Doomsday Rebirth novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Wells

Ezra's POV

I had been awake for a minute before Tuck started pounding on the door.

Gillian was asleep against my shoulder, with her hair across my arm.

I lay there and made a list of everything I could find.

Her laugh in the cellar on the first night.

The soup, the axe, the wardrobe, the hand on my chest.

All of it was there.

I could not tell what was missing, and I knew that was the whole trouble with it.

"Boss!" Tuck yelled. "Vans!"

I slid out from under her hair very carefully, and she didn't wake.

I found my cardigan on the floor, the one with the hole, and I put it on.

I stood at the front window of the shop with the shutter cracked open an inch.

Five white vans were pulling up along Lorain Avenue, nose to tail.

Guards in county vests were getting out of them, with batons and a roll of printed pages.

At the front was Dexter Kellington, in a clean polo and a very good watch, with a bullhorn.

He had the same face he'd had at the birthday, the one Gillian said he used when he wanted to be liked.

I had to admit it was an effective one.

"Tuck," I said.

"Boss, we go out the alley. Right now. You said."

"I said it to Gillian."

"Gillian isn't awake."

"No." I buttoned the cardigan wrong, and fixed it. "I'm going to ask you to do something I'd rather not."

He saw it in my face.

Tuck was nineteen, and he had stolen his way through every door in this neighborhood, and for the first time I saw him look afraid of me.

"No," he said.

"Give me ten minutes. Then tell her what I said. That I'm telling her first."

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