First to Die by Peter Nelson

Author:Peter Nelson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2023-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

“They had guns?” Sherman said. “Guns? You had guns pointed at you and you didn’t tell us?”

They had met up at Artie’s, a teen hang at the southern end of Graceland. Graceland was an amusement park built at the turn of the century and, the joke went, painted faithfully every hundred years since then. It had a small, not terribly frightening, roller coaster, unless you took into account the maintenance men who worked on it; a haunted house that wasn’t; a fun house that wasn’t, either; an assortment of shake ‘n’ puke rides; and an old carousel with hand-carved and hand-painted horses. Artie’s was a pizza joint, Artois, but everybody called it Artie’s, just outside Graceland’s main gate. There was a picture on the wall inside Artie’s of the owner, Art Yeske, shaking hands with Elvis Presley, who’d visited back in the early fifties and who, it was rumored, had named his house in Memphis after the amusement park. The place was jamming. In the front corner booth Mollie saw Angela Carbajal, surrounded by all the girls who wanted to be like her and all the boys who wanted to be with her, or who wanted to be with the girls who wanted to be like her. Mollie thought it was an odd personality cult, though people who’d known Angela said it’d been like that since kindergarten.

“They didn’t exactly point them at us,” Mollie said. “They just held them, and then they put them away.”

“That’s so excellently cool,” Sherman said.

“And you think they were the ones in the car?” Roberta asked.

“I don’t know,” Mollie said. “I only saw them for a second, but I saw one thin, bald guy and one stockier guy with hair on top of his head. I mean, I think.”

“Maybe Janet was right,” Meredith said. “Maybe it is too dangerous. I mean, if people have guns …”

“What? Are you crazy?” Jaime said. “It’s just getting interesting.”

“I don’t see how they found us,” Mollie said. “Did you notice anybody following us when we left the house on Harrison?”

“I didn’t,” Roberta said. “But if they saw you, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out who you are. Maybe they followed you from Nick’s apartment. Maybe somebody’s been watching you all day.”

“That gives me a creepy feeling,” Mollie said.

“What are you talking about? We’ve been watching people all day, too,” Roberta said. “I believe in the Golden Rule: Do unto others what you wouldn’t mind them doing to you, so if you do it to them first, you got nothing to bitch about if they do it back.”

“But they were looking for Nick, too,” Mollie said. “I mean, I think they were, and we led them right to him. Why didn’t they ignore us and chase Nick?”

“It’s obvious,” Jaime said. “They don’t know what he looks like.”

“You’re probably right,” Mollie said.

“Well, we certainly have to be more careful from now on,” Meredith said.

“Don’t talk to Sherman and Jaime about being careful,” Roberta said.

“What do you mean?” Mollie inquired.

“They went inside,” Roberta said.

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.