Warrior Angel by Robert Lipsyte Read Free Book Online Page A

pure paranoia, he thought. I wasn’t going over the speed limit and it’s too early for Mom to have called the cops. He could imagine her still in the store, clerks smelling the limitless credit on her plastic cards, fluttering around as she examined a hundred shirts and ties. Been there, done that, too.
    But I’ll have to ditch the Rover, jack or hot-wire another car, maybe mix it up with a bus or train. Got to move fast. Ditch PJ, too.
    â€œDitch me?”
    â€œFind a place to drop you off.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI’ve got a job to do, and I can’t take you with me.”
    She snapped open her seat belt. “Then I don’t care, drop me off here.” She opened the door and started swinging her legs out. He could see the highway flashing past below her feet. Was she testing him, or was she ready to jump?
    He imagined her hitting the highway at sixty miles an hour, leaving a trail of blood and hair until she rolled to a stop as a lump of warm roadkill. One way to get rid of her.
    Convenient.
    But wrong. The Creator would never forgive me.
    â€œNooooo.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her back. It took all his strength to steer and hang on to her. “We’ll talk about it. After you close the door.”
    She closed the door. “Starkey, I’m not going back there. I want to be with you.”
    â€œBuckle up.” When she did, he said, “I’m not promising to go all the way with you.”
    â€œI’m not sure I’m ready for sex, Starkey.”
    He swallowed the laugh. Dumb but pure. One of the true Live Ones, the people the Band of Angels and the Legion of Evil are fighting over. But I can’t lose focus. She is not my Mission, she can only get in the way.
    â€œOkay. Find us a town with a north-south railroad line, rich enough so this baby won’t cause attention when we leave it in the parking lot. You really like Allysse?”
    â€œAlly, call me Ally.” She laughed andsqueezed his leg so hard, his foot jerked on the pedal and the Rover burst into speed.
    He laughed with her, pretended that everything was all right now. “But first, Ally, get us some tunes. Driving music. No opera, no gangsta rap. No Locs ‘n’ Bagels.”
    â€œThey’re over,” she said. “Phony interracial group put together by some music company hustlers.”
    â€œAwww-right, let’s go. We’re off to Vegas to save Sonny.”
    â€œSonny the boxer? But didn’t he win?”
    â€œHe won the fight, but he’s lost. I’ll explain along the way.”
    Â 
    He didn’t explain, of course. You only do that when you want to keep Live Ones off balance, when letting them think you are crazy is in the best interests of the Mission. And then there are the times when you need to step out of your undercover clothes and be a Live One yourself. That’s very tricky, because you might begin to think there is a crazy side to you after all, and you need to take the pills and listen to the shrinks who will bury it.
    â€œHave you been taking your pills?”
    Who am I kidding, how can this work? Live Ones are always trying to control each other. “What’s it to you?”
    â€œWhen you don’t, you sort of…go away.”
    â€œI’m right here.”
    â€œYou know what I mean. I feel I can’t even touch you.” Her hand hovered over his leg.
    He was going to have to deal with this soon, dump the vehicle and dump her.
    Â 
    The Harley Fat Boy was a hard, intense ride. It took all of Starkey’s concentration to keep it moving along the back roads of Indiana and Iowa. Stealing it was easier than steering it. Macho bikers are always leaving their hogs in packs outside bars, keys in the ignition, so sure nobody would dare mess with their rides.
    Ally held him tight, murmuring encouragement as he wove through farm traffic and passed tractor trailers on narrow roads. She seemed so unafraid, so