The Watch (The Red Series Book 1)

by Amanda Witt

  It was an obvious attempt to distract me. “Take me home,” I said cutting him off. “I want to go home.”

  The island—my island, my home—was a distant line on the horizon now. I wouldn’t even have noticed it, if I didn’t know it was there. I looked the other way, looked all around, and saw nothing but open sea, gray waves, gray sky.

  “I wasn’t in danger,” I said. “Angel wouldn’t have hurt me. He’s Meritt’s father. Why would he hurt me?”

  Farrell Dean was only eighteen, but at that moment he looked ten years older.

  “What?” I said. “What is it?”

  “I’m doing what’s best, Red.”

  That was too much. “I should just trust you, is that it?”

  Farrell Dean said, evenly, “I wish you would.”

  “And I wish you’d tell me what’s going on!” My voice was shrill. “You of all people, after accusing Meritt of keeping things from me.”

  I hesitated a fraction of a second, could have stopped myself, but I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to hurt him.

  “Do you know what this looks like, Farrell Dean? This looks like you saw a good opportunity to get me away from Meritt. You saw your chance, and you took it. But I don’t appreciate being kidnapped. I won’t forgive you. Not ever. I hate you.”

  Farrell Dean listened stoically to my tirade, the expression in his eyes growing increasingly distant. When I stopped he waited, eyebrows raised, as if to see whether I was truly finished.

  Then he said, softly, “Hate me if you have to. I’m doing what’s best for you, and I’ll take you back home when it’s safe. I promise.” He took a deep ragged breath, the only sign that he wasn’t perfectly calm. “And if Meritt’s with his father, he’ll be okay. He’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”

  Cline’s angry face swam before my eyes. The rocking of the boat made me ill, though it might have been the turmoil inside me that did it. I shut my eyes and tried not to let the panic in, the grief over leaving Meritt, the shame I felt for the way I’d spoken to Farrell Dean.

  I almost wished that I could lose my mind.

  Chapter 32

  The waves bore us swiftly along for one hour, or two—all I knew was that behind the screen of clouds, the sun gradually was moving west. We were in a gray bowl, gray sky above us, gray sea around us. I had never seen so much open space, so much nothingness.

  “When will we go back?” I finally asked.

  “Unless we can find a boat with an engine, we’ll have to wait until the currents shift. We’ll need the current to help us back.”

  “And when do these currents shift? In a day? A week?”

  Farrell Dean looked away. “Around about the winter solstice,” he said.

  The winter solstice? That was more than two months away. I couldn’t believe this.

  “And what if the current, or the wind, takes us straight out into the open sea? You’ve gotten all your information from a crazy old man.”

  I wanted to make him admit that he might not know what was best, wanted to punish him for taking me away from home, wanted to make him feel as unsettled as I was feeling. Maybe I succeeded. All I know for sure is that I ended up scaring myself, because the more I thought about it, the more the truth of it sank in. We were trusting a crazy old man.

  A crazy old man, and I was the one who had led us to him. What if I’d chosen wrong? What if Angel was the sane one, the good one? After all, Meritt had been with Angel. And if occasionally I’d caught a glimpse of something hard, something calculating, in Angel’s eyes, well—he’d been having to plot and calculate for years to survive around the old man, hadn’t he? Because he didn’t trust Sir Tom. He’d said so. And he’d said I shouldn’t trust him.

  But I had. And because I had trusted Sir Tom, Farrell Dean had trusted him, and now here we were, out on the sea, with only Sir Tom’s words for a guide. The sea was unending, and we had never set foot in a boat until that morning. We could die, and the seagulls would eat our bones.

  “We could die out here,” I said aloud.

  Farrell Dean considered this. “You’ve always wanted to see the sea,” he said finally. “Why don’t you try to enjoy it?”

  * * * *

  It grew cold, out on the water. The wind was still blowing, skimming us along, and my clothes were still damp. I felt in my pockets for my black cap.

