The Watch (The Red Series Book 1) Read Free

shadow there, and
then a warden.
    Instead the steps resumed,
receded. The car door slammed. The headlights shifted on the street and the
patrol car growled away.
    I didn’t move. I could feel that
I wasn’t alone.
    The white spotlight swept past,
at this angle catching only the other side of the wall. For a long moment the
night stretched out, sighed. A handful of leaves whispered around the corner,
tumbled toward me.
    I couldn’t hold my breath any
longer, so I let it out as quietly as I could and hoped it was quiet enough.
    On the other side of the wall,
someone moved, whispered. There was more than one of them, unless I’d heard
only the rising wind, the leaves.
    Another whisper. Not two feet
away from me, on the other side of the wall.
    My body screamed for me to leap
up, run. My brain said no, staying put was still my best hope for escape. Don’t
move. Be part of the shadows, part of the night.
    Then the clouds parted and the
moon emerged, full and round, shining down clear and calm and bright, outdoing
the electric blue lights, changing the shadows. The moonlight reached down and
picked out the one part of me that wasn’t pressed tightly enough against the
wall—my left foot, heel braced on the ground, toes pointed up in the air.
The moonlight struck it and cast a perfect shadow of its form, a foot with heel
and toes, clear and unmistakable against the pavement in front of the gap.
    Someone on the other side of the
wall drew a sharp breath.
    I scrambled to get my feet
beneath me, to rush back the way I’d come. I took a step backward, turned, took
one long leaping stride—and barreled straight into someone.
    Meritt .
    He put a hand over my
mouth—not that I would have cried out—but I knew it was too late
for silence, too late to hide. Someone was outside the wall, and any moment now
he would step into view and pin us with his light. And unlike me, Meritt had been caught before.
    All this flashed through my mind
instantly, definitively. I wrenched myself out of his arms and pointed at him,
then pointed back the way we’d come.
    There was just time to register
the quick series of expressions flitting across Meritt’s face—disbelief, objection, dismay—to see him reaching to grab me
and missing as I stepped beyond his grasp, pulled off my cap, shook out my
hair, and plunged into the light.

 

Chapter 2
    One of the wardens reached for
his stunner and the other took a step back. I paused just long enough to
register their faces—both men, that was good, it was harder to know how
to maneuver if you were dealing with mixed pairs—and then I started
talking.
    “There you are!” I said. “I’ve been looking for you
forever.”
    Go on the offensive, my friend Cynda always said, and she had more experience with wardens than any of us.
    The wardens stared at me, their faces impassive. One was
young. His hair was short-cropped and he had an ugly puckered scar running
through his upper lip. He stood in a way designed to show off his muscles, with
his chest out, his hands fisted on his hips. The other warden was bigger,
softer, older—about Rafe’s age, maybe—and
was completely bald but had a short blond beard. I recognized him and could
almost remember his name. We thought he might be Judd’s father.
    He asked the obvious question. “Why were you looking for
us?”
    “I’m lost,” I said, making it up as I went. “I don’t know
how to get back to my dorm.”
    For a long moment neither warden said a word; they just
stood there staring at me. Then the one with the scarred lip reached out and
took me firmly by one arm.
    “Let’s go,” he said, and from his tone I knew he wasn’t
taking me home.
    As he began to lead me away, the other warden, the older
one, turned on his heel and walked down the shadowed sidewalk, shining his
light here and there. I craned my neck to watch him, stumbling as the younger
warden pulled me along, my heart in my throat.
    But Meritt was safe. The older
warden came back