Lost in Shadows by CJ Lyons Page A

is the first place they’ll head.”
    “So blowing up my car is like an early warning system?”
    “You’re getting the hang of this, Vinnie. Our best bet is to get to your place before them, relay the message to Washington.”
    “Yeah, but then what? The Preacher’s guys will have us out flanked—this side of the gorge and down below.”
    “I was hoping you’d know more places to hide. It’d have to be better concealed than this.” He gestured to their luxurious accommodations.
    “I know a few, but there’s no Jacuzzi or room service,” she said with a smile.
    “That’s what I was afraid you’d say. Look, I want you to memorize this number, in case anything happens to me.” He wrote down Rose Prospero’s phone number for her. “If you call, they’ll answer, Standard Communications. Ask for Rose Prospero or Billy Price. Tell them The Preacher is planning multiple strikes during the State of the Union address on Tuesday, including ones on the UN, Congress, the CDC, the IRS and Pentagon computers, and the Port of LA. All the details are on that hard drive.” He watched her read the number, her teeth worrying her lower lip as she memorized it. 
    “This is really bad, isn’t it?” she finally said in a small voice. “I mean I knew it was, but I guess it kind of felt, I dunno, like something out of a book or something—not real.”
    Lucky slid down to join her on the floor, wrapped his good arm around her and pulled her close. “This is as real as it gets, Vinnie.”
    She laid her head on his shoulder, and he buried his face in her hair, inhaling the lingering perfume of Ivory soap and wood smoke. Scents that were fresh and innocent, unlike anything The Preacher ever touched, so different from the chemicals that surrounded Lucky back home in his lab. Scents that reminded him of why he did what he did, who he might die protecting.
    He would stop The Preacher, he vowed. Vinnie was going to make it off this mountain alive. Even if he didn’t.
     

 
     
     
    CHAPTER 12
     
     
    It was a familiar dream, one that Vinnie found herself reliving every night. She struggled against it as always, but was helpless to stop it. 
    Michael coming into the convenience store after pumping the gas, his hand brushing against her backside as he passed her to rummage through the candy bars. 
    The grey-haired Asian storekeeper looking at them both with distrust as she caught the bag of M and M’s Michael threw to her. The storekeeper’s nicotine-stained nails tapping the counter, waiting impatiently to finish ringing up their bill, drawing her attention away from Michael for one split second. 
    A warm breeze swept past as the door opened and a pock-faced teenager with reddened eyes entered. His smell, that particular musky-oniony smell of a body overloaded with methamphetamine made the hairs on her neck stand up. Then she saw the sawed-off shotgun in his hand. 
    Michael whirled, alert to her change in mood, the quick movement startling the robber who now stood between them.
    Vinnie was certain that if she hadn’t been there, if it had been Michael alone in the store, things would have worked out much differently. He would have kept his cool, talked the crankhead down, or just bided his time and waited for the kid to leave with the thirty-four seventy from the register, then go after him.
    It was because of her that Michael was dead. She’d seen the look on his face when he saw the kid aim the gun at her—naked, primal fury. 
    The kid had no way of knowing that he was a cop or carrying a gun. It was Michael’s expression that had made the kid shoot. 
    It was over in a heartbeat. Michael never even had the chance to reach for his weapon.
    Vinnie was at his side seconds after he was shot, but a shotgun fired at point blank range leaves a huge crater behind as it rips through the heart and chest. There was nothing she could do except watch Michael’s blood gush through her hands, the light fade from his