The Guard by Pittacus Lore Read Free Book Online Page A

familiar with the rolling hills. The place suddenly starts to feel claustrophobic. I don’t abandon it completely—it could still come in handy—but I gather most of my equipment and all of my data and leave for a new secluded location in the Oregon woods. It’s there that I finally get a glimpse into Agent Purdy’s personal files thanks to his incompetent assistant, who likes to work on unprotected wireless networks in coffee shops. I manage to get into Purdy’s email account and read through a few messages detailing an operation code-named MogPro. It’s mentioned in passing, neverdefined, but I understand that it has something to do with Mog infiltration of the government. I take some screen grabs and save a few files, but after a couple of minutes in his email account, my computer completely freaks out. It crashes, not in a way I’ve ever seen before. I fear I’ve been discovered.
    I leave Oregon minutes later, never looking back.
    I move often after that, setting up safe houses around the country. The deeper I dig, the less safe I feel staying in one place for too long. But moving has its downsides. I’m in the midst of relocating when a blog post slips through the cracks:
    Nine, now eight. Are the rest of you out there?
    By the time I see it and wipe it away, it’s too late. I trace the poster’s IP address to a physical address in London. After that it only takes a few minutes to discover that a twelve-year-old girl was found murdered there shortly after the post went up.
    One of the Garde, no doubt. If her math was correct, that means she was Number Two. If she’s dead, that means so is One, and likely their Cêpans.
    Our numbers continue to decrease.
    And our allies keep disappearing. I keep track of Malcolm Goode, but not long after I met with him, he disappears, leaving his truck and glasses behind in agrocery store parking lot in Paradise. I go back to the message board I used to find him in the first place and try to track down the others he corresponded with. Their years-old communications lead me to other dead ends or, more often, missing persons.
    The authorities don’t seem to have any leads on where Malcolm might be—they posit that he might even have left on his own—but I have no doubt that the Mogadorians or the FBI tracked him down. When I read this news, something inside my gut twists, and all I can see is the face of the little boy standing outside of Malcolm’s office, staring up at me. At least the rest of the Goodes seem to be safe. I shudder to think that the Mogs might be using them to try to get information out of Malcolm. I consider going back to Paradise and taking them to one of my safe houses. But would they go? If not, would I take them against their will? Should I even risk exposing myself at all by going back to Ohio?
    No. That’s not my place or role in all this. I coordinate from behind the scenes. I warned Malcolm they would find him. I did everything I could. He should have left.
    When I’m not moving or researching, I gather weapons, ammunition, medical supplies, cash—any and all resources that might come in handy. I plant caches of them in my safe houses, which I no longer view as my own but as places that the Garde may one day use.
    When they’re ready. When they’re strong.
    One day soon they’ll make a move, and I’ll be watching, waiting to finally expose the Mogadorians on Earth and help the last of my people destroy them.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    BY THE TIME THE MOGS MAKE THEIR BIG PLAY in Paradise, years have passed and I’ve settled into a new base: an old orchard and pecan-processing plant in Georgia.
    It’s so obvious to me when I read the reports—both public and those I find in the Paradise Police Department’s files—that this is a Mog incident. Something big. The Mogs wouldn’t just attack a high school without a reason. Especially not one that happened to be located in the small town where Malcolm Goode lived.
    I think back to what Malcolm had told