Free Between the Cracks and Burning Doors: Book 2 of The Extraction List Series by Renee N. Meland Page A

the men, I understood why Maureen had wanted to make sure I knew who they were. As seemingly civil as Officer Keegan had been, the first thing I saw him do when he stepped out was throw a soda can at a stray dog.
    We stayed there until Maureen had pointed out every one of them. The last piece of trash who called himself a police officer started whistling at a girl walking by. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen. When she didn’t look up, he called her a cunt and spit in her general direction.
     
    I had a drug deal to do that night, so I asked Maureen to drop me off where I was supposed to meet the customer. She just rolled her eyes. “Cain, I can’t be seen with you. If I wanted the strung-out freaks to know who I was, why would I need you?”
    She did have a point.
    I shut the car door hard behind me and watched as she drove off back to her house. Once she was out of sight, I started walking in the opposite direction of the police station. I was supposed to meet my customer in the back storage room of a warehouse.
     
    When I slid silently through the back door, I was surrounded by tall wooden crates stacked to the ceiling. A bulb burned dimly overhead. I smelled old paper and fresh paint, and I had to fight off the lightheadedness that came with it.
    The woman emerged from behind the crates; long green dress, shiny fabric, something Maureen would wear. I had no idea why she’d wanted to meet in a warehouse; she couldn’t have worked there in that outfit. Then I saw her bodyguards.
    Three men with muscles barely contained by their shirts emerged from the same dark corner. My guess was they were the ones who worked at the warehouse. She was just there so they could keep an eye on her.
    I’d met her before, but never at that place. She’d been very easy to deal with the last couple times I was around her. I had no idea why she would think she would need bodyguards, until I counted the cash she gave me. “This is only half. Where’s the rest?”
    One of the men spoke. “She doesn’t have it. You’re gonna have to give her a discount today.”
    Maybe it was stupid. Maureen probably would have told me it was stupid. But drug deal or not, fair is fair. And I needed that money. When I pictured Nick, Felix, and Alexis’s smiling happy faces, cheery in spite of cereal and apples for dinner, I knew what I had to do. And I was not in the mood to negotiate. “Sorry, fresh out of discounts. No money, no heroin.”
    The men tightened around me, and the woman stepped away. The second man spoke. “You sure about that?”
    The third man: “Look kid, just give her the drugs.”
    My grip tightened around my switchblades. “No.”
    As they stepped toward me from all sides, my knives seemed to fly out toward them on their own, as if they knew their job was to save my life. The first man, bigger than the other two, didn’t pay them any attention until I slashed through the skin on his forearm.
    It didn’t slow him down.
    His heavy body pounded toward me. I kicked my leg forward and made contact with his groin. He clutched himself as he fell.
    I felt the whisper of the second man’s hands moving swiftly threw the air toward my neck. Before they could get there, I thrust the knife backward and into his right thigh. The tight, thick muscle seemed to swallow the blade whole.
    As the third man charged toward me, I gripped my other knife and held it in front of me. The woman was screaming behind us, but it sounded distant, as if from another place entirely. I shouted to him, told him not to come closer, but he had already reached my side. He grabbed my knife arm with his paw, squeezing so hard the tendons felt as if they would rip apart. He threw me toward the ground and my blade went skittering across the floor.
    Suddenly I was back in the basement, my father hovering over me, grinning, taking pleasure as he broke my bones and tore my flesh. The man’s face leaned toward me, whispered something to me, but it was my