Free Silverthorn by Sydney Bristow Page A

would crash into a resident’s garage door.
    I craned my neck to the left, which demanded plenty of control, since if I moved too quickly or too slowly, Darius would twist my head around and crack my neck.
    “Still here,” Darius said with a smirk.
    I didn’t respond and instead tramped down on the accelerator as hard as possible. As the vehicle hit 47 mph, Darius’s hold on my neck slackened. Straight ahead though, I needed to travel only ten more yards before the street curved into a perpendicular street, so I kept my foot down, now going past 50 mph.
    Darius’s grasp fell away, springing my neck in the opposite direction. At that exact moment, I entered the next street, so I stomped on the brakes and swung the wheel to the left.
    Darius’s body bashed against the side of the car before ricocheting into the street. The vehicle’s tires let out a shriek from such a swift turn, but once I evened out the vehicle, I hit the accelerator again and rocketed down the street. I glanced in the rearview mirror as pain sliced through my head.
    About twenty yards behind me, Darius rose to his feet and watched my departure.
    I turned the corner, putting more distance between us. I headed for home in serious need of placing an ice pack against the back of my neck and a good night of sleep. Tomorrow afternoon, I’d attempt to speak with a woman who could help me put an end to all of this torment. I just hoped she’d listen to what I had to say.

 
    CHAPTER SIX
     
     
     
     
    “Why are you dressed like that?” asked a beefy man at the entrance of Angels of Babylon , an upper scale strip club. His eyebrows rose. “All those clothes on you? That just ain’t possible.” He pushed a hand through a scraggly goatee. He closed his eyes and looked at me again. “Must’ve took some bad acid…or something. It’s a bad trip.”
    I shook my head. My neck was a little stiff, but I’d avoided serious injury. “I’m not Alexis. She’s my identical twin sister.”
    The man removed the half-smoked cigar from his lips and chuckled. He slipped a hand across his bald head. “No kidding?” He looked me over and a smile surfaced. “Hey, you’re a mighty good looker. Some nice curves on you. Might want to see the boss, see if you two could do a performance together. Bet our clients would get their rocks off on that. Hell, I know I would,”
    “Tempting offer, but…no way in hell! I ignored his sexist comments and scanned the packed strip club. The classic Whitesnake song “Slide It In” pumped through the surround-sound speakers across the ceiling. Above the stage, canned lights shined down on a tanned, lithe blonde woman who barely looked of drinking age. She wore a short, plaid skirt, white-laced stockings, and a leopard-styled bra that peeked through the white see-through white blouse that she’d tied at her bursting breasts. She removed a pair of glasses and flung them into the crowd. Then she sat down on a chair at the middle of the stage and spread her legs, pushing down her short skirt to prevent the crowd from seeing what remained hidden behind it. Even so, she bent forward, providing the audience with more than a heap of cleavage.
    A few men clapped and a couple others lifted their mugs of beer in salute, while the vast majority chatted or looked on in silence. Half a dozen men stood at the stage railing, waving bills at the woman, a couple of whom stumbled from having drunk too much.
    On my way here, I gave a lot of thought to how my sister ended my life. How do you mentally process something like that? Did I hate her? Not precisely. Did I want retribution? Yeah! How could I not? She’d resorted to that measure in order to protect our mother, but still…I kinda died because of it! Alexis enjoyed irritating me (and everyone else, for that matter), but she didn’t seem to have any interest in killing me…or anyone. Given that rationale, I wasn’t sure if I didn’t hate her because I didn’t have any family and I