Destined to Die (The Briar Creek Vampires, #3) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse by Jayme Morse Page B

with me. Besides, I wanted to go back for it that night
so that something like this wouldn’t happen, and you said
no.”
    “Going back for it that night would have been
dangerous,” Gabe intercepted, his voice calm. “There’s not much we
can do about it now except hope that we’ll figure out who took it,
if anyone did. What exactly was in the bag, anyway?”
    “Umm, mostly stuff that Austin gave me.” She
tried to recall everything she had been carrying in the bag the
night of the festival. “I know I had his journal, the code to
figure out what he had written in his journal . . . and some old
book.”
    “A very important book,” Austin said through
gritted teeth. “But you’re right. There’s nothing that we can do
about it right now. We need to figure out who has it first. Let’s
get out of here before someone sees us.” He led them back to the
car and climbed in.
    As Lexi struggled to buckle her seatbelt,
Austin pulled off the back road and onto Main Street. The Briar
Creek Halloween festival had been held on the street days ago, but
candy wrappers still covered the sidewalks and the smashed
Jack-o-lanterns hadn’t been cleaned up yet. Lexi guessed that it
all had to do with her; by disappearing the way she had, Lexi had
changed the lives of the people in Briar Creek. Some of them were
going to die soon if they didn’t get her blood, so they had
probably been too panicked to bother making the town look pretty.
Some of them might not even live to see it another day.
    Lexi would almost feel guilty. Almost. But she
couldn’t bring herself to feel any guilt knowing what they had in
store for her.
    Austin brought the car to a slow halt at a
traffic light, and Lexi felt a weird feeling form in the pit of her
stomach. When she glanced out the front windshield, she immediately
knew why.
    The red truck that was stopped in front of them
looked familiar . . . really familiar. It belonged to Greg
Lawrence.
    Lexi felt her heart freeze in her chest as it
skipped a few beats. “Austin?” she could barely hear herself
whisper, keeping her voice quiet as though Mayor Lawrence could
hear her from inside the truck in front of them. Then again, he was
a vampire, so for all Lexi knew, his sense of hearing could be
heightened and he really could hear her. Lexi still had a
lot of learning to do about vampires and the powers that they
possessed.
    “I know,” Austin whispered back, obviously
aware of what she was going to say next. “Shit.”
    “I knew Dan was a little weasel,” Gabe muttered
under his breath.
    Austin turned and looked at him. “We don’t know
this has anything to do with Dan.”
    “This has everything to do with Dan,” Gabe shot
back. “If he were doing his job, Greg would still be at Violet’s
house right now so that we had time to get the back instead of
sitting in front of us.”
    “Something must have happened . . . something
out of his control. We’re jumping to conclusions. Let’s just hope
that Greg doesn’t see us,” Austin replied.
    “I told you we should have gotten the
windshield tinted,” Gabe said. Lexi noticed that his voice sounded
less calm than usual. It was obvious that he was
panicking.
    “Well, it’s too late now,” Austin replied
coolly. “Besides, like I told you, it would have drawn more
attention to us. No cars in Briar Creek are fully tinted. The back
window being tinted is distracting enough. Just act
natural.”
    “Look, just stop arguing,” Lexi chimed in,
sinking further down in her seat. “We don’t need to fight right
now. We need to focus on not getting seen.” She kept her eyes glued
to the truck in front of them. It felt like the red light had
lasted forever.
    When the light finally flashed to its bright
shade of green and the Mayor’s truck began to pull forward, Lexi
held her breath as she watched him glance into his rearview mirror.
When he continued to drive and his facial expression didn’t seem to
register that he knew they were in the car