Free Exposed by Judith Graves Page B

into the midday sky and ended the call. A flock of sparrows flittered by, coming to settle in a spruce tree beside the school. I sat on the school roof, watching their antics. I let my legs dangle over the edge and tapped my heels on the brick facade. The lightheartedness I’d felt while talking with Jo slipped away all too easily.
    A week after my sixteenth birthday, and nothing was as I had imagined it would be.
    The warehouse had been sectioned off as a crime-scene investigation. Diesel, Wheels and Thing 1 and Thing 2 had been taken into custody. They’d been exposed for what they were. Users. Men who preyed on the innocent.
    The files we’d saved on the USB drive had also been emailed directly to the police chief. Who would probably set up another investigation to uncover who exactly had fed him information not once but twice in the space of a few weeks. Information that had led to the investigation of several members of city council, police officers and who knew who else.
    I leaned back, raised my face to the sun and braced my weight with my hands.
    Who would have thought a handful of kids could cause so much damage? Or do so much good? And we weren’t done yet. Bentley had eliminated all traces of the warehouse kids from Diesel’s files but had saved them for me. I was slowly working on the list of names. Tracking down the kids who’d left the warehouse. Some had moved out of the city, but a few were close by, and everything I feared about Diesel had come to light. These kids hadn’t been set free; they’d just gone into other forms of servitude, trapped by guys like Diesel or worse.
    If they’d accept my help, I would do all I could to get them out. So far, they’d just told me to get away as fast as I could and not look back. But I hadn’t launched my houseboat yet. There were still things keeping me fixed in place.
    I reached into my hoodie pocket and took out the glass raven Diesel had given me. Remembering everything it represented. I might be staying, but I wasn’t caged. Not anymore. I stared at it for a few seconds, then fired the delicate ornament off the roof. It smashed to the ground and disintegrated into a fine dust.
    A shadow blocked the sun. “Is that what you do when you come up here? Destroy things?”
    Emmett stood over me. He approached slowly, one eye on me and the other on the drop to the school parking lot.
    Stifling a laugh, I sat up and stared out at the day. Emmett sat beside me, slow and steady, as if every movement would send him over the edge. I guessed he hadn’t scaled the wall like I had.
    “Don’t like heights?” I smirked.
    “Hate them with a passion.” Emmett’s tone was conversational, casual, but his rapid breathing betrayed him. The guy was freaked, but he’d come after me anyway. I decided not to ride him too much.
    “Found the ladder, did you?” I asked.
    “Yeah.”
    We didn’t speak for a while, just absorbed the day and the feeling of being close to each other.
    “I guess you’re waiting for me to say thank you.” I shot him a look. “You didn’t have to send your dad, but you did. You could have given him my name, but you didn’t. So thank you.”
    He dipped his head. “You’re welcome.” He cautiously turned to face me. “I still have questions.”
    I nodded.
    “And you’re still not going to answer them.”
    I gave a slow smile as I shook my head. Nope, he’d get no answers from me. But I gave him something, at least. “If you want this to work, you just have to accept that there are some things I can’t tell you.”
    “Or what? You’ll have to kill me?”
    I gave him a pointed stare. “It’s not just me that’s at risk. I’m not going to put you or anyone else in danger. Can you accept that?”
    “For now.” His eyes narrowed.
    I braced myself for more. More questions. More demands.
    Then he sighed. Relaxed. Got lost in the view. He seemed to get over his fear. A bit. “You know, this is amazing.” We stared at the city and