Free Brigands M. C. by Robert Muchamore

holidays.
    Following the bomb attempt the police were taking no chances with the only witness to a quintuple murder. Dante’s third school in as many months was six miles from Ross’ home and it had been chosen for its location on a dead-end street.
    An armed police officer drove him each morning and sat in his car making sure nobody suspicious came through the school’s only entrance. At lunchtime he’d swap with another officer, who’d take Dante home and stay until just before bedtime. A third officer kept guard through the night.
    It was an isolated existence. At school Dante was known as Kevin Drake. There were a couple of boys he got on with, but the other kids had settled into their own cliques which were hard to break into.
    Things other kids took for granted were complicated by bodyguards and security details. Boy Scouts was out of the question because the church hall had an unlit car park and exits on three sides. An invite to a Saturday afternoon birthday party required a change in shifts and Ross having to fill in forms and negotiate overtime payments with the Devon police force who were paying for Dante’s protection.
    Dante had always been the kind of kid who terrorised the playground and wound up teachers. But now he withdrew, burying himself in wrestling magazines, wondering about death and dreaming up elaborate fantasies of killing the Führer. He seemed content to watch the world drift by, rather than to take part in it. He only livened up when he got to visit Holly. He always tried to bring her sweets, or make a paper windmill or do some little thing to get her excited. Holly’s foster mum would take them out to a local swing park and her oneyear-old innocence allowed him to be a normal big brother until he looked up and saw the plain-clothes officer walking behind with a bulge under his jacket.
    Dante’s teachers didn’t know his background and thought he was just taking time to settle. Ross was a trained psychologist. He knew Dante was depressed but couldn’t do much about it.
    He’d sent e-mails to a few trusted psychologist colleagues asking if they had any ideas, but their replies told him what he already knew: Dante needed to start a new life in a safe location with Holly. This wouldn’t be a miracle cure, but over time he’d make new friends, develop new interests and begin to put distance between the grief in his past and his new life.
    But Dante couldn’t lead an ordinary life while the Führer was walking the streets. There wasn’t even a date for a trial because the Devon police hadn’t even charged him with the murders. Ross tried to sound upbeat when Dante was around, but privately feared that the boy might be stuck in limbo for two or three years.
    *
     
    Dante’s mind drifted as he pressed the light on his projector clock. It was one of the few items salvaged from his previous existence and despite a melted facia and a warped lens it still put a legible 00:17 on to the ceiling.
    For as long as Dante could remember he’d taken sleep for granted. He’d stay up as late as he could get away with, then crash out until he woke early the next morning. He’d either watch cartoons for an hour before breakfast, or if he’d stayed up too late he’d get shaken awake by his mum yelling at him to put his uniform on before she whacked him on the arse. Now he’d fight to get to sleep, then he’d wake up with nightmares.
    Dante pulled his duvet around his head and brought his knees up into a foetal position. He closed his eyes and imagined that he was in a concrete bunker deep underground. He was protected behind huge metal doors, with video cameras. He had weapons. He had huge muscles like a wrestler, and he was famous and had hundreds of bodyguards who’d batter anyone who tried to come near him.
    Dante’s fantasy got shattered by a deep belch from the policeman sitting in the living-room less than two metres away. Some of the bodyguards were nice and played video games and stuff,