Read Online The End of Tomorrow by Tara Brown - Free Book Online

sobbing and wanting to kiss the ground, but I shook my head. “Kiss American soil when we get home. Right now, we gotta go.” I started to run at a light jogging pace back to the car with the dead driver. I grabbed my cell phone from my clutch in the backseat and dialed 9-1-1.
    “JESUS CHRIST, EVIE! WHERE THE FUCKING HELL ARE YOU?” Coop was calmer than I had imagined he would be. He was only screaming and swearing, not threatening to kill me himself.
    “Running back to the Burj Al Arab in Dubai.”
    “OH THANK GOD, YOU’RE STILL HERE! YOU SCARED THE HELL OUT OF ME! WHERE ARE YOU? I WILL COME AND GET YOU!”
    “Just stop freaking out. I can meet you on the beach by the hotel. Bring a boat that can take about fifteen teenagers in bad shape.” I clicked the phone off and continued running. I opened my Google Maps and put the hotel into the link. We ran through the side streets and across main intersections. They were dressed in sheets and blankets and not one person stopped for us.
    No one cared about the group of people who were clearly injured. Not that it would have done a fucking bit of good. I would have killed anyone who stopped as it was.
    When we made it to the beach I almost started crying too. The sand and rocks on my feet were soothing and amazing, like a sign that I might actually make it back alive with the kids—the kids I couldn't turn and look back at. The kids I didn't want to mother, regardless of the desire I had to do it. I just couldn't. The horrors in my mind, lurking behind my eyes, were too fresh. I needed a minute and a drink and maybe some heroin.
    But I didn't get any of that.
    I turned and pointed at the seawall along the beach. “Sit there and talk to no one. Unless I come, you are a shipwrecked group of sailing kids who are awaiting your parent chaperones. That's your story.”
    One of the boys nodded, giving me a look. “Who are you?”
    “Someone who can sneak you in and out of countries without telling anyone. That's all you need to know.” It wasn't even the truth. If I was honest I would have hugged them all and cried about their wounds and made them a tea. That was more who I was. The bitch who killed all those men, that bitch wasn't me. She was a trained assassin who came out when I needed her. Her only demand was that I looked the other way when Gustavo Servario unbuckled his pants.
    It had taken us half an hour to get to the beach so I had to pray that Coop would hurry and arrive any second before the most dangerous men in Dubai figured out I had stolen their precious imports.
    I paced the beach, repositioning the guns in the back of my dress and attempting to flush out images that were burned into my retinas.
    I forced myself to look at them, all of them. They were a straggly looking bunch of teenagers. It was the horror movie version of an Abercrombie and Fitch commercial. I could have cried but I didn't. I focused on the fact that they were alive. Yes, the worst things that could be done to a person had been done to them, but they were alive.
    The girl I had rescued first was sitting on the far edge. She had a look on her face that told me I hadn’t found her sister in the group. I flinched when I thought about the plan forming in my head, but when a boat came along the harbor, I knew I had to go back. I had to. Coop and Luce hit the wharf with intensity, running down the beach. The kids behind me cowered, but I ran to the two people racing for us. Jack stayed with the boat, talking on the radio. Luce and Coop both wrapped themselves around me, hugging hard. Luce trembled when she spoke, “Quite the find, Evie.”
    “You have no idea.” I glanced back at them. “You have to get them out. They need to be taken back to US soil, now. You guys need to go, before they find out they’re gone.”
    Coop gripped me, trying to get me to look at him. “Are you okay?”
    “No.” I shook my head. “I will be when they’re gone and there is no chance of them going back.