Unstoppable: Truth is Unstoppable (Truth and Love Series) (20 page)

VICTORIA

“It’s not too late. You can still tell me the truth.”

“I already have.”

Jace looks at me. Then he opens the cell door and steps into the hall. I follow him.

DEREK

Plan Two. Affectionately called the Quick or the Dead. Cause if we ain’t quick, we are dead.

Sabrina doesn’t head inside. Instead, she stays on the sidewalk, a bit to the left of the building, and stares out at traffic as if waiting for a bus or something.

I put on my sunglasses and grab the hoodie from the back seat. I put it on, which is agonizing in the heat. I flip the hood up on my head, which is even worse. I tighten the drawstrings. It feels like I just stuck my head in a fireplace. 

Just as we planned, William comes out. I had called earlier and said I was a Corps soldier. I had explained that new evidence just came in regarding his father’s case and said it’s being processed but will be available at 2PM. I said he should hurry if he wants to see it first.

Looks like William wants to see it first.

I sit up straight and, though this is the part Sabrina and I have rehearsed over and over last night, I hold my breath. 

“Please,” I whisper. “Please work. Please, please work.”

William heads to the sidewalk. He doesn’t bother getting his car; the Steel Tower is a short walk away. He goes about ten feet before Sabrina suddenly pivots and heads toward him.  And then bumps into him so completely that it throws him off balance and he has to step back to keep from falling. He whips his head around as she keeps walking. 

“Hey,” I hear him yell.  His hand goes up to his chest. 

Sabrina breaks out into a run. William does the same. Sabrina didn't just bump into him. She lifted his wallet. Quickly. Sloppily. I saw it from a mile away.

And so did William. 

I open my car door and go after them.

<><><>

She races down the street, William hot on her heels. I'm behind William, doing my best to keep pace but, at the same time, not get so close he'll be able to see or hear me but not lose them altogether. My ankle is already on fire. It's a tricky thing.

“Stop,” William yells. “Stop her!”

No one does. She keeps running. He keeps chasing her. His dress shoes smack against the pavement and his suit jacket flares out around him. His arms pump strongly. 

Suddenly, a guy comes out from a side street. He's wearing running shorts and shoes but nothing else. Earphones are in his ears. When he collides with William, they both go flying. I grimace as they land. William goes down so hard he actually rolls several times before stopping. A small black item goes bouncing.

It kills me to do it, but I kick my run up a notch. While William is getting to his feet, while the runner is helping him up and saying over and over how sorry he is and helping dust off William’s jacket, I race to that small item, bend down, and pick it up. I don't stop running.

VICTORIA

I don’t stop walking.

My body shakes. My skin goes cold.

It kills me to do it.

But I don’t stop moving.

DEREK

Buildings are a blur in my peripheral vision. My breathing is sharp and quick. Just a few more blocks to go. Less than three. Just a few more and I'm there.

“Stop!  Freeze!”

I don't know what I'm more surprised at. The fact that a Corps soldier—a real, honest-to-God Corps soldier—just screamed at me, or the fact that he actually said stop and freeze. Just like in the movies.

I kick my gear up another notch. A cramp in my side is killing me. He must have heard William yell for help, maybe he even saw that little black square go flying and saw me pick it up. I don't know. Either way, a soldier is chasing me. Holy shit.

I hear his footfalls and I know he’s close. I try to make a sharp turn but my foot slips out from beneath me. I start to go down. And then I feel his hand on my shoulder. 

Instinct kicks in. I spin around and my arm is already up, my fist already formed, and my body already coiled to attack. My hand swings out, but the guy is standing too close to me and he brings his own arm up before I can make contact. He pins my hand on my chest and shoves me against a car. Lightning shoots through me as he presses on my cut.

I grab the guy's hair with my free hand and pull to the side as hard as I can. It creates a bit of space between us and I can finally shove him back and push myself from the car. I swing at him again, and this time I make contact. His head whips to the left, but just as quickly, his own fist hits me in the jaw. My sunglasses go flying off my head. He manages to land two more punches before I can hit back. It's becoming a brawl and I'm losing fast. My hood falls back. Adrenaline is making me sloppy, not sharp, and my damn leg is throbbing. The guy swings again and this time, it's hard enough to throw me completely off balance. I crash to the cement.

“Quit it, kid,” he huffs out. He kneels down, pinning my arm in the process. I flail and try to hoist him off, but he's heavy. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a walkie talkie. He flips it open, at the same time yelling at me to stop moving.

