Finding Honor (The Searchers Book 1) Read online

  Finding Honor

  The Searchers, book 1

  By Ripley Proserpina

  Finding Honor

  The Searchers, book 1

  © 2016 Ripley Proserpina

  Published by After Glows Publishing

  PO Box 224

  Middleburg, Fl. 32050

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-944060-24-4

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-944060-25-1

  Cover art by: Leanne Louise with Bound 2 Books

  Formatting by: AG Formatting

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  AfterGlowsPublishing.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  About the Author

  Finding Honor

  Love finds her in her darkest hours…

  Nora Leslie’s twenty-year existence revolved around one thing—survival. A split second decision under a hail of gunfire saves the lives of her students and alters her own forever.

  When she wakes in the hospital, Nora finds herself a suspect in the worst tragedy to ever strike her small college town. Thrust into the spotlight as the villain, instead of the hero, she is in desperate need of allies

  A chance meeting introduces her to Ryan Valore, a young law student searching to outrun the guilt of his past. With the world turned against her, Nora accepts his aid, and the help of his roommates, a group of guys with pasts as dark as her own. For them, Nora is everything they never believed they deserved.

  One

  Manifesto In Action

  Each time Nora agreed to substitute teach at Alexander Twilight High School, her past bitch-slapped her.

  She saw herself at sixteen, scratching out her calculus homework with the nub of a pencil at the corner table in the cafeteria. There she stood in the line, keying in her code to get free lunch.

  Substituting wasn’t the worst job she’d done, and though it didn’t pay much, it fit in between the shifts she worked at the college and mini-mart. She never turned up her nose at work, minimum wage or not.

  Besides. She took a deep breath, inhaling the combination of marinara and cleaning agents. Lunch is included.

  The seven hours she spent at her alma mater gave her the opportunity to challenge her under-utilized brain. She supervised the study halls, and taught lower level math and English classes. Even if she had to follow lesson plans, she got the chance to help confused students and problem solve. It made her feel useful, a contributor to society, more so when she considered her current resume read, housekeeper: Brownington College, and, cashier: G’s Deli and Mini-Mart. Maybe in her next life, she could be a teacher.

  It was her own fault she wasn't. When she was a teenager, she should have been applying to schools, considering scholarships. But hindsight was 20/20 or whatever.

  How the hell was I supposed to go to college when I could barely afford rent?

  She shook her head, arguing with herself did nothing to change her present and it put her in bad mood, especially when her past felt the need to toss in mental pictures from an album she liked to call, My Childhood was Shit.

  She flipped her inner monologue the bird just as a bag of chips flew past her nose. Grateful the bag wasn’t open, she ignored the food. However, flying food was a precursor to cafeteria chaos, so Nora uncrossed her arms and pushed her shoulders back. At twenty years old, only two years older than the seniors, she tried to project a confidence her five foot two frame didn’t offer naturally.

  Was authority correlated with height? She hoped not.

  A moment later, a bottle of water was thrown to the same table where the chips landed earlier. Unfortunately, for her and the pitcher, the top wasn’t on, and the water released in a beautiful arc illuminated by the midday sunlight.

  Crap.

  Sighing, she hoped the other cafeteria monitor, the one who worked full-time, would take the lead, but…. nope… the woman tapped away on her phone. Nora waited a moment longer, and she swore she saw the woman glance her way before purposefully walking in the other direction.

  After glaring at her retreating figure, she met the interested gazes of the kids at the offending table. Their eyes were wide, but they all wore shit-eating grins. Some laughed at the dumbass who’d thrown the bottle.

  Nora knew him. He was a good-natured kid; she didn’t need to read him the riot act. He watched her approach warily, as if her presence simultaneously put him on edge and humiliated him.

  Here goes.

  “Hey Pete. Can you get me a mop from the janitor?”

  Snickers around the table made the boy flush before his lips pinched and his eyes went hard. She stifled a groan.

  “Why don’t you get it yourself?”

  “Pete…”

  “Seriously?”

  “Please go get it, Pete.” Nora shook her head. “Then get to class.”

  He curled his lip at her and opened his mouth to argue, but he never got a chance. An alarm echoed shrilly off the cafeteria walls and the secretary’s voice came over the intercom, “Clear the halls. This is not a drill. Clear the halls.”

  His face went from cocky to childlike. Clear the halls meant someone in the school had a gun. Her heart pounded and her vision tunneled.

  She was going to die. She was going to die, and her life sucked.

  The kids knew to hunker down and get really quiet. They practiced for this. She’d practiced for this when she was in school.

