Feel the Fear. Lauren Child

she went straight up to her room and on up to the roof where she could sit in private and think her own thoughts undisturbed. What she was thinking about was the Spectrum test. What would it be? Survival? Agility? Strength?

      And what would happen if she failed?

      It was too awful to contemplate.

      She stared up into the starlit sky and searched for meteors. It was the end of the season but she couldn’t help looking and Ruby’s patience knew few bounds. It was like a sort of meditation, looking up into the infinity above her, and it allowed her to think. She heard the soft padding feet of her dog.

      ‘Hey there boy,’ she scratched him behind the ears. ‘What’s next for old Ruby Redfort do you think?’ She looked at the husky like he might answer back.

      Three cases and five months into her agent career and she already felt like she had always done the job – she certainly wasn’t ready to give it up.

      She thought back to the past month’s events – the meeting with the Australian, her close encounter with the perfumer Lorelei. . . there was more to that whole conspiracy than she could fathom. Why had the Australian woman commissioned Lorelei to steal the Cyan scent? What was she planning to do with it? Where were they now? What did they really want and when would they resurface? Perhaps never, though this seemed unlikely – in every thriller she had ever read, the evil genius always came back for a curtain call.

      Ruby found herself actually longing for this to be the case for these two, and she wished with a strange hope that it would be sooner rather than later. . . her curiosity made her want it so.

      As Ruby gazed up at the dark sky, hand on Bug’s warm head, she heard distant sirens, lots of them, drifting through the night air from downtown Twinford. They sounded like a warning cry of things to come. And as Ruby listened, another alarm sounded in her mind, and she was suddenly almost able to hear LB’s voice, the words sharp and unequivocal – ‘Too much curiosity can be fatal.’

      It was a warning Ruby had been given on many occasions and had always ignored. Would she heed it this time?

      History suggested not.

       High

       above the

       howling sirens. . .

      . . .above the slow-turning red and white lights of emergency vehicles, a tiny figure walked across the barely illuminated sky. He trod the air between two colossal buildings, his feet feeling the invisible path, skywalking.

      The sirens and lights were not for him. Further down the street, a building was burning.

      Well, it was none of his concern.

      When he had crossed the void he stepped lightly onto the rooftop and vanished as if he were a mere figment of the imagination.

      

Chapter 7.

      RUBY REDFORT WOKE TO THE SOUND OF THE TELEPHONE. At least, she thought it was a telephone. She stumbled out of bed and staggered to her feet. But she couldn’t seem to locate the ringing. She had a lot of phones – a whole collection of them. One shaped like a shell, one a lobster, another a squirrel in a tux. There was also a donut, a hamburger, a few shaped like telephones, and a whole lot more.

      As Ruby scanned the room, trying to work out where exactly the noise was coming from, it slowly dawned on her that the sound was no ringing phone and in fact was almost certainly emanating from her watch, which was tucked away in her desk drawer. The watch was no ordinary Timex, Ingersol or Swiss. This watch was custom made, multifunctional, radio equipped, and though often referred to as a Rescue Watch, its official title was the Spectrum Escape Watch. It had once belonged to Bradley Baker when he was a kid.

      Now it belonged to Ruby.

      Ruby picked it up and switched it to speak-mode.

      ‘So how’s the broken arm doing?’ came a perky voice.

      ‘You woke me to ask me that?’ said Ruby.

      ‘It’s ten am,’ said the voice.

      ‘I wasn’t aware,’ said Ruby.

      ‘Perhaps you should set your alarm.’

      ‘I don’t need to. I got people like you bothering me.’

      ‘So the arm, is it giving you any trouble?’

      ‘Yeah, it’s preventing me from sleeping.’

      ‘How’s that?’

      ‘People keep calling to ask how it is.’

      ‘Is that so,’ said the voice, ‘and how is it?’

      ‘Itchy,’ said Ruby.

      ‘That’s a good sign,’ said the voice, ‘means it’s healing.’

      ‘So people keep telling me. By the way, do you mind giving me some idea of who you are?’ Ruby asked.

      ‘Oh I’m sorry, did I neglect to say?’

      ‘Uh huh,’ yawned Ruby.

      ‘I’m Agent Gill. LB asked me to coordinate your field test. Just wanted to say hi.’

      ‘Hi back,’ said Ruby scratching her arm with the yellow pencil. She tottered into the bathroom and examined her face in the mirror. ‘So this is a survival test?’ she asked, fake-casually.

      ‘I can neither confirm nor deny,’ said Gill. ‘When’s the cast due off?’

      ‘Today,’ said Ruby.

      ‘That’s good because you’re going to need both arms for this; fitness is key.’

      ‘Isn’t it always?’ said Ruby.

      ‘That’s correct, so you might want to get back on your bicycle and put in some miles. Give yourself a bit of a workout.’

      ‘I would, only I don’t have a bike,’ said Ruby.

      ‘Sure you do, I’ve seen you riding around, yellow isn’t it?’

      ‘Green,’ said Ruby.

      ‘That’s the one,’ said Gill. ‘Yep, you got to get back on that green bike of yours.’

      ‘It’s blue,’ said Ruby.

      ‘You just said it was green.’

      ‘Not any more.’

      ‘How so?’ said Gill.

      ‘I sprayed it Windrush blue and gave it to my pal Clancy.’

      ‘That was nice of you,’ said Gill.

      ‘Yeah, maybe, but it leaves me walking I guess.’

      Gill sighed down the end of the phone line. ‘That’s what you get for being nice.’

      ‘Tell me about it,’ said Ruby.

      ‘My advice, take up jogging,’ said Gill.

      ‘You woke me to suggest I should take up jogging?’

      ‘No,’ said Gill, ‘I woke you to inform you that you’ll be contacted any day soon, maybe in the next few hours. You need to be on standby.’

      ‘You contacted me to tell me that you’ll be contacting me. . .?’

      ‘Correct, I’ll be contacting you,’ said Gill, and hung up.

      Ruby’s watch vibrated – she looked at the words that appeared on the surface of the glass that covered the dial.