Among the Betrayed by Margaret Peterson Haddix Page B

Mack,” the hating man muttered. “They’re coming to help you.”
    â€œUnnhh,” Mack groaned.
    Both of them seemed to have forgotten Nina. Nina looked down and saw the guard’s key ring on the floor, just to the left of her chair. All the keys stuck out at odd angles. Slowly, carelessly, as if it were nothing more than just another stray peanut shell, Nina bent down and picked up the whole ring.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    N ina slipped the ring of keys around her left wrist and pushed it up her arm—farther, farther—until the ring stayed in place on its own. The points of the keys bit into her arm, but it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant sensation. It woke her up.
    I have keys.
    I have food.
    I have twenty-four hours.
    I need a plan.
    The hating man strode back into the room. Nina didn’t have the slightest idea how long he’d been gone. Maybe she’d been sitting there fingering the keys through her sleeve for hours.
    â€œI can’t believe this!” the man fumed. “Mack’s—I’ve got someone else with Mack now. I’ll take you back to your cell. Come on! I want to get back here as soon as I can. . . .”
    Nina stood up, feeling the full weight of the food bag tied around her waist, the pinch of every individual key around her arm. As slowly as she dared, she circled thetable toward the hating man. He grabbed her arm—her right one, fortunately—and pulled.
    â€œDon’t know what this world’s coming to,” the man muttered as they came to the door from the luxurious hallway into the rest of the prison. Nina held her breath. Would he realize now that he needed Mack’s keys?
    No—he was pulling keys of his own out of his jacket pocket, jamming a key into the lock, jerking the key around, jabbering the whole time. “Mack’s a good, honest man, got kids of his own—I don’t know why . . .”
    They were at another door. The man unlocked this one, too, with barely a pause.
    Down the stairs, through another door—the man hustled Nina all the way. Nina was daring to breathe again. Then they reached the door of Nina’s cell.
    The hating man stopped, stared at his key ring.
    â€œWouldn’t you know it!” he grumbled. “I’m missing this key. I’ll have to go back for it.”
    He glanced around toward the door they’d just come through. The disgust and impatience played over his face so clearly, Nina felt like she could read his mind: Now I’ll have to go all the way back upstairs, take this nasty girl with me, then come back down here into this muck. Yes, that had to be what he was thinking. He even raised his foot distastefully to look at the mud on the bottom of his polished shoe. And I don’t want to have to think about this useless kid anymore, I just want to go check on poor Mack —
    â€œTell you what,” the hating man said. “I’m not even going to put you in the cell. I’ll just leave you in this hall. There isn’t anyone else in this wing right now anyway, and that door will be locked tight. . . .” He spoke as though it were Nina, not he, who might worry that she wouldn’t be imprisoned well enough. “The morning guard can put you back in your cell when he comes through on his eight A.M. rounds.”
    He was already going back through the other door. “Can’t be helped,” he muttered, and shut the door in Nina’s face.
    Nina stood beside the solid metal door and put her finger over the keyhole. One of the keys on Mack’s key ring fit into that hole. She was sure of it. If the hating man had put her back in her cell, the keys would have done her no good; the door of the prison cell couldn’t be unlocked from the inside.
    But she had keys to all the doors between her and the interrogation room, with its windows to the outside.
    She had keys, she had food—she could