Hawk - James Patterson Page 0,10

Clete asked.

I shrugged. “Better for them not to see us, no?”

Since Ridley had left, the horrible murderer had been staring right at us, like he was memorizing our faces. Like we would be his next victims. A shiver ran down my backbone and I realized the covert feathers at the top of my shoulders were bristling. I stepped farther backward into the darkness.

Still the murderer seemed to see right through everything, right through me. The guards prodded him along, and the gate to the long walkway leading to the prison opened on the other side of our play yard. True, we had never used the play yard much—it was a quarter of an acre of depressed grass and eager weeds, but who had thought it would be good to put a prison right on the other side? A MORON.

Until he had to turn and go through the tall iron gates, the murderer seemed to keep his black eyes on me intently. Was he looking at my black mohawk, the ring in my nose, the feathers tattooed above my eyebrows? I didn’t look that unusual—lots of kids looked like me. Without the actual wings, I mean. Which were hidden.

And me—I couldn’t look away from his angular, strikingly handsome face. He was the furthest thing from a troll, despite his evilness. My feathers were bristling, my wings itching to expand, and my breath was coming faster, almost like my body was responding to him.

What was the deal between this horrible killer—and me?

CHAPTER 9

My gang was talking about the murderer like it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened. Maybe it was. But I felt uneasy, maybe a little afraid, and I didn’t want to show it.

“It’s time, Hawk,” Clete said in my general direction. He tapped the watch on his wrist, the watch I’d stolen for him. He was intense about time and schedules.

“Right, right,” I said, and took off my poncho. Everyone here was a freak—my wings didn’t make anyone blink.

“Will you be gone long, Hawk?” Calypso asked.

I pushed my fingers through her short red curls. “Depends on how much laundry there is, kid,” I said.

“K,” she said.

The manager of the Children’s Home—a woman named Stella Bundy—had put us to work a couple years ago, once she realized there were some freakish misfit kids still living in the McCallum Children’s Home. She couldn’t turn us out into the street ’cause then McCallum couldn’t claim a charity Children’s Home as one of his good deeds, but I bet she thought about it. Instead, they came up with the next best thing—free child labor. During the day, Clete fixed the office computers and phones and stuff. Moke did like plumbing and electricity. I could never be found, for some reason . During the night Moke sometimes helped out in the gym when the prisoners were allowed to use the equipment. I wondered if the prison manager would let the new murderer use the gym.

Anyway, at night Clete and I did laundry in the huge industrial machines.

When we were all together, Clete faded into the background, but when it was just me and him, he never shut up.

“I’m really close, Hawk,” he said happily, enjoying our time together, as usual.

“Oh yeah?” I said automatically, dumping bins of laundry into a wheeled cart. Most of the laundry was from the prison, and most nights we saw bloody sheets, jumpsuits, towels. Everything in this city has blood on it, from the sidewalks to the washrags.

“Yeah,” Clete said. “I had to install some updates at the offices and it was takin’ forever so I was workin’ on my own stuff an’ I mean, Hawk, I swear I’m close.”

“Close to what?” I could work without thinking. I could usually talk to Clete without thinking, because he didn’t require a lot of interaction. I’d heard it all a million times before: He was close to a breakthrough. He was about to change the world, and no matter how many times he failed, he kept trying. I kept listening because I thought he really might change the world. Someday.

“It’ll be an app,” Clete said, lowering his voice. “If I install it on the office computers, it’ll start replicating and infiltrating other computers. Hawk—it’ll change everything.”

I gave him an absent smile. “Yeah?”

“Yeah! It’ll totally change the balance of power, for one thing,” he said. “Everyone could have power, not just McCallum. I hate McCallum and his Voxvoce. It’s awful. It hurts my ears.”

“I know, bud,” I said, adding extra