Hit Squad by Sophie McKenzie Read Free Book Online Page A

see us unless he came right into the room.
    We had ripped the bottoms of our T-shirts off earlier. I held one of the strips of material in my hand. The footsteps grew close. Broken Nose was right outside the door. I could hear his wheezy
breathing as he positioned the key in the lock.
    Dylan gave a low moan.
    ‘What is matter?’ Broken Nose asked Dylan as the door creaked open.
    Dylan bent over her stomach and groaned more loudly. ‘Aaagh, it hurts.’ Her right hand rested lightly on the lantern.
    I held my breath.
    ‘Where others?’ Broken Nose was edging into the room now, his hand on his gun. He craned his neck trying to see into the dark corners on either side of the door, where Cal and I were
hiding.
    Dylan moaned again. ‘Aaagh.’ She sounded completely convincing.
    Broken Nose looked around. He muttered something in his own language that I didn’t understand. I pressed myself flat against the wall behind the door as Dylan, right on cue, smashed the
lantern onto the ground.
    The light went out. The room sank into darkness.
    ‘HEY!’ There was a note of panic in Broken Nose’s roar. We had to shut him up. And take his gun.
    ‘Now!’ Cal yelled.
    I rushed towards Broken Nose, just able to make out his outline in the dark room. I grabbed his arm. Wrenched it back.
    Broken Nose yelled out, pushing me away. I clung on. Cal grabbed the man’s other arm. Tania rushed to help me. Dylan jumped up. A moment later she and Cal had the man’s arms behind
his back and were tying them together.
    ‘Shut him up,’ Dylan ordered.
    I reached up with my T-shirt strip and wound the cloth round his mouth. Broken Nose’s yells were instantly muffled. Tania was clamped round one of his legs. Cal bent down and wound a third
strip of material around his ankles.
    Dylan pushed Broken Nose to the floor. ‘Done,’ she said, panting.
    ‘Everyone okay?’ My heart was beating fast.
    ‘Awesome,’ Cal said. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’
    We ran through the open door and into the corridor. The stairs that led up to the ground floor were to our left. Voices drifted down towards us.
    We turned right, away from the voices. We ran along the corridor. Around the corner. We passed a couple of windowless cells like the one we had been kept in. A few seconds later we arrived at
the end of the corridor and a narrow set of stone steps that led down to the floor below.
    ‘Come on,’ Cal said.
    ‘No.’ Tania tugged at my arm. ‘Way out upstairs.’
    ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Think about what Tania’s saying. We won’t get out if we go down these stairs. We’re already in the basement. We need to be going up to the
ground floor.’
    Cal hesitated for a second. Then Dylan grabbed my arm.
    ‘Listen!’ she whispered.
    The sound of footsteps filled the corridor we had just run along.
    ‘Someone’s coming,’ Dylan whispered. ‘We have to go down.’
    She was right. We crept quickly down the narrow stone steps. It had been cold everywhere in the castle, but as we ventured through the darkness it seemed to get chillier. I still couldn’t
see much, but the wall beside the stairs was damp as well as cold. I pressed my hand against the moss-covered stone. Freezing air was blowing in from somewhere down here – and the smell of
stagnant water.
    I thought back to our arrival all those hours ago and the lake we’d seen beside the castle.
    ‘We must be close to the water,’ I whispered as we reached the bottom of the stairs.
    A rough stone tunnel led away from the steps. Light glimmered in the distance. For a second, I was reminded of my earlier vision – but that had been a bright, blinding glare.
    Cal was already running towards the light. Dylan followed quickly after him.
    ‘Come on,’ Dylan hissed over her shoulder.
    I grabbed Tania’s arm. As we raced after the others, a voice yelled out above our heads. Again, I didn’t understand what was being said, but whoever was shouting sounded furious.
    ‘They know