Every Second Counts Read Free Page A

gun or a knife. I’d do it.’
    I shook my head. ‘Too risky. You wouldn’t get near him.’
    ‘Anyway, killing him would make us as bad as he is,’ Julius added.
    I looked over at Charlie. She was still standing a little way from us, arms folded. She rolled her eyes, presumably at Julius’s reluctance to take Riley out.
    I met her gaze. For all her bravado, Charlie wasn’t any more a killer than Julius. Just a few weeks ago she had a gun in her hand and Riley unarmed in her sights and she hadn’t taken
the shot. Neither had I. I’d told her we’d done the right thing, but Charlie hadn’t wanted to talk about it.
    A flicker of embarrassment – and vulnerability – showed on her face, then disappeared again. She knew what I was thinking. I raised my eyebrows. ‘Any suggestions for how we
expose Riley?’
    Julius and Lennox turned to her. A beat passed. And then Charlie jutted out her chin in that defiant gesture of hers I was beginning to know so well.
    ‘I think it’s obvious,’ she said. ‘I should join Riley’s inner circle, like he wanted me to when we last saw him.’
    There was a shocked silence.
    ‘You mean pretend to switch sides?’ I shook my head.
    ‘Exactly,’ Charlie said. ‘I can get close, get evidence of what he’s planning, the next bomb or whatever.’
    ‘No way.’ My heart rate quickened. It was true that Riley had claimed to want to bring Charlie into his inner circle, but to me that was obviously a lie, a barefaced attempt to try
and stop her running away. Anyway, I couldn’t begin to imagine the danger Charlie would put herself in if she voluntarily turned up on Riley’s doorstep. ‘Riley’s not going
to believe you joining him now,’ I went on. ‘It’s too risky.’
    ‘I can make him believe it. Anyway, it’s not up to you, Nat.’ Her fierce dark eyes met mine at last. ‘It’s
my
decision.’

Charlie
    Nat stared at me. I could see the emotions parading across his face: he was annoyed with me for being impatient with Julius and Lennox, and angry that I wanted to put myself at
risk by going undercover with Riley.
    Was that because he was scared I would get hurt? On our first night on the run we’d admitted how much we really liked each other, but since then we had barely spoken about our feelings.
There had been so many other things to deal with; life in the past few weeks had been unbelievably stressful: finding food, sleeping rough, always worried that if Riley’s English Freedom Army
soldiers didn’t find us, some random tramp would attack us in our makeshift beds.
    The tension in the room grew. Nat and I were still looking at each other. And then Julius coughed. ‘Erm, why does Riley want you to join him?’
    ‘That’s my business,’ I snapped.
    I shot Nat a look that meant I seriously wanted him to keep his mouth shut. The truth of it was that Riley had told me my dad – who I thought had died when I was a baby – was in fact
alive and a leading figure in the English Freedom Army. I was sure it was a total lie. Well, almost sure. Either way, it was not information I wanted spread about.
    Nat gave me a swift nod, then turned to Julius.
    ‘We can talk about this later. Right now we’re kind of tired. And very hungry,’ he said. ‘Do you have any food?’
    ‘Of course.’ Julius led us out of the little bedroom and into a small kitchen. He bustled about fetching us bread and warming some soup while Nat and I retrieved our backpacks from
their hiding place and brought them into the house. Lennox sat at the table with us while we ate our soup and the four of us swapped all the details we knew about Riley. Julius hadn’t been
exaggerating his lack of knowledge about the other resistance members, but he told us what he could about the people in Resistance Four, Six and Eight. All of them were either wanted by the police
or else had been made scapegoats by Riley.
    I could see Nat getting more and more dispirited as we talked. I was sure he had