Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 109245 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109245 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
“You ready to do this?” His friend asked.
Not at all. Gage nodded anyway.
A plastic bottle was pushed into the center of his chest. He tried to stop his hands from shaking as he twisted the top.
He drank the water in three loud gulps and motioned for another.
“You’re gonna’ be fine,” Roz said. “Let me wash up and change, then we can go.”
Fine, huh?
Fine was a word people used when they didn’t want to tell the truth.
This is about to go horribly wrong.
Roz’s old Lincoln rumbled beneath him as cars flew past, tires skidded, and horns honked endlessly.
Gage sat angled toward the window, focusing on not cataloging every sound the way his new, screwed-up brain wanted to, and instead replayed what he was going to tell his parents.
He was leaning toward some version of the truth.
He’d tell them there was a program that recruited inmates. And he’d taken a deal to work for a nameless agency, that may or may not be affiliated with the government, in exchange for the remainder of his sentence. He’d confess to the experimentation to explain the vision impairment.
Then he’d explain that he escaped when he found out the organization was corrupt…and it was why he wouldn’t be able to stay with them.
He’d tell his father not to investigate the anonymous agency, or write his congressman, not to go on the news, nor write to the prison warden.
Gage had a sinking feeling the Ravens wouldn’t hesitate to eliminate a self-righteous preacher on the West Side of Chicago threatening to expose them.
His heart leapt into his throat when Roz took a hard right, and the shotgun on the floor in the backseat knocked against the base of his seat.
“Can you please drive a little less erratically?” He gritted.
“Relax, G. I’m just making sure no ones tailing us. We’re deep in the West Side, and I’m on a hit list, remember?”
They circled the block twice before Roz eased to a stop.
“We’re across the street,” he said.
Gage turned his head toward his parent’s house.
In his mind, it was as vivid and detailed as ever—the narrow porch with three steps he used to clear in a single jump, the chipped white railing and sun-faded blue shutters he had to paint every few years, and the small yard edged by his mother’s flowerbed.
“Does the lawn look okay?” he asked softly.
Roz was quiet for a second, as if he hadn’t expected that question. “Yeah.”
“Is the sidewalk salted?”
“Looks like it.”
“Are the trash cans at the curb. Tomorrow is pick up.”
“Gage,” Roz said gruffly, as if he knew how much this was killing him.
He used to complain about hauling those cans, pulling weeds in his mother’s garden every Saturday morning in the summer, and shoveling the snow during the dreaded winters.
He’d taken that peaceful existence for granted.
It’d been a mundane life, but it was safe.
Chicago Theological Seminary classes Monday through Friday. Bible study on Wednesday nights, volunteering at the food bank on Saturdays. Church on Sunday mornings. And quiet family dinners each night.
He’d been so desperate to get a taste of “real life” that he’d ignorantly walked into a pit of fire, not thinking he’d get burned.
He’d just wanted to make his own decisions and not have to do exactly as his father instructed. Make how own mistakes.
Mission accomplished, Gage.
“You ready?” Roz asked.
“Yeah,” he whispered, reaching for the door handle.
Before he could touch it, his mother’s familiar voice floated across the street, sweet, respectful and so unexpected it knocked the air out of his lungs.
“Thank you both so much for coming,” she said. “I think this is a wonderful cause you’re fighting for.”
His father’s deeper baritone followed, full of that pulpit conviction Gage had grown up with.
“There needs to be changes in the penal system,” his father said. “It’s not right what happened to my boy. He was a good man. A Christian man.”
Another male voice answered, smooth and calm. “A lot of men trapped in the system are good. It’s why we started our prison reform program, Pastor Harrington.”
Gage went still. He knew that voice.
Recognition struck like a shockwave as a cold ripple slid down his spine.
Roz leaned over him as if he were trying to get a better view out of the window. “There’s two guys talking to your folks.”
“What do they look like?”
Roz sucked his teeth. “Umm, they’re not facing us. They’re tall, kinda built, I think. I don’t know, they’re wearing heavy coats.”
“They said they’re doing some kinda prison reform,” Gage whispered.
Roz’s gasp was loud near his ear. “You can hear them?”
Gage shushed him as footsteps scuffed along the concrete.
“What color are their suits?” he asked.
“Why does that matter?”
“Just tell me,” he snapped.
“Uh…I dunno,” Roz said slowly. “Like a…dark green. Blackish green. It’s dark. I can’t see their faces, and they’ve got hoods on. They sure don’t look like any Mormons I’ve ever seen.”