CHERUB: Guardian Angel (30 page)

‘Well look what the cat dragged in,’ Grace said sourly, as she sat on her bed pulling a shin pad over her foot.

‘I got you these,’ Ryan said, as he reached out with the chocolates. ‘Breaking up with you by text message was mean. I should have manned up and done it to your face.’

Ryan placed the chocolates on the end of Grace’s bed as she dug striped hockey socks out of a kit bag.

‘So are we OK or what?’ Ryan asked. ‘I’m not asking you to forgive me. I just want you to be OK.’

Silence hung in the air and Grace made no eye contact as she crossed the room to grab hockey boots from her wardrobe.

‘I’m around if you want to talk,’ Ryan said, as he backed up to the door. ‘I hope we can still be friends.’

Ryan wished Grace had been more communicative, but at least she hadn’t gone mental like the first time he’d broken up with her. He quickly forgot about the whole thing because his littlest brother was in his room when he got back.

‘Hey, Theo!’ Ryan said cheerfully. ‘How’d you find out I was back?’

‘I could smell your stink,’ Theo said, grinning mischievously. ‘I made you this.’

Theo held out a bunch of bog roll holders, stuck together with PVA glue and sploshed with orange and black paint.

‘It was a machine gun, but the shooting bit broke off,’ Theo explained.

‘I’ll put it on my shelf,’ Ryan said, as he admired the model.

‘I showed it to Daniel and Leon last night. They said it was pants.’

Ryan hid a smirk as he placed the junk model on his bedside shelf, in between framed photos of their dead mum and dad.

‘The twins are trying to wind you up,’ Ryan said. ‘How many times have I told you to ignore them?’

‘How was your mission?’ Theo asked.

‘Yeah, good,’ Ryan said.

‘I didn’t lock the hamster cage and they all got out,’ Theo said. ‘I got two punishment laps. My first
ever
.’

Theo sounded quite proud of his punishment laps, but before Ryan could answer his door burst open.

‘Here’s what I think of your bloody chocolates,’ Grace shouted.

She’d taken the cellophane off and the box turned into a chocolate cluster bomb as it spiralled across Ryan’s room sending brown balls in all directions.

‘Possessive,’ Grace screamed, as she whacked the back of Ryan’s legs with her hockey stick.

‘Oww!’ Ryan yelled. ‘I didn’t say you were possessive.’

‘I overheard Max and Aaron,’ Grace said. ‘So don’t lie to me, dirt bag!’

Theo looked startled, but recovered quickly enough to scoop two rolling chocolates off Ryan’s bed and cram them into his mouth.

Ryan jumped out of the way as Grace swung the hockey stick again, but the return swing painfully cracked his kneecap.

‘Put that down,’ Ryan shouted. ‘Are you a mental case, or what?’

‘You’re a piece of shit.’

‘It didn’t work out so I broke up with you,’ Ryan said. ‘It happens all the time. I apologised for the way I did it, now get the hell over it.’

‘I hate you,’ Grace shouted.

She swung the hockey stick again, but this time Ryan grabbed hold and ripped it out of Grace’s hands. Ryan shoved her back against the wall and pinned her chest behind the stick.

‘You’ve whacked me twice now. Next time I’m not holding off.’

Ryan let the hockey stick drop and backed away from Grace.

‘I’m not scared of you,’ Grace spat. ‘Try hitting me. See what you get.’

‘I’m taller and stronger, just cut it out,’ Ryan said, then he caught sight of Theo cramming more chocolates into his mouth. ‘Theo, stop that! They’ve been all over my floor and let’s face it, I’m not big on vacuuming.’

‘Pig,’ Grace shouted, as she whacked Ryan with the hockey stick again.

This time Ryan lost it and slapped Grace’s face.

‘Go play your stupid hockey match,’ Ryan shouted, as he bundled her towards his door.

Grace looked shocked and Ryan felt bad for hitting her. Everyone would slag him off for slapping a girl if news got around campus. And news about stuff like that
always
got around campus.

‘Right,’ Grace roared.

Ryan thought she was going to charge him, but instead Grace snatched a handful of Ryan’s school exercise books from a pile near the door and made a run for it.

Ryan shouted after Grace as her hockey boots clattered down the corridor. ‘Give ’em back, you stupid cow.’

Grace lobbed her hockey stick on her bed, then rushed into her bathroom and bolted the door.

