Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath Read Online Free

almost impossible to keep a secret from him. Ruby was good at keeping secrets, but Clancy always sniffed them out. So, despite all her efforts, Clancy had managed to find out about her recruitment to Spectrum. Ruby had been forced to assure LB that from now on she would keep her mouth shut, that she would not blab to him again, that she would keep it zipped at all times.
    But Hitch was astute enough to know that this was a promise Ruby Redfort just couldn’t keep. So they had made a little agreement: LB must never know that Clancy knew everything, and Clancy must never tell anyone anything, on pain of death. He never would; there was no question about that. Clancy Crew knew how to keep it zipped.
    However, Ruby did still have one secret that not even Clancy Crew was aware of.
    She kept it in her room under the floorboards, and not one living creature except perhaps a spider or a bug knew anything about it. Since Ruby was just a kid of four she had written things down in little yellow notebooks. Not a diary exactly, but a record of things seen or overheard, strange or mundane. She had just completed notebook number six hundred and twenty-three, which she had placed underneath the floorboards along with the other six hundred and twenty-two. The one she was working on now, six hundred and twenty-four, was kept inside a compartment concealed in the frame of her bedroom door.
    Now, Ruby went upstairs and took the notebook out.
    The way Ruby saw it, you just could never be sure when something inconsequential could become the missing link, the key to everything. RULE 16: EVEN THE MUNDANE CAN TELL A STORY. Though usually it was just inconsequential.
    She opened the notebook and wrote:

    She added other important details she had noticed and replaced the notebook in its hiding place. She was just about to exit via the window when she heard Mrs. Digby calling.
    “Ruby, you troublesome child, you better not be about to climb out of that window! I want you down here on the double!”
    Now, Mrs. Digby was one of the few people Ruby could not always twist around her little finger. Sometimes Ruby just had to do things Mrs. Digby’s way, and today, unfortunately, was obviously going to be one of those days.

AFTER APPROXIMATELY FORTY-FIVE MINUTES of running errands, dropping things off, and picking them up, Ruby finally pointed her bike toward Amster Green and rode the short distance to the small triangle of grass where a big old oak tree grew, its vast branches reaching off in every direction. She leaned her bike against the railings, quickly looked around just to make sure no one was watching, and then, in a blink, swung herself onto the branch above and up and out of sight before you had time to think you had seen her.
    “What kept you?” came a voice from high in the tree.
    “Mrs. Digby,” said Ruby, climbing up the tree.
    “Oh,” said the voice. “I was about to give up on you. I’d just finished writing you a message.”
    “Yeah? What did it say?” she asked, still climbing.
    “Here,” said the voice, and a piece of paper fashioned into the shape of a condor came floating toward her. She unfolded it.
    Ec spgkwv kxoss kzi ulabtwwyj’w klmj srv hrvjv llw emiojkevsrpoc uej xo avv eedp *
    “No kidding?” said Ruby, impressed. The paper, like most of the messages they left each other, was folded into an origami shape, the words encoded using their own Redfort-Crew code, which no one but no one knew how to decipher.
    “So how did training camp go?” asked Clancy.
    “Good,” replied Ruby.
    “Good? That’s it?”
    Silence, and then Ruby’s head appeared through the leaves. She shuffled along the oak’s limb to where a skinny boy sat, binoculars around his neck and a sun visor shielding his eyes.
    “Good to see you, Clance. What’s up?”
    “Truth is, it’s been kinda boring without you, but I’ve been making it work — getting by,” said Clancy.
    “Glad to hear it,” said Ruby.
    Clancy was eager to get back to