Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath (3 page)

In fact, free diving was how Ruby’s parents had met. Brant had been working with a famous Italian marine biologist, free-diving from his yacht off the coast of Italy. Sabina had been sailing single-handed around the Mediterranean and had bumped into Brant underwater. She was pretty good at holding her breath too, championship good.

As a result, there wasn’t a lot that Ruby didn’t know about breath-hold diving, but for the life of her she just couldn’t begin to contemplate holding her breath for a whole lot longer than seemed entirely sensible. It went against everything that was natural and sane. Dive down 220 feet without oxygen? No thank you. It was a claustrophobic’s nightmare. The free-dive training involved a lot of slow, rigorous preparation — years of it, in fact. It was a difficult and dangerous technique to master, and Ruby wasn’t about to risk her life for something that seemed so wrong. Diving to great depths with scuba gear: no problem. Diving with a snorkel and fins: a breeze. But ask her to hold her breath for more than one minute and one second? No way was she gonna do that. She didn’t have the lung capacity, which, combined with the darkness at great depths, made her feel claustrophobic.

On Thursday she resurfaced just as Sergeant Cooper walked by. This chance encounter was not a good one.

But of course, it did bug her. This Bradley Baker guy bugged the life out of her. Of course, he had long since grown up, become the most versatile agent Spectrum ever trained, loved and admired by all — the youngest, smartest agent Spectrum had ever hired, and no one was going to let her forget it. To make matters worse, Bradley Baker had tragically met his end, dying in a plane crash in the line of duty, and so had died a hero’s death. If Bradley Baker’s ghost didn’t haunt Ruby, then his legendary status certainly did.

Of course, no one got away with speaking to Sergeant Cooper this way, and Ruby found herself scrubbing all the latrines in the camp for the following three days. Kip Holbrook, who despite all the constant metaphorical hair-pulling was actually a nice guy, was kind enough to wade in and help her out. He didn’t exactly know why but he found himself liking this kid from Twinford.

“Can I give you some advice, Redfort?” he asked in the middle of day three’s latrine scrubbing. “You might wanna learn to keep that mouth of yours shut. It gets you in some unsanitary situations.”

“I can’t help saying what’s on my mind,” replied Ruby. “It’s the way I am.”

“Then buy yourself a pair of good rubber gloves, because it looks like you’re going to be scrubbing latrines for many years to come,” said Holbrook.

Having endured a week of what she saw as drill sergeant Cooper’s poor attitude, Ruby wasn’t exactly grief-stricken when one day she swam up through the clear ocean water to see a sign.

Well, to Ruby Redfort it was a sign: to the mere mortal it was just a donut on a plate sprinkled with candy numbers. The numbers she recognized without rearranging them: they were all digits that together and in the right order made up one long familiar number. Without any hesitation she crammed the donut into her mouth and made her way hurriedly to the bank of telephones outside the canteen.

One of the phone booths had a half-drunk milk shake balanced on top of the phone and next to it a stack of coins. Ruby picked up the receiver and dialed the number. The phone was answered on the third ring.

“Double Donut, Marla speaking.”

“Hey, Marla, it’s Ruby.”

“Hang on, I’ll get him — he’s right here.”

One minute and twenty seconds later a man’s voice came on the line.

“Hello.”

“What took you?” Ruby said.

“Kid, can’t a person eat a donut in his favorite diner without getting harassed?”

“I believe you wanted me to contact you,” said Ruby.

“Glad you can still read the signs,” he said. “So how are the plankton?”

“Oh, the plankton are OK — it’s the sea cucumbers I’m having trouble with.”

“Sergeant Cooper?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I gather he isn’t your biggest fan.”

“I’m not too fond of him either.”

“Well, this is your lucky day, Redfort. Dive school is done with you and Twinford Junior High would like you back Monday at eight a.m. pronto. So slip out of your fins. You’re on a plane back to Twinford in . . . oh, seventeen minutes.”

Ruby Redfort smiled, but before she hung up, she asked, “So, Hitch, why didn’t you just leave a message with the camp coordinator, like a normal person? It’s not like you’ve gotta be covert about it; everyone knows you’re my sidekick.”

“Kid, you can fool yourself that you have a sidekick, but you’ve got a long way to go before you’re going to fool me, LB, or anyone else in Spectrum.”

“OK man, I’m just kidding with you. I haven’t forgotten that you are Spectrum’s number one
numero uno
action agent — I was only asking. Why all the secrecy?”

“Just keeping you sharp, kid. Don’t want you getting sloppy.”

Ruby smiled. Yep, that was Hitch all right — one royal pain in the behind.

THE DREAM HAD BEGUN IN THE USUAL WAY:
Ruby alone, treading water in a bottomless ocean, an ethereal voice whispering to her, almost singing. She would turn this way and that, but she could never see “the thing” until it was too late.

Suddenly she would feel something grab her leg, and she would spin down, down, down into the indigo depths. And the miniature man who appeared in the water just couldn’t save her. And all the while the calling, like someone whispering a song to the ocean.

The vision was so real that whenever she awoke, she felt sure it had happened, the whispering so familiar that she could believe that she must have heard it once before, a long, long time ago, perhaps in a past life.

Ruby sat up in bed. She was covered in perspiration, freezing cold, and her head was thudding. She put out her hand and blindly felt around for her flashlight. But somehow the beam it shone just made things worse, more dramatic. She fumbled for the switch on the lamp beside her bed.

