Run For Cover Read Free

probably don’t have to worry for a while… .” Her voice trails off into the woods as the little circle of light bobs away. I can feel Louisa tense; she doesn’t love the dark settling around us, or watching her friends disappear up ahead. I fumble for her hand and squeeze it reassuringly. My heart is pounding, and I seriously wish we still had the rifles we used on the camping trip.
    With the flashlight gone, my eyes start to adjust to the dark and the dim light from the moon, high above the trees. My ears feel like they’re going to pop off my head, I’m listening so hard. Is that crack a branch being stepped on? Am I hearing someone’s breathing, getting closer and closer?
    Louisa sees it first, and she clutches my hand in a death grip.
    A dark shadow moves out of the trees behind us and slowly edges past. Whoever it is, they’re definitelyfollowing the sound of Maddie’s voice, stepping lightly where our feet just were.
    I crouch quietly and feel for a stick that’s just the right size. My eyes scan the darkness, looking for more shadows. I spot another one a few feet away, flanking the one that’s just gone by. I don’t know if there are more of them out here in the woods. I have to decide whether to risk confronting them, or try sneaking away.
    For a moment I think about how far Louisa and I could get on our own — how quickly we’d get back to Chicago, where we could warn our parents about what’s happening. They could send help for Maddie and Evelyn. Nothing really bad will happen to them; I’m sure of it. The Alliance people at CMS would want Evelyn safe so they could get as much money as possible out of her parents.
    But Maddie is nobody special; she wouldn’t be valuable to them. Would they even keep her alive, now that she knows their secrets?
    As much as I would like to, leaving the other two girls is not an option. I heft a stick in my hands and touchthe end of it — perfect. I place Louisa’s hand against the tree and pat it once:
stay here.
Then I creep out, one foot gently before the other, until I’m right behind the first shadow. His friend is ahead and to the left of us, so I can keep an eye on him, too.
    I shove the end of the stick into the guy’s back. “Stop right there.”
    He jumps a mile and tries to whirl around, but I’ve grabbed his arm to hold him in place, facing away from me. “Don’t turn around,” I say. “I don’t know how much damage this rifle will do at such close range, but I bet you don’t want to find out. Tell your friends to drop their weapons.”
    “W-w-we don’t have any weapons!” he yelps. “I swear!”
    I frown. His voice sounds familiar. And now that we’re up close, I’m pretty sure he’s only fourteen or fifteen, not much older than I am.
    Louisa clicks on her flashlight, illuminating a head of short reddish-blond hair and a sage-green CMS T-shirtover stocky shoulders. The guy has his hands up in the air and keeps twisting his head around to try to see us.
    “Ryan?” Louisa says from behind me.
    “Louisa?” he says, nearly collapsing with relief.
    I lower my fake rifle and let him go. Of course. Just my luck. It’s those dingbat boys that Louisa dragged back to our campsite during our survival mission over the weekend — the ones from the boys’ school across the lake. The boys who made the other girls so silly that they nearly ruined everything, just for the sake of a couple sandwiches and some flirting.
    Nobody cared about what would happen to us if we got in trouble — how we might be sent home, or how the teachers might take a closer look at some of us who’d rather not attract any attention.
    The other one comes crashing through the trees toward us. I catch a glimpse of his dark eyes and hair before he raises his hand to block the light. He’s Hispanic, like me, and I wonder, not for the first time, where he’s from.
    I put my hands on my hips. “Good grief,” I say, “are you guys
still
lost?”
    “No!” says the