Free The Switch by Anthony Horowitz Page B

almost hungry. And her face seemed to have changed too. Her dark eyes were gleaming as she made a hurried note at the bottom of the file. She looked up and saw Tad staring at her. At once she relaxed. “What I mean is . . . it’s good that we found you,” she explained. “ACID is always interested in young people with no families. That’s where we do our best work.”
    “What exactly do you have in mind?” Tad asked.
    Marion glanced at him curiously, as if there was something about him that didn’t quite add up. But whatever was in her mind, she dismissed it. “All we want to do is to get you off the street,” she said. “That means somewhere to live, a good meal inside you and a chance to earn some money to support yourself. ACID has a center just outside London where we run education programs for boys like you. That’s what it’s called . . . the Center. I’d like to take you there now.”
    For some reason that he couldn’t understand, Tad was uneasy. Perhaps it was the look he had seen in Marion’s eyes a moment before. “What if I don’t want to go?” he asked.
    And there it was again. A sudden hardness behind that smiling, beautiful face. “Then we’d have no choice but to hand you over to the police, Bob. The break-in at Sir Hubert’s was a very serious matter. I’m afraid it’s us or it’s prison.”
    Tad considered. Marion reached out and clasped his hand. Her fingers were long, her nails perfect. “We only want to help, Bob,” she said. “Have you got anywhere else to go?”
    And suddenly Tad was angry with himself. This was his parents’ charity! What was there to worry about? For the first time since the switch had taken place, someone was actually trying to help him, and instead of being grateful, he was almost being rude. He sighed. “I haven’t got anywhere else to go,” he said. “And I’m glad I was brought to you. You can take me to the Center.”
    Marion smiled. She closed the file. “Good,” she said. “We’ll leave at once.”
    There was a black van waiting for Tad in the lot behind the building. As he walked across the blacktop toward it, he felt a sudden chill. The evening was drawing in, but it was still warm, and he paused, wondering what was wrong. Marion Thorn was next to him and she rested a hand on his arm. “It takes half an hour to get to the Center,” she said. “You can sit in the back.”
    Tad looked at the van. It had no windows in the back, not even a small panel set in the door. It didn’t have any logo on the side either. Its color made him think of a hearse.
    “Is something wrong, Bob?”
    Tad remembered the moment in the office, the chill in Marion’s eyes. Then he dismissed it. ACID was his parents’ charity. ACID was going to look after him. “No. I’m fine.”
    He got into the van. There was a bench along one side, metal with no cushions. A sheet of metal separated the back from the driving compartment. When Marion closed the door, Tad found himself entombed in a metal box that would have been pitch-black but for a single bulb burning behind a metal grille in the ceiling. He heard Marion walk around the side. A driver must have shown up, for there was a brief exchange. Two doors slammed shut and the engine started.
    It was only then that Tad realized that—apart from Marion—nobody had seen him since he had left the Knightsbridge house. He had seen nobody. If anybody came searching for him now, it would be as if he had vanished off the face of the earth.
    He had put himself completely in the power of ACID and its staff. As the van moved off, picking up speed, Tad wondered if he hadn’t made a terrible mistake. ACID was a charity. ACID wanted to help him. Everything was going to be all right. Tad sat back and waited for them to arrive.

THE CENTER
    Tad, washed and dressed in pale blue dungarees that reminded him uncomfortably of a prison uniform, followed Marion Thorn down a seemingly endless corridor, lit by a line of tiny halogen