Read Between the Cracks and Burning Doors: Book 2 of The Extraction List Series for Free Online

and I couldn’t imagine adding to it. But I needed to help Nick, plain and simple, and if she was as dangerous as he said she was, I needed a weapon to do it.
    I took careful, defined steps toward the door. The only sound I heard was my shoes tapping against the wooden floor.
    By instinct, I started walking toward the cash register, like any other time I found something I wanted in a store. Only this time, the items happened to be hidden in each of my pockets.
    I made a sharp left toward the door.
    He made brief eye contact with me and I almost cracked. I felt words of apology try to burst from my lips and I had to will my hands to remain at my sides instead of throwing the knives on the counter and running out the door.
    The shopkeeper must have known. My hand reached for the doorknob when I heard a deep voice behind me. I could hear the spit and age rattling in his throat when he said, “Hey, kid.”
    I turned.
    “Take care of yourself, okay?”
    Maybe it was something in my eyes. Maybe my hand shook more than I thought. But that old man knew that I was desperate for something, and he decided that I needed it more than he did. Despite his business falling apart around him, he let me walk out with something that belonged to him.
    I nodded as I slipped out the door.
     
    Nick was waiting on the porch. “Hurry, she may not even be there anymore. If you want to meet her, we gotta get moving.”
    I fell in step with him as we headed farther down the street. “Where are we going anyway?”
    “Birch Street, right at the edge of town. She lives in a big white house. Three stories tall. Really pretty.”
    “The house or the woman?”
    Nick’s cheeks flushed. “Both, I guess.”
    Nick was a good foot and a half shorter than I was but he moved his little legs as fast as a mouse running from a cat. I had to practically jog to keep up with him.
    We passed right by a police officer and my stomach cramped. I guessed I would have to get used to the feeling that I could get caught at any moment. I swore I could feel him staring at me. My face had to be on every news channel and in every paper by now. I could feel him searching for the face of the wanted teen.
    But whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it, and we kept moving. Nick didn’t speak the whole way. Every once in a while, he would look up at me, but I pretended not to notice. He kept his hands gripped tightly around the straps on his backpack.
     
    Nick hadn’t been kidding about the house. Like everything else in town, the paint was peeling off, and the porch looked like it had seen better days, but the majesty of the house itself was still there under the mold and worn shutters. A big red door stood at the top of the stairs, a mouth waiting to swallow us whole. “Well, we’re here. I hope you have more of a plan than just me getting you here. If that’s it, then your plan kinda sucks.”
    I scoffed. “Thanks.” But I couldn’t help but smile a little. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out.”
    I hoped I was right.
    We were about to climb the porch steps when the big red mouth opened and a woman in a sequined blue dress burst through it. The strap on one side barely clung to her shoulder, and the armholes sagged so low that I could tell she wasn’t wearing a bra. The skirt of the dress dragged behind her on the ground, but she stood tall, holding the front of it in her hand. “Nick! Hello, my darling. Please come here.” Nick took small steps up the porch toward her. I followed.
    When she reached him, she bent over and, holding his face in her hands, placed a gentle kiss on his forehead. “Who’s your friend?”
    “This is Jack. Jack, Maureen.”
    My breath caught in my throat. I don’t know what I had expected Maureen to look like, but the woman in front of me definitely wasn’t it. Barely sixteen, her dark green eyes stared at me, looking me over from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head. Her lashes were so long that I swore they swayed