Black Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

meets.”
    “Then they won’t notice if you miss another one. Honestly, Cassel. You almost got yourself killed yesterday. I would like to discuss the incident.”
    I think of the gun, taped in the closet of my dorm room. “It wasn’t any big thing,” I say.
    “Glad to hear it.” With that, she hangs up.
    I head toward my car, kicking leaves as I go.

CHAPTER THREE
    A FEW MINUTES LATER Agent Yulikova is gathering up piles of paper and shifting them out of the way so that she can get a better look at me. She’s got straight gray hair, chopped to hang just beneath her jawline, and a face like a bird’s—delicate and long nosed. Masses of chunky beaded necklaces hang around her throat. Despite holding a steaming cup of tea and wearing a sweater under her navy corduroy jacket, her lips have a bluish tint, like she’s cold. Or maybe like she has a cold. Either way she more closely resembles a professor from Wallingford than the head of a federal program to train worker kids. I know she probably dresses the way she does on purpose, to lure trainees into feeling comfortable. She probably does everything on purpose.
    It still works.
    She’s my handler, the one who’s responsible for ushering me into the program as soon as I am eighteen, per the deal I made with the Feds. Until then, well, I don’t know what she’s supposed to do with me. I suspect she doesn’t know either.
    “How are you doing, Cassel?” she asks me, smiling. She acts like she really wants to know.
    “Good, I guess.” Which is a huge, ridiculous lie. I’m barely sleeping. I’m plagued with regrets. I’m obsessed with a girl who hates me. I stole a gun. But it’s what you say to people like her, people who are evaluating your mental state.
    She takes a sip from her mug. “What’s it been like shadowing your brother?”
    “Fine.”
    “Philip’s death must make you feel more protective of Barron,” she says. Her gaze is kind, nonthreatening. Her tone is neutral. “It’s just the two of you now. And even though you’re the younger brother, you’ve had a lot of responsibility placed on you. . . .” She lets her words trail off.
    I shrug my shoulders.
    “But if he put you in any danger yesterday, then we need to put a stop to things immediately.”
    “No, it wasn’t like that,” I say. “We were just following someone—a random person—and then Barron got a call. So I was on my own for a couple minutes, and I saw the murder. I chased after the kid—the killer—which was stupid, I guess. But he got away, so that’s that.”
    “Did you talk to him?” she asks.
    “No,” I lie.
    “But you cornered him in the alley, correct?”
    I nod, then think better of it. “Well, for a second he was cornered. Then he went for the fence.”
    “We found a broken plank near the scene. Did he swing it at you?”
    “No,” I say. “No, nothing like that happened. Maybe he stepped on it as he was running. It all happened so fast.”
    “Could you describe him?” She leans forward in her seat, peering at me, like she can see my every fleeting thought in the involuntary flinches and flushes of my body. I really hope that’s not true. I’m a good liar, but I’m not world class. My experience has been mostly with two different kinds of adults—criminals, who act in ways I can anticipate, and marks, who can be manipulated. But with Yulikova I’m out of my depth. I have no idea what she’s capable of.
    “Not really,” I say with a shrug.
    She nods a few times, like she’s taking that in. “Is there anything else you want to tell me about what happened?”
    I know I should admit to taking the gun. If I confess now, though, she’ll ask me why I took it. Or maybe she’ll just ask Barron what we were doing. Who we were tailing. If he’s in the right mood, he might even tell her. Or worse, he’ll make up a story so fanciful that it leads her straight to Lila faster even than the truth would.
    It’s not that I want to be this person, doing