Read Echols, Jennifer for Free Online Page B

worked a fender bender at the Birmingham Junction, the intersection of the highway through town and the interstate to Birmingham. The Birmingham Junction was famous for wrecks, but this one wasn't even interesting—just a shattered taillight and a couple of infuriatingly polite Japanese businessmen from the car factory.
    We had driven down to the bridge with the headlights off three or four times to make sure kids weren't drinking there. Ides of March my ass. It wasn't bad luck Officer After had caught us at the bridge. He caught us because he haunted that bridge, just as if he were the ghost of someone who'd died there himself.
    We had eaten dinner, or whatever you called the 1 a.m. meal, at Eggstra! Eggstra! I could tell Officer After did this every night. Purcell served him coffee and cooked for him without asking for his order, just like he did for me. Weird that this had been going on in my backyard and I didn't even know, because I usually got off work around ten. While Officer After and I ate, the diner got slammed with the crowd heading home from the demolition derby. Of course Purcell wanted me to take orders and serve drinks while he cooked, and of course I refused. It was bad enough that my parents didn't pay me for working there. I sure as hell wasn't going to work there for free when it wasn't even my shift.
    Purcell actually had the nerve to start cussing at me. I guess he wasn't worried about his job security. Our town offered plenty of jobs for an illiterate, and most of them probably paid better.
    He cussed at me, that is, until Officer After half stood. That's all it took. Purcell suddenly became engrossed in flipping the chopped steak on the grill. Officer After went back to eating like nothing had happened, without looking at me.
    Without talking to me, either. We'd spent most of the night in silence. And when we parked by the highway, cut the lights, and waited for speeders, it was like a game of sleep-chicken. Who would snore first?
    It was torture. I had gotten off work at Eggstra! Eggstra! that afternoon, gone for my jog, and then tried my best to sleep, but come on. I never slept at 3 p.m. And I was too keyed up about tonight. Now Officer After was making me pay. Wasn't it enough to miss spring break of my senior year in high school so I could ride around this town with a cop all night? He didn't have to bore me to death, too.
    No chance of that now.
    "You'll still be able to get out the door," he said. "I've set it so only the back doors are locked and suspects can't get out. And no one will be able to open your door from the outside. Suspects can't get in."
    "Get in?" I echoed as he hauled himself out of the seat with lots of clicks and clanks from the equipment attached to his belt and closed the heavy door behind him with an official-sounding thunk. But he was bluffing, trying to scare me. The blue lights took swipes at the back of his uniform as he walked casually to the rusty Caddy and stopped just behind the driver's door. He bent to talk to the driver through the window.
    And then he slowly reached back with one hand and unsnapped his gun holster.
    Frantically I felt for my cell phone in my pocket. I did not call people, but I pressed the button to call Tiffany at the hospital. We weren't close like we were as kids. We were back to being the tentative friends we'd been since eighth grade. Or maybe a little less, now that I'd caused her to miss her spring break and lose her boyfriend. But at school on Friday, I'd traded cell phone numbers with her when she asked. She'd told me the paramedics watched TV or slept at the hospital most of the night. But they'd warned her that when they did get a call, all hell would break loose. She'd wanted someone she could call to save her in case the speeding ambulance turned over. This was a similar emergency.
    "Hello?" she said sleepily.
    "Wake up," I hissed. "It's Meg. I need you to be on 911 alert. If I scream, bring the paramedics to the highway between