to silence me so he could listen to Eamon on the line. I watched, gnawing on my lower lip and wincing with unease.

“Right,” said Calder. “Yeah, we can get there. We will. Bye.” He hung up the pay phone. “Some detective named Mallory sent out a BOLO on us.”

“Mallory? Detective Mallory?”

“Yeah.”

I scowled. “The man at the grocery store. The one who chased after us in