Free In Stone by Louise D. Gornall Page B

front desk they won’t need to load every floor with guys, but--” Before I can finish, and for some reason that escapes me completely, he knocks on the door. Calm evaporates.
    “What are you doing? Are you insane?” My heart is hammering through a billion beats a second. “Why did we go to all that effort of sneaking in if you were just going to knock?” I shout-whisper at him. Although there is zero point in trying to be quiet now.
    “I wasn’t going to knock, but I can’t short the keypad. This was our only option. It’s like you said; it doesn’t make sense to have heavy security up here when they have it in the foyer.”
    “That was a theory.”
    “It’s a good theory.”
    He’s a whack-job. A fricking fruit-loop. I start pacing. I’m debating making a run for it, when the door clicks open. I shake out my arms, roll my shoulders, and take a breath in prep for big, burly, gun-brandishing guards. But expectation is quashed. I was right, and instead of more guards like the ones downstairs, we’re greeted by a guy who looks like a pipe cleaner with eyes. He loafs out into the corridor, scratching his head. He can’t be much older than me. His eyes are pink and splotchy. Five bucks says he’s been sleeping on the job. He pushes a pair of heavy-duty, horn-rimmed glasses up his nose and hitches up a utility belt full of big-boy toys. A radio hanging from it crackles with static.
    “Hey,” he greets suspiciously. “I don’t think you guys should be up here.” Jack starts strolling toward him, a move that makes the Pipe Cleaner’s eyes anxious. He reaches down to his belt and snatches the radio. A single press of a button, and we’re toast -- those guys from reception will be up here in a flash. But snap, the crack of a whip, and Jack’s tail flicks forward. The radio falls to the floor and smashes to pieces. The Pipe Cleaner is me, yesterday, all slack-jawed and trying to wrap his head around what he’s just seen. Not even the bleeding gash on his hand from where Jack’s tail has caught can pull him from the trance.
    Jack lunges at him. I’m not really sure what happens next. I see Jack’s fingers pinch around the Pipe Cleaner’s shoulders, the back of his neck. Then the Pipe Cleaner is unconscious, falling into Jack’s chest.
    “You killed him,” I choke as Jack tosses him over his shoulder like a sack of spuds.
    He turns sharply to me with a look of absolute disgust “Beau, I don’t kill people,” he reminds me. “He’s just…resting.” Jack shakes his head, at me presumably, while he walks off through the door.
    I follow them into the room and close the door behind us. The guard is slumped in a folding metal chair. I can’t see Jack. Twenty hours too late, I’m having trust issues. Eyeballing the lifeless guard, I make way over to him. I stretch out my hand and let it hover over his mouth. A jet of warm air breaks against my palm and a sigh of relief escapes my lips, a fraction too loudly.
    “Satisfied?” Jack asks. I pull my hand away and am reduced to kid-being-caught-with-their-hand-in-a-cookie-jar status. I decide to pretend that I didn’t just doubt him. All girlish, I twirl, smile and flap-flap my eyelashes. He’s looking  at rows and rows of metal shelving and several thousand boxes filling them.
    “Holy mountain of mess,” I say. This is our Everest. Jack turns his head to look at me. An eyebrow is poised, and a ghost of a smile sits on his lips.
    “What?”
    “Told you he wasn’t dead,” he almost sings. Apparently, he doesn’t want to play pretend. “We’re going to have to work on your trust issues.”
    “What issues?” I shrug. “I don’t trust you; it’s as simple as that.” I match his smile. There’s that hot hormonal shift again, deep inside my stomach, and of all the things I should be thinking right now I’m stuck with, I haven’t kissed a boy in almost two weeks. I used to kiss Mark every day. We kissed for three hundred and sixty-five days