True Colors Read Online Free PDF Page A

she’d started stressing again about the conversation they weren’t having.
    “Come on, Charlie. What’s going on?”
    Charlie drew in a breath. “Have you felt different? Since you were shot.”
    Alex gazed at her for a long moment. So it was going to be one of those conversations. Where Charlie fished for information on what Alex was feeling or had felt or might feel tomorrow. A maddening habit her sister had picked up since the shooting, as though she expected Alex to be different in some way. And she was . . . different in some way. But putting it into words . . . hell, Charlie was the writer. Alex expressed herself in pictures.
    “Yeah, I do feel different,” she said finally. “How could I not? I died in the ER.”
    Charlie flinched at that but moved on. “I don’t mean physically. I mean, it is physical, but it’s mostly . . . emotional. Well, hell, maybe it’s mostly physical. I don’t know.”
    “You’re not making any sense. You know that, right? It’s kind of funny, really, coming from you. You’re the one who always knows what to say and precisely how to say it.”
    “You’re giving me way too much credit on that.”
    “Just say it, Charlie. Lay it out for me, and we’ll go from there.”
    Charlie closed her eyes as though to gird herself. Alex felt so bad for her that she reached across the table and grasped her hand.
    The world turned inside out . . .
    I yank on my hands, but they’re tied, and there’s pain, oh, God, pain in my temples, behind my eyes, rippling in waves. I try to talk, forcing the words out through lips that don’t want to move.
    “You need help.” Nausea cracks my voice. “You’re hurt. You’re probably bleeding internally. I can help you. Get you to the ER.”
    The man wavering before me, pale and sweaty, takes a step back only to double over with a harsh groan. “This is your fault,” he says. “You broke something inside me.”
    I jerk at my wrists. What if he passes out and I’m stuck here like this? “I can’t help you if you don’t untie me.”
    But he drops to the gritty concrete floor and starts to retch.
    Desperation races through my blood like fire. I’m going to die here, like this, tied and helpless and alone.
    “Untie me.”
    I’m begging now, knowing this is it, this is the end. And then lightning blasts behind my eyes—
    Alex’s head snapped back, and for a moment, she felt it loll, weightless yet incredibly heavy.
    “Alex!”
    Charlie’s frantic voice broke through the confusion, and Alex managed to lift her head and open her eyes. The Herculean motion made everything around her swim, and the next thing she knew, she was on her knees on the floor, her stomach heaving.
    Charlie jumped back with a shout but quickly recovered and helped Alex to her feet and down the hall to the bathroom. Tears squeezed out of her eyes as she vomited until nothing more came up.
    She leaned back against the side of the bathtub and tried to get her breathing under control, conscious of the sweat running down the sides of her face and her spine.
    Charlie handed her a washcloth, and Alex pressed its cool wetness to her face. She winced at the flare of pain in her cheek, as though someone had struck her.
    Breathing easier, Alex looked up at her deathly pale sister. “Did you hit me?”
    Charlie knelt before her and grasped Alex’s ankle as though to ground herself. “You weren’t answering me. I didn’t know how else to snap you out of it.”
    Stomach-clenching horror slid through her. “Snap me out of what ?” She’d blacked out? Had an epileptic seizure? What?!
    “Alex, you had an empathic flash.”

CHAPTER FIVE

    B utch McGee settled into the rental Mustang in the parking garage at Tampa International Airport and unfolded the road map the nice girlie at the Hertz counter had given him. She’d batted her eyes at him more than once, but as much as he’d been tempted to flirt back and score a little afternoon delight, he’d stayed on track. He had a