Fathom by L. Standage (spanish books to read .TXT) 📕

his truck. He’s a cop. That has to be him. He’s probably Brock’s dad.” I sighed. “What’s a bolo?”

“Be on the look out. Local cops think we’re crime suspects.”

“Are the others all right?”

“They’re all fine. We need to lie low until they can come and get us. Eamon said there’s an orange grove a few miles away. We can wait there. Uther’s going to try and get the BOLO lifted.”

“I don’t get it. How can these cops be so corrupt?”

“To them, it’s not corruption. It’s following orders. That Detective Mallory—he must have some authority.”

“What are we going to do? This guy is almost as bad as Linnaeus.”

“Don’t worry about him. He’s probably only paid muscle. As soon as he stops getting paid, he’ll stop chasing us. Are you hungry?”

“Not really.” My nerves stole my appetite.

“We’ll be here a while. I’ll get us something to eat for later.”

We bought a bag of chips and a candy bar each. Not the most nutritious meal, but it was the best they had in the grimy gas station. The bagels they sold were as hard as rocks, and I wasn’t about to touch the hot dogs. They looked like they had been sitting on the rotating cooker for the last ten years.

We walked in silence through the neighborhood, looking like a couple of beggars. A few people leered at us from behind their cockeyed window shades, but I wasn’t afraid. Instead, I found myself content to be exactly where I was.

The bag of mail swung from one hand as I pretended to look at the houses we passed—but really, I was looking at Calder. He might have been moody and reserved, but he also had undeniably attractive qualities: selflessness, bravery, and brains—not to mention good taste in reading. Aside from being fist-bitingly cute, he had a protective, road-wise nature. Unlike Landon, he didn’t have selfish motives or treat me like he was doing me a favor when he spent time with me. As I watched him, I could tell he knew everything about our surroundings—ins, outs, escapes, and dangers alike. With him, I felt safe. And now that he was actually being nice, he was easy to talk to.

Maybe he wasn’t such a cretin after all.

“What?” He caught me looking at him.

I looked away, my face burning. “Nothing.”

After another half hour of walking, we came to the orange groves. Similar to the ones I knew in Arizona, it had citrus trees sitting squat and round in long, tight rows. Little green balls hung from every leafy branch, unripe and inedible.

A high bank of dirt ran along the edge of the orchard. We sat down behind it and ate our unhealthy lunch.

“I hope they come soon,” I said, though it was only half true.

“We’ll be all right.” He finished his food, rested his back against the bank of dirt, and propped his elbows on his knees. “I don’t like waiting to be rescued either, but it happens sometimes.”

I looked up at the tree whose branches lent us shade.

“I wish the oranges were ripe.”

“Me too,” said Calder. “Sounds pretty good right about now.”

“At home, we have neighbors who have orange trees in their backyard. We get all the oranges we want during winter.”

He looked at me with a confused tilt in his face. “In the winter? Where are you from?”

“Arizona.”

“Oh.” He nodded. “Makes sense. I’ve never been to Arizona.”

“You’re not missing much. It’s too hot in the summer, too dry in the winter, and too cactusy all year around. I think Scotland would be a lot prettier.”

“You’ve never been?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never been anywhere. Just Arizona and California.”

“Well, you’ll have to travel someday. There’s a lot to see out there.”

“Where have you been?”

He shrugged. “All over.”

“All over where?” I pressed with a smile. “All over North America? All over Scotland?”

Calder looked at me and gave a small laugh. He paused a moment as if to read an invisible map in the dirt. “All over the world, really. The British Isles, er…Germany, Portugal” —he thought some more—“Australia, New York, Hawaii, Jamaica, Alaska…”

My mouth dropped open. “Whoa. Is this all for mermaid stuff?”

“Most of it.”

“How do you afford all that?”

“Uther. He’s quite, er, well off. Old money.”

“Really?”

“And our connections with merpeople. We help them out and they help us out. When they feel like it.”

“Wow. What did you have to do to become part of the group?” Internally, I cringed. I didn’t want it to sound like I wanted to join up.

“I didn’t have to do anything. My mum was part of the group. Eamon’s a good friend of the family. He said when I turned eighteen, I could help.”

“Oh, right. Eamon told me about how all of you found each other.”

I looked at the potato chip and candy bar wrappers in my fidgeting hands while the silence stretched on. I looked around for something more to talk about but all I could see were trees and dirt. Say something, Liv. Anything! Continue the conversation. But right as I opened my mouth to ask him which Harry Potter book was his favorite, he spoke.

“Listen…” he said in a resigned tone. I looked up. He went on, “I might as well say it since we’re stuck here…”

I watched him as he struggled with his words. He looked like he had an icky tasting cough medicine in his mouth and tried to muster up the courage to swallow it.

“I’m sorry.” He spoke to the tree trunks.

I leaned back again, astonished and feeling as though my candy bar had turned into a firecracker in my stomach.

He continued. “I mean, for the way I behaved.”

I nodded, my chest tight and my breath shallow. I bit the inside of my mouth. I couldn’t believe it. He was apologizing. I thought back on the things he said, the way he had hurt me. I didn’t want to forgive him so easily, but with an internal clench of irritation, I realized I already had.

But he didn’t need to know that. He