Thirteen Read Online Free Page A

himself at Jake and grappled bravely for a short while, landing a punch or two. Then the pair fell to the ground and Jake’s weight winded Adam. A punch just below Adam’s belly button followed. Finally, to make his revenge and dominance clear, Jake pushed Adam’s face hard into the ground and held it there.
    Adam should have stayed still. Everyone could see that it was over. But anger buzzed in him like a thousand wasps and as soon as he was released he threw himself on Jake again. Jake reeled as the punches came: chest, face, shoulder, ear, then back to face. He couldn’t recover; couldn’t hit back. Jake retreated to the ground as if looking for somewhere to hide.
    His friends looked on, dumb spectators.
    Megan yelled for Adam to stop. Leo and Asa bellowed for him to continue.
    Adam heard nothing. “Leave me alone. And leave Leo alone,” he shouted in Jake’s face.
    Megan ran to him. She pushed her mouth to his ear. “You’ve
won
. We can go now.”
    Asa and Leo patted Adam on the back, full of admiration. “Sick,” said one; “wow,” said the other.
    Jake never bothered Adam or Leo again. Nor did anyone else at school. “He beat up Jake Taylor,” they said. “He’s hard.” But the kids at Gospel Oak Senior were not the real threat.
    In the corner of the park, between the swings and the roundabout, a seventeen-year-old boy watched Adam intently, wondering when he should make his move.

6
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2013
    Somewhere in the distance a gate swung lazily against a post. Trees rustled, hushing the night. Drizzle hung in the air. And a car, with little more than a rumble, crept along the quiet residential street, then stopped.
    Watery yellow light drifted from the street lamps, and a few early autumn leaves pirouetted to the ground. Otherwise, nothing happened and no one moved.
    After a while, a man, a blond-haired boy and a pretty girl stepped out of the car. All three of them were dressed entirely in black. The man carried a leather book.
    They had come to kill.
    Inside the house, a boy slept soundly, head deep in his pillow, surrounded by posters of soccer players, graffiti art and girl bands. On the floor, next to a crumpled and poorly completed math book, were a PlayStation and a belt. A green light winked from the laptop perched on the end of his bed.
    In the distance was the low rumble of a bus pulling away. Here, at 2:00 a.m., everyone slept.
    The three strangers didn’t enter by the gate: gates creaked. Neither did they enter by the front door: front doors were usually double locked and people recognized their sound. Through oily darkness, they went down the side of the house. Their firstfive paces were on the left of the path—avoiding recycling boxes and bins. Their next three steps were on the right—stepping around an old fence panel. They had rehearsed this many times. Back at the Old School House everything had been taped out in the gym.
    They tiptoed to the patio door at the back of the house. From his top pocket, the man with the book pulled out a small bronze key. Even in the gloom, it went into the lock first time—that had also been practiced on an identical patio door in the gym. They knew it would work: it had been stolen the day before when Marcia had lied about coming to read the electricity meter.
    They dared not get this wrong. The four who had failed to kill the boy near Wembley Stadium two months previously had spent fifty-two hours in Dorm Thirteen.
    Thoughts of Dorm Thirteen crept into their minds and scuttled around for a moment.
    Upstairs, the boy slept.
    His parents slept.
    They passed through the sitting room and paused briefly at the bottom of the stairs. Items were sometimes left unexpectedly on stairs: toys, clothes, Legos, school bags. But these stairs were clear.
    The three went up, all moving in the same way. Right foot first. The fifth and eighth stairs were missed—they creaked.