She Heard Nothing novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Justice Is Blind

At four-thirty in the morning, I put the silver star in Lottie's hand and closed her fingers around it.

"Go to the far end of the equipment shed," I said. "Sit down behind the mats where no one can see you."

"And then?"

"Talk. Anything. Just don't stop until I send you a signal."

Lottie considered this.

"I brought a box of cereal," she said. "Is the ingredients list okay?"

"Perfect."

She tucked the star into her palm and slipped out into the gray before dawn.

By the time the bugle sounded, the whole company stood in rows on the wet field, and a long table had been set up in the center.

Beside the drill instructor stood a second man I had seen only from a distance.

He was gray at the temples, with a closed, weathered face, and everyone called him the chief instructor.

The drill instructor had clearly told him everything.

"Wrenfield. Pelham," the chief instructor said. "Come forward."

I walked out across the grass with my hands at my sides.

Sabina came from the other direction, calm and neat, with her braid pinned up.

Her eyes went to my collar, and stopped.

"Where's your necklace, Abby?" she asked, so softly that only I could hear.

"The chain broke," I said. "I left it in my bag."

Something moved at the corner of her mouth, and was gone.

The chief instructor handed me a clipboard with a blank sheet of paper and a pen.

"You will sit back to back," he said. "Wrenfield writes one sentence. She will not speak. Pelham, you will tell me what it says."

"Yes, sir," Sabina said.

We sat in the wet grass with our backs pressed together.

Keep reading free with an account. Start She Heard Nothing from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.