Dead Water Zone by Kenneth Oppel Read Free Book Online Page B

that helicopter tail us afterward? They must have thought one of us was Sam.”
    Decks nodded in agreement. “I saw a helicopter making passes late yesterday afternoon. Ifthey’d found your brother, they’d be long gone by now.”
    “He might have known they were looking for him and left on his own,” said Paul, hopeful.
    Another reassuring thought came to mind—the shadowy figure on the pier last night. There was no logical proof it had been Sam, but it somehow gave him hope.
    “Must have been pretty heavy-duty research,” said Monica. “And he didn’t say anything else about it?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Why’d you come down here, then? Unless you knew he was in trouble?”
    “It was just a feeling.”
    She wouldn’t believe him, even though this part was true. Last night, on the rooftop, he had felt almost close to her, but now…“When we last talked on the phone, he sounded funny. He was really worked up. I think he was scared, too. I was worried.”
    “Very helpful,” she said witheringly. She turned to Decks. “There’s a computer diskette, too. I found it in the boathouse. Armitage is trying to get a machine so we can read it.”
    Paul’s hand involuntarily touched the diskette in his shirt pocket. “It might be a jumble to anyone but Sam. But there could be a clue to where he is.”
    “And what he’s been doing,” Monica added. “I think you’re holding out on us, Paul.”
    “I’ve told you everything.” There was more, but it was strictly personal. Sometimes he barely understood it himself.
    “This is getting very messy,” said Monica. “If they trace us back to our pier—”
    Paul felt an urge to reach across and brush away the purple smudges of fatigue beneath her eyes.
    “Look,” he said apologetically, “I wasn’t trying to make trouble. I came down here to meet my brother. He told me to come to Jailer’s Pier. He didn’t show up.”
    “That’s where I found him,” Monica told Decks. “Now he’s got it into his head that his brother might be hiding out in Rat Castle. What do you think?”
    Decks snorted. “The canal runs all the way around, like a moat. Anyway, the whole place was boarded up years ago. All the piers were rotting away.”
    “See?” she said, but Paul thought there was vague disappointment on her face, too.
    “You should stay away from there,” Decks told Monica. “It’s not safe. It won’t be long before it collapses to the bottom of the lake.”
    “Thanks, Decks,” said Monica. “You’ve been a help.”
    At the hatchway, Decks placed a hand on Paul’s arm. “There’s one other thing I should tell you,” he said. “That photograph they showed me—you were in it, too.”
     
    “When we get back to the pier, you’re staying inside. Understand?”
    Paul nodded mutely, keeping pace with her through the maze of alleyways. His mind kept circling back to the photograph of him and Sam. When had it been taken? Where? What were he and Sam doing? The details seemed important somehow. Get a grip, he told himself. But how had they got hold of it? He imagined them going through the closets of his brother’s room at college, handling his clothes, pulling pictures from the bulletin board. Paul suddenly felt afraid.
    “Runaway brother,” Monica was muttering. “What crap!”
    “Why are they carrying guns?” he said. “What’s the point of guns?”
    “You tell me. Maybe they want something your brother has.”
    “What do you know about the water?”
    “What are you talking about?” She looked at him, surprised.
    “It’s got to have something to do with the water. He said there was something strange about it.”
    “It’s polluted. Nothing lives in it. You can’t drink it.”
    “He found something new. He didn’t say what.”
    “What was it about the water?” she asked fiercely. “What are you so afraid of?”
    “That he’ll kill himself.”
    He was almost as surprised as she was.
    “What?”
    He shook his head. “It was a stupid