In a desperate, last ditch effort, I buck up and swing out at the same time. It kills my shoulder; the angle I'm at is all wrong. But I surprise him. I connect with the bridge of his nose and it causes him to rear back. Blood shoots out immediately. His walkie talkie goes flying. I hear it hit the ground and shatter into pieces.

I claw my way to standing position; the soldier is doing the same. He's cupping his face and I see blood seep through the cracks of his fingers.

I can't believe I’m fighting with a Corps soldier. A part of me wants to ask if he's okay, but another part of me needs to get the hell out of here. I try to run, but he tackles me like a linebacker. We land in a heap. I wriggle my way up, so his hands are grabbing at my jeans. And then—in hindsight I won’t believe it—I kick him. I kick him twice and he lets go. I worm away from him and I'm running.

I don't look back.

VICTORIA

I step into the courtroom. She’s a dragon atop her mountain. She breathes fire as I approach. I stand before her and only look back once. Then I turn from Jace’s stare and face the monster before me.

DEREK

My lungs are on fire as I run down the street. Everything hurts. I retrieve my phone from my pocket and dial Sabrina’s number. I whisper-yell as I hear her answer, “I just punched and kicked a soldier!”

“Holy shit. Are you joking?”

“No!”

“Jesus, what were you thinking?”

I take an agonizing breath and slow my pace, but not by much. I can hear sirens. “I wasn't thinking, Sabrina. Obviously. I just needed to get away.” A siren explodes in the distance. Seconds later, another one, from a different direction, joins it. I duck between two dumpsters. “Shit, I still can't believe I did that.”

“It's okay. You're okay. Just get the hell out of there.”

“Are you on the T?”

“Yeah. I'm halfway to the mall right now. Jeez, did you have to attack the guy?”

“He would have caught me otherwise and I'm too damn close. I can't give up now. I just can't. I feel like we're at the tipping point here. I'm not about to turn back now. Not after everything we've done.”

“I understand. Be careful.”

“What about Matthew?” Matthew, the runner who slammed into William. “Is he alright?”

“Yeah, he texted me. He's waiting for you at Strawberry Way and Smithfield.”

More sirens. I see a Corps truck speed past me. I press myself further back. “Alright.  Text him. I'll be there in less than two minutes.” I take a breath. “I'll call you as soon as I can.”

“Be careful.”

I hang up with Sabrina and quickly take off my hoodie. My body is screaming as I duck in and out of building doorways, making my way to Matthew. The sirens have intensified in the last five minutes.  My heart is pounding and adrenaline is making me practically cross-eyed.  But then I see Matthew’s car. He's behind the wheel, reading a magazine, looking as calm and relaxed as can be. When he sees me, he smiles and waves. I throw myself on the backseat floor just as the Corps Canine Unit passes us. And then we're on the road.

And William's iBullet is clasped safely in my hand.

VICTORIA

The judge looks at me. “I've reviewed the case file. And let me say, for the record, I did so because Captain Pearce requested it, though I’m not sure why. However, I respected his request because he has an impeccable record. But frankly, I'm not impressed.

Victoria Elizabeth King, I find you guilty of murder. You are hereby sentenced to death by firing squad at 9PM this evening
. 

Court adjourned.”

DEREK

Matthew locks the front door as we step inside. The tightness in my chest finally relaxes...a bit. I collapse on the couch. 

“Thanks, man,” I say. “What you did today, that was incredible. Thank you.”

“I just bumped into a guy. Don't worry too much about it.”

I give him a look. He did more than that. He lifted William’s iBullet and threw it far enough away for me to grab. And when he tried to retrieve it, Matthew grabbed his jacket and kept swinging him back, pretending he was just trying to help dust him off.

“Still, I couldn’t have gotten this without you.”

He grins. “Too bad me and Sabrina are such a sucky pickpockets. Otherwise we could've avoided the whole chase scene."

It's true. Last night, when Sabrina and I were practicing, she was so awkward and obvious, a wild monkey would've been more discreet. And Matthew was even worse.

So I used it to our advantage.

"Yeah, well, we worked with what we had," I say. "By the way, Sabrina's alright. She's at the mall."

Matthew nods and heads upstairs, telling me to call him if I need him. I give him a small wave as he leaves then I place the iBullet on the table. I double-tap the top and like a volcano eruption, red shoots out. Millions of pixels fan out four feet wide and three feet tall. More pixels emerge from the lower half to shoot a keyboard onto the table. I set my hands on the home keys.  I press a button.

User ID and Password
.

Okay. I think for a moment and type in William for the user ID and King for the password. I'm not even surprised when a big fat error sign comes up.

Great.