Click
.

The room was bathed in light, and Ruby could breathe again. Through the blur of her less-than-perfect vision she was reassured: there was the comic she was working on, spread out on her desk; there were the floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books, hundreds of them — fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, codebooks, puzzle books. Her record player, her records, her telephone collection — eccentric designs, from a squirrel in a tuxedo to a conch shell — all perched haphazardly on shelves and furniture. There was the jumble of clothes on the floor. She was definitely in her room and not miles beneath the heavy ocean, sinking through indigo.

Ruby lay back on her pillow, sighed a deep sigh, and drifted back into sleep, this time dreamless, her glasses still perched on the end of her nose. She was only wrenched from her slumber when her subconscious tuned in to the sound of screaming, coming from the backyard.

Ruby scrambled to get out of bed, tripped over the tangle of discarded clothes, and limped to the window. There she saw clouds of seagulls swooping and diving around the house, filling the air with their wings, legs trailing, ready to land. Seagulls are sizeable birds, and as they dodged and swooped, their gray and white feathers almost made contact with the glass, and Ruby found herself instinctively backing away.

The noise they made was enough to drown out most other noises, but not the screaming — this was coming from a small elderly woman who was darting around the yard waving a broom.

It was Mrs. Digby.

Mrs. Digby was the Redforts’ housekeeper and she had been with the family forever, which is to say longer than Ruby had existed, longer, even, than Sabina had existed. No one could do without her, and no one wanted to do without her: she was the family treasure.

Ruby stood transfixed, watching the tiny woman attacking the birds, shouting abuse at them and generally telling them where to go. It seemed that they had made the mistake of settling on her freshly laundered sheets, and this had got her hopping mad.

“I didn’t get up before six in the a.m. and work my fingers to the bone only to have you feathered vipers do your business all over my clean linen!”

It was fair to say Mrs. Digby was furious.

Just then a well-groomed man came into view. He was wearing a beautifully cut suit and appeared entirely unruffled as he calmly strolled out into the yard, a tiny device in his hand. He held this up to the sky, depressed a button, and suddenly, in a deafening screech, the birds all rose as one and squawked their way back in the direction of the ocean.

Ruby pushed open the large square picture window that made up most of the wall beside her desk (the Redfort house was a miracle of modern architecture) and leaned out.

“Wow!” she said, somewhat sarcastically. “I didn’t know you could talk to the animals.”

The man looked up and winked.

“Hey, kid. Surprised to see you up before noon.”

“Oh, you should know, Hitch. Early bird catches the worm and all that.”

“Too late for worms,” said Hitch. “Gulls got ’em, but I can rustle up some pancakes, kid.”

Ruby pulled on her clothes: jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt printed with the words
honk if you’re happy, hoot if you’re not, toot if you couldn’t care less
and scooted down the stairs two at a time. Mrs. Digby and Hitch were already in the kitchen and discussing the avian invasion.

“So what is that?” asked Ruby, sliding into her chair. “Some kind of bird-banishing gizmo?”

“Works on the same principle as a dog whistle. It emits a sound that humans can’t hear and birds can’t stand,” replied Hitch, tucking the device into his shirt pocket.

Ruby was impressed — not a bad gadget to have up your sleeve when the wildlife went wild.

“I might have to get myself one of those,” said Mrs. Digby. “Where’d ya buy it — SmartMart?”

“Well, they do say SmartMart’s the smart place to shop!” said Hitch, quoting the store’s tagline.

“Well, all I can say, child,” said Mrs. Digby earnestly, “is that it’s just as well your parents ain’t here to see this. Your mother would have a three-cornered fit if she witnessed what those critters have done to her sheets.”

Mr. and Mrs. Redfort were currently away — as they so often were — this time on a mini cruise that was taking them and the local historical society around Twinford’s coast. Dora Shoering was giving a series of on board lectures about the smugglers’ caves, the famous Twinford shipwrecks, and various other seafarers’ legends.

“Don’t you give those sheets a second thought, Mrs. D.” said Hitch. “I’ll get the laundry service to pick up the linen — no need for you to waste your valuable energy on that.”

“Shucks and fiddlesticks,” said Mrs. Digby. Which didn’t really mean anything, but often translated as,
If you insist
.

It had been less than two months since Hitch had joined the Redforts as house manager (or butler, as Sabina Redfort preferred to think of him) but to look at Mrs. Digby you might have thought he had been there always. She had accepted him at once and woe betide anyone who said a bad word about him. As far as she was concerned, he was the best darned butler, house manager (or whatever else he wanted to call himself) this side of anywhere.

Of course, what Mrs. Digby didn’t know was that Hitch was actually an undercover agent, sent by Spectrum to protect and work alongside Ruby. She had no idea that the butlering was just a cover — that really would have impressed her.

But it was a Spectrum imperative that Mrs. Digby should never know, never even suspect, that this alarmingly attractive man might not be all that he seemed. Although Ruby and Hitch had got off to a somewhat rocky start, they made a dynamic team. LB had seen this: she was a smart woman, and she knew that unflinching loyalty was what made a good agent, and agents who were loyal to each other made for a solid agency.

“So,” said Hitch to Ruby. “How are you going to get yourself in and out of trouble today?”

“I’m not,” said Ruby. “I’m gonna lie low, take it easy, probably hang out with Clancy.”