  Several packs were in the bottom of the boat. One had dried fruit and meat. Farrell Dean tried to get me to eat something, but I wouldn’t. Then he opened another pack, pulled out a blanket, wrapped it around my shoulders, and turned away, clearly intending to leave me in peace.

  I didn’t do him the same favor.

  “You made me leave Judd,” I said. “I promised to take care of him, and you took me away.”

  Farrell Dean nodded. “That’s true. I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t want to be blamed for anything else. “That promise was mine. I’m breaking it by leaving. But you’re the one who made me break it. If anything happens to him, it’s your fault.”

  Farrell Dean looked at me for a long moment without speaking. Then he turned, studying the horizon.

  * * * *

  The sun was visible through a thin layer of clouds, and the waves were greener now. I stared at the sea outside the little boat, catching glimpses now and then of strange creatures that I knew only from Rafe’s descriptions in biology class. Jellyfish. The fin of a shark. Farrell Dean hoped I didn’t notice that, I could tell; he sat up and gazed with interest at a spot in the distance, where absolutely nothing was, as if I’d automatically look where he was looking.

  I watched the shark.

  * * * *

  “Farrell Dean?”

  We had been sitting in silence for several hours. Now Farrell Dean leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and looked at me warily.

  “I appreciate your concern,” I said. “But please explain how your secret about why you’re taking me away is any different from the secrets you were angry at Meritt for keeping from me.”

  “I’m trying to protect you. His secrets were leading you blind into danger.”

  “Excuse me for saying so, but when you gave me your mother’s stolen food, weren’t you leading me blind into danger?”

  Farrell Dean nodded. “But I had to do that,” he said. “Do you remember that winter when you were sick all the time? You were ten or eleven, and you were growing really fast. And one day you weren’t in school, yet again, and Rafe said you weren’t getting enough nourishment to get well. The Watchers weren’t killing people back then, so it seemed worth the risk, considering.”

  “Notice who did the choosing. I didn’t choose to take that risk. You chose it for me.”

  Farrell Dean stared at me for a heartbeat, then gave a short disbelieving laugh. “You aren’t stupid,” he said. “You knew I couldn’t magically produce extra food.”

  I looked away. There wasn’t much to look at—just the waves, the horizon. “And now you’re carrying me off to some unknown land, all in the name of protecting me, and you won’t even tell me what you’re supposedly protecting me from.”

  “That pretty much sums it up,” he agreed. The waves behind him were gray and cold.

  “We can’t go back now, anyway,” I said. “The die is cast. The deed is done. I can accept that. I just want to understand it.”

  His face was grim. “Understanding it would hurt you, Red. More than you know. Best to let it go.”

  I counted very slowly to ten, to twenty. When a full minute had elapsed, I tried again.

  “I am going to an unknown land,” I said. “I want to know exactly what I’m leaving behind.”

  He shook his head.

  I counted to sixty.

  “You’re going to an unknown land,” I said. “As long as you don’t keep secrets from me, I promise to always watch your back.”

  Still he said nothing.

  Sixty seconds.

  “I’m sorry for what I said before,” I said. I
tried to keep my tone light, but my voice wobbled a little bit, and Farrell Dean looked at me sharply. “I don’t hate you,” I said. “More than anybody in the world, you always try to protect me. I know that. And I probably will forgive you, eventually, for kidnapping me.”

  Scooting to the middle seat so I could reach him, I leaned forward, touched his knee, and looked him straight in the eye. “But I will not forgive you if you keep secrets from me.”

  Farrell Dean didn’t smile, but the tension in his face eased. “You’re ruthless, aren’t you?” he said. But he knew I meant the apology, even if I also intended to use it to get what I wanted.

  “Is it because Meritt and Angel were together?” I asked. “Because you don’t trust Angel and you think I’d be around him because of Meritt?”

  No reply.

  “Is it Sir Tom? Did he tell Alice something while we were asleep, something that worried her?”

  No reply.

  “Is it because Judd killed that warden—did you hear the warden shouting at me? He thought I did it.”

  “Those are all good reasons, Red.”

