“Okay, sure. Good luck with that,” he scoffed.
He’d been annoyed by Scar from the moment they first met. He was a bully, thief, murderer, and a miserable jerk who blamed everyone but himself for his problems.
Silence stood between them.
“How do you know those killers on the roof aren’t still hunting us?” he asked, stalling without admitting it.
“Don’t care. I beat ’em once, ain’t no thing to do it again.”
The scrape of wood, and rush of cold air hitting his face, revealed the door was opening.
“You’re a fool,” he told Scar.
“Stay here, turn yourself in, become a farm hand, whatever. I don’t care.”
The shape that was Scar disappeared through the bright block before it went dark again.
Gage sat with the sound of Scar leaving and let it infuriate him for a long moment.
He flipped open the phone—the glare causing pain to pulse in the center of his forehead—and began clumsily swiping and jabbing at the screen.
He took deep breaths to quench the panic and waited.
With all the trauma the Ravens had inflicted on him, one thing they gave him from all those injections that he appreciated was enhanced strength, the feeling of invincibility, increased stamina, and a sharpened analytical instinct that accelerated his reaction time.
I got this.
There was but one name he could think of that would come through for him, no matter what, no questions asked.
He tried to recall his friend’s number and hit a blank wall.
He whispered combinations in his mind until one finally echoed true.
Of course the keypad was familiar, but he failed the first fifty or more tries. He just had to steady himself.
He missed over and over before growling and forcing his hands to be still. Then he tried again.
Two numbers. Three. Backspace. Start over.
Did that for at least an hour. Then the line rang.
He held the phone to his ear and listened to his own breath and the rush of his pulse.
Ring.
He swallowed.
Ring.
Click.
“Yo?”
His best friend’s voice was laden with sleep and distorted by the fuzz of cheap cell service, but he knew it was him.
“Roz,” he said, damn near breaking. “It’s me.”
Silence blared on the other end before his friend whispered his name as if it was a forbidden secret.
