The Watch (The Red Series Book 1) (15 page)

I fell to my hands and knees, groped along the cold
concrete.

“What is it?”
Meritt
said.

“The thing that got him killed.” I held out my hand, palm
up. Three tiny white pills. “Painkillers.”

Meritt
took
one, held it up in the candlelight. “Not exactly,” he said, his gray eyes
sparkling. “Sedatives.”

I gave him a look, but he didn’t notice. “Why did
Rafe
have these?” I said.

Meritt
didn’t answer. He sat down at the table, took the other two pills out of my
hand, and with infinite care wrapped all three in a small piece of paper and
tucked it into his pocket.

“You wouldn’t have those pills if it weren’t for me,” I
said, getting to my feet. “Tell me what’s going on.”

He looked up at me. “I’d rather you trusted me on this,” he
said.

“And I’d rather you trusted me. I thought we were friends.”

Meritt
leaned forward and pulled the map toward him. “You’re my best friend, and you
know it,” he said. “Show me the other circles—”

“Then why don’t you trust me?”

Meritt
didn’t even look away from the map. “I do trust you. But you have to trust me,
too.”

I didn’t answer.

After a long moment
Meritt
sighed
and looked at me. I didn’t say anything, and neither did he. He tipped his
chair off its front legs and began rocking it up and down.

Finally he spoke. “The other night, when you got picked up?
If you’d known why I was meeting
Rafe
, would you have
been able to play innocent as well as you did?”

“I would never give you away,” I said, and my words caught
hard in my throat. “Not ever.”

Meritt
looked alarmed. “Don’t cry,” he said, and his chair legs thumped hard on the
floor. Reaching out, he took me by the arm and pulled me down onto his knee. “I
know you wouldn’t give me away. Not intentionally. But you might give away that
you weren’t giving me away, and then we’d both be in danger, not just me, but
you too. Sometimes ignorance is the best defense.”

As he spoke he collected my wet hair at the base of my neck,
his hand warm on my skin. I wanted to lean into him; I wanted to be held.

Instead I pulled my hair out of his hand and stood up.

“Tell me what’s going on,” I said. “If you won’t tell me,
then the next time I find something out, I’ll deal with it on my own. Or I’ll
tell Farrell Dean. In any case, I won’t be coming to you.”

Meritt’s
expression hardened. “Farrell Dean,” he said. “So that’s what this is about.”

“No. This is about us. You and me. This is about you
treating me like a child.”

Meritt
shook
his head, looking irritated.

“You are,” I said. “
Rafe
trusted
me—he told
me
where to find
those sedatives.”

“Because he had no choice,”
Meritt
said. “You were the one who happened to be there when he got the chance to
speak.”

“
Happened
to be
there? I went to him,
Meritt
. I tried to save his
life.” The memory brought tears to my eyes.
 
“Why can’t you take me seriously?”

 
Because I was
small and young and looked younger than I was, because I had stupid freaky red
hair—but I didn’t say any of that. It sounded whiney, even to me. Someone
who deserved to be taken seriously wouldn’t list the reasons why she might not
be.

Meritt’s
expression softened, but he didn’t pull his punches.
“Don’t delude yourself,” he said. “
Rafe
and Farrell
Dean wanted to keep you in the dark—they were in complete agreement about
that—and I
was the one who disagreed. Who’s been sneaking out with
you three or four nights a week for, what—two years now? Me, that’s who.
So you’ve got no business being mad at me. If you can’t be mad at
Rafe
because he’s dead, then save your indignation for
Farrell Dean.”

“I don’t care about Farrell Dean,” I said. “I – .”

Meritt
met
my gaze but didn’t say anything.

My face grew hot. We had never spoken of what was between
us.

“I thought you were different,” I said finally, and my voice
broke on the words.

A faint flush rose on
Meritt’s
cheeks, but the uncompromising expression in his gray eyes didn’t waver. He
wasn’t going to tell me. He was going to take my information and share it with
Farrell Dean and tall-older-
Meri
and who knew what
others, and leave me out.

Speechless with frustration, my chest tight with distress, I
turned away and headed for the door. I didn’t walk slowly. I didn’t hesitate. I
wasn’t bluffing.

What it did mean, that I was walking away from
Meritt
? I didn’t know. He was my best friend. I loved him.
I couldn’t even remember how it felt to not to love him.

