Wild Sky 2 by Suzanne Brockmann, Melanie Brockmann Read Free Book Online Page A

happened. “Bullet to car window! Over to the right.”
    The broken windshield belonged to a beat-up sedan parked two slots down from us in the Sav’A’Buck lot. Someone had fired a gun, just once, probably from somewhere near the grocery store’s front doors, judging from that broken front window. Shards of glass made tinkling sounds as they careened off the front of the car and onto the pavement.
    “Gunman at the store door, get down get down get down!” Calvin shouted, and I stupidly turned to look instead of diving onto the floor of his car, and he grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me down just as the shooter must’ve flipped the switch from one shot to massacre , and the gun began going off, popping bullets through the air.
    BOOM BOOM BOOM POP BOOM!
    I braced for them to hit Cal’s car, covering my head as I prepared for a rain of glass, but the man with the giant gun must’ve been pointing it in a different direction, because I heard the ping of punctured metal and breaking glass, but it wasn’t from our car.
    I could hear someone screaming—high-pitched and frantic—even as Garrett yelled, “ What the fuck! What the fuck! Calvin, drive, what the fuck!”
    “Don’t,” I told Cal as I closed my eyes and focused on that glimpse I’d seen before he’d pulled me to relative safety.
    Single gunman.
    Carrying…
    A big gun. And something else…?
    I focused on calling up the image, and yes, he was carrying something under his left arm, some kind of brightly colored sack, with his assault rifle tucked into his right elbow—this tall, broad man, maybe twenty years old, buzz cut, scar above his eyebrow.
    That screaming—it had been a child’s voice. She was silent now, but I realized with a flash that I hadn’t seen a colorful bag but instead the cheerfully patterned clothing of a little girl. That man with the gun was abducting a little girl. And I bet I knew why.
    “Gimme!” I said and reached back to grab one of the water guns from beside Garrett.
    “Sky!” Cal exclaimed. “Don’t—”
    I didn’t wait to hear what he thought I shouldn’t do. I’d yanked my hood up over my head, hiding my red hair and as much of my face as I could, and I was already out of the car and on the asphalt, heading toward the man who was still firing that gun. He was using it not to kill, thank goodness, but to keep the little girl’s family from following him.
    I could see with just one glance that she was unconscious, as he tossed her none too carefully into the passenger seat of his shiny black Bimmer.
    He had a nice car. And I was pretty sure I knew how he’d paid for it—by kidnapping little girls like this one, like Sasha, too, and selling them to the Destiny makers.
    Mother. Effer.
    “ Hey! ” I belted out. But my voice was buried beneath the cacophony of his weapon. I had to move fast, or he was going to get into his snazzy car and that little girl would be gone.
    I took a deep breath and concentrated. Water versus bullets? Not normally much of a contest there.
    But I could do this.
    Couldn’t I?
    Suddenly, I heard Dana’s voice in my head, shouting Fail! Fail! What are you doing, Bubble Gum? You have no backup, you have no plan!
    What was I doing? This was insane.
    Still thoughts. I closed my eyes and pictured Milo. I breathed him, I felt him, I heard him. Still thoughts, Sky. Just let it go …
    And in that moment in which I was specifically not thinking about what I was about to do or what the consequences would be if I failed, I felt and then saw my enormous pile of plastic water pistols—there were sixteen of them total—shoot out from the backseat of Calvin’s car and through the passenger side window that I’d left open. They streamed toward me like metal particles toward a magnet.
    Then, just as quickly, all but one—a little green one—swooped in front of me before lining up and hovering in midair, exactly as Jilly’s remote must’ve hung in midair in Garrett’s living room.
    The little