Read Online The Always War by Margaret Peterson Haddix - Free Book Online

disabled?” he asked. He glared at her. “Were you the one who disabled it?”
    The kid’s eyes kept darting about.
    “Why aren’t you outside checking out the engine, to see why it isn’t working?” the kid said. “People
always
go out to check the engine.”
    “Not in enemy territory,” Tessa said drily.
    Tessa wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the kid’s eyes got even bigger.
    “What?” the kid asked. “Where
are
we?”
    She sprang up and dashed toward the pilot’s seat.
    “Keep down!” Gideon commanded. “You don’t want anyone to see you through the windows!”
    The kid had already dropped into a rolling position to get past the windows.
    I think she knows more than Gideon and I do about staying out of sight,
Tessa thought.
    There was something familiar about the kid’s nervous, jerky movements. Suddenly Tessa knew why.
    “It was you!” she burst out. “You were the one following Gideon last night!”
    “What?” Gideon asked.
    “Someone was following you, all the way from the apartment building to that dark alley where you got the plane,” Tessa said. “That’s why
I
started following you, because I was going to warn you—”
    “When were you planning to tell me that?” Gideon asked.
    “Well, we’ve been a little bit busy,” Tessa said sarcastically. “Anyhow, once you started talking to that man in the alley, I thought it was just him who’d been following you. Obviously, you knew he was there.”
    “You mean Rondo?” the kid asked, as she eased into thepilot’s seat. “You think Rondo would do his own surveillance? Never! He might actually have to break a sweat!”
    Gideon looked at Tessa as soon as the kid’s back was turned. If Tessa hadn’t just decided she was completely disillusioned with Gideon, she would have been thrilled by that look, because it was so conspiratorial. It clearly said,
I trust you. I don’t trust this kid. We’re partners against her, all right?
    Tessa flashed a look back at Gideon. She hoped he could read her thoughts in her face:
Look, that kid weighs maybe seventy pounds. I think either one of us could overpower her if we had to. Why don’t we pretend to go along with whatever she says, and see if she can actually get the plane working again?
    Aloud, Tessa said, “Then … if you’ve been on this plane since back in Waterford City, you’re probably not one of the enemy. Are you?”
    “Doesn’t seem logical, does it?” the kid agreed. “If I were the enemy, why would I bother infiltrating Eastam, just to secretly fly back with you to … oh, crap! We really are in the war zone!” She’d refreshed the computer screen and was staring at the same geographical coordinates Gideon had called up before. “I was hoping you were just too stupid to read the navigational data, but it turns out you’re even bigger fools than I thought. Why in the world would you have …” She was turning around in her seat to face them, and suddenly shouted, “Get down!”
    Automatically, Tessa and Gideon dropped to the floor.
    “Where are they coming from?” Gideon asked in a tense whisper. “Where’s the attack?”
    The kid rolled her eyes side to side, glancing toward each window.
    “There’s no attack yet, that I can see,” she said, and now her voice was hushed and urgent too. “That was mostly just a precaution. Testing your reflexes. You don’t know the angle anyone could be looking from, through those windows. We’ve got to go into desperado mode. I want to get out of here alive, so it’s probably a package deal. I’ll have to keep the two of you alive too.”
    “That would be … nice,” Tessa said faintly. She had rug burn on her cheek now, along with the bruises from falling last night.
    Gideon had begun crawling on his elbows toward the front of the plane, so Tessa decided to do the same.
    “Look,” Gideon said. “I’m a military pilot. I know how to—”
    The kid cut him off with a snort.
    “The fact you ended up here,