But something terrible was happening in
Optica
,
and if there was a solution, I wouldn’t be left out. Not without a protest. Not
when he was endangering himself.

My hand was on the doorknob when he spoke.

“They were for me.”

I turned, surprised.

“Yeah,”
Meritt
said, running a
hand through his hair. “That’s right.
Rafe
got the
sedatives for me.”

“You’re not sick.” I was too startled to move away from the
door.

Meritt
looked startled too, and then regretful, and then something else. “Not like you
mean,” he said slowly. “It’s not a physical illness  . . .”

“Stop it,
Meritt
. You aren’t sick
in any way at all.”

“It was worth a shot,” he said with a shrug, flashing me a
grin that quickly vanished. “No, don’t get mad again, Red. Listen—here’s
how it’s been. For the past few months I’ve been working on rigging the
connection to the compound so I can spy on the Watchers from the tower. It took
awhile because I could only work on it when I got called to the compound, and
then only for a minute or two at a time, when the wardens weren’t hanging
around. So I brought Farrell Dean in and coached him through it so that when he
got called out there he could do some of the work, and then I’d pick up where
he left off next time I got called, and so forth and so on. You see?”

I nodded.

“So last week we finally finished it. We’ve got the compound
part in place, and I can get into the watchtower easily
enough—something’s always malfunctioning up in the
Opticon
,
they’re always calling for me. But the warden won’t ever leave while I’m
there.”

I was shaking my head, moving back toward him. “No, no, no,”
I said.

“Yes, yes, yes. It’s perfect, don’t you see? There’s only
one warden up there at night. He always drinks hot milk and whiskey. I can slip
one little pill into the bottle of milk, and once he drinks it he won’t know
anything else until morning. It’ll work. I know it will work.
Rafe
knew it would work.”

There was no point arguing with him. It would only convince
him he shouldn’t have told me.

“So was it the pills all along?” I asked. I was standing
directly in front of him now. “Was that what
Rafe
wanted us to find? Not the circles, not the map itself?”

Meritt’s
eyes
went distant, abstract.

“Both, I think,” he said after a moment, focusing back in on
me. “Whatever these other cameras are, they’re significant.” He gestured toward
the sketch of
Lonna
on the wall. “I bet that’s why
she died. I bet she found something.”

“You mean they killed her? Electrocuted her and made it look
like an accident?”

“Maybe. Or maybe she tried to check it on her own, and
electrocuted herself. In either case, if she knew something, then her getting
killed lost us six months.”

His
matter-of-fact tone made me blink. We’d known
Lonna
;
Rafe
had loved
Lonna
; how could
Meritt
talk about her possible murder in such analytic
terms?

“You
sound like you’re talking about chess,” I said. “This isn’t a game,
Meritt
.”

He made an exasperated gesture. “I never said it was. I said
it was a shame
Lonna
died before she could tell us
what she’d found, and if she were standing here, she’d say the same thing. Stop
spoiling for a fight.”

He’d wrong-footed me, and I wasn’t sure how, and anyway a
sudden fit of shivering kept me from answering.

“You’re soaking wet,”
Meritt
said,
as if he’d only just noticed, which he probably only had.

“So are you,” I said.

“I’m not turning blue. Go see if you can find some towels.
See if the hot water’s working. You could even take a shower, if you want. It
might make you feel better.”

“Don’t patronize me.” My voice was firm, but I had to fight
not to smile back at him when he grinned at me.

I turned my back on him in an attempt to maintain a
non-amused, adult demeanor. Of course the most adult thing, I thought then,
would be admit that he was right. There was no point in standing around
freezing.

So I went to the bathroom in search of towels, and once
there I couldn’t resist checking the water. It was, in fact, hot.

The temptation was enormous—I was so cold, and I could
so easily imagine the comforting warmth, the tenseness in my neck relaxing, the
shivering stopping.

I stripped off my wet clothes, dropped them on the floor,
and ducked under the running water.
 
It wasn’t a particularly safe thing to
do—a warden could show up at any moment—but it felt safe enough. I
was in
Rafe’s
house, and
Meritt
had suggested it.