  Even as a high school student she’d never believed it would happen. She might have practiced the drill, but she’d spent the time reading her book, ignoring everyone until the secretary announced, “Halls are secure.”

  Now she wished, instead of getting lost in vampire stories, she'd used the time to devise an escape plan, because here she was with a room full of kids to keep alive.

  Nora looked at the cafeteria doors. There was no way to lock them. Every new
s article she’d read about school shootings seemed to happen in the library and the cafeteria, but these doors wouldn’t keep anyone out. Inside her, something clicked. Her brain and body primed for a fight, taking in information, making plans, discarding them, and creating alternatives.

  “Pete,” she said quietly. “I want to move the tables in front of the doors.”

  The boy’s face was completely white. She saw how his lips trembled, but he swallowed hard and nodded. He whispered to the boy next to him and they all stood, pulling their trays silently from the table and placing them on the floor before releasing the levers to fold the table in half. They pushed it toward the doors, the wheels squeaking obscenely loud as they maneuvered it in place. Students observing on the other side of the cafeteria began to do the same.

  Part of her noted how quietly everyone moved, how they seemed to pull together. She heard quiet whimpers and sniffles, but no screaming. The sense of resignation in the room was even more frightening than chaos would have been.

  As she scanned the room, Nora happened to meet the wild eyes of the other lunch monitor. The woman darted from place to place. She pushed her body under a table before pulling herself out and running to another place in the cafeteria. It took her only a moment to realize what she was trying to do.

  Hide.

  Good idea, but the cafeteria was wide open, bright. There was nowhere… Her gaze alighted on the kitchen.

  “Get them to the kitchen!” She pointed, each word punctuated with a gesture in that direction, but the woman continued to stare blankly. She tried again. “Get the kids in the kitchen!”

  The woman still didn’t respond, but the girl who’d been sitting next to Pete whispered Nora's directions to her friends. The students streamed into the kitchen, and one of the lunch ladies lowered the metal partition dividing the serving area and the cafeteria.

  Pete and his friends managed to get two folded tables in front of the doors, locking their wheels in place. Hopefully it would slow the shooter long enough for the police to arrive.

  As the group of boys began to walk/run to the kitchen, she heard pop pop pop from the hallway. It was so innocuous. It could have been a can of paint dropping off a ladder, or a tray of soda cans falling off a dolly.

  The students didn’t scream; they moved faster, pushing a bit to hurry the kids in front of them.

  Nora tried to remember if there was an exit out of the kitchen. Did trucks deliver there? Should she file them out?

  Once those tables were knocked aside, or climbed over, or shot through, the shooter would have easy access to them.

  All these lives rested on her shoulders; she would get them out of here and to safety, or they died. She followed behind them, herding them, waiting for the last student to squeeze inside the kitchen before she went in after them. She closed the swinging door and fumbled for a lock. There wasn’t one. Of course.

  “Are there exits?” she asked one of the lunch ladies.

  The woman she asked was older, haggard. She had lines around her mouth like her lips were perpetually puckered around a cigarette, and with a flash, her mom’s face popped into her mind. Nora pushed it out.

  The woman nodded, pointing with a steady finger to a door next to the pantry.

  “No!” one of the girls whispered, grabbing her arm. “What if someone’s waiting outside? We should stay here!”

  “I’ll go out first.”

  The girl shook her head, over and over.

  Nora extracted her arm gently. It felt cruel when the girl held onto her so tightly, but she needed to move, to act. She was out of options and somehow she knew, if they stayed where they were, they would die. The girl tried to clutch her sleeve again, but one of the other students grabbed her, holding her arms at her sides and enfolding her in a hug. They held each other, comforting each other.

  “I’m going to make sure it’s safe,” she told them, her voice toneless but carrying over all of them.

  Everyday sounds still emanated from the kitchen: the clattering of silverware in the dishwasher, a beeping somewhere indicating something finished cooking. The world continued like nothing was happening.

  No one argued with her again. The students and staff accepted her directions like she was in charge, and she supposed she was. The twenty-year-old no one, suddenly granted the power of life and death decision-making status.

  Gunshots echoed through the school again, but this time it was followed by the sound of breaking glass. The shooter was getting closer and Nora was running out of time.

  She pushed her way through the students. They stood so close together the most each person could do was lift an arm, shift a wrist, or crane a neck. She arrived at the door breathless, like she had run a mile and not walked ten feet.

