Chasing Thunder Read Online Free PDF Page B

could do with this young ingénue in their midst.
    By the time they could fall asleep, she was sandwiched in between Tammy and Billy, with Billy’s hard body pressed up against her back, his arm flung across her and Tammy like a locked chain. Haley stayed awake as long as she could, fearing that his hand would somehow find its way down her pants and she’d wake once again to someone forcing her open with his fingers to do unspeakable things to her while she lay paralyzed with fear. It was dawn before her eyes fluttered shut. Not more than two hours passed before Tammy and Billy shook her awake to get out of the building before their hiding place was discovered.
    Despite the fact that she had made it through the night without physical assault, her bag was long gone, as was the money inside. She had been so exhausted that the thief managed to slide everything away from her without her noticing. Even her shoes were missing. “I told you to hide your money,” Tammy reminded ruefully.
    Haley was on the verge of tears. “I thought—” she began, but quickly silenced herself. It didn’t matter what she thought. She was out of her element in this new world, and it was clear the rules of normal existence did not apply.
    They ended up in a diner, with Billy and Tammy footing the bill for the five-dollar breakfast they all shared. And just like at the bus depot, they were merely paying rent to occupy a booth for as long as the waitress would tolerate them. Billy drank at least five cups of coffee, which he used to wash down a handful of pills. He pocketed the rest of his stash, no doubt to sell for extra money, while Tammy’s day would be spent working a street corner near downtown L.A.
    Haley had two choices. She could go with Tammy or she could stay with Billy. The latter seemed the less threatening of the two, so Tammy strutted off in short shorts and Billy and Haley waited on a side street in the parked car.
    He rolled down the windows. The summer heat wasn’t nearly as oppressive as in North Carolina, but she was sweating bullets as they waited in the car. He glanced over her outfit, which covered as much skin as possible. “You’re going to die of heat stroke dressed like that,” he said. “You should change into something cooler.”
    “Everything I had was in my bag,” she explained. She wasn’t even wearing layered clothing to discard as needed. What she had on her back was literally all she had in the world. “I don’t have anything else.”
    With a sigh he got out of the car and popped the trunk. A few minutes later he shoved some articles of clothing at her through the open window. “Here. Change before you pass out.”
    Before she could protest that she couldn’t change in the car, she realized he was pointing to a gas station on the corner. Her legs shook as she exited the car and headed toward the tiny storefront. The attendant regarded her suspiciously as he handed her the key, attached to a wide wooden stick, and she said nothing. She headed toward the grimy, cramped bathroom, which was even hotter than Billy’s beater of a car. The new clothes clung to her damp, sweaty body like a second skin, what little bit they covered. But given the ninety-degree weather, she could hardly begrudge the shorts and the tank top. The breeze cooled her skin as she walked back to the car in her borrowed outfit, right down to the bargain-bin flip-flops.
    Though her clothes were skimpy, she looked every inch a teenage girl rather than a streetwalker. She hoped that meant that she could put off her new career as a prostitute for yet another day, but Billy was quick to dash this meager dream.
    “You’re gonna make a lot of money looking like that,” he informed her as she slid back into the car. “You’re lucky they like ’em young.”
    Haley shuddered. The thought of an older man putting his hands on her body made what little breakfast she’d been able to put in her stomach rebel. “I don’t like the men who