Edge of Dreams Read Online Free Page B

beneath his skin.
    “I don’t think so. God, I hope not.” She wiped away a couple of tears. “Sorry. I don’t usually break down. I just thought maybe here he’d have a chance to be a normal kid. If only I’d—” She knotted her hands.
    “If you’d what? Look, the boy’s a teenager and he’s trying to be a man. You took him from a bad situation and set him up in a better one. You’ve been a better parent than his own. What more could you have done?”
    She grimaced and just shook her head. I understood. Guilt wasn’t that easy to shrug off. I pushed in a different direction.
    “The cops know he’s your family? And they still won’t go looking for him?” I really shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d bounced off the corruption in Diamond City so many times that I practically had a PhD in bureaucratic greed. All the same, however corrupt law enforcement was, they tended to look after each other’s families.
    Lauren looked away. “I begged,” she said. “But like I said, Trevor had a juvenile record before we came here. I’m a new face and they think I’m just a silly woman without sense enough to realize that he’s off doing what he wants to do.” She drew a breath and let it out, nodding. “That’s true enough. He is off doing what he wants to do, but that doesn’t mean he’s not in trouble, and it sure doesn’t mean I’m going to sit around waiting for his body to turn up.”
    I didn’t bother telling her that it was a rare thing for anybody to be brought up out of the tunnels, unless it involved some sort of mining accident. Those people the Tyet dumped there tended to be lost forever.
    I took a breath. It was up to me. If I didn’t find him and his friends, they were likely going to die, if they weren’t dead already. Two days is a long time in the mines.
    Unless they’d nulled out their trace, I’d be able to find them fairly easily. That wasn’t what bothered me. The location of the Sparkle Dust minerals was a closely guarded secret, one that those in the know were willing to kill for. On top of that, the method of converting them into the drug was a complete secret. If the kids knew, they were dead meat. With all that, looking for them became a serious risk. If we were caught, we’d be up shit creek without a paddle or a rubber ducky.
    I caught myself. Was I really going to do this? I hated tight spaces. I rarely took elevators, and going into the subway sent my heart into overdrive. I usually came out soaked in sweat. Literally. The mine shafts would be a lot worse. Could I handle it? I jeered at myself. Better question was, could I live with chickening out and letting five kids die when I could have done something about it? The answer to that was a big hell no .
    If I was going to do this, I was going to need help. The most convenient and quickest option was right here in the diner. I twisted around. Dalton was still brooding at me beneath lowered brows. I waved at him to come over. His brows rose, but he complied.
    “How fast can you get gear together to go into the mountain? There’ll be two of us—” I pointed to Lauren and myself. “Plus whoever you want to bring, and one more.” I’d call my brother, Leo. A metal tinker would be useful in the mountain, especially Leo. Rocks talked to him, or so he said. I didn’t know what that meant, but it couldn’t hurt to have him along. He spent half his time underground.
    Dalton scowled. “You can’t go into the mountain. It’s suicidal.”
    “Yet I’m going,” I said. I gave him a long look. When he neither spoke nor moved away, I shook my head. So much for trying to trust him. “Fine. I’ll find someone else who’s willing.”
    I thumbed my phone on and hit my Contacts button. I knew where to get the gear, but finding backup was going to take time. More than I had. That meant it was just going to be me, Lauren, and Leo, though I was rethinking calling him. Without Dalton and his crew, we’d be sitting ducks. We