The Blood Guard (The Blood Guard series) by Carter Roy Read Free Book Online Page B

him ? He’s a thief! He smells! He has the phoniest British accent I’ve ever heard. There are probably thousands of people who’d like to skewer him.”
    As I slogged along beside her, I couldn’t decide whether to tell Greta about my mom, about the people in the train station. Back in New York, we’d never exactly been friends. “It’s more complicated than that.”
    “No, it’s not. It’s simple,” she said. “We go with him to the truck stop, and then when we see a chance, we get help. My dad will save us.”
    Watching the back of Dawkins’ dirty brown leather jacket as he picked his way along the embankment, I thought maybe this was how he’d gotten so dirty. He probably jumped from trains all the time.
    “Success!” Dawkins cried from ahead, raising the satchel in one hand and the duffel bag in the other. “I’ve got a good feeling about what’s in these bags,” he called out, “but why don’t we wait until we’ve crossed the road to check them out.”
    “Sure thing,” Greta said, giving Dawkins a look. “Whatever you say.”
    “As you pointed out, it won’t take our foes long to deduce we’ve left the train,” Dawkins said. The train sat on the tracks several hundred yards away. Several vehicles had pulled up alongside i t — f amiliar red SUVs that seemed almost to glow in the late afternoon sun. “So maybe we should all…run!” he chirped, sprinting away.
    Greta groaned, but we both took off after him.
    When you’re in a car, you don’t notice how big parking lots can be. You roll down one lane after another until you find a spot close to the doors of wherever you’re going, and then you complain because you have to walk for a whole minute. But imagine starting from the farthest edge of the biggest mall parking lot you know, one that stretches on like the scorched surface of some tar-covered planet.
    Jogging across the endless truck-stop lot with Dawkins and Greta, I felt naked, exposed, certain that the red SUVs would come skidding to a halt around us before we made it even halfway to the buildings.
    But that didn’t happen. Instead, we just got sweaty and tired.
    “Super,” Greta muttered. “And now I’m going to be sunburned, too.”
    We reached the main building, a sprawling gas station/convenience store/food court/novelty emporium. At an angle to it was another building, a garage with a half-dozen enormous raised doors and four more closed ones, the shadowy hulks of big rigs and cars dimly visible inside. In front of both buildings were triple rows of gas pumps, eight to a row, with lines of cars and trucks pulling in, filling up, and zooming away.
    Dawkins led us into an alley between the two buildings, where reeking Dumpsters were parked along the back walls. “I don’t think anyone noticed us crossing over here,” he said, peeking back around the corner and dropping the two bags.
    “I don’t know.” Greta fanned herself with her hand. “You don’t see that many people running across parking lots. We probably stuck out.”
    “Sure,” he said, crouching down over the bags. “But people have what psychologists call ‘selective perception.’ You see something that doesn’t make sense, and your brain works hard to make it fit it in with everything else you’re looking at.”
    “If you say so,” Greta said, but she was edging back the way we’d come.
    “Let’s see what those two on the train were packing.” The first things he pulled out of the black leather satchel wer e — “Tighty-whities!” he announced. And undershirts and dark socks, all of which he flung over his shoulder, straight into the trash. They made soft pongs against the metal wall of the Dumpster.
    “What are we waiting for?” Greta whispered to me. “Let’s move. Now .”
    “Interesting,” Dawkins said, pulling forth a sort of plastic pistol-looking thing with a squat square black barrel, like a laser blaster in an old science fiction movie.
    “What’s that?” I