Touch (Denazen #1)(2)

Pulling my cell from my back pocket, I groaned. One a.m. If luck was with me, I’d have enough time to stumble home and tuck myself in before Dad got there. I hadn’t meant to stay so late this time. Or drink so much. I’d only agreed to go as moral support for Brandt, but when Gilman started running his mouth… Well, I’d had no choice but stay and put up so he’d shut up. I had a rep to worry about, after all.

By the time I hit the halfway point between the field and the house—a shallow, muddy stream I used to play in as a child—I had to stop for a minute. Thumping beats and distant laughter echoed from the party, and for a moment I regretted not taking Brandt up on his offer to walk home with me. Apparently, that last beer had been a mistake.

I stumbled to the water’s edge and forced the humid air in and out of my lungs. Locking my jaw and holding my breath, I mentally repeated, I will not throw up.

After a few minutes, the nausea passed. Thank God. No way did I want to walk home smelling like puke. I shuffled back from the water, ready to make my way home, when I heard a commotion and froze.

Crap. The music had been too loud and someone must have called the cops. Perfect. Another middle-of-the-night call from the local PD wasn’t something Dad would be happy about. On second thought, bring on the cops. The look on his face would be so worth the aggravation.

I held my breath and listened. Not sounds coming from the party—men yelling.

Heavy footsteps stomping and thrashing through the brush.

The yelling came again—this time closer.

I crammed the cell back into my pocket, about to begin what was sure to be a messy climb up the embankment, when movement in the brush behind me caught my attention. I whirled in time to see someone stumble down the hill and land a few feet from the stream.

“Jesus!” I jumped back and tripped over an exposed root, landing on my butt in the mud. The guy didn’t move as I fumbled upright and took several wobbly steps forward. He’d landed at an odd angle, feet bare and covered in several nasty looking slices. I squinted in the dark and saw he was bleeding through his thin white T-shirt in several places as well as from a small gash on the side of his head. The guy looked like he’d gone ten rounds with a weed whacker.

Somewhere between eighteen and nineteen, he didn’t look familiar. No way he went to my high school. I knew pretty much everyone. He couldn’t have been at the party—he was cute. I would have remembered. I doubted he was even local. His hair was too long, and he was missing the signature Parkview T-shirt tan. Plus, even in the dark it was easy to make out well-defined arms and broad shoulders. This guy obviously hit the gym—something the local boys could’ve used.

I bent down to check the gash on the side of his head, but he jerked away and staggered to his feet as the yelling came again.

“Your shoes!” he growled, pointing to my feet. His voice was deep and sent tiny shivers dancing up and down my spine. “Give me your shoes!”

Buzzed or not, I was still pretty sharp. Whoever those guys yelling in the woods were, they were after him. Drug deal gone south? Maybe he’d gotten caught playing naked footsie with someone else’s girlfriend?

“Why—?”

“Now!” he hissed.

I wouldn’t have even considered giving up my favorite pair of red Vans if he hadn’t looked so seriously freaked. He was being chased. He thought having my shoes would somehow help? Fine. Maybe as a weapon? Rocks would have worked better in my opinion, but to each his own.

Against my better judgment, I took several steps back and, without turning away from him, pulled them off. Stepping up, I tossed him the sneakers—and teetered forward. Instead of trying to catch me, he took a wide step back, allowing me to fall into the mud.

My frickin’ hero!

I struggled upright and flicked a glob of mud from my jeans as he bent down to snatch the shoes—without moving his gaze from mine. His eyes were beautiful—ice blue and intense—and I found it hard to look away. He set the sneakers on the ground and poised his right foot over the first one. A giggle rose in my throat. No way he’d be jamming his bigass feet into them.

He proved me wrong. Cramming his toes in, heels poking obscenely over the edges, he wobbled with an odd sort of grace to the embankment and wedged himself between a partially uprooted tree and a hollowed-out log. He teetered slightly as he walked, and I remembered the nasty gashes on his foot. Great. Now on top of borrowing my kicks, he was going to bleed all over them.

My gaze dropped to the spot he’d been standing. It was dark and the moon had tucked itself behind the clouds so I couldn’t see very well, but something about the ground didn’t look quite right. The color seemed off—darker than it should be.

I squinted, bending to brush my fingers along the dark spot, but more rustling in the woods had my gaze swinging hard left, heartbeat kicking into high gear. The next thing I knew, a group of four men exploded from the brush and came storming down the embankment like ravers on crack. Dressed in dark blue, skintight body suits that covered them from fingertips to toes, little was left to the imagination. Mimes. They reminded me of mimes.

Mimes with what looked a lot like Tasers.

“You!” The one in the front called out as he skidded to a stop. Looking at the ground, he surveyed the trail leading to the shallow water. “Has anyone been past here?”

From the corner of my eye I saw the boy, face pale, watching us. All the men would have had to do was turn to the right and they’d surely see him.