Читать книгу Catch Your Death - Lauren Child - Страница 18

WHEN RUBY WOKE, the first thing she smelled was woodsmoke. Someone had lit a campfire. She slowly sat up and peered around; it was all rather fuzzy and hard to make out, but then she heard a voice she knew well.

‘You look in pretty bad shape Redfort.’ Sam Colt was silhouetted against the light sky, a sky now clear of rain.

‘How did you find me?’ Ruby croaked.

‘I’m a tracker, wasn’t difficult,’ he replied.

‘How much time do I have?’ asked Ruby.

‘Depends how you look at it,’ he said. ‘You might consider time to be up or you might say you got all the time in the world.’

Ruby slumped back. ‘What happened?’

‘My guess?’ said Colt in a slow drawl. ‘You lost focus – set about trying to beat the elements. Sometimes you can be lucky with that approach.’ He peered at her from under the brim of his hat. ‘Sometimes not.’

‘What do I do now?’ said Ruby.

‘Now we got a stitch that wound on your foot, clean it up before it goes septic and then I’ll get you to base camp.’

He made neat work of the stitching and although it wasn’t exactly pain-free Ruby was grateful that he was able to take care of it without drama. He found her a spare pair of boots from his kit, a little too big but certainly better than no boots.

She drank a cup of something hot and sweet-tasting, but she was unable to eat – the pain had made her nauseous.

‘You’re gonna have to ride in back,’ Samuel Colt said, saddling up. He helped Ruby onto the back of his horse and together they galloped across the plains.

When they reached the edge of a high bank on the edge of the woods, Sam pulled the horse up and helped Ruby down.

‘I’ll let you make your own way from here,’ he said. ‘That way it won’t show on your test score.’

‘I guess I flunked,’ said Ruby.

‘Depends how you define failure,’ said Sam.

‘Depends how Spectrum define failure,’ said Ruby.

‘Survival don’t sound like failure to me,’ he replied. He tipped his hat at her, turned and rode off, like he was the Lone Ranger himself.

Just below her, Ruby could make out a small wooden cabin sitting in a clearing edged by pine trees. A figure was chopping logs and stacking them against the house. At least she thought that’s what he must be doing, but it was the sound that told her so. The figure was a blur, her eyes unable to see any detail now she was parted from her glasses. If she had still had them, she would have been able to see how every once in a while the man looked at his wristwatch, then at the dimming sky, pausing before continuing on with his work.

She had no idea who this blurry figure was, but she was hopeful it might be Hitch.

Ruby limped into base camp by sundown, just. She punched in her time – she was about thirteen hours overdue. The man was sitting on a stool fashioned from an old tree stump and he was drinking a hot beverage, book in hand. He looked up.

‘Better late than never Redfort.’

It wasn’t Hitch.

Ruby slumped down on the grass. It was a nice enough night, not raining at least, but she was tired, really, really tired. She looked around her.

‘Everyone else has been and gone,’ said the Spectrum agent. It was the same agent who had doled out the mission briefing the day of the drop. His name was Emerson.

She sighed. Did anyone else fail? she wondered.

‘Hungry?’ asked Agent Emerson.

Ruby nodded.

‘Didn’t do so well finding food, huh?’

Ruby shook her head.

Emerson helped Ruby hobble to the tiny log cabin.

Inside was a fire and there were a couple of chairs set round a small wooden table. Two bowls, two plates, a couple of forks and a couple of spoons. A large metal pot dangled over the fire and a very good smell wafted out. Ruby suddenly felt a lot more awake. Emerson didn’t seem like such a hard nut after all – he could cook at least.

For the first ten minutes she said nothing at all as she slurped the stew.

‘Wow, you are wolfing that down Redfort. When did you last eat?’

She looked up. ‘It’s good,’ was all she said.

Later, after Emerson had got her to the light aircraft and flown her back to the outskirts of Twinford, Ruby finally clapped eyes on Hitch. He was waiting there in the darkness like some kind of guardian angel.

The first thing Ruby did was to ease her left boot off. She had been dying to remove it, but she hadn’t wanted Emerson to see the injury; she didn’t need it to become some sort of big deal – not yet anyway.

‘Sam bring you in?’ Hitch asked.

‘How dya know?’

‘I recognise his bandage work,’ said Hitch, glancing at Ruby’s foot.

‘How come he was tracking me?’

‘I put in a request.’

They got into the car and drove into the night.

‘So what happened out there kid, what took you?’

‘I fell,’ said Ruby. ‘Hurt my foot.’

‘That’s a consequence,’ said Hitch, ‘not the reason.’

‘I lost my glasses – they fell in the river.’

‘So?’ he said.

‘What do you mean, so?’

‘What I mean,’ said Hitch, ‘is why should that be a problem?’

‘Are you kidding me?’ said Ruby. ‘I can’t manage without them.’

‘What I’m suggesting,’ said Hitch, his voice calm and steady, ‘is if you’re saying your being thirteen hours late is really because you can’t manage without eyewear then what are you doing trying to train as an agent?’

Ruby just looked at him. Then she said, ‘You gonna tell LB?’

‘No kid, I’m not going to tell LB, at least not if you tell me what’s really the problem here.’

Hitch pulled the car over to the side of the road and let the engine quietly idle.

‘I don’t really get it myself,’ said Ruby.

‘Come on kid, give me a straight answer. You can flannel all of them – you can even get me to cover for you – but you can’t pretend like I don’t know something went wrong, something more than losing one geeky pair of glasses.’

‘Colt didn’t tell you?’ asked Ruby.

‘No, what Colt says to you is your business,’ replied Hitch.

Ruby took a deep breath. ‘If you really wanna know, Colt seems to think I rely on what I know instead of using my instincts. He says I got a throw away the rules and react to what’s happening out there.’ She gestured to the darkness beyond them.

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘I don’t think I know how to do that,’ said Ruby. ‘So, when I go and lose my stupid glasses, I might as well throw in the towel.’

Hitch thought for a moment before saying, ‘I think I might be able to help you there kid.’

‘Yeah?’ said Ruby hopefully.

‘Might take a while; she’s not the easiest person to track down.’

‘Who?’

‘I’ll let you know if I find her.’

‘So you’re not gonna tell LB about my eye trouble?’

‘Why would I tell her?’

‘Why wouldn’t you?’ shrugged Ruby.

‘Because kid, I can see that there’s a whole lot more to you than your bad eyesight.’

She sighed, relieved. ‘So you’re not gonna tell LB I flunked?’

Hitch didn’t answer immediately. He checked his mirror and made to swing back out onto the road and then he said, ‘No need. LB already knows you flunked kid. She knew before you did.’