Blindside Read Online Free PDF Page A

crowd. “Let’s talk somewhere private.”
    “I don’t know nothing,” Mendoza mumbled just as the crowd pushed him toward her. Falling, he knocked the sunshades off her face to drown her in agony. The heat of lasers burned into her eyes; the sawdust floor rushed up to introduce old friends, Nausea and Pain.
    “Fuckhead!” Papi was at her side, groping as much as helping. More tears—God, she hated them—stabbed through her burning lids. She crawled over the floor, searching for the glasses, closing her fingers over the magically intact lenses with rapid relief. With shades back on her eyes, she pressed the helmet to her belly, the cool touch edging back some of the nausea.
    Yeah, you’re a real superhero, now .
    “Poor mamas, you could use a fix. Come in the back with me. I got something to help you.” Under the blaring rap, Papi gripped her upper arm to help her up and squeezed her breast as if that was his thank you.
    With noise and tears coalescing into hell, she’d had enough.
    A quick fist to his face shattered Papi’s nose, his blood a thick, dark spray she barely avoided. With screams and chaos behind her, Lana pushed out of the crowd toward the stench of downtown air.
    The helmet back over her face calmed most of the agony. At least that eerie gaze no longer cut her back. Not possible that he came back after three years .
    She had to focus on the present. Power seeped from her pores to create a lens effect, making her frame appear as a walking nightmare. The oversized cloak maintained the illusion if the power she still didn’t understand winked out. She became a dark blur, large and impenetrable, the Night Rook as she had once mumbled to a reporter who asked for her name.
    She hadn’t mastered flying, so she ran, the wind tearing through the cape, the smell of water fresher as she headed toward the San Mike River. She wouldn’t lose Mendoza when she’d gotten a bead on the snitch.
    Tonight, she’d find out his connections and, from there, the dealers who set up Nick. And the cops—she still couldn’t think about that without bile in her stomach—who protected them all.
    Pavlic wasn’t hard to find, or maybe she got lucky. Either way, she all but stumbled over him huddled in the shadow of a crate close to the entrance of the harbor. The wrought iron lamps with their curlicues and soft lights allowed her to see him feverishly texting.
    “Reception’s crappy down here,” she said in a voice freakishly low thanks to the helmet’s audio distortion.
    He jolted, mouth dropping open in surprise. She fed on his sick terror of the persona she created, this “Night Rook” name she once dropped out of arrogance and pride.
    “How about a freebie? Favor between friends?” He fumbled a plastic baggie out of his pocket, his fingers shaking, his rings a dull gold.
    The helmet and her power shield allowed her to see the yellow spills of lights shimmering on the water’s edge. Another time, she’d have admired the view. “The cops won’t get here in time.”
    “You think you scare me? You think I’m running from some freak dressed like Darth Vader?” Pavlic waved a blade, the steel gleaming under the lights like a sharp star.
    A short blast of power sent him reeling close to freezing water.
    “I want names, Pavlic. The cops you snitch for.”
    “They’ll kill you.” Choppy voice full of dark, gratifying fear. “Dozens of them are on their way here. You gonna fight them all?”
    “Won’t need to.” Too bad he couldn’t see her smile. She didn’t stop to analyze this satisfaction bubbling inside her veins.
    “They say you fly. Fly, fucker. Show me.” And that meatpacker body rushed her, blade angled up and aimed right at her throat.
    Her power surged, a flash of heat under her skin. Just self-defense , a sly voice whispered in her ear, and time crawled to still. She waited, lethal, steady, a cobra coiling for a kill.
    She would enjoy it.
    No . Instead of power, Lana used his momentum,