Criminal Destiny Read Online Free PDF Page B

you’re telling me my business ?”
    â€œWithout honesty and harmony,” Amber demands, “what chance will you ever have at contentment?”
    If the situation wasn’t so dangerous, I’d laugh out loud. Leave it to Laska to spout classic Happy Valley garbage to a criminal with a knife!
    â€œAmber . . . ,” Eli croaks warningly.
    The blade swings in his direction and he clams up. Then Scruffy wields his weapon at his intended victim, who has been inching away from the wall. Finally, he spins to threaten Amber. She doesn’t move a muscle, ramrod straight in her fury.
    â€œYou’re nuts,” the crook tells her, and runs out of the alley, disappearing from view.
    The rest of us are still quaking in our shoes, too cowed to speak.
    â€œHe did the right thing,” Amber approves, her anger lifting.
    â€œMaybe he did,” says the victim, dusting himself off. “Did you ?”
    â€œI couldn’t let him rob you,” she retorts. “What would you have done if nobody stood up for you?”
    â€œI would have done this .” He makes an elaborate show of handing her his watch, his wallet, his cell phone, and a gold pinkie ring.
    Laska stares at the stash in her open palms. “But you’d lose everything!”
    He shakes his head vigorously. “Not everything. I’d still have my life, so I could go out and buy new things. But you—you could have gotten yourself killed! A young kid with everything still ahead of you! Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to stick your neck out?”
    We gawk at the guy—not just Amber, but all of us. If there was ever a conversation Happy Valley didn’t prepare us for, it’s this one.
    He looks us over, and I can tell he sees how clueless we are. “Let me guess—you kids aren’t from around here.”
    I shuffle uncomfortably. “Not really.”
    â€œWhere are your parents?”
    â€œWe’re meeting up with them later,” Tori supplies.
    The guy thinks it over. He isn’t satisfied with what we’re telling him, but he seems pressed for time. When he takes his stuff back from Amber, he keeps glancing at the watch.
    â€œA word of advice,” he says finally. “Denver can be a tough town. So when your folks aren’t around, don’t stick your noses into other people’s business—especially roughbusiness down some alley. Think about what could have happened to both of us.”
    â€œBut we—helped you,” Amber protests feebly.
    â€œAnd I’m grateful.” He reaches into his wallet, and hands her a twenty-dollar-bill. “For your trouble. Don’t ever do it again.”
    We stand in silence for a few seconds as he hurries out of the alley.
    â€œThat’s it?” I call at his receding back. “That’s all your life is worth? Twenty bucks?”
    Eli finds his voice at last. “You know, Amber, that guy’s right. That was way too risky.”
    She’s stubborn. “It’s never wrong to do what’s right.”
    â€œIt is if it gets you stabbed,” Tori reasons.
    â€œHe wouldn’t have done that.”
    â€œMaybe he would; maybe he wouldn’t,” Eli insists. “You can’t take that chance. All this proves is that we’re like aliens in the outside world. We have to feel our way through every minute of every day, because it’ll only take one mistake to sink us. If you got stabbed and wound up in the hospital, it could make the papers. You think Purple People Eaters can’t read?”
    â€œAnd you could have died ,” Tori adds emotionally. “Ifwe’re going to have a chance to have any kind of future, we all have to pull together.”
    A discordant note sounds in my head, one that extinguishes any exhilaration I might feel at my first glimpse of a real city. “It’s a little late for that,” I remind everyone. “We’ve already