The Rescue by Sophie McKenzie Read Free Book Online Page A

tomorrow.’
    He marched us back to the dorm and double-locked the outer door.
    The other three were still sleeping – Mat and Mig emitting gentle snores and Tommy sucking his thumb. Nico stumbled to his bed and lay down.
    I went over. It was a clear night and the moon was shining directly in through the window, casting a silver beam of light across Nico’s face.
    ‘Are you okay?’ I whispered.
    ‘Yes,’ Nico said. ‘He wasn’t really going to hurt me. Just scare me.’
    ‘Why didn’t you stop him with telekinesis?’
    ‘For the same reason you tried to lie about getting inside his mind.’ Nico sighed. ‘Have you forgotten how Carson and all the other frigging bad guys we’ve had to deal with tried to use our abilities to get what they wanted? You know how I feel about Geri, but she was right about that: Our number one priority is to keep what we can do a secret.’
    I stared at him.
    ‘How come you mind-read Fernandez, anyway?’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you stop yourself?’
    ‘He’d already seen what I could do that first time by accident,’ I stammered. ‘Then, the second time, when he made me look at him, I couldn’t help it. You know that if I make eye contact I can’t hold back.’
    ‘Yeah, I know,’ Nico muttered disparagingly. He sat up. ‘At least tell me you saw something useful. Something that might help us get out of here . . .’
    ‘I didn’t see anything in Fernandez’s mind. I was deliberately trying not to mind-read him.’ I could feel my face reddening. It wasn’t fair of Nico to have a go at me about this. ‘But, before, I did find an envelope of police reports in the filing cabinet. It had a strange word written on it – Escondite . I’m not sure what it means, though.’
    Nico lay back on his bed with a frustrated sigh. ‘So you’re telling me you’ve just given away the fact that you can mind-read – for nothing.’
    There was a long pause. ‘I told you, I couldn’t stop.’ I could hear how defensive I sounded. ‘It doesn’t matter. Fernandez thinks it was just some trick.’
    ‘Let’s hope so.’ Nico rubbed his eyes. ‘Why were you looking for police reports in those filing cabinets anyway?’
    I fingered the photo of Luz in my pocket again.
    ‘Information – on us, the police van kids that come through here . . . the ones we saw . . . that Tommy told us about. I don’t think Fernandez is officially supposed to have anything to do with them.’
    ‘For God’s sake, Ed, man.’ Nico groaned. ‘Never mind all of that. How are we going to get out of here now?’
    There was an atmosphere in the camp the next morning. I could feel it as soon as Cindy called us for morning chores. She was in an evil mood, barking at everyone to hurry and giving Mig a demerit just for dropping his spade. I guessed that Fernandez must have bawled her out for believing she’d left the doors unlocked last night.
    Ketty was almost in tears when she heard about Fernandez finding Nico and me in his office. Even Dylan looked shaken. She had picked up a fifth demerit late last night for talking back to Cindy at lights out and was now officially ‘in solitary’, which meant, as Cindy explained, that after breakfast she would be put to work in the barn on her own for the entire day. Anyone caught attempting to speak to her, Cindy warned, would themselves be given a demerit.
    We didn’t see Fernandez until breakfast. He stood at the head of the dining table as we filed in, radiating fury. Everyone fell silent.
    ‘Discipline,’ Fernandez said, drawing himself up to his full height, ‘is the be-all and end-all of Camp Felicidad. Without that we have nothing.’ He paused. ‘And in the past three days discipline has been in short supply.’ He turned to Dylan. ‘Five demerits in two days is a sign of weakness and a lack of self-respect.’
    Dylan shrugged. Fernandez cleared his throat. ‘Nico and Ed each earned two demerits last night for being out of their dorm after lights out.