Firefly Mountain by Christine DePetrillo Read Free Book Online Page A

already tight. She had no room. She couldn’t yell. She did the only thing she could.
    She bit.
    “Son of a…” Cameron sat up, straddling Gini. He wiped at his bleeding bottom lip, and in a lightning quick move, he slapped Gini across the face.
    Sparks exploded before her left eye, and her ear rang. She couldn’t believe she was with the same boy who’d just told her he loved her. He’d never been violent with her before. Who was this kid? Anger that he would treat her this way swirled deep in her belly.
    “Now you owe me, bitch.” Cameron unzipped his jeans and grabbed the waist of Gini’s shorts.
    The explosion was what stopped him. Flames burst from the hood of the car. Cameron screamed when the windshield shattered, and the flames rushed in. Shock had them both paralyzed. When the fire jumped to the front seats, Gini snapped out of her hypnosis.
    “Open the door, Cameron! We have to get out.”
    Cameron didn’t move. His eyes were transfixed on the fire as it inched closer to them.
    “Cameron!” Gini pushed the passenger seat forward and opened the door on that side. “C’mon.”
    She pulled on his arm as she fumbled out of the car. When he didn’t follow right behind her, she poked her head into the back seat.
    “Let’s go. Hurry!”
    Slowly, he turned to face her. She reached out her hand, and as he shifted to take it, the back of his T-shirt caught fire.
    Somehow finding the strength, Gini clamped onto his forearms and yanked Cameron out. They tumbled to the gravel roadway, and Gini kept them rolling until the flames were snuffed. When she looked up, the car was engulfed in an orange fury. They had to get away.
    Gini pulled Cameron to his feet. He moaned in pain. How bad was he hurt? She didn’t have time to investigate because another explosion sent metal hurtling toward them.
    It happened in slow motion.
    She tried to push Cameron out of the way, but she wasn’t quick enough. Red-hot steel rammed into his legs and sent him careening to the ground like a bowling pin.
    The sweep of headlights had Gini whipping around. A car pulled over, and a woman jumped out.
    “Are you all right? I called for help when I saw the flames.” She stuffed a cell phone into her pocket. “Let’s get him a little farther away from that.” The woman motioned to the inferno that had become of the car.
    Together, Gini and this Good Samaritan maneuvered Cameron toward the woman’s parked car. He cried out with each movement, and tears streamed down his face. Gini tried not to look at the bloody trail his body had left in the gravel.
    “What happened?” the woman asked.
    “I…I don’t know,” Gini said, although the feeling in her stomach told her she did know. Knew exactly what had happened. Exactly what she had done.
    ****
    Gini snapped awake on the arbor swing, and Saber let out a hiss as he was jostled off her lap. She rubbed the palms of her hands over her face, brushed away the tears that had come in her slumber, in her remembering.
    Cameron had healed, but it had been a painful journey. Multiple surgeries to repair the damage to his legs had him missing most of his senior year of high school. He’d had to repeat it. He and Gini didn’t talk much after the accident. Or incident, as Gini called it.
    She’d gone around for a while denying she had caused the fire that exploded the engine. She went over the scene thousands of times, replayed every angle, analyzed every detail she could remember. The anger was what stuck out in her mind. The words Cameron had said. What he had planned to take from her. But anger couldn’t start fires. Could it?
    Her father had combed through the remains of the car himself, several times, and with forensic consultation. No obvious cause for the engine to blow. No recognizable malfunction with the vehicle. No foul play. Nothing.
    Nothing but Gini’s anger.
    When she’d mentioned her theory to her father, he refused to believe her.
    “Nonsense, Gini. Total nonsense,” he’d