Her first instinct had been to scream. This, as it turned out, had been a very bad idea. Now more would come. More would find her. She scrambled from the dirty alley ground and darted past the man. She didn't know who he was, but he was after her. He called to his friends, and the footsteps behind her multiplied as she stumbled onto the next street. Headlights reflected in the darkness and momentarily blinded her as she left the sidewalk and leapt onto the street. A car honked, she swerved out of the way and kept going. What had she done? She was no one special, she was an ordinary girl. When she was seven she stole a candy bar from the grocery store and couldn’t sleep for a week she was so riddled with guilt. She would never do anything to warrant a footrace through downtown in the middle of the night.
She made it to the other side of the street relatively unscathed, whoever was chasing her hadn’t made it past the traffic yet. She should win some kind of an award for outrunning 5 young men while wearing heels. Then a hand clamped around her arm and she yelped in alarm as he pulled her into the shadows of the alleyway.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispered.
“Who are you? Why am I being chased?” she asked in a panic.
“Come with me.” He pulled her through a small door at the side of the building and everything was black. She couldn’t see a thing, but felt his hand on her arm. “It’s about your brother,” he explained.
“My brother? He was killed five years ago in Afghanistan,” she told him, her eyes adjusting enough for her to see the outline of his jaw.
“No,” he refused. “He wasn’t.” She looked at him closely, it had been five years, but she knew her brother’s face.
“Cody?” she asked in disbelief.
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