1616955880 by Joy Preble

Author:Joy Preble [Preble, Joy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery / Young Adult
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2016-02-24T16:47:52+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Dallas, Texas

Present

The nightmare was always the same. First Emma was talking to Charlie.

“There must be an antidote for it,” he would say. “Some way to counteract, like for poison.”

She would tell him, “No.” And her heart would pound, and then she’d start smelling smoke, thick and acrid. They would row back from the island. But she would lose her shoes, and her feet became slick with coated mud. Every time, she slipped on the grass and fell heavily to her knees.

The dream shifted then to the museum. “Hurry!” she told Charlie. “Oh, God, Charlie. Hurry.” The smoke assaulted her lungs. Flames had engulfed everything. In her dream, she ran faster, pulling ahead of Charlie, the heat of the f ire drawing her forward in spite of her fear.

“Stop!” He grabbed her arm. “You can’t.”

She wrenched her arm away. Flames were shooting through the roof. From inside she heard one long, thin scream: her mother. She grabbed the door handle, and her hands blistered, though she couldn’t feel the pain.

Her family was dead. “But they drank the tea,” she would say over and over, willing their charred remains to return to life even as the horrible truth sank in.

Only this time the dream was different. This time, the smell of smoke didn’t fade. Nor did the heat in her lungs. There was a shrill sound in the background, punctuated now by a pounding, a f ist slamming against something over and over.

Emma’s eyes f luttered open. She was coughing. She was awake.

The air reeked of smoke.

Now. Here. In her apartment. In Dallas.

“Shit,” she said. “What?” She was on her couch, laptop open next to her. She’d been researching after talking to Meehan. She must have drifted off. So what was with the f ire alarm? And the pounding—

Wait. Someone was at her door.

“Emma O’Neill!” a gruff voice shouted. “I know you’re in there. Open up!”

She stumbled over to the door and threw it open. The knob wasn’t hot; wasn’t that a good sign? In her half-awake state, she saw Detective Pete Mondragon of Albuquerque, New Mexico, standing in her smoke-f illed hallway. For a moment Emma thought she was still asleep. He wore jeans and the brown Carhartt f leece-lined jacket that always made him look like an aging cowboy.

“O’Neill,” he barked, tapping the cement f loor with his square-toed boot for emphasis. “Your place is on f ire. Let’s go.”

Emma blinked a few times. Pete? Why is Pete here?

People were running up and down and she could hear sirens outside. The smoke stung her nose and eyes and tickled her throat, and she felt panic grow into something the size of a basketball in her chest.

Pete reached for her hand. “Emma, we need to go.” He punctuated this with his own cough.

Emma stepped into the hallway, and her head swam suddenly. She nearly collapsed into Pete’s arms.

“You are not going to freeze up on me, got it, O’Neill?” he grunted. He tightened his grip around her, nudging her back inside.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.