Seeking Her Read Online Free PDF Page B

traffic or construction. But in the desert, the sand seemed to suck away all the other sounds.
    Tap-tap-tap.
    I stood, whirling, trying to find the source, and I wasn’t alone. Rodriguez was there at my heels. Ingram, Johnny One, and Teague, too.
    “Come on!” Ingram roared, gesturing for us to retreat back behind a barricade. He slid over the top, knocking down glasses and beer bottles perched along the bar.
    I looked back to Kelsey. She was alone on the dance floor now, the others running for cover, but still she danced. A blast struck off to my left, closer this time, and the ground rumbled so long it could have been an earthquake. I glanced back again, and everyone was behind the barricade, except for Rodriguez. I couldn’t hear him over the near constant tap-tap-tap filling up the desert, but he was waving wildly.
    I had to get Kelsey first. She was my responsibility.
    I sprinted toward her, my boots sinking into the sand. A cloud of the stuff swirled up around us when I slid to a stop in front of her. My hands scrabbled at her hips, trying to take hold. Her long eyelashes rested against her cheeks, and it took a few seconds before her lids lifted. Her green eyes glowed, magnified by her spreading smile. I was stunned into stillness for a moment.
    Tap-tap-tap-tap.
    I heard the whine of a bullet ripping past on the wind, and I pulled Kelsey under my arm, ready to drag her with me.
    I turned to see Rodriguez halfway toward me, his rifle hanging at his side.
    Tap-tap.
    The bullets reached him before we heard the sound, so that his body seemed to jerk in anticipation. I didn’t see where the first bullet hit, but the second struck in the neck. Blood painted the sand, and Rodriguez reached one hand out to me and the other toward his neck. The strap of his gun fell down to his elbow, and the weight must have been too much for him to reach his neck. He plunged toward me, his mouth hanging open as he tried and failed to draw in a breath. He sputtered around drifts of blood, and his eyes screamed at me in a way he couldn’t.
    I too felt like I was choking on the blood as his knees hit the earth, sand clumping into dark red clots beneath him. Kelsey’s jaw dropped beside me in a scream, but I couldn’t hear her. Silence rang in my ears like the first few seconds after a blast, but it stretched on. And despite being unable to hear, I knew the gasping, gurgling sound that Rodriguez’s trembling mouth made like it was a physical thing I could see and touch.
    It was Kelsey that began dragging me away, past the lifeless body of my friend. When I ripped my eyes off of him, I saw everything clearer. Including my friends behind the barricade, behind the bar.
    My mind tripped for a moment, trying to reconcile the past and the present. The film of the dream weakened and I thought—I’m about to wake up. Relief pumped through my veins seconds before the mortar shell dropped and the bar exploded, flames propelled upward into the sky.
    The blast blew me backward, and I was skidding through the sand. The last thing I saw before blacking out was Rodriguez’s empty eyes and blood-stained lips.
    I woke, covered in sweat as if I’d just spent the night in the desert heat. My ears rang as I stumbled out of bed and pushed open the window. Head swimming, I thought I might be sick. I concentrated on the purple pre-dawn sky.
    The window shutters banged against the building in an eerily familiar tap-tap-tap, and I slid down to my knees. Turning, I sat with my back below the windowsill and tried to catch my breath.
    I couldn’t decide what was worse. Dreams like the one I’d just had, amalgamations of truth and fiction, or the ones that were actual memories. Rodriguez’s death in my dream wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. It bore a resemblance to the death of a soldier from the first week of my deployment. I couldn’t remember that soldier’s name now. —There had been too many others that I’d met and lost since then—but the look on his