Free Shades of Gray by C. Dulaney Page B

onto my shoulder and grabbing my bow, shaking like a drug-addict going through withdrawal. It wouldn’t dawn on me until later that it had indeed been strange, not getting a response from Waters or any of the Guardsmen at the prison. Again, hindsight is twenty-twenty.
    “Are we done here or what?” I finally asked, interrupting the men. Even my voice was rattled.
    “Yeah, Kase, head on back. Get some rest. We’ll take care of this mess in the morning,” Michael replied with a dismissive wave.
    I dipped my head and made myself scarce, brushing past Mia in my hurry to the stairs.
     
    * * *
     
    “This ain’t good,” Jake said to himself.
    He’d been watching the others from the roof through a pair of binoculars, but Kasey was the one who’d drawn his attention. Ironically, the runners’ screams hadn’t been what had woken him up. It’d been the fight coming from Kasey’s room earlier. He had listened from the other side of his bedroom door. After hearing the girls leave, he’d gotten dressed and went up to the roof. He had known he wouldn’t be needed for this particular situation. After what had happened earlier, and the small things he’d been noticing from Kasey in previous weeks, Jake wanted to observe her, see how she’d react, and interact.
    He’d gotten his answer.
    Jake sat in one of the old lawn chairs they kept up top, bent low so he was barely visible from the ground. If Kasey knew he was spying on her, she’d rip him a new asshole. He watched her come down from the wall, watched as she walked down the gravel drive, and as she looked once over her shoulder before disappearing onto the porch. In Jake’s opinion, she looked very much like someone hiding something. A secret, a plan? Or a sickness perhaps. Jake didn’t like the thought of that.
    He leaned against the back of the old chair with a sigh, dropping his binocular hand to his lap, and stared out over the expanse to the wall. Jonah and Abby had stayed to finish their shift, and Michael was walking Mia back to the house. Both of them were motioning in the direction of the prison as they talked, which forced Jake’s eyes reflexively to the right. He twisted in his seat, eyes narrowing as he noticed something the two on the ground couldn’t from their low vantage point: flashes of light, white and orange, dancing along the horizon.
    “Well,” he muttered, slowly rising and raising the binoculars back to his eyes. “This ain’t good either.”
    There was only one thing in that direction: the prison. Any light bright or large enough to be seen from the former country club was a bad sign considering there were a few ridges between the Winchester clan and Blueville Correctional’s soldiers. After watching for several minutes, Jake began to notice that the white flashes were quick and random, resembling muzzle flares from heavy arms fire. The orange flashes were more of a glow than a random burst, making Jake think of fire. He lowered the binoculars, looked back at the wall, then looked back to the horizon.
    A group of runners, here. Gunshots and fire, there.
    “Ah, hell.”
     
    * * *
     
    “I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.”
    I paced back and forth in my room in the dark, my hands in my hair. Gus sat next to the desk, his head moving back and forth, watching me as I made laps. “Right, Gus? I’m not like Shannon, am I?”
    I don’t want to end up like her.
    “You already are,” Ben said. He was hovering in the corner next to the closet.
    My hair was sticking out in odd directions, a result of being yanked here and there for the last twenty minutes. My forehead was damp with sweat; my eyes bloodshot. The shakes had left, so that was a plus. Unfortunately they’d been replaced by rapid breathing and overactive sweat glands. I’d stopped in the middle of the floor, looking down at Gus, trying to get my breathing under control, when I heard stomping in the hallway outside my door.
    “What the hell’s going on