VICTORIA

DEREK

I've been going through it almost all afternoon. My head is killing me. I've called Sabrina about ten thousand times to help me but she never picked up. I texted her. She never answered. My ankle is throbbing and I down six aspirin. It barely makes a dent.

“Shit,” I say, throwing the thing on the table. I bang my elbows down and drop my face in my hands. Massaging my temples, I think back to just a few months ago. It was finals week and I was studying my ass off for my neuro class. I pulled an all-nighter and by morning it still hadn’t gelled. I took a shower, hoping it would wake me a bit, when suddenly, while I was shampooing my hair, I had a pure eureka moment. It was like my brain synapses were finally firing and every one hit bull’s eye. Not only did I ace that test, but I did it in record time.

I shove my chair from the table and head to the bathroom.

<><><>

“What are you doing?” I ask as I come downstairs.

Matthew turns to me but doesn’t look up from William’s iBullet he has in his hands. “Sorry, man. Just wanted to get a close-up look at what the big deal was.”

I walk in the dining room. Water is dripping down my neck from my wet hair but other than that, you’d never guess I took a shower. I had to put back on my stiff, filthy clothes because Sabrina’s friend is apparently an eight foot monster. The clothes in his closet were about four sizes too big for me.

“Have you heard from Sabrina at all?”

“No, but she’s pretty flighty. She goes for days without answering me when I call or text. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” He hands me the iBullet. “I’m gonna head out. Talk to you later.”

I frown at his words. Sabrina may not answer him when he calls, but she's always answered me. I pick up my cell and dial her again. It just keeps ringing.

Great, I'm getting about as far with Sabrina as I am with this damn iBullet. The two-minute shower I took did absolutely nothing. I don’t feel more energized, I don’t feel like the brain synapses are firing. Or if they are, they’re shooting blanks. In fact, the only thing the shower did was make me feel more desperate and frenzied. It feels like I wasted five hours in there.

“Alright,” I mutter, staring hard at the iBullet, as if I could glare it into submission, “this is it. This time, you will open. You have to open.”

I take a breath. Double-tap the top.

A billion pixels fly out of it.

The entire set up has changed.

The home screen is up, file folders and a trash bin, too. Every icon is a 3-D model of itself and with a gentle tap from my fingers, I can move them anywhere. To the left, right, behind me. A big E is floating above the table like a nucleus.  I touch it with my pointer finger and all at once, that E transforms into a list of names and accounts and subject lines. 

I'm in William's email.

I lick my lips and sit up even more. I scan every subject line, looking for anything interesting. It’s too much to hope that I’ll find one that says
Everything You Need to Know to Give to the Corps to Prove Victoria’s Innocence
but I still hope. As I get to the center of the page, I notice a folder on the left hand side. Victor King.

No, it couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. I tap on it and a new list of subject lines appear.

Now, I’m in Mr. King’s email.

I scroll and hurriedly go through them. Toward the middle, I see it. 

Subject: Answer this now!

I click on the message and my eyes widen as I read a letter from a guy named Martin Grammor: 

You asshole! You ruined my life! I fucking hate you and your entire family. I want you to know that I trusted you and you will surely burn in hell for abusing that trust. We all depended on you and now, when I need you most, you fucking betray me. How would you like it if I promised you something and then, whenever you needed it most, I told you to go fuck yourself? That's what you did to me, you scum bag. That's what you did to me and are doing to other people and families too! WE HAVE FAMILIES!!! All of the people you are fucking over have FAMILIES! And you should be ashamed of yourself. I hope your children know what a lying asshole they have for a father. I would want to know if my father was a cheat. You are a son of a bitch and you'll get what you deserve. I hope you're happy. And I'll see you at the other end of my gun. 

I sit back, feeling like the wind was just knocked out of me. The other end of my gun? I can practically feel the vehemence of the email, the anger and bitterness. I immediately pick up my cell phone and dial Sabrina's number.

She doesn't pick up.

I toss my phone aside and read the email again. At the bottom, Martin Grammor has an automatic signature. His name, his phone number. Perfect. I enter the phone number into reverse directory and an address immediately pops up. 64 Voelkel Avenue.

I reach over and grab my cell but remember the stupid thing doesn't even have a screen. I toss it aside and reach over for my real cell phone. I bring up my GPS and type in the address. Excitement flows through me at this break, at this undeniable proof that the Corps really wasn't looking as hard as it should've been, that it really just honed in on Victoria because she was convenient.

But this Grammor guy—he’s more than convenient. He's angry. He's threatening. And he has a gun

I send the email to my own account then I push my chair out and grab Lucas's car keys.