  “But they aren’t the one you had in mind. Is it . . . is it because Cline dislikes me, and you’re afraid he’ll yell me to death if we go back?”

  “You aren’t going to stop, are you?”

  “Not ever. Not until you tell me. You’re stubborn, Farrell Dean, but I’m more stubborn than you are. You know that. I will never let this drop. I’m tired of secrets.”

  He sighed and looked out over the empty waves. After a moment he turned to me, his face weary. “Bear in mind I could be wrong,” he said. “I hope I am.”

  I waited. He looked so very tired, and his face was filled with so much pain and dread that my heart sank and I almost relented. Maybe he was right—maybe I didn’t want to know, not if telling made him look like this. But how could I stand to not know?

  “I can only tell you what I heard,” he said. “The wardens in the prison were talking.” He paused.

  “The wardens?” I prompted.

  “Last night. Before the city meeting. They thought I was about to die, so they weren’t being careful.” Again he paused, and I heard the unsaid words. They thought he was about to die, and so did he. What had that been like for him, to think—to be all but certain—that he was moments away from execution?

  I put my hand back on his knee and absently he picked it up, traced the length of my fingers.

  “One of the wardens said, ‘He won’t do it. He’s fond of her.’”

  My heart began beating too hard and I felt the slow hot flush creep up my neck.

  Farrell Dean went on in a low voice, his face turned away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at me. “The other warden said, ‘That’s just it. He has divided loyalties. He has to prove he’s on the Watchers’ side. What better way than sacrificing the little redhead? Anyone can be bought if the price is right.’”

  So that was what the Watchers meant, that “one way or another” I’d be gone soon. Either I’d be “euthanized,” or Meritt would hand me over to them.

  “Then what?” I whispered.

  “Then they took me out to the city meeting.”

  I leaned forward. “But Meritt would never betray his friends—not me, not you. He’s the one who saved you from the city meeting.”

  Farrell Dean nodded. “I know. Cline told me.”

  “That was a terrible risk, Farrell Dean. We thought Meritt had been killed for helping you escape. Trapped in the watchtower and killed.”

  Again Farrell Dean nodded. “I thought so, too. He saved my life and risked his own. I’m not denying that. I’ll owe him as long as I live.”

  “But.”

  “I didn’t add any ‘but.’”

  I laughed, a strained, ugly sound. “I know what you want to say—that Meritt saved you, but you weren’t the one the Watchers wanted. You weren’t the price they wanted him to pay. He could afford to let you go.”

  Farrell Dean said nothing, sat looking at me as if waiting for it all to sink in, and in a moment it did.

  “There on the beach—just now—you think he was coming after me. To turn me in.”

  He didn’t nod, but I knew I had read his thought.

  “You think he brought the wardens—that he came after me with wardens, with guns . . . you think Angel was helping him trap me.”

  The windswept boat pitched and rocked, and Farrell Dean shook his head. “I don’t know what to think, Red. But I had to make a snap judgment, and it seemed safer to get you away. To do what Sir Tom said. Like I said, I hope I’m wrong.”

  “You are wrong.”

  “I want to be. But what if I’m not? You know Meritt. He plays to win.”

  “This is real life, not a game.” But I shifted uneasily, remembering things I’d said to Meritt, things he’d said to me.

  Farrell Dean said nothing.

  A more solid defense occurred to me. “Listen,” I said, leaning further forward, determined to make him understand, to make him agree with me. “If Meritt had come out to get me, why would he bring wardens? He didn’t need them. All he needed was himself. I would have gone straight to him.”

  Even as I spoke I wondered—why was Meritt out there with wardens? Maybe he wasn’t with them. But if he’d been out there alone, why hadn’t he come to me on the beach? Why had Angel come instead?

  “I’d have gone to him,” I repeated absently, my thoughts fixed on untangling the logistics. “I would have done anything he wanted. Anything at all.”

  Farrell Dean flinched at my words. For a second I thought his feelings were hurt, that I had twisted the knife again, but then I followed his thoughts and saw he was thinking something worse.

