Warchild: Pawn (The Warchild Series) Read Free Page B

there’s no way to tell where the army might be.
    Brandon is still fresh, breathing
smoothly, bounding along like a whitetail deer, but taking shorter strides
because he knows I’m winded and having trouble matching his pace. He says, “I
don’t know, but if they’re coming, they have a reason. Hawkins told me one time
that the Peace Pact was never really there to prevent a war in the first
place.”
    “It wasn’t?” I stop, bend over at
the waist, and try to suck in deeper breaths of the cool, wet air. Rain
splatters against the back of my head.
    “Stand up. Put your hands behind
your head. It’ll open up your lungs better.”
    I do what he says, and he’s right,
it’s better, but it feels like I’m breathing through a straw reed no matter
what I do. “Can we walk for a second?”
    Brandon nods. “Sure.”
    “So the Pact? It wasn’t…”—I pause,
sucking air—“it wasn’t supposed to prevent a war?”
    “Hawkins said it was something like
a mutual agreement, you know? That we, both sides, I mean, were only supposed
to invade if we had a good reason for it.”
    “Who would agree to that?”
    “Desperate people, I guess. Didn’t
your grandfather tell you what happened?”
    “He said both sides lost so many people
that nobody really won.”
    “And that’s true, but—”
    “But what?”
    “That was a hundred years ago. They
have a new president now, and he may see things differently.”
    “How’d you learn that?”
    “Your buddy Finn told me.”
    I stop in the middle of the path. Disbelieving,
feeling like I’ve been caught. “You know about him?”
    “You’re not the only one guarding
the woods, Caroline.”
    “What else did he say?”
    “Nothing important…although now I’m
thinking that maybe I shouldn’t have trusted him.”
    It’s good that he feels the same. It
takes some of the guilt away. But I’m curious about their relationship, and for
a moment, the threat of war is replaced by a stronger need to know. I feel like
someone snuck into our shack and touched all of our things while Grandfather
and I weren’t there. “When did you meet him?”
    “Maybe a week or so after you. This
whole time, I always thought he wasn’t that smart and the only reason he’s
alive is because we both let him live so he could give us information.”
    “Did he tell you anything?”
    “Same stuff he told you, probably. Pennsylvania
and New York joined up. Some bridges washed out. Simple things that don’t
affect us all the way down here.”
    I’m wounded, in a way. My secrets
weren’t my own after all. I feel like I have nothing. “Yeah, that’s what he
told me, too.”
    “I can’t believe I trusted him. I
bet he let us catch him on purpose so he could run around here as free as he
wanted.”
    “That’s not dumb at all,” I admit. Then
I shake my head, disappointed in myself for not spotting the truth. I should’ve
seen it. “I’m such an idiot,” I say.
    “Same here,” Brandon adds. “But, if
it makes you feel better, at least you weren’t the only one. You and I both let
him sneak around for a year. There’s no telling what kind of information he was
able to give them.”
    I grab a heavy, wet rock from a
small landslide and sling it out into the lake in frustration. It’s the only
way to get some of the anger out.
    Brandon grins. “Like that helped. Anyway,
I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine. The only thing we can do now is learn
what Hawkins wants to know. If it’s true that the DAV has sent a big group,
then once we’re back at camp, I’d say we better start packing.”
    I agree, and now that we’ve walked a
bit, I can run again, but we’re going slower now, more cautious, because we
can’t be sure how far the DAV army made it. Or if Finn is hiding somewhere,
watching us, waiting to pick us off. In all the times I’d seen him, he never
carried a weapon, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t take us out with a
well-placed rock from above or a makeshift