Read Online Bad Hair Day by Carrie Harris - Free Book Online Page B

asked Rocky.
    “I dunno,” I whispered. “Shhh.”
    I stuffed my freezing hands in the pockets of my coat and wandered out into the middle of the parking lot, trying to figure out what had me so spooked. It felt like my whole body was one big goose bump now, and my hands were shaking with adrenaline. I’d learned to trust those instincts before. The worst thing that could happen was that I’d look dumb, right?
    Then I saw a dark splatter on the ground near a white SUVparked at the back end of the lot near the Dumpsters. Normally, random muck didn’t exactly command my attention, but this did. The dark liquid glinted in the dim light.
    I didn’t need to touch it to figure out what it was. As soon as I got close, I could smell the blood. There was another smear on the back of a pickup. Apparently, my poor eyesight didn’t apply to bloodstains, or maybe the adrenaline rush had enhanced my visual acuity.
    Something in the overgrown lot behind the restaurant clanged loudly.
    “Meet me around back!” I yelled, pointing to the right. “We’ll cut it off.”
    Rocky took off like this was an Olympic trial. I hiked my backpack more securely onto my shoulders and circled the building to the left. We’d catch whatever was back there. And do something constructive with it that I hadn’t thought of yet.
    Being a total med geek had its advantages. My pack was stuffed with medical paraphernalia just in case I happened to run across a random emergency.
    “Is someone hurt?” I yelled. It came out as more of a gasp than a yell—I wasn’t exactly a track star. It didn’t surprise me when no one answered. I knew from the amount of blood on the ground that this was a serious injury. The victim most likely was unconscious. You don’t spot bloodstains from a skinned knee at a hundred meters. If you do, you’re a freak. I was a geek; that was totally different.
    I stopped at the chain-link fence bordering the back of thelot. The lot was crammed with junk—snow-speckled boxes and empty pallets competed for space with beer cans and random bits of broken furniture. To make matters worse, it was much more difficult to see back here. The roof of the restaurant blocked all the lights, and we were in that gray borderland between dusk and full night.
    The pavement crunched beneath my shoes as I twisted on the balls of my feet, searching for some sound or smell that would lead me to the person—or thing—that was bleeding. Nothing.
    There was another thunderous clatter from the far end of the lot. It sounded like someone skydiving onto a trash can. But I still couldn’t see anything. The lot was so overgrown that you could have hidden a freaking tank in there and no one would have noticed.
    To go around the fence would waste precious seconds. I sprinted right up the back of a pickup truck parked next to it, setting off the alarm. The monotonous wah-wah noise made my teeth vibrate. Good; maybe it would attract some assistance. Something told me I was going to need it.
    I climbed onto the cab and vaulted the fence before I had a chance to rethink. The fence wasn’t particularly high, but anything requiring physical skill made me nervous by default. My ankle twisted a little on the landing, but otherwise, the Jumping Off Random Objects fairies were looking out for me. I started puffing like an asthmatic in a balloon factory, but I ran on, my head whipping from side to side, looking for blood spatter in the piles of cast-off bottles and half-rotten pallets.
    Finally, I saw it. All the way at the back of the lot was a slowly rolling trash can, and then I could make out a crumpled form against the chain-link fence. The ground shimmered; someone lay sprawled there in a big black pool of goop. It could only be blood, and my heart sank when I saw how much there was.
    That was nothing compared to how I felt when I saw that the victim was Rocky’s boyfriend, Bryan.
    Rocky ran through the gate with my backpack slung over her shoulder. She’d be