The Headhunters Race (Headhunters #1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

or heart should do the trick.
    The rustling, battering, and banging continues. I don’t understand why they’re here. No one usually comes to this side of the prison. Through the slit between the cabinet doors, I see a hand reach for the handle, blocking the waning rays of daylight that had been filtering through. My heart beats in quick time while a scream swells in my throat. I raise my knife, ready to slash. Ready to run.
    “What are you all doing?” I hear McCoy say all casual-like. I blow out a quiet breath of relief. I’ve never been so happy that he tails me every day. “You boys are missing out on the surprise dinner slop they dumped in a few minutes ago.”
    “What? It’s not slop day,” says the older one.
    “Are you winking us, Mitchell?” says the younger guy.
    McCoy grunts. “No, I ain’t hoodwinking you. You’re gonna miss out though, if you don’t hurry your haunches back to the main center.”
    The thought of extra slop gets the men scurrying off like rats on a dead roach. They must know McCoy because they knew his last name. I stay huddled in my position until I’m sure McCoy is gone too. While I wait, I can’t stop thinking about the extra slop. I’m angry at myself for missing out. For being stuck. In the three years that I’ve been here, I can’t believe today is the one day King decides to give us extra.
    But the more I think about it, the more it seems too good to be true. Why would King give us extra anyway? The only thing I come up with is that King must’ve ordered the extra rations to celebrate the forthcoming race.
    Of course he did! He’d want as many prisoners as possible to carry themselves to the end. King wants to make certain one of the prisoners is able to bring back Gavin’s head.
    When I’m sure the coast is clear, I carefully liberate myself from the cabinet, sheath my knife, and move to the hall, hoping there’s still time to fight for my share of slop. Instead, I’m greeted by McCoy. He leans against the wall, arms crossed over his chest and looking like he’s waiting for me.
    “Don’t bother going to the slopfest,” he says.
    I stop in my tracks, dumbstruck. First he stalks me in his never-ending quest to find my food and water sources and now he wants to prevent me from getting slop. “I have a right to it as much as you do,” I say and charge past him anyway.
    “There isn’t any slop,” he hollers after me.
    I give myself a few seconds to let my mouth hang before I whirl around. “What do you mean there isn’t slop? I just heard you tell those morons there was slop. Why are you lying to me?”
    McCoy straightens, pushing himself from the wall, and I catch a sheepish curve form at the corner of his mouth, like he’s guilty and I’ve caught him and he knows it.
    He does a little head shake to move his bangs out of his eyes, revealing the small dark mole high on his cheekbone. “I lied to them,” he says, raising his brows and nodding toward the empty hall.
    Heat blossoms over my chest and neck as the impact of his words dawns on me all at once. There isn’t any slop. It was too good to be true. My stepfather would never give us anything more than he had to. The worst part of this revelation is that McCoy did it to save my rear.
    Why?
    It only takes a millisecond for my brain to conjure up the answer. He can be a hero all he wants, but I can’t outright thank him. Not with him grinning at me like that. Verla pounded it into my head that showing gratitude inside a prison is a sign of weakness. She learned it the hard way. The vile way.
    I will not show weakness.
    With nothing else to say, I turn and continue the other way, leaving McCoy to wonder why I’m a jerk and me wondering if I’ll ever be normal again.

 

    I practically leap out of bed. Zita is fast asleep and I think about how grateful I am we’re friends. I won’t let her down. I can’t let her down. I pull on my boots, comb through the knots in my hair with my fingers, and tiptoe