Destiny: The Girl in the Box #9 Read Online Free PDF

find a way to stop him, which—hey, surprise—I don’t have one.” I felt my whole body cry out to do something, to move, to vent frustration in some direction, but I held it back. “I’ve got nothing. No solution. No special powers. Nada.” I held my hands up to reveal how empty they were and shrugged my shoulders as though that simple gesture could relieve them of the weight of all the people who were looking to me to save them.
    “You can’t run,” she said. She looked like she was hugging herself, like she was gripping herself tight to keep from—I don’t know—slugging me, probably.
    “I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said. “I doubt Weissman will move in tonight.”
    “And if he does?” She almost sounded like her voice was going to quiver. Almost.
    I let my head sink down until I was staring at the floor, examining the carpet fibers. “Then I guess he’ll get one less piece of cannon fodder than he planned for.”
    I listened to her taking slow breaths for a long moment before she finally turned on her heel and walked out the door.

 
     
Chapter 7
     
    I was dressed a little more professionally when I got on the plane to Vegas. I wore a suit jacket with my jeans and slung my bag over my shoulder. I never was much of a purse girl, and it was probably never more obvious than now, as I sat in the first-class section in the large seat, the dull thrum of the overhead vents fading into the background chatter of the coach passengers loading behind us.
    I’d only flown commercial airlines a few times. The one that stuck out most in my memory was my trip to London and back. It had been the sort of rough hell that I wouldn’t wish on many people: a nine-hour flight each way that rendered me cramped and annoyed, vowing to never get on an airplane again.
    Yet here I was, this time for a three-hour flight which I would reprise tomorrow. All so I could go look at a corpse and make sure it was my aunt’s. I let out a long sigh, the stale, stuffy, filtered smell of the plane’s air conditioning running through my nose.
    I’d seen enough corpses to last eight lifetimes, and I was only nineteen years old.
    I thought again about what my mother said, about how I was running away. I didn’t really want to admit it, but she was right. She was dead on. Maybe not correct in her reasoning, but correct in the symptom.
    It wasn’t like I was afraid to die. I’d rather have died than go on with all the people I cared about back at the campus dead.
    No, I was afraid of the future. I didn’t even want to think about it. Unfortunately, my brain didn’t share those feelings, because it had put this thought on a loop in my mind.
    I didn’t think Weissman would be coming immediately. Something about the way Sovereign—Joshua—whatever his name was—talked about the whole thing made me think Weissman had other stuff to do before he came for us.
    Of course, I’d still feel like holy hell if he got there while I was gone.
    I took another breath of the synthetic-smelling, recirculated air, listening to the man in front of me talking with the stewardess as she took his coat and offered him a glass of something alcoholic. I had already decided to pass on that if it came my way. Not because I was underage, but because this business I was heading to Las Vegas to attend to was grim and worthy of seriousness. Not drunkenness. No matter how great the temptation might have been to be hammered.
    I hadn’t seen my Aunt Charlie in a year or so. Not since she’d saved me from that asshole James Fries then proceeded to beat the hell out of me herself. My mother had saved me on that one and threatened Charlie so strongly that we’d caught not a whiff of her heavily perfumed ass since. Even the Agency sources had drawn a blank on her when I’d had them snoop around a few months ago.
    It was like she’d disappeared. Which was probably for the best.
    And now she was dead.
    Another guy in a suit appeared in the aisle as I kept my head