Read Last Light Falling for Free Online Page A

second look. I can see him from the side, placing a book back on the shelf, and it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I remember this man from before—I saw him years ago at the Foster Care Center.
    I remember him talking to one of the administrators with an elevated voice. He seemed very concerned about something, and I remember the director of the Care Center coming over to calm him down. I don’t remember anything after that, but I know this is the same man. I gather my thoughts and walk quickly over to where Gabe is looking up the coordinates.
    “Did you find anything?” I say, panting.
    “Yes … what’s wrong with you? You look like just saw a ghost.”
    “It’s nothing, I’ll tell you later. Did you get any information?” I ask again.
    Gabe looks at me with concern. “Yes, it’s printing right now, but—”
    “No buts. Let’s go right now, come on.”
    I shove the letter in my pocket, grab Gabe by the arm, and snatch the printed directions from the printer. We carefully scurry downstairs without anyone noticing we are in a hurry. We reach the basement floor, where all the periodicals are kept, making sure to look behind us every so often to ensure that no one is following us.
    “Okay, what’s going on? Tell me now,” says Gabe intrusively.
    “I saw that priest upstairs, the same one I told you about in the car on the way over here,” I say, flustered.
    “Okay, okay, I believe you, but what makes you think he is following …” Gabe pauses and remembers what he said earlier, before we got out of the car.
    “Exactly. You knew this. It’s what you were feeling,” I concur.
    “Look, let’s just stay down here for a little while and figure out this map before we make too much out of this,” Gabe calmly says.
    We sit down at one of the unoccupied tables to decipher the coordinates. It’s so drab and dark down here, we have to turn on one of the table lamps. As we look at the directions, we notice that these coordinates are less than fifteen miles from here. The aerial view reveals anold, white building covered by trees. A gravel road connects the building to a small county road where it’s fenced off. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but it appears that most of the road has been covered up.
    “So what’s the plan?” asks Gabe.
    “I think we need to lay low for a little while. I don’t want Myra or Daniel getting suspicious, especially with the trust we’ve finally established with them. I need a while to think about this. We have no way of getting there except on foot, and I’m not about to walk fifteen miles there and back, risking getting caught past curfew,” I say.
    We stay in the basement a little while longer until I feel it’s safe for us to go back upstairs. I’m still a little suspicious of the priest who I think is following us, and I won’t hesitate to do whatever is necessary to protect my brother. Maybe he is or maybe he isn’t following us, but it just seems too much of a coincidence that the same priest who was at the Care Center arguing with our foster coordinator was near our house and now at the library. Servant to deity or not, I feel a responsibility to defend my family against all walks of life. If there was anything I was taught of value from Finnegan, it was to have an innate awareness of deceptions. Evil prowls on the tempted, and what may seem impossible most certainly can be.
    With no signs of the priest wandering around the aisles, we spend most of our time in the library reading. I could spend my whole life in here and never become bored. There are so many things I want to learn about, so I just dive into the first book off the shelf that interests me. I’m reading Paleo-Hebrew inscriptions from Jonathan Bell’s
The Ancient Hebrew Culture,
while Gabe loses himself in a Dan Bricklin technology book.
    While I’m reading, I glimpse over and notice three girls coming toward us. Two of them recognize Gabe and snicker back and forth to each other. They are