Estranged (29 page)

Jenna’s voice called out gruffly,
“Shut up, I’m trying to concentrate.”

Kalei finished laying Josh across the
bench seat, then carefully climbed into the passenger side up
front. Slowly, she raised her head up to peer through the window.
Terin and friends were only fifteen feet away now and closing. Two
Wardens created a solid vanguard, and a step behind them, two more
flanked Terin on either side. All of them sported wet patches on
their uniforms where Jenna and Kalei’s bullets had visited. The big
guy in front of Terin raised his rifle and squeezed off a series of
shots. Kalei ducked just as the driver’s side window
shattered.

“
Got it!”

Kalei looked down at Jenna. “You got
it?”

“
Yeah, I found the guy’s
sidearm! He had it right there under the seat,” Jenna cheerfully
responded, holding up a pistol.

“
I thought you were
hotwiring the car!”

“
I am! Hold on.” Jenna
twisted a couple of wires together and the radio blared to life
with the latest pop music.

Kalei turned the radio down and said,
“Alright, c’mon! Let’s go.”

Jenna squirmed a ways out from under
the steering wheel and said, “Not yet. Get over here and hold this
wire while I have a nice chat with Terin and the crew. And be
careful not to let it touch anything.” Jenna crawled up onto the
driver’s seat as Kalei slid down and lay on the floor, gingerly
accepting the yellow wire from Jenna.

Once she was free, Jenna popped up
into the open window and took a shot at their friends. Then she
paused, eyes widening slightly. “Shit! Do you see this?” She
quickly ducked back under cover as three shots crashed into the
cabin.

“
What?”

“
He just pulled the same
trick Xamic did back at the mansion. The whole ‘I just had my
brains blown out and I don’t give a fuck’ bit.”

“
Really?” Kalei started to
sit up, but Jenna waved her back down.

“
Stay down there. You
ain’t done yet. You see the green wire hangin’ there?”

“
Yeah.”

“
When I say, I want you to
touch the end of that wire to the yellow wire, then hit the gas
when you hear the engine start, got it?”

Kalei retorted, “I only have two
hands. How do you expect me to hold the wires together and hit the
gas at the same time?”

Jenna rolled her eyes. “You don’ need
to hold the wires. Jus’ drop ‘em when the engine starts. Now stop
being a pussy and get ready.”

Kalei mumbled under her breath and
reached for the green wire. Jenna got off three more shots, then
turned and slammed the butt of her gun into the keyhole and yelled,
“Now!”

Kalei brought the two wires together,
but before they even touched, a bright flash of electricity jumped
between them, shocking Kalei as the engine roared to life. She
cursed and dropped the wires, jumping away as the yellow wire
caught on her arm and shocked her again.

Jenna took another shot at the Wardens
and roared, “Hit the gas!”

Kalei found the gas pedal and shoved
it to the floor. The tires screamed, the truck swerved violently
out into the middle of the road, and then Jenna caught the wheel
and set it straight.

Jenna said, “Now get out of there.
I’ve got it.” Kalei hastily clambered off the floor, brushing dirt
off herself as she sat up in the passenger seat. “Here, take this.”
Jenna handed over the gun. “Keep it low.”

Gunshots pinged off the truck and the
back window shattered. Kalei ducked and replied, “Fuck that. I
should be shooting back.”

“
No. Keep the gun low,
keep your head low, and face forward.”

Kalei wasn’t sure what Jenna was up
to, but the calm, determined look in Jenna’s eyes convinced Kalei
not to argue. She slouched low in her seat and faced
forward.

The gunshots stopped, and Jenna
dropped their speed down to thirty-five miles an hour. Kalei
glanced back over her shoulder and saw the Wardens running to their
vans. As she turned forward again, the silence that was left by the
lack of gunfire was filled by the sound of sirens. Jenna didn’t
react, she didn’t speed up; if Kalei didn’t know any better, she
would have thought Jenna hadn’t heard them. Her only response was
to turn on her blinker and merge onto Cedar Street. It was a
modest, two-lane road with minimal traffic, and while Kalei noticed
a kid in the backseat of the car beside them, pointing and
exclaiming at the bullet holes down the side of the truck, the rest
of the road utterly ignored the newcomers as just another piece in
the daily commute.

