“Don’t!”
Megan held the phone out, turning the volume up. “It’s ringing, Gerry. Do you hear it?”
“No!”
“Hello?” Tonya Fletcher’s voice sounded frantic. “Megan! One of my neighbors came over. Her husband is one of the MPs. What is Gerry doing up there?”
Calmly, her breath feeling tight inside her lungs, Megan pulled the phone back to her ear. “Tonya, it’s Megan. I need you to be calm.”
“Calm! My son is up on a rooftop! Where, I’ve been told, you chased him! How can you expect me to be calm! My husband is in jail, my son is in danger, and this is all because of you!”
“Tonya.” Megan made her voice forceful. “We can sort out whose fault this is later. Right now Gerry needs to know that you want him safely down from here. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you! But this isn’t my fault! This isn’t Boyd’s fault! We can’t help how Gerry is! Don’t you understand that? You’ve seen how he is! You’ve seen how he always wants attention!”
Too late, Megan realized that Gerry heard every word his mother said. The rooftop was silent and still, and the tinny voice from the cell phone traveled easily to Gerry’s ears.
“Gerry,” Megan said, covering the phone’s mouthpiece. Before she could say another word, a belligerent voice bellowed up from below.
“Gerald Fletcher, you had better move your sorry self off that rooftop right this minute, mister! Don’t make me come up there and get you!”
Megan recognized Boyd Fletcher’s voice. She was still a half step behind Gerry. The boy wheeled around at the roof’s edge, and fear filled his features. He seemed to regain his balance for a moment. Then his left foot shot out from under him.
Megan was already in motion, watching as Gerry flailed his arms in a doomed effort to regain his balance. He toppled over the edge without a word.
16
United States of America
Columbus, Georgia
Local Time 1:18 A.M.
“Do you even have a little brother?”
Joey felt angry and scared all at the same time. Jenny was acting totally weird. She’s not just mad. She’s scared. Real scared, he amended. But he had no idea what she was scared of.
“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded. Then he wondered if someone who evidently had that much wrong with them could even have a clue that something was wrong.
A car horn blared.
Yanking his attention back to the street, Joey discovered that he had wandered across the center line and was now traveling halfway in the oncoming lane. He pulled the wheel hard, overcompensating as he steered back onto the proper side of the road.
His tires squealed. Another car horn bleated behind him. Bright harsh light flooded his back window, splashing against the rearview mirror and stabbing into his eyes to blind him.
“Let me out!” Jenny demanded.
Eyes tearing, mind scattered, Joey frantically tried to figure out where the street was. He couldn’t even remember where he was, but he knew he was close to the military base. The bright yellow car parked along the street appeared in his view like a ship pushing through a dense fog.
“Stop!” he yelped.
“You stop!” Jenny countered. She slapped him, hitting his arm and the top of his head.
Joey raised the arm blocking the laser beams from the car on his rear bumper to protect himself. The bright lights zapped his eyes again. The car horn behind him blared once more, longer and louder this time.
“Jenny!”
She hit him again.
“Jenny! C’mon! I can’t see! I’m gonna wreck!” And if his mom wasn’t already going to go through the roof, wrecking her car would definitely do it.
Desperately, Joey reached up and twisted the rearview mirror out of his eyes. Almost too late, he spotted the red SUV at the side of the street. He pulled away from the collision course he was on, narrowly avoiding locking bumpers with the SUV. He didn’t even know if his mom’s insurance would go high enough to cover an expensive vehicle like that. And he was certain there wouldn’t have been much of his mom’s car left.
Shifting in the seat, somehow snaking loose from the seat belt, Jenny got a leg up and kicked Joey in the side. “Let me out of this car! Let me out now!”
“Ow!” Joey tried to cover his side. “Jenny, stop!”
“You shouldn’t have lied to me! I get tired of being lied to! Everybody lies to me!”
Man, she’s totally losing it! Tears leaked down Joey’s face. He was hurt and scared and probably madder than he had ever been. From the corner of his eye, he spotted a side street. He swerved the car, somehow escaping the merciless onslaught of the lights from the vehicle and the idiot driver behind him.
Jenny slapped Joey in the head again.
“Stop!” Certain he was out of the flow of traffic now, Joey stomped the brakes. The car came to a rocking halt. He raised both hands and caught Jenny’s wrists.
She kicked him in the face hard enough to split his lips.
“Let me go!” she demanded. “Let me go now!”
“All right, you psycho!” Joey shouted back. “I’m letting you go!” He tasted blood as he released her wrists.
Jenny popped the door release and got out of the car.
In dazed disbelief, still trying to figure out what had just happened and what had set Jenny off, Joey watched her walk down the darkened street away from the car. For a moment, he just wanted to drop the car back into drive and leave her there. But the street looked like part of a residential area. There were no public pay phones around. And it wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where a stranger could bang on a door at this time of night and expect to borrow the