‘You psycho,’ Ryan shouted, banging on the door as she turned on her shower. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m giving your books a little wash,’ Grace shouted. ‘Humanities is starting to look soggy. Maths is getting wet and your French vocabulary book is floating across my bathtub.’

‘Open that door,’ Ryan roared, as he shoulder-charged.

But the door didn’t budge.

‘Right,’ Ryan shouted, as he grabbed a whole bunch of stuff off Grace’s desk. ‘You’re not the only one who can trash stuff.’

He opened Grace’s window and lobbed the whole lot over her balcony.

‘What was that?’ Grace shouted.

‘That was books,’ Ryan yelled. ‘And this lot’s clothes and shoes.’

The bathroom door shot open as Ryan dumped an armful of clothes out the window. The books had plummeted into bushes seven floors below, but wind caught some of the lighter clothes and sent them billowing towards distant treetops.

‘AAARGH!’ Grace screamed, as she reached for the hockey stick.

But Ryan shoved his hand in her face and grabbed it himself. Grace landed on her bum but before Ryan could move any further she locked her legs around the back of his knees and jerked forward, pulling him down on top of her.

A wave of pain shot up from Ryan’s bruised ribs as he found himself lying across Grace.

‘Now you’ve got me,’ Grace said, letting her body relax.

Ryan looked into her eyes. Grace either wanted to kiss, or she was making it look like she wanted to kiss as part of some evil plan to knee him in the balls or gouge out an eyeball. But although Ryan was angry, Grace had the cutest expression and her body looked really fit.

Theo stood in the open doorway watching the action and covered his eyes as Ryan kissed Grace on the lips.

‘Sicko,’ he yelled.

Ryan felt like he’d been lured into a trap and as Grace’s hand grabbed his bum, he sprang up like he’d been zapped with ten thousand volts.

‘You’re cute, but you’re insane,’ Ryan said, as he stumbled back towards the door. ‘I don’t want
anything
to do with you.’

Grace’s eyes narrowed and it looked like she was going to go for the hockey stick again, but the carer Beatha was storming down the hallway.

‘What idiot threw stuff out of the window?’ Beatha shouted, knocking Ryan into the wall as she stormed Grace’s room. ‘Someone could have been hurt down there.’

Neither Ryan nor Grace answered, so Beatha pointed at the floor.

‘OK then,’ she said. ‘If I’m getting the silent treatment, you two can go down to the Chairwoman’s office and discuss it with her.’

‘It was only a few clothes,’ Ryan said defensively. ‘It’s not like anyone’s gonna get knocked out by a flying bra, is it?’

Beatha inhaled deeply. ‘Both of you go down and pick it
all
up. If one of the senior staff sees that lot you’ll be in
serious
trouble.’

Grace pointed at Ryan. ‘He threw it out,
he
should pick it up.’

‘Grace, we’ve discussed your anger issues and you are on thin ice already. Now if I hear
one
more word it’ll be fifty punishment laps each.’

Ryan looked pissed off as he headed out of Grace’s room, staring at the hallway floor, with Grace a couple of steps behind.

‘Cock,’ Grace whispered, as they waited for the lift.

‘Loony,’ Ryan replied.

‘This isn’t over.’

Ryan looked at the numbers over the lift doors and saw that the right-hand car was heading their way.

‘You come near me with your hockey stick again and I’ll break it over your head,’ he said.

Grace snorted. ‘You’ll have a hard time breaking it over
my
head when I’ve already rammed it up
your
big fat arse.’

‘You’re so immature.’

‘You’re the immature one,’ Grace replied.

‘I bloody hate you,’ Ryan said as the lift doors came open.

‘And I hope
you
drop dead,’ Grace snapped back, as she followed him in. ‘I’m gonna miss hockey practice because of you.’

‘It’s a bloody stupid sport anyway,’ Ryan said.

The two thirteen-year-olds glowered at each other as the doors rolled shut, but their expressions had softened by the time a couple of other kids got in on the fifth floor. As Ryan backed up to give the new arrivals space, he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to kiss Grace or punch her lights out.

The only thing he knew for sure was that she
completely
did his head in.

The adventure concludes in CHERUB: Black Friday

US Intelligence has taken control of the Aramov Clan, but can they shut down the sprawling criminal network before it splinters into dozens of smaller, more dangerous groups?