So I stood there in the dark, blissfully warm, feeling my
shoulders relax, and the muscles in my face, and the tight fist of anxiety in
my chest, and I let myself pretend that this was our house,
Meritt’s
and mine. We lived here in the circle of
Rafe’s
protection, and we trusted each other, and we were happy.

And no one would ever tear us apart.

“Red?”

Meritt’s
voice
jolted me awake. I’d dozed off standing under the warm water, leaning against
the tiled wall.

“Coming,” I said. I turned off the shower, dried off, and
pulled on my clothes. They were still wet and cold, but I felt much better. In
fact, I felt triumphant:
Meritt
had caved. He’d
brought me in on his secrets.

Meritt
was
sitting at the table, examining the camera by candlelight. “This is high-tech
stuff. Way beyond our cameras
.” He looked up at me.
“It’s another discrepancy to add to
Rafe’s
list.”

“Like pencils,” I said, remembering what Farrell
Dean had said. “And eyeglasses.”

Meritt
shook his head. “More like our power system.”

The system ran off of the sea, somehow—no
one was quite sure how.
Meritt
and Farrell Dean had
bored me many a time speculating together about how it actually worked.

”We don’t know things we
should
know, given the things we do know,”
Meritt
went on. “We have peculiar technological
gaps.”

“Is it because of the Guardians? Did they tell the Watchers
how to do certain things?”

 
“Maybe,”
Meritt
said, noncommittal, fiddling with the camera.

“They
really do exist. That’s the only explanation for the gap by the Watcher
compound being sealed.”

Meritt
gave
me an odd look. “Of course they really exist,” he said. Then he gestured at the
camera again. “That panel that covered it—it must be motion-sensitive.
That would let it stay closed unless there was something to see.”

“What’s to see in the wasteland? The other cameras, the ones
inside the city, those make sense. But who goes to the wasteland?”

Meritt
cocked an eyebrow.

“I know we go there,” I said. “But who else?”

 
“I don’t know.
People. Where else is there to go, if you don’t want to be seen by the
Watchers?” But he was still fixated on the technology in his hand. “See how
tiny it is, compared to the regular cameras? And it seems to be functionally
wireless. Must use some sort of radio signal.”

Hurriedly I put my hand over the glass. “If it doesn’t need
wires, does that mean it’s working right now?”

He pushed my hand away, fiddled with the camera. “I don’t
think so,” he said, pulling out a tiny piece. “See this? It’s corroded.”

He moved the candle closer to the camera, studied it some
more.

“Maybe it wasn’t the Watchers who put these up,” I said, and
Meritt
looked at me, suddenly wary.

“Three of the circles are in the Watcher compound,” I said.
“Maybe someone’s been watching the Watchers, and watching us when we were in
places the Watchers couldn’t see.” I shivered. “It has to be the Guardians.
Don’t you think?”

Meritt
shrugged
and his eyes slid away from mine, went back to the tiny camera.

“They might help us,
Meritt
,” I
said, but before I finished speaking he was shaking his head.

 
“Even if they
hate the Watchers’ guts, it doesn’t mean they’d help us.”

 
“What exactly do
you think they are?” I wanted him to say they certainly weren’t animal-like
creatures with poor drawing skills and a taste for chicken blood—or
guttural voices calling my name—but he merely shrugged again.

“Do you think they’re human?”

“They do inhuman things,” he said, still looking at the
camera.

 
“If our
technology came from the Guardians, they must be smart. Like we are, I mean, or
more than we are. Not like animals.”

Meritt
didn’t answer.

“Don’t you even have a guess?”

“Sure.” He glanced up at me. “My guess is they’re flightless
birds with the heads of men and tails like lions.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Not funny,” I said. “I’m
serious,
Meritt
. Who are they? What are they? And
what if they’re angry that we took their camera?”

Meritt
didn’t seem concerned, at least not about that. “Nobody’s taken care of this
device for a long time,” he said. “I’m guessing nobody cares about any of these
cameras anymore.” His voice went quiet. “Maybe nobody even remembers they
exist.”

“I wonder how
Rafe
found them,” I
began, but my words were cut off by a sound.

Someone was trying the door.

Meritt
and I
stared at each other. The door rattled again.

Meritt
jumped to his feet and in two steps was at the wall, re-hanging the map.

There was no other exit besides the door—not unless we
could get a window open and get away before the warden walked around the house.
He was probably doing that already. He’d know someone was here—he’d be
calling for backup. They could be coming from all directions.