A block later, the cop cars appeared
two streets ahead of them, lights flashing and sirens blaring as
they turned onto Cedar. The daily commuters lazily pulled to the
side as the two police cruisers picked up speed on the
straightaway, gunning straight down the middle of the road toward
Kalei and Jenna. Kalei brought the gun forward, flicking the safety
off as she prepared to fire.

Jenna held her hand out over the gun.
“Don’t.” Jenna slowed down and pulled to the side along with the
rest of traffic. Kalei wanted to scream at her sister, to demand
why they were stopping, to hit her over the head, but instead, she
shut her mouth and tightened her grip on the pistol.

Kalei watched Jenna for any sign of
what her sister was planning, but Jenna just leaned back and lazily
eyed the police as they approached.

The cops didn’t slow down as they
closed the distance to their target. The sisters were sitting ducks
now. Kalei looked from Jenna to the speeding vehicles and realized
that even if they pulled back onto the road and sped off now, it
was already too late to outrun their pursuers. Was this Jenna’s
plan? To release Kalei, run them all over Celan in a crazy series
of explosions and gunfights, just to hand her back over to the cops
when she was done with her fun? Kalei had already accepted that
this woman was her sister Jenna, but now she started to wonder just
how much that sister had changed in the years since they were kids.
Kalei realized that whether she was looking at Shenaia or Jenna,
she still didn’t know what this woman was capable of.

The police were four hundred feet off
now, two hundred— they made no sign of slowing. One hundred feet,
fifty, twenty—they passed the truck.

Kalei turned in her seat, watching as
the lights retreated into the distance as Jenna casually pulled
back onto the road.

Kalei didn’t look at Jenna as she
demanded, “What the hell was that? We were sitting right in front
of them!”

Jenna turned down Seventh. “You keep
goin’ on about how SWORDE doesn’t communicate with the cops, right?
They had no fucking clue what they were looking for. They were just
running down to the site like good little officers.”

Later, they dumped the truck in a
ditch and hitched a ride in a taxi. Kalei had donned a pair of
sunglasses and a sweatshirt they pilfered from the truck, and they
found a baseball cap to cover the healing bullet wound on Josh’s
head as they propped him up between them, claiming he was just
passed out drunk when the taxi driver looked at them questioningly.
The cabbie didn’t seem to approve of a drunk thirteen-year-old, but
it was better than telling him it was a temporarily dead
thirteen-year-old.

Kalei was grateful for the sweatshirt,
but the glasses had been at Jenna’s insistence. “Xamic made you
famous, honey. The driver gets one look at your face, and everyone
goes nuts. You shoulda seen the news when you chased Xamic down
that interstate. They have experts on you now.” Jenna had given a
short laugh as she pulled Kalei’s hood over her head.

For the most part, though, the taxi
driver wasn’t overly concerned with Kalei’s attire, or with their
“passed-out-drunk” friend. He only had eyes for Jenna’s
half-exposed melons. Once they arrived at a grimy motel, Jenna
pouted her lips, invented some sob story about losing their wallets
in last night’s fun, and the driver grudgingly let them go for free
after a quick peek at the items of his affection.

Kalei stayed in the parking lot with
Josh while Jenna worked more of her magic on the motel manager,
probably sharing more than the brief flash she had given the
cabbie, and soon they were climbing the stairs to their new
room.

Kalei couldn’t even look at her
sister. She was ashamed of what Jenna had done, and even more
ashamed that she had let her do it.

Once Jenna opened the door, Kalei
immediately found the nearest bed and dumped Josh into it. Kalei
knew this hotel. She had done guard duty for a number of crime
scenes at this place. She had only seen the interior of the rooms
in passing, but nonetheless, it was odd to see the cheap, garish
furniture sitting neatly in their places. Usually, they were tossed
about the room, or half covered in someone’s blood. Almost like a
recovery room, except the wreckage was ten times cheaper to
replace.

As it was, a pair of twin-sized beds
covered with red leopard print sat pushed against the wall, a
small, wooden nightstand between them. A gaudy painting featuring a
large, well-endowed woman in a cocktail dress overshadowed the drab
lamp on the table, and on the opposite wall stood a pasty green
dresser with a fat, cracked television on top. A door at the back
led to the bathroom, but Kalei’s nose told her she had no interest
in investigating. The main room already smelled like sex and vomit
overlaid with the sickening tang of artificial citrus. She had no
desire to know what the bathroom smelled like. Instead, she plopped
down on the second bed while Jenna found a short armchair near the
door to fall into.

The girls sat in silence for a moment,
taking a deep, mental breath after the mayhem of the afternoon.
While the furnishings were distracting enough to take Kalei’s mind
off things, they were almost painful to look at. So instead, she
found herself looking at Josh, lying perfectly limp on the bed
where she had dropped him. She noticed that his head hung off one
edge of the bed, and his arm was twisted in a painful angle beneath
his body. Kalei leaned forward and straightened the boy out,
berating herself for being so careless.

Jenna remarked, “Dumbass is slow to
recover.”

“
Whatever. He’ll wake up
soon. “

Jenna kicked her feet up onto the bed
and leaned back in her chair, eyeing Kalei. “So what is this? One
minute, you’re all, ‘I’m gonna kill the Estranged!’ and now you’re
savin’ ‘em? What the hell?” Jenna pulled her hands forward and
started counting out on her fingers. “We’ve got Terin and all of
frickin’ SWORDE after us, Franklin’s pissed, who the hell knows
what Xamic is up to, and now we’re playin’ babysitter to some
dumbass kid? Shit.” Jenna flopped her arms onto the armrests. “So
what now?”

Kalei looked back at Josh’s body. If
it wasn’t for the bullet-hole in his forehead, or the fact that he
wasn’t breathing, he could’ve been just another teenager, passed
out on a Saturday afternoon after a late night of video games. As
it was, she knew what he was. She knew he was Estranged. But when
she asked herself why she bothered to take him along, when she
asked herself what they were going to do next...

Kalei replied, “I don’t
know.”

Jenna pulled her feet off the bed and
leaned forward. “I’ll tell you my plan.” She pointed at Josh. “I’m
gonna get rid of this punk-ass kid ASAP. I can’t stand the immature
little son of a—”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Shenanigans

Jenna sat on the edge of the bed, arms
animating her words as Josh watched closely from his seat on the
opposite mattress. “Then I turned around...” Jenna grinned as Josh
leaned in closer. “And smacked her dead in the face! And get this:
the bitch falls flat on her ass and rips out the biggest damn fart
I ever heard!” The pair burst into laughter.

From where she stood on the other side
of the room, Kalei dropped her head back into the wall. Arms
crossed, her eyes rolled back beneath closed eyelids. They had been
like this for the last three days, ever since Josh woke up. Kalei
was at her wit’s end; she felt like a chaperone to a pair of
middle-schoolers. When Josh started asking questions about whether
it was a juicy fart or a loud honker, Kalei opened her eyes, pushed
off the wall, and reached for the door handle.

Jenna stopped laughing. “Where do you
think you’re going?”

“
Out.”

“
Hey, you know you can’t
go out. People will see you.”

Kalei picked a paper bag up off the
dresser, dumped out its contents of newspaper and gum wrappers,
then put it over her head. She poked out two holes for the eyes and
demanded, “There! Better?” She didn’t wait for a response. She
stepped out.

Kalei strode up to the railing where
it guarded their second-story walkway from the parking lot. She
grabbed it with both hands and looked out at the world beyond their
tiny little room. The pavement spread out in deeper, darkened hues
and the cars glistened from a recent spurt of rain. A cool breeze
hinted of more to come.

She didn’t even know why she had
bothered to drag Josh out of that office. Perhaps it was just a
misplaced sense of concern. Perhaps she just didn’t want to be
responsible for sending anyone else to solitary. The memory of that
place still stuck in the back of her throat like sour
milk.