CHERUB: Guardian Angel by Robert Muchamore Page B

relief as he pressed end call on his phone.
    ‘So it’s you and me with six hours to kill,’ Grace said, smiling sweetly as she shifted across the bench towards Ryan. ‘What do you fancy doing?’
    Grace had proved to be extremely clingy and a bit of a lunatic during their previous brief relationship, but even though Ryan knew he was opening himself up to a world of neediness and flying macaroni, Grace had a cute face and nice legs. Also her boobs were bigger than they’d been six months earlier and Ryan liked the idea of getting a feel.
    ‘We could go for a coffee or something,’ Ryan said, trying to sound mature when he was actually completely flustered. ‘Then maybe somewhere quiet like a park. We can talk, or whatever . . .’
    ‘I can think of some things we can do in a park,’ Grace said, as she put her hand on Ryan’s jeans and studied the dot of blood where the Taser barb had snagged him.

12. SCHOOLS
    28 March (11 days later)
    It was quarter to eleven on a Wednesday night and every surface in Ryan’s bedroom was covered with torn-out magazine articles, hastily scribbled notes and web printouts, plus tape, glue and scissors.
    Alfie was crawling around the floor in a grubby Karate suit, cutting out a picture of bashed-up cars floating down an overflowing river. As he glued it to a big sheet of paper with ‘Freak Weather’ written at the top in marker pen, Ryan came through the door holