Never Look Down by Warren C Easley Read Free Book Online

hand and smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, now that you mention it, maybe it was an SUV. Wow, I saw more than I thought. Were you a cop, Rupert?”
    He laughed. “Let’s just say I have experience with the criminal justice system. Now, how’s the leg?”
    â€œOkay. I put some antiseptic on the cut and rebandaged it like you told me.”
    â€œGood. Let me see that elbow.”
    She gingerly slid the sleeve of her sweatshirt up and turned the elbow toward him. “It’s sore is all.”
    He took her arm in his big, rough hands and gently flexed it. “Hurt?”
    â€œNo,” she lied, and just for an instant she yearned for her dad with such intensity she thought it might burst her chest. She fought off an urge to crumple into Rupert’s arms and cry.
    â€œOkay. Now go on about your business like nothin’ has happened, Kelly. I’ll let you know how the call goes.”
    Class was over, so Kelly ambled along the river toward the Skidmore Fountain in Ankeny Plaza, gossip central for the kids who hung out in Old Town. When she saw a group gathered at the fountain, some sitting, some standing, but all with backpacks, she was suddenly reminded of the loss of hers. She might as well have lost a limb. She wondered what she could get with the fifty-three bucks she had left. Probably not much.
    They were talking about the murder and hardly noticed when Kelly walked up.
    â€œâ€¦yeah, so me and Mickey walked over there this morning to check it out, you know,” a tall kid everyone called Twig was saying. “The body was gone but the cops had one of those bucket trucks up alongside the building. Looked like they were checking out some piece a tagger had done.”
    â€œHey, I heard about that,” a girl named Mellow chimed in. “Heard some dudes were asking around about who painted that shit.”
    â€œSome guy asked me, man,” a young man using his backpack as a pillow piped in. “He acted like he didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t know. Like I go around studying all the graffiti in this town.”
    Kelly’s stomach dove like a roller coaster. “Was he a cop?” she managed to ask.
    The young man smiled. “Doubt it, man. He said he’d hook me up if I would tell him. Anything I wanted.”
    Kelly’s stomach kept diving. The cops were bad enough, but the thought of the killer looking for her was like a stab in the heart with an icicle. She listened for a while longer, taking some solace in the fact that the moniker K209 wasn’t mentioned. Maybe the killer, and the cops for that matter, won’t make the connection between the piece she left unsigned and her other work. That would mean they’d be looking for other taggers, too.
    Then an even worse thought occurred to her, if that was possible. What if the killer mistakes some other tagger in Portland for her? There was no doubt in her mind what would happen in that case, just like there was no doubt what would happen if the killer caught up with her.
    She slunk away from the group without being noticed, fear and anxiety weighing on her every step. Suddenly Old Town seemed like a dangerous place, and she wanted to go home in the worst way. But she had her weekly appointment with her case manager at three. You better show , she told herself. Like Rupert said, act like nothing’s happened.
    Monica Sayles looked up and smiled as Kelly entered her office at New Directions. Kelly was assigned to Monica when she came to the school eighteen months earlier as a runaway and “habitual truant” with one tagging bust. Monica was demanding at first, but at least she cared. Except for the tagging, Kelly had straightened out, but even with Monica’s influence, she still felt angry and defiant for reasons that were difficult for her to understand, let alone explain. But this much she knew—some girls cut themselves, others threw up, starved themselves, or