Ryan is heading for the USA, trying to stop terrorists who want to blow up malls on the busiest shopping day of the year, while Ning and Ethan must help track down Leonid Aramov – before he can revive the family business …

Read on for an exclusive first chapter of the next CHERUB
book,
Black Friday
.

November 22nd 2012, Manta, Ecuador

Manta Airport’s only terminal felt like its best days were behind it. Built to serve a United States Air Force squadron running anti-drug operations, the Yanks didn’t like it when the Ecuadorian government kicked them out and before leaving they’d stripped everything from the main radar in the control tower to the benches at the departure gates.

Fourteen-year-old CHERUB agent Ryan Sharma squatted on a canvas backpack in the airport’s sparsely populated passenger lounge, hearing cheesy piped music compete with rain pelting the metal roof.

Ryan had barely slept during a twenty-hour journey from Kyrgyzstan. The long flight had given him a sore throat and bloodshot eyes. A hot shower and soft bed would have been perfection, but it would be a long time before he got near either.

For the past seven months, Ryan had been based at Aramov Clan headquarters in Kyrgyzstan – known as the Kremlin. Ryan’s job was to scrape gossip out of the smuggling operation’s employees and family members.

The Kremlin didn’t offer much in the way of entertainment and the main hangout for teens was an outdoor yard full of weightlifting equipment. Ryan had pumped enough metal to put ten centimetres on his chest. He liked the way he looked with his shirt off now, and so did the girl he’d fallen in love with.

Three aircraft could be seen through plate glass windows across the shabby lounge. It was early morning, but clouds blotted the sun and it felt more like twilight. The smallest plane was a turboprop flown by the Ecuadorian Post Office; next door was a Boeing 737 cargo jet with custard-yellow hull and the logo of
Globespan Delivery
. The company’s slogan was painted beneath it:
Anywhere, Anytime, On Time
.

The third much larger aircraft loomed behind these two, standing on eighteen threadbare tyres, with flaking paint and patched-up bullet wounds. It looked badass, like it might roll up to the two smaller planes and make them hand over their lunch money.

It was an Ilyushin-76. The four-engined Uzbek-built freighter had rolled off the production line in 1975 and could swallow a truck through its gaping rear cargo door. This old bird first saw action when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Records showed the Soviet Air Force selling her for scrap in 1992, but in reality the old freighter had spent twenty years flying the world, carting everything from stolen Mercedes coupés, to Class A drugs.

Anyone could hire her if the money was right, and besides the naughty stuff the Ilyushin had dropped bags of food in earthquake zones, and made deliveries for the US military in Iraq. Over the years, the plane had worn the insignia of twenty different airlines, two national governments and the UN, but anyone smart enough to follow a paper trail of forged maintenance logs and dodgy holding companies would always have found that the real owners were the Aramov Clan.

Ryan had to block out the cheesy airport music as a low voice sounded through the invisible communication unit buried inside his left ear. ‘Has she moved?’

The voice belonged to CHERUB instructor Yosyp Kazakov, currently playing the role of Ryan’s dad.

Ryan looked up slightly, catching a woman in the corner of his eye. She was touching thirty, sat in a battered armchair, wearing a pilot’s uniform. A cap with the
Globespan Delivery
logo on a yellow band rested on the next seat.

‘Not yet,’ Ryan said, putting a hand across his mouth so that he didn’t look like a some loony talking to himself. ‘Size of that latte she bought, she’s gotta need a piss soon.’

‘What’s she doing?’ Kazakov asked.

The pilot was reading a copy of
USA Today
. She’d made it through the paper itself and now studied a wodge of advertising pull-outs. Home Depot, Wal Mart, Target, Staples.
Black Friday Special – 40 Inch Sony $399, Two Part Air Con $800, Complete Harry Potter Blu-Ray $29.99
.

‘She looks depressed,’ Ryan said.

Kazakov snorted with contempt. ‘It’s Thanksgiving. She wants to be home in Atlanta, watching NFL with hubby and the rug rats.’

Ryan felt a stab of guilt. What he was about to do was hopefully for the greater good. It might save thousands of lives, but this pilot was about to go through the most horrifying experience of hers.

‘You really have it in for the Americans,’ Ryan noted.

The voice that came back in Ryan’s ear was grudging. ‘You’ve got three brothers, Ryan. How would you feel if the Americans had sold a missile to a bunch of terrorists that killed one of them?’