Read Online The Stolen Child by Peter Brunton - Free Book Online

of the strange group had a n old man collared and leashed at his side, dressed in tattered rags .  There was foam on his lips, and his hair was a mane of tangles.
    Pulling back from the window frame, Rachael closed her eyes, and tried to shake off the image in her mind.  It couldn't have been real.  She was sure of that.  
    She felt a hand on her shoulder.  Opening her eyes, she Justin's expression, calm and focused.  
    “We 've gotta get outta here ,” s he whispered, though she hadn't the slightest idea how .   The scarred man and the tall brothers in their long coats were still waiting at the gate.   The only other way through the fence was at the back of the site, where they had slipped in.  That meant going down the ladder, and through the men searching below.
    “I'll jump the one nearest the ladder,” J ustin whispered.  “You run while he's distracted.”
    She saw a coldness in his eyes, like the edge of a knife.  
    “Justin, wait...”
    She grabbed his shoulder, as he began to move.
    “What?” h e hissed.
    “I don't know, just... Wait, OK? ”
    She looked around again, hoping for any other way.  Then her eyes settled on the back wall of the building, where a garbage chute had been hooked up to the scaffold s .
    She nodded, and Justin followed her gaze.
    “OK,” h e mouthed.
    The second floor was mostly a patchwork, pieces of finished flooring connected by planks that bridged the openings.  One long plank was all that connected them to the back wall, where the garbage chute began.
    Justin gestured for her to go first.  While he sat back in the shadows, watching the torch-lights flicker below, she crept out onto the plank.   She felt it rock ing slightly under her weight.  She crawled, inch by inch along the length of the beam, as the men on the floor below swept through the building.  She could hear them talking, calling out areas cleared in hushed tones.
    She was about halfway across when she saw the movement at the front of the building.  The man with the voice like gravel, and the ragged mutt that snuffled at his heels.  He strode into the building like he owned it, casting his gaze about imperiously.   S he forced herself to breath e and contin ued shuffling along the wooden board, one inch at a time.  She was almost there.  She could have reached out and touched the lip of the half-finished concrete floor when she heard a howl, somewhere between the cry of an animal and a wail of deep anguish.   The sound seemed to move through her body like an electric shock , and she very nearly slipped off the beam.  It rattled beneath her, rocking perilously back and forth.  As the movement subsided she glanced down, and once again she saw not a mangy hound but a ragged man with wild and frantic eyes , too much white showing as he stared into her with an awful hunger.
    The man with the scar looked up and gestured, one hand pointing, almost lazily, as all eyes turned to her.
    “Run!” Justin yelled , and she scrambled onto the hard floor.  Rolling to her feet she glanced back to see him dashing across the narrow beam, as the men below made for the ladders.   Justin grabbed her hand and t ogether they ran towards the chute.
    “ Just like a water slide,” s he told herself.
    The plastic tubing thundered like a drum as she slid down.  Metal ribs scratched at her hands and face, everything flashing past in a few seconds until she tumbled head first into a jagged mound of rubble.  Dazed and battered, she barely had time to crawl clear as Justin came crashing down after her.
    T hey sprinted across the open ground, torchlight lapping at their heels.  She glanced back as Justin searched for the gap in the fence, to see the four men closing in.  Over the shouting she heard a single barked command.
    “ Take them! ”
    “Quickly,” Justin hissed, standing with one leg through the gap in the fencing.  She followed him through, her heart in her throat.
    As soon as they were through, Justin