A Lonely Road

Some Might Call This Stalking

A/N: Excerpt two from the second book in the Disillusionment Series- Deserted Highways. Enjoy. I will also be editing book one in the next several weeks, so be on the lookout for the new and improved sections to be re uploaded. Thanks for joining me on my NaNoWriMo journey!

Chapter Two

Jace had stood on the street for several minutes, staring at the place where the girl had been. He couldn't shake the fact that he knew her, and yet, he knew that if he told anyone about it, he'd just get a pamphlet handed to him about grief from his mom, something she picked up in the psych ward at the city hospital she'd started working at. "You're just seeing people that you want to be her, but she's gone Jace."

And everytime, he would say that maybe she wasn't gone, her body had disappeared, and he knew Kaelie. She always had something up her sleeve, she'd never just leave them all behind, what if she was alive somewhere. Maybe someone had taken off with her. But then, where was she? Why hadn't she come back for them, for him? Why would she just leave them behind and walk out of their lives after everything that happened?

He forced his feet to lift of the asphalt and move, and then he was walking him again, and he felt a line of sweat trail it's way down from his neck, between his shoulder blades. He felt like he was on edge, tense, waiting for something else to happen, but there was no other trucks, and the mysterious girl didn't come back, and soon enough he was stepping through his own front door to the smell of cookies.

"Jace," his mom called. "Is that you?" Jace just grunted non-commitally, and she wandered out of the kitchen and into the hall. "Oh good. I'm glad your home safe."

He accepted her hug, and then he turned and went up to his room without saying anything, and then he laid in his bed and stared at the ceiling for a while. When he finally dozed off, violet eyes swam in his dreams, watching him, and he woke up again in the morning, the first time he'd slept through the night in three weeks.

When she stepped through the door, a light rain had started to fall, the ground smelled fresh, the water easing the heat in the air. "Well your home late," a voice said from the living room. She just laughed.

"Yeah, I got... held up," she responded. "Got some dinner for me, Jordan?"

A masculine chuckle met her ears. "Try again," he said. "Do I look like your personal cook? Heat up a pizza, I think there might be one in the freezer."

She scoffed. "Jordan, the only thing that has been in our fridge was a gallon of milk that expired four days ago." She turned down the hall and opened a door, looking longingly at the bed inside and then went passed it to go into the bathroom. She flicked on the light and studied herself in the mirror. She pulled out the violet contacts, and then she curled up on her bed, wondering the the driver of the black truck from earlier.

She rubbed her knee, her leg ached, something that had only recently started happening after the removal of the cast it had been in. She was still limping, something that drove her nuts, and her fingers trailed over a scar on her stomach as she lay thinking. After she had knocked him out of the way, the truck had roared off around the corner, and she'd run after it but she'd lost it after a few blocks. She turned back, and followed the boy home, making sure he'd gotten in the front door. If someone had orders to kill him, something told her that they wouldn't wait long before trying again.

A knock on the doorway startled her out of her thoughts and she rolled over to see Jordan standing just inside the room. Jordan was tall, he blocked most of the light from the hallway, and his brown hair was tied in a bun on top of his head. "You gonna tell me what really happened?" he asked.

"I don't know what you mean," she said back, trying to turn back around, closing her eyes and willing Jordan to just leave.

He sighed, a sound that had grown familiar to her by now, and she could almost see him rubbing his hand over his face and rolling his eyes. "You know you can't lie to me. What happened?"

"Nothing Jordan. Some kid almost got hit by a car, and I pushed him out of the way, that's it." She still didn't look at him, she knew he'd be able to see her lie in her face, but even without seeing her, he sighed again to let her know that he didn't believe her. She relented, there was no use lying to him. "Okay, Jordan. Alright. It was him. Someone was following him in a black truck, and it isn't too hard to figure out who or why. They tried to run him down, probably so they could play it off as a hit and run, an accident. I got there first. I pushed him out of the way, and then I left. That's it."

"You need to be careful! What if they came back? What if it was you they hit? You can't just go around taking matters into your own hands," Jordan exclaimed.

"I can Jordan, and I will. He would have died. Or been really hurt, did you really think I would just let that happen?" she retorted.

Jordan's eyes softened. "No. No, I know you wouldn't. It's just not your nature. But honestly, you need to be careful. Under the radar. Low profile."

"I had contacts!" she pointed out mulishly and Jordan laughed.

"I do love your purple eyes," he said and then he wandered out of the room. "Good night."

She rolled to her stomach and closed her eyes, but sleep didn't come. Eventually, she got up, put her contacts back in, and slipped out of the little apartment, silent and unnoticed. A walk might clear her head, but after hours of aimlessly wandering, she found herself outside of a modest two story home, a little silver car parked out front with a stick figure mother and child on the rear window.

The light on the second story window was out, and she saw the glow of a monitor inside, but no one in front of it. She stood there for a long time, and when the sun started to peek out from behind the mountain, tinting the sky orange, she retreated across the street, leaning against a hedge. She heard an alarm go off inside the second story room. After another thirty minutes, the front door opened, and a head of black hair emerged, hiding gray eyes. He didn't look around despite the previous night's events, and started walking.

She waited, and then followed, telling herself it was just to make sure he made it to school- because honestly, why else would anyone be up at this hour on a Wednesday- and made sure to keep her head down in case he turned around. It was silent for a few minutes, and then she heard steps fall into line behind her. She ducked down a side street and next to a house and she watched. There was a short man trailing behind them, in a suit that didn't fit, and he edged closer and closer to the boy in front of him.

She stepped quickly from the house, and caught up to the man without his notice, and she was glad for the early hour for once, as no one else was around to see anything out of the ordinary. She wrapped an arm around his throat and squeezed, dragging him down an alley. "Who the fuck are you?" he spat and she cracked him across the face without hesitation.

"Doesn't matter. Why are you following him?" she said.

"Like I would tell you," he retorted and she hit him again, and then slid a knife from her boot. His eyes widened. "Look, I just got told to grab him, and make it look like an accident. A robbery or something. I don't even know him, I just took the money. Times are hard, you know?" He looked to be on the brink of snivelling at her feet and her lip curled in disgust.

"I think it would be best if you didn't, don't you?" she said and he nodded rapidly. "Get lost, dumbass. If I see you near him again, you will get to meet your maker. Understand?" He turned and ran, stumbling over himself, and she stepped back out of the alley. The mop of black hair was disappearing in the distance, and she cursed, speeding up. When she finally caught up to him, he was disappearing into the double doors of hell, and she turned back the way she came, trying to get back to the apartment before Jordan woke up.

Luckily, Jordan slept like the dead and rarely woke before noon so the place was still quiet when she entered and when she passed his room on her way to the kitchen, he was still in bed, snoring softly. She made her way to the kitchen and grabbed banana from a bowl on the table, thanking God that she'd at least had the foresight to pick up some fruit on her way home last night. Jordan would never do it on his own, and sometimes she felt like his mother. She finished her banana and made her way back to her room, curling up in bed and singing the praises of Netflix to pass the time until the school bell would ring.