  Walking through this exit wasn't just accessing the outside. It was jumping out of a plane, or diving off a bridge. Whatever was on the other side might, or might not, kill her. She gripped the bar in her hands, and slowly pressed it in. It squeaked like the tables had. If she survived, she’d buy the school a case of WD-40 so they could grease all their hinges. The lock mechanism caught; she could push it open now.

  So why didn’t she?

  This could be her last moment, her last millisecond, on Earth. Behind her an intake of breath and a stifled sob spurred her to action.

  Now.

  She opened it a crack, putting her face to the gap, and squinted against the bright sun. It was a beautiful day. She saw the blue of the sky, a huge red dumpster, a couple of cars, but nothing else. Scanning quickly, she opened the door a fraction wider, looking all around before easing her head out.

  No one.

  She pulled her head back quickly. “It’s safe. Let’s go.”

  The kids began to move toward her and she held the door open.

  “Run,” she told them. “Hide.”

  She heard a slam from inside the cafeteria. Everyone in the kitchen jumped, a collective lurch toward the ceiling. They moved faster then, one after the other, exiting and then disappearing. All of them stayed quiet. She heard the cafeteria door slam, over and over. She heard what must have been the tables crash to the floor and then the gunfire. One of the bullets pierced the partition, and for the first time, someone cried out. It was real, right behind them, a nightmare come to life.

  “Go go go!”

  She pushed them, grabbing arms, sleeves, belt loops, pulling them toward the door and pushing them out. The kitchen door finally swung inward.

  It wasn’t fast, like she expected. It opened slowly. She saw the black muzzle of the gun. She waved desperately at the people left. Next she saw a gloved hand, holding the door so it didn’t swing back on the shooter.

  Her brain slowed, taking in each detail and spitting out thoughts.

  He is very tall.

  Why is he wearing gloves when it’s so warm?

  Then there he was. A man, tall and broad, his face covered by a ski mask. Nora didn’t recognize him, but he fixed his gaze on her.

  There was a whimper, and his head swiveled toward the sound. The gun swung away from her. Gunfire followed the sweep of motion and Nora startled, watching one of the lunch ladies collapse.

  “No,” came the whisper, and the gun swung back at them.

  She met the wide, tear-filled gaze of a student.

  “I don’t want to die.” The girl’s voice was high and young, and she stared at the gun.

  Nora lurched forward, grabbing the girl and twisting, pushing her ahead. She saw the girl tumble out the door as the world shifted. She heard the pop, felt a burn, and then louder and longer, more gunfire. She tried to run toward the door, but her body wouldn’t obey her commands. She heard a sound like a train roaring by her, and felt the wind whip past her face. She blinked and found herself staring at the yellowed laminate tiles and the bottom of the pantry door.

  How did I get down here? Then everything went black.

  Two

  Fault

  Nora didn’t have a lot of experie
nce with hospitals. In her birth family, if someone got hurt, then too bad for them. Ignoring injuries made them go away.

  So she was willing to admit, even after a week at Brownington Medical Center, she didn’t know the ins and outs of patient care.

  The voice inside her, the one all about self-preservation, screamed something was wrong. The nurses took her pulse and asked her what level of pain she was experiencing.

  Scale of one to ten? A million.

  Which face represents your discomfort? The frowny one in the pit of fire.

  Nora wanted to be weaned off the morphine cocktail immediately, so she had no one to blame but herself if she hurt. She didn’t want to be tempted into the haze of oblivion. It was her mother's favorite place to be. It left Nora afraid of the consequences if she stayed on the drugs. She wouldn't care if she were hungry, or if there was electricity. It was better to muscle through, and not start a habit she was genetically predisposed to have.

  So she dealt with the pain, and asked for the prescription dose of Tylenol.

  No one at the hospital liked her decision. In fact, and this was what had Nora’s radar alerting, they treated her with a kind of high-handed disdain. The nurses were efficient, but they communicated to her only the most basic information. At first, she didn’t understand what she’d done to earn their contempt, but it became all too clear when the first detective visited.

  Of course the police wanted to question her. After all, she came face to face with the gunman at the school, and she had a pucker on her stomach and furrows across her sides as enduring reminders of what happened.

  Except, she still wasn’t sure exactly what happened, and even when she asked, no one would tell her anything. She had no TV, no phone, and no contact with the outside world besides the detective and nurses.

  Nora lifted her hand to rub her forehead, sucking in a breath when the IV pulled at her skin, and then wincing at the zinging pain the quick movement caused. The door opened, and she glanced at the clock. It was too early for the nurses, which meant another visit from the police.