The Hunt of Altswood High (The Altswood Saga #1)

Chapter 20 - Breathe

Chapter 20 - Breathe

The first sensation I felt was the persistent throbbing in my leg. It didn't take long for my head to join in too, and then my body was a singing symphony of suffering.

"Wake up."

I squeezed my eyes shut, praying that this was the last remnant of a nightmare. Any moment now, I would awaken in my comfortable bed back in the city.

A sharp boot landed in my gut. I writhed.

"I know you're faking it now. Wake up, Luca."

I should have seen this coming. There was only one person I knew who carried shoulder bags to school all the time. The remnants left behind from the bomb on my water tank had been a shoulder strap.

Stupid.

I pried my eyes open, my vision immediately focusing on Rebekah. She peered down over her nose, holding my stare. I looked away.

A line of blood marked my tracks from the small door at the far side of the circular room to where I was now, sprawled in the middle against the giant column holding the building up. It was dimly lit in here, with only one dying bulb, the beam directly hitting Rebekah's white-blond hair.

I arched my neck, pressing my fingers to the tender skin at the base of my scalp. My unsteady gaze followed the spiraling stairs along the column behind me, creeping to the very top, leading into a room within.

I realized suddenly that I was in a lighthouse.

Rebekah couldn't have moved me too far out. She had to have dragged me, and there was only so much ground she could cover without being noticed, even in the dark.

"The gray girl," I rasped aloud as the thought occurred to me.

Rebekah hadn't heard me. She was busy doing something to her gun.

"I think you're the liar, Manny," Maddison had said that very first day I had been at Altswood High. "Just yesterday, I saw you go into the gray girl's house, and you're crazy if you think I won't tell Daphne."

I had assumed the gray girl to be a nickname, an inside reference. Instead, Rebekah Gray's identity had been staring me right in the face from the very beginning.

She moved with purpose now, pacing the room as she dug around a burlap sack.

Fear pumped through my veins, warning me to stay alert, but already I could feel the first signs of light-headedness. How much blood had I lost?

Rebekah threw something at me without any warning. I had to blink a few times to register that a phone, already dialed, had landed in the crook of my elbow.

"Kaydee and Douglas are taking the fall as we speak," she said. There was no emotion in her voice. "Gabriel can't be thinking anything else. Assure him that they did it, and being so wondrously relieved, you're going to leave the island for an unknown period of time."

The line was ringing loudly.

"Why?" I whispered. "So my body can rot a little bit longer before they find me?" 

Rebakah crouched down, head tilted curiously. I swallowed rising bile.

She kept silent.

I was surprised. Wasn't she at least going to tell me why she was doing all this?

"Was it your stepsister?" I tried to pry. "Beatrice?"

She narrowed her eyes. "You already know, so why are you still asking?"