The Battle for Jericho Read Online Free

the living room. She’s a year older than Dad, but she’s petite, and her shoulder-length hair doesn’t have any gray, so she actually looks a lot younger. There was worry in her eyes as she approached, but I could see anger just beneath it.
    “Jericho, thank God. We were worried to death,” Mom said, taking me by the shoulders. She looked me over, as if to make sure my body wasn’t missing any parts. “Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you answer your cell phone?”
    My cell? Damn it. I patted down my pockets. Nothing. “Oh. I guess I lost it.”
    “You guess you lost it? You guess you lost it?” Dad’s voice cracked with incredulity. “What the hell is wrong with you? You know how much that thing cost me?”
    I knew exactly. He paid all of nine bucks for my cell when he finally consented to add me to the family plan. But that was hardly the time to point out how cheap he was. I immediately dropped my chin to my chest in a show of regret, hoping that would get me a little mercy.
    “Where were you, honey?” Mom asked. “This isn’t like you, staying out so late and not telling us anything. Where were you?”
    Okay. Something was seriously wrong here. The world had been off-center since I walked out of school six hours ago, and it now seemed to take a further drastic lurch away from reality. My eyes went blank. I couldn’t think.
    Dad rapped on my forehead with his knuckles. He was not gentle about it. “Did… you… hear… your… mother… boy?” he intoned, fingers working as if signing to the deaf.
    “London, stop,” Mom said, irritated. She steered me away from him. “Jericho, this is serious. You know the rules. You’re supposed to let us know where you’re going. And you have a curfew. I called Maclin, and he said he hadn’t seen you since you left school. Now I want you to tell me where you were and what you were doing.”
    My heart started thumping in my throat. The extra blood didn’t help my brain at all. “Uh….”
    “Okay, that’s it.” Dad took me by the ear and strode off down the hall. Bent at the waist, I had to trot in his wake to keep from losing the side of my head. Dad pushed open the door to my room and dragged me inside. He pulled me slowly around, forcing me to sit on the bed before freeing my ear.
    “You are grounded, boy, until I say otherwise.” Dad disconnected my Xbox and snatched it up. He unplugged my DVD player and confiscated that. He spotted my MP3 player and nabbed it. Then he looked around for anything else that might entertain me. The place was now pretty barren. He and Mom had taken my computer out two months ago when they discovered I had bypassed the parental locks and made several downloads from the Playboy website. On my desk was a spread of cards where I had started a round of Solitaire. Dad gathered up the cards and stuffed them into his pocket.
    “You go to school, you go to church. Other than that, you’re in this room.” Dad waved the DVD player enticingly in my direction. “When you decide to answer your mother and apologize, we’ll talk about taking you off punishment.” He departed with my electronics, slamming the door.
    I waited until I figured Dad had moved out of earshot, and then I lunged across the bed for the telephone.
    Mac answered his cell on the first ring. “Jerry?”
    “Yeah, it’s me,” I whispered. “Where are you, man?”
    “Where do ya think? I’m home.”
    “Me too. Uh. Did the sheriff show up?”
    “No. And my folks haven’t gotten any calls, either. They don’t know, man. They don’t know about any of it.”
    “How—”
    The line clicked, and my dad’s voice broke in. “Jericho, get the hell off the phone! Go to bed!”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The line clicked again, violently, as Dad hung up.
    “I gotta go,” I said.
    “Yeah,” Mac replied. “Just be cool. Okay?”
    I hung up the receiver and sat there, more puzzled than ever. What in the world was going on?
     
     
    F OR the next three days, Mac and