"So, it's two against one?" he asked timidly, all his bravado gone. He heard horses clomping out on the main street, and it made him picture the president coming along in his own carriage soon.
"Two against one," Sera agreed. "Good thing we're an odd number so we can't get tied up on decisions. Right?"
"Right," Dak repeated. Then he turned and ran, sprinting down a connecting alley toward the sounds of the horses. Forget democracy this time. He'd talk to Lincoln if it was the last thing he ever did.
Sera shouted his name from behind, and the sound of their footsteps followed. Dak knew he couldn't outrun them, so he had to get a little reckless. He burst out into the main street, where throngs of people and horses and carriages and carts were all in motion. Shouts and curses rang out as he bumped and jostled his way across the road, almost getting clomped by a big black horse whose eyes seemed to say, "Hey, idiot, quit messing with history."
Dak swung around the other side of the horse and rider, and scooted his way down the wooden sidewalk, running past shops and tanneries, a post office. He saw a break in the crowd and sprinted back across the street, toward the entrance of Ford's Theatre, where the nasty deed was going to go down in a few hours. He went for the door, hoping it was open, not caring who was behind it. No one played hide-and-seek like Dak "the Ghost" Smyth.
The door opened beautifully.
One minute later, Dak was nestled behind a curtain in the back of the theater, sucking in breaths like a hungry hippo.
After an hour of searching, Sera gave up.
"What a goon," Riq said, leaning back against the wooden siding of a cooper's shop. "It annoys the heck out of me that I've actually started to like that doofus."
"No one says doofus anymore," Sera answered absently.
"In 1865? Actually, they haven't started saying it yet. Not until around 1960." Riq smiled. "But it's a good word. We should say doofus more often. Especially when talking about Dak."
Sera sighed, almost felt tears emerge. Come on, Dak, she thought. Please, please don't mess everything up.
A beautiful two-horse carriage made its way down the street toward them, and people along the wooden walkways on both sides of the street were pointing and gawking, whispering to one another furiously. Sera knew who was inside even before the horses stopped right in front of the entrance to Ford's Theatre.
Despite everything, she stared in wonder as the man Dak had described so reverently -- beard, top hat, lankiness, and all -- stepped out of the carriage. Abraham Lincoln had arrived.
Jennifer A. Nielsen is the New York Times bestselling author of The False Prince and its sequel, The Runaway King, as well as the popular Underworld Chronicles series. She loves chocolate, old books, and lazy days in the mountains. Born and raised in northern Utah, she lives there today with her husband, three children, and a dog that won't play fetch.
Scholastic Children's Books
An imprint of Scholastic Ltd
Euston House, 24 Eversholt Street
London, NW1 1DB, UK
Registered office: Westfield Road, Southam, Warwickshire, CV47 0RA
SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First published in the US by Scholastic Inc, 2013
First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2013
This electronic edition published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2013
Copyright (c) 2013 Scholastic Inc
Cover illustration by Michael Heath
Cover design was by Keirsten Geise
Map by Jim McMahon
eISBN 978 1407 13602 8
A CIP catalogue record for this work is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical or otherwise, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express prior written permission of Scholastic Limited.
Produced in India by Quadrum
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
www.scholastic.co.uk/zone
Jennifer A. Nielsen, Behind Enemy Lines
(Series: # )
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends