Between the Cracks and Burning Doors: Book 2 of The Extraction List Series Read Online Free PDF Page B

me. My voice softened. “Please tell me, I want to help you.”
    He sniffled as he talked. “Maureen. I live with her. There’s a bunch of us. We sell her stuff and she lets us stay with her. Says we’re a family. I gotta earn my keep though. If I come back without selling those bags, she’ll kick me out. I got nowhere to go.”
    “What about your parents?”
    He hesitated, and glanced around avoiding my eyes. “Haven’t seen ‘em in three months.”
    Even as the words came out, I knew they shouldn’t. “Just come stay with me. And you don’t have to do anything for it.”
    Nick shook his head, hard and fast. “You don’t understand. No one leaves. Once you’re in, you’re in. If you’re out…well, no one gets out.” His face stiffened, almost like he thought somehow she could hear him. “Maureen’s real nice though. Feeds us and we all have a bed. She even sometimes reads to us before we go to sleep. Real nice, I swear.”
    I felt my skin get hot, and my limbs start shaking. Sweat formed at my temples, and I tried to slow my breathing so I didn’t scare him. The woman had a bunch of kids in her house and they were too scared to leave. But like Nick, they probably thought they had nowhere else to go. What kind of person traps children at their weakest moments and has them sell drugs?
    “Take me to her.”
    “You can’t, I’ll get in trouble.” Nick turned to run but I grabbed him by the shoulders.
    I kept my voice as steady as I could. “I just want to talk to her. I can get you out of this. You don’t really want to be doing this, do you?” Nick stared at me for a silent minute. I played on the only piece of information I could. Again. It was cruel, but I had to get him away from this woman. For Dom. “Your mom wouldn’t like you doing this, would she?” Nick shook his head and looked down at his shoes. I held out my hand. “Then take me to her and we can work this out.” He left my side to grab the backpack and then took my hand and squeezed it tight.
    As we rounded the corner of the alley and out into the street, he tugged my hand toward him. We stopped and when he looked up at me, he said the absolute last thing I expected, “You got any weapons on you?”
    I didn’t answer for a moment. When I recovered from the shock, I shook my head.
    “You should.”
     
    I had no choice but to take his word for it, so we stopped by the only store that was still open on the street: a hardware store. I had Nick wait outside while I combed the aisles, searching for just the right thing to defend us against a woman I’d never met. The light bulbs had grayed over, barely lighting the room, and I wondered if he would be able to replace them once they went out completely. The bins of tools, nails, and screws were sparse, but at the back of the store, I saw it: a switchblade knife. I stared at it, black with a design etched onto the blade similar to the fake tattoo Dom had given me. I picked it up and it felt heavy in my hand.
    For some reason, the look on Nick’s face told me that one wouldn’t be enough. Or maybe it wasn’t Nick’s face—maybe it was the fact that my palms were sweating and I had zero idea what to expect. I picked up a second knife, holding both of them in the palms of my hands.
    Nick was clear that I needed a weapon. But there was one problem that I hadn’t shared with him that made all the difference: I had no money. Not a dime. All I had grabbed when I left the church was Dom’s keys.
    The shopkeeper’s gray hair hung in his eyes as I entered the store. His lips could barely manage a slight smile, and the second his lips had curled upward they had sunk back down again. There had been a picture on the counter of him with his arms wrapped around a beautiful white-haired woman in a blue dress. Both of them were grinning ear to ear.
    I wondered where his smile and that woman had gone.
    The store was barely still open. How could I steal from the man? His sadness was contagious