Matt Archer: Blade's Edge by Kendra C. Highley Read Free Book Online

pointed at me. “He’s fifteen years old! What in the world would the Army want with him?”
    “I’m almost sixteen,” I muttered. Mamie shot me a warning look and shook her head. The panic in her eyes practically reached out and smacked my forehead. I hated hurting my sister, so I clamped my mouth shut to let the “adults” hash things out.
    “It’s not a joke,” Julie answered, giving Mom a level stare. “Matt’s mission is of grave importance. You know we would never put him in harm’s way if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. In this case, it is. He was chosen, hand-picked, really—”
    “A mission? Hand-picked?” Mom turned to Mike, her face wild with fear. “No! Not again! It was bad enough with Erik, but this is my child. My son.”
    Erik? Mamie, Brent and I exchanged tense glances. What did our deadbeat dad have to do with any of this?
    Mike watched us, his jaw clenched so tight I thought I heard a tendon pop. “Don’t.”
    “No!” Mom shouted. “I won’t keep quiet any longer, Mike. They need to know. I may have let Erik go, but I still loved him. You know that! I did what the two of you told me to do—I pretended he ran out on us to protect the kids. Do you have any idea how hard that’s been? I don’t even know if he’s still alive! We haven’t heard from him for over a year.”
    “Uncle Mike,” Mamie asked, “what’s Mom talking about?”
    Mom ignored the question, saying, “The intrigues, the danger, the flat-out lies…it nearly killed me. If you think I’ll allow the same life for my son, my fifteen-year-old baby, you’re crazy!”
    With that, she collapsed onto the couch, buried her face in her hands and burst into sobs. I’d never seen my mother cry like this, not once in my life.
    I turned to Mike. “Dad walked out on us. He left us. ”
    Mike shifted on the couch. Mom cried harder. Mamie burst into tears, too, and Brent pulled her close so she could cry on his shoulder. His face had turned green.
    Still, no one said anything. All this time, they’d been lying to us, yet they wouldn’t talk. Mamie, Brent and I had been blasted backward in the last two minutes and Mom was pissed that we had lied to her ? Seeing Mamie crying her eyes out snapped the thin grasp I had on my self-control and my temper boiled over.
    “What the hell is going on?” I yelled.
    Aunt Julie flinched. Mike patted her knee and said, “Matt…all the stuff about wielders being special, what the knives recognized about us? Ancient power from our fathers? We all have special families, full of warriors, but it’s clear to everyone you have an enhanced tie to your blade. Haven’t you wondered why?”
    I shook my head, not because I hadn’t wondered—because I didn’t want to hear what came next.
    Brent stared at me. “What’s he talking about, Matt?”
    Mike went on, ignoring Brent. “I’ve suspected why the knife chose you for quite some time. You got power from both sides of your family. Erik is an exceptional man, no matter what we’ve said or done to make you believe otherwise.”
    Mamie reached for my hand and squeezed. Chill crept over me…exceptional?
    Mike looked at each of us in turn, stopping with me, and said, “Your dad is CIA—part of the Special Operations Group.”
    “Special Operations?” Mamie asked in a whisper. “What does that mean?”
    “Erik is an agent for the government,” he said. “A spy, but not just any kind of spy. He goes into hot zones to scope out very dangerous situations, gathering intelligence of a kind that very few people have the ability to obtain. He speaks eight languages, has superior weapons training, and has forgotten more about the martial arts than I ever learned to begin with.”
    “He’s a spy?” I asked. “Like Aunt Julie?”
    I looked at all three adults: Mom was still bawling; Mike stared uncomfortably at the floor; Julie was the only one to meet my eyes. “Not like me, honey. I’m not a tenth of what your dad is.”
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