Free Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3 by Karen McQuestion Page B

wondering what he’d done to make her stop mid-sentence, but when I peeked out, all I could see was the two of them standing side-by-side, his hand on her arm. He spoke so softly I could just hear him. “Just go inside and go back to sleep. Forget you ever saw us.”
    She looked around, confused. “Go back to bed?”
    “Yes, that’s right. You’ll sleep soundly, and when you wake up you won’t remember any of this.”
    “All right then,” she said, turning and going back into the house.
    The boss walked back to the car, and he and the armed guard got in and drove away. As I watched the taillights go off in the distance, I felt relief wash over me. I wiped my sweat-slicked hands on the front of my jeans and blinked back tears.
    Only then did I stop to think about the throbbing on the back of my neck. I reached up to rub the spot and found it sticky and wet. When I pulled my fingers away and looked, I realized that what I’d thought was sweat plastering my shirt to my body was actually blood. I had no idea how this had happened. The men who’d been chasing me hadn’t even come close. But something clearly had made contact with my neck, causing the stinging sensation. And that something had broken the skin.
    I didn’t have time to think about it. I had to go at least a mile before I got home, and I needed to do it without getting caught. I looked up and down the street before crawling out of my hiding place. Lights were on in a few of the houses, and the streetlamps lit up the road, but the trees, mature and abundant in this part of town, would help me hide along the way.

 
     
     

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
     
     
    I’d gone through Old Edgewood so many times before that I knew all the good hiding places. I darted between parked cars and behind hedges. Crouched behind garages and moved stealthily between trees. The men in white had their detectors on, so I knew I’d hear them if they were close. Meanwhile, I could be absolutely silent. I tried not to think about the man with the gun. Maybe he and the boss had left for good.
    I came to Knitting-Lady’s house. Looking through her front window, I noticed she was up to her usual routine. Seeing her working at her knitting made my world seem normal again. For a moment I could fool myself into thinking I wasn’t being hunted by men in white suits and a man with a gun. Hunted? Wasn’t that the word Mallory had used? And here I’d thought she was being overly dramatic.
    Leaning against a tree trunk in front of Knitting-Lady’s house, I allowed myself the luxury of a few moments’ rest. I watched as she yanked at a skein of pale pink yarn, then resumed her work, fingers effortlessly manipulating the yarn into something that would (I guessed) eventually be a scarf. Observing her going through the motions was soothing; I let my brain whir with all that had happened. Even though I’d essentially been spying over at the train station, I hadn’t seen anything of interest. Why should the men even care that I’d been there? And why spread out and search with their detectors on? I thought about how weird it was that the old lady had changed her mind about calling the police. She almost sounded drugged. Maybe the boss man had hypnotized her? Or maybe it was mind control, like Mallory talked about. None of it made sense. I looked at my cell phone and groaned when I saw it was half past three. My alarm would go off in three hours.
    Reluctantly I left Knitting-Lady’s yard and continued carefully toward home: through the industrial park and past the strip mall, until I was finally in New Edgewood at last. My side of town lacked the foliage, but the houses were closer together. I was familiar with every barking dog, every motion-sensor light, and every residence that contained a fellow insomniac who might be looking out the window. I avoided all of it. I didn’t see any further signs of the men who’d been chasing me, and I decided they must have given up. The worst was