  I would have done whatever Meritt wanted, and Meritt wanted to save the city.

  A wave splashed hard against the boat, rocking us, giving us an extra shove as if proving we were unmoored, without foothold.

  “Meritt could have saved all those people,” I said slowly. “All I had to do was go with him. The Watchers would have killed me and been satisfied, and then Meritt could have persuaded the Watchers to spare everyone else, could have come up with some other way to get us through the winter.”

  Farrell Dean said nothing.

  “My old people,” I went on, and my voice trembled. I looked up at the sky, trying to stop the tears prickling at the backs of my eyes. “Louie, Estelle, Mariella . . . and the food supplies, the winter coming on . . . So many people will die, and it could have just been me.”

  “Hold on, Red.” Farrell Dean was shaking his head. “Don’t get ahead of the facts. Everything you’re saying—sure, that might have been going through Meritt’s head. But I don’t think it would have worked. The Watchers wouldn’t have given Meritt any real power, not even in exchange for you. He’d be a token, a puppet.”

  I didn’t believe that. I knew Meritt, knew how single-minded he was, how smart, how good he was at getting things done, how easily he could manage people—even Cline, suspicious and cynical about absolutely everyone except Farrell Dean, liked Meritt. He could have made it work. He would have made it work.

  But Farrell Dean had messed it up.

  “It should have been my decision to make,” I said. “My choice. Not yours.”

  “Stop it, Red,” Farrell Dean said sharply, shifting until we were knee to knee, looking me straight in the eye. “Think about what you’re saying. A suicide mission is still suicide.”

  Was it? And if so, so what? It was just a word. Suicide, sacrifice, whatever you wanted to call it, the question remained: If I’d had the choice, would I have turned myself in, knowing I’d die, but giving all the others a chance to live?

  “Maybe Meritt still can salvage the situation,” Farrell Dean said. “He’s good at that, at thinking on his feet. Maybe it will all come right after all.”

  “Maybe he was already planning to salvage it,” I said. “Maybe he could have brought me to the Watchers and persuaded them that arresting me was goo
d enough, that they didn’t need to kill me. Or maybe he was coming out to get Angel to help him—to help us—and wasn’t intending to turn me in at all.”

  I could come up with all sorts of possibilities, but how could I know which was the correct one? The waves slapped the little boat, waves that were cold and dark and gray. What had happened to the lovely sea, the water that felt like freedom, like hope?

  “Red?” Farrell Dean waited until I looked up. “If you can’t think of yourself, think of Meritt. For his sake, it’s better we got you away. He might trade you for a chance to save the city—I hope not, but he might. Or he might let you trade yourself. And if that happened, Meritt would never forgive himself. It would eat him alive.”

  But when he met my eyes, we both knew he was describing how he himself would feel. He wasn’t sure at all that Meritt would feel the same way.

  “We’re going to have to agree to disagree,” I said, turning away from him. “I know Meritt. I trust him to do what’s best.”

  Whatever that was. I no longer felt like I knew.

  Chapter 33

  “How far is this other island?” I said. The sun had set and we were in the long gray twilight.

  Farrell Dean, who had been sitting facing away from me—giving me what privacy he could—swung his legs over the bench seat, turned towards me.

  “I don’t know how far it is in miles,” he said. “Sir Tom thinks it’ll take us less than two days. Maybe only one. It depends on the speed of the current.”

  I tried to hide my astonishment, and knew I failed. Two days in this little boat? Two days on the open sea in this tiny little boat, with only—I looked again—one gallon bag of water? We had plenty of dried food, but water . . . that apparently was part of what fell out when I tipped the boat.

  I didn’t want to think about it. We couldn’t get back now, anyway.

  * * * *

  As it grew dark the movement of the waves slowed. I dangled my fingers in the water; it moved, but I didn’t think we were moving any longer. We were rocking, but not going forward. I dropped a small piece of dried apple in the water; it floated gently beside us for a long time before it drifted away. After a series of such small experiments, I was sure—at least as sure as I could be, out there in the dark, with no stable landmarks.