The Rescue by Sophie McKenzie Read Free Book Online Page B

Nico’s punishment is to spend the rest of the day digging the new well.’
    There was a gasp from Tommy. I glanced at him and he whispered, ‘That well is hard labour. They’ve been working on it for months and it makes digging potato patches in the field look like eating cake.’
    I looked back at Fernandez. What the hell did he have in store for me?
    He turned his dark eyes on me. I looked away, my face burning.
    ‘Ed will take his demerits by working all his shifts today in the kitchen.’
    I looked up. A low – and disgruntled – murmur swept round the room. Kitchen duty was widely accepted as the easiest chore option. No way was it normally used as a demerit punishment.
    ‘Silence,’ Fernandez snapped. He strode out of the room.
    I sat, looking down at my lap, feeling everyone else’s gaze upon me. Tommy, who was sitting next to me, leaned across and whispered, ‘How come he’s letting you off so light?’
    I shook my head. I had no idea – maybe kitchen chores would involve something disgusting today, worse than the fish gutting I’d done the evening before last.
    As breakfast finished, everyone filed out. Ketty was on breakfast duty with me.
    ‘What were you and Nico thinking last night?’ she asked as we cleared the plates and bowls onto trays. ‘Surely you realised Fernandez would have disabled his office phone when he wasn’t there?’
    I shook my head, then explained how I’d been trying to work out what Fernandez was doing with the police van kids – and what information he held on us. I mentioned Luz too, though not how much I’d wanted to find out about her.
    ‘Please be careful, Ed,’ Ketty said, looking up at me with anxious, golden-brown eyes. ‘I want to get out of here us much as you do, but we can’t mess with Fernandez . . . I keep trying to see into the future and I can’t. I don’t know why.’ She shuddered. ‘I just know that I’d hate it if you got hurt.’
    I stared at a spot to the left of her eyes, feeling my face going red again.
    ‘There’s something else,’ I stammered. ‘Fernandez knows I can mind-read.’
    ‘What?’ Ketty said, her eyes widening. ‘How?’
    I explained what had happened while Ketty ran a bowl of washing-up water, her forehead screwed up into a frown. She was silent for a while.
    ‘Maybe that’s why Fernandez hasn’t punished you properly yet for breaking into his office last night,’ she said at last, ‘because he’s realised you can mind-read and wants more time to work out what to do about it.’
    I shrugged, following Ketty’s gaze out of the kitchen window. The new well was clearly some way in the distance, beyond the field. I could just make out the top of Nico’s head, deep inside it. Every few seconds a shovelful of earth appeared, tossed out of the hole he was digging.
    ‘Is he using telekinesis to do that?’
    ‘Course he is – and he’s getting really good at it too,’ Ketty said. She glanced sideways at me and smiled proudly. ‘You know what he’s like.’
    ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I know.’
    The rest of the day passed easily enough. Spurred on by my discovery of the Escondite files, I made my first serious attempt to contact Mum and Dad by remote telepathy, willing my brain to find theirs, wherever they were.
    All I got was a headache.
    I did at least find out what Escondite meant, though – hiding place.
    Fernandez didn’t reappear for the rest of the day. Cindy remained in a foul mood, snapping at me three times for peeling potatoes badly, leaving smear marks on the washing-up and spilling a pint of milk on the kitchen floor. At one point she marched me across to the barn to fetch a fresh mop. Dylan was in there alone, gluing a chair leg together. I glanced at her as I fetched the mop, but she didn’t look round.
    Nico joined us for supper, though Dylan was made to eat alone in the barn. He was in quite a good mood, considering he’d been outside in the heat all day. He sat next to Ketty, telling her in a low