Crazy Dangerous Read Online Free Page B

could tell by the reflection of Jeff’s eyes that he was smiling. “That’s funny,” he said. “You’re funny even now. I like that. You’re a tough little punk, aren’t you?”
    I shook my head. “Not very tough, no.”
    “Oh yeah, you are. You punch me in the face like that? With three of us standing there? You run across that bridge, right into that train like that? You’re a tough little punk, all right, no mistake.”
    “All right,” I said. “I’m a tough little punk.” I hate to admit it, but I actually felt a little proud that Jeff had said that.
    And he went on too. “Really,” he said—kind of earnestly, as if he were trying to convince me of this very important point. “Running into that train? I don’t think I ever saw anything like that before. That impressed me. It really impressed me.”
    I shrugged, trying to hide the fact that I appreciated the compliment. “I’m happy I could bring a little entertainment into your shabby life,” I told him as sarcastically as I could.
    At that, Jeff let out a real laugh, a big laugh. “See, that’s what I mean,” he said, talking to me through the rearview, glancing back and forth between the rearview and the windshield as he drove. “Saying stuff like that? When we’ve got you like we do? That’s tough. I like that. It impresses me.”
    I shrugged again. I wondered if Jeff being impressed meant he wasn’t going to kill me.
    I fell silent for a while and Jeff fell silent too. He drove the growling Camaro along the winding road until we reached a turnoff hidden in the trees. He turned there, and we started heading over broken gravel back up the hill, back to where we’d been before.
    I looked out the side window, past the hulking—not to mention smelly—shape of Ed P. Outside, I saw that we were in deserted territory again. Empty, rolling hills. A spreading dark oak tree with a flat, dark lake underneath it. The sky.
    Not much to see—and no way to escape. I looked away and tried to forget my fear by picking a few more splinters out of my bleeding hand.
    After a while Jeff started talking again. “I’m gonna tell you something,” he said. “Normally, if a guy does what you did, if a guy hits me like that, I gotta do something about it, I can’t just let something like that go unanswered. You see what I mean?”
    I sighed. “Yeah. I see what you mean.”
    “Normally? A guy does something like that to me, I gotta do something back to him, only a hundred times worse, enough times over to put him in the hospital. You can understand that, right?”
    I didn’t answer. I felt my stomach drop. Getting put in the hospital didn’t sound like a happy end to my day.
    “But I don’t know,” Jeff went on. “What you did. The way you were. The things you say. The way you ran right into that train . . .” He gave a kind of thoughtful sniff as he guided the car around another turn. Now we were bouncing and bounding over a dirt road, past trees, hills, more deserted territory. “I like you, Sam,” Jeff said then.
    I couldn’t keep the surprise off my face. Jeff was the kind of guy people feared. The kind of guy people treated politely. It was odd to have him tell me he liked me.
    “I’m serious,” he said. “You’re just the sort of guy I like to have around me. You’re the sort of guy I want on my team, if you see what I’m saying. Really, I can use a tough guy like you.”
    I didn’t know how to answer. No one had ever said they wanted me on their team in anything.
    The car came to a stop. I tried to look out past Jeff’s head, out through the windshield, but I couldn’t see much. Then the doors opened and everyone got out. Harry Mac grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out too.
    The Camaro was parked in a sandy spot, a sort of driveway. There was an old barn in front of us. Brown, unpainted, the clapboards rotten and splintering. Around us was . . . well, nothing. A hilltop. Trees in the distance. No other building or person in