Read Online All for One by Ryne Douglas Pearson - Free Book Online Page A

curve of the safety glass.
    “HELP!” Mary screamed, recoiling board straight in her seat. She heard a pop and a hiss, and her car dipped to the left front.
    “You let them do it!” Chuck shouted as he stalked back to the front of the Jeep and smashed the right headlight, then laid two solid hits upon the polished blue hood.
    Mary pressed the horn with both hands and screamed, “HELP! HELP! SOMEBODY!”
    Chuck squeezed the handle of the switchblade and jabbed it with force into the right front tire and sawed back and forth until the nose of the Jeep had settled all the way to the rims. Moving past the passenger window he pounded the top of the car again and again, the fury of a madman unleashed.
    “HELP! Somebody!” Mary thumped her fist on the horn and swiveled in her seat to watch her attacker. “Please!”
    The right rear tire went down, and then the rear window exploded inward in a thousand crystalline shards. Chuck stuck his head through the opening and wailed, a high shriek that collapsed into a guttural growl. Mary put her hands over her ears, but she heard him say plainly, “You’re gonna die, bitch!”
    She looked away and reached for her bag, just as the last tire began to collapse. The keys. The keys. No. I had them in my hands. I opened the door. Where are they?! Her hands moved the bag, felt the cool leather beneath it, back in the crevice where seat and back met. Not there!? Damn! Where are they?! Flat tires or not, she could drive. Ruin the rims. Who gave a damn? Just get away from him. From this lunatic. Please. Where are my keys?
    Two almost casual taps on her window drew Mary’s attention from her search. Her eyes flared, and she could feel the blood draining cold from her head. Chuck Edmond stood just outside the window, his nostrils expanding with each massive draw of air, his hair askew, tears staining his cheeks.
    “Please,” Mary pleaded, and began to lean away.
    Chuck Edmond screamed at the sky and shattered the driver’s window with a single blow of the aluminum bat.
    “NO!” Mary cried out as she scampered across the center console to the passenger seat, back against the door, feet thrashing toward her attacker.
    “He was just a kid!” Guy Edmond’s oldest brother said, and threw the bat aside, taking the switchblade in his strong hand. He reached in for the lock and said, “You fucking bitch!”
    “NOOOO!”
    “FREEZE!”
    Chuck Edmond’s head swung left. A gun pointed at his face from a few yards away.
    “Drop the knife!” Dooley ordered. “Now! Drop it, Chuck!”
    The seventeen year-old’s eyes narrowed.
    “Now!”
    The blade fell to the asphalt. Dooley stepped close and grabbed the teenager by his collar, dragging him to the front of the car and forcing him onto the unnaturally low hood.
    “She’s gonna die,” Chuck said, twisting his head to see into the front of the Jeep. “YOU’RE GONNA DIE!”
    Dooley holstered his weapon and pulled cuffs from a holder at the back of his belt. Others were now approaching from the main building. “ You almost died, Chuckie.”
    “Fuck you! Who the fuck are you?!”
    Dooley snapped the cuffs over Chuck’s wrists, extra tight. Someone could loosen them later. He took a fistful of hair and made the junior man of action look sideways, away from his intended victim.
    “You’re Miss Austin,” Dooley said loudly, and thought he saw a nod somewhere through the adrenalin inspired shivers and the spiderwebbed windshield. “Are you all right?”
    A more defined nod this time, then the hands came up and covered the face, the interlude of composure gone as if never there.
    “Oh dear God,” Veta Nelson said upon drawing close enough to see the debris and the young man in handcuffs, and through the shattered window the devastated form of Mary Austin. “Mary!”
    “Would you check on her?” Dooley asked, and the fiftyish woman hustled to the car. Several more people followed and helped Mary out, taking her to a nearby Suburban to be