“You hungry?”
“Not really.”
His stomach churned as though something alive was twisting around in there. The last thing he wanted to do was feed it.
“You ready to do this?” His friend asked.
Not at all. Gage nodded anyway.
A plastic bottle was pushed into the center of his chest. He tried to stop his hands from shaking as he twisted the top.
He drank the water in three loud gulps and motioned for another.
“You’re gonna’ be fine,” Roz said. “Let me wash up and change, then we can go.”
Fine, huh?
Fine was a word people used when they didn’t want to tell the truth.
This is about to go horribly wrong.
Roz’s old Lincoln rumbled beneath him as cars flew past, tires skidded, and horns honked endlessly.
Gage sat angled toward the window, focusing on not cataloging every sound the way his new, screwed-up brain wanted to, and instead replayed what he was going to tell his parents.
He was leaning toward some version of the truth.
He’d tell them there was a program that recruited inmates. And he’d taken a deal to work for a nameless agency, that may or may not be affiliated with the government, in exchange for theremainder of his sentence. He’d confess to the experimentation to explain the vision impairment.
Then he’d explain that he escaped when he found out the organization was corrupt…and it was why he wouldn’t be able to stay with them.
He’d tell his father not to investigate the anonymous agency, or write his congressman, not to go on the news, nor write to the prison warden.
Gage had a sinking feeling the Ravens wouldn’t hesitate to eliminate a self-righteous preacher on the West Side of Chicago threatening to expose them.
His heart leapt into his throat when Roz took a hard right, and the shotgun on the floor in the backseat knocked against the base of his seat.
“Can you please drive a little less erratically?” He gritted.
“Relax, G. I’m just making sure no ones tailing us. We’re deep in the West Side, and I’m on a hit list, remember?”
They circled the block twice before Roz eased to a stop.
“We’re across the street,” he said.
Gage turned his head toward his parent’s house.
In his mind, it was as vivid and detailed as ever—the narrow porch with three steps he used to clear in a single jump, the chipped white railing and sun-faded blue shutters he had to paint every few years, and the small yard edged by his mother’s flowerbed.
“Does the lawn look okay?” he asked softly.
Roz was quiet for a second, as if he hadn’t expected that question. “Yeah.”
“Is the sidewalk salted?”
“Looks like it.”
“Are the trash cans at the curb. Tomorrow is pick up.”