We were caught.

A scene flashed through my mind:
Meritt
, standing in the center of the city meeting
circle.

“
Meritt
,” I said. “Hide in the
bathroom.”

“No,” he said, turning to me. “
You
hide.”

“You’ve been arrested five times to my one.”

“No.”

“I don’t know how to spy on the Watchers from the tower. You
do.”

“
Shhh
,” he said, ignoring my
argument and pulling me by the arm toward the bathroom.

I yanked my arm free. “I won’t hide. I’ve already seen
Rafe
die, and I’m not watching the same thing happen to
you.”

For a heartbeat
Meritt
stared at
me, frowning. I could see calculations passing through his mind. Then he bent
over me, kissed me on the lips, and was gone. I didn’t even feel it until it
was over.

Hurrying to the door, I unbarred it, opened it just a crack.
Please not the warden with the scar, I thought. Please not him.

“Hello?” I called uncertainly, my heart pounding.

Out of the darkness a form materialized from around the
corner of the house. It came closer, and the beam of a flashlight shone in my
face, blinding me. This was it. At the very least I’d be put in prison. Surely,
surely they wouldn’t put me in the city meeting—I wasn’t stealing
anything, I wasn’t causing discord, it probably wasn’t even past curfew yet,
but this was
Rafe’s
house, the traitor
Rafe
—

“Blast it all,” a gruff voice said. “I thought it might be
you.”

It was the bald, bearded warden. Warden Karl.

Without another word he pushed me into the house and closed
the door. His round face was grim and his eyes looked hard and strangely tight,
as if he’d looked into a too-bright light and hadn’t yet recovered.

Judd, I thought, more sure than ever that Warden Karl was
his father. What had this man suffered, watching Judd in the city circle that
night?

He glanced around the room, noting the candle burning low on
the table, the open books.

“You want to explain?” he said shortly, crossing his arms
over his chest.

I nodded. “I came to say goodbye.”

His look became, if possible, even more disapproving. “You
think
Rafe
cared about you?”

“I know he did.”

“So you think he’d want you getting in trouble?”

I didn’t have an answer for that, but the warden didn’t wait
for one. Instead he began strolling around the room, turning over the books and
then moving to the wall, where he studied the sketch of
Lonna
,
then took another few steps and stood in front of the map. His eyes narrowed.
Reaching up, he touched a point with the tip of his finger.

“That’s where we’re standing,” he said. “Right there. And
there’s the city circle.”

It could have been a threat, but I hoped it wasn’t. He was
Judd’s father, and I was Judd’s friend, and
Petey
had
saved Judd’s life with his own. We couldn’t talk about it, couldn’t
commiserate, but we could look at the circle on the map and hate it.

I stepped up beside him and peered at the map as if for the
first time.

 
“There’s my
dormitory,” I said, pointing. Hinting.
Let
me go home.

The warden turned and faced me. I couldn’t read his
expression. His decision might depend on whether he’d found me on his own, or
whether the warden in the watchtower had seen something and sent him out to
investigate. Whatever happened, as long as he didn’t decide to search the
house,
Meritt
at least would be safe.

“Here’s how this works,
” the
warden began. “The warden handcuffs you. He takes you to the prison and sticks
you in a cell. He files a report that gets sent to the Watchers. Best case
scenario, you don’t see the sun for three months, and various wardens end up in
charge of your well-being from one shift to the next. One warden at a time, if
you get my drift.”

Unfortunately I did.

“That’s the best case scenario. Worst case
scenario, you end up in the city circle tomorrow night, or the next day, or the
next. That’s what would be happening to you, if most any other warden had
walked through that door tonight. That, or else he would have offered you a
deal you couldn’t refuse. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

I nodded.

“I won’t be able to cover for you again,” he
continued. “I have obligations. Do you understand?”

Again I nodded, certain that he was referring to
Judd.

Warden Karl studied me for a long moment, his
face unreadable, the skin around his eyes still tight and angry. “I’ll take you
back to your dorm now, if you’re finished with your good-byes.”

A third time I nodded mutely, afraid that a
spoken word from me, any word, would break the spell of good fortune.

Warden Karl turned, and I followed, and neither
one of us so much as glanced toward the bathroom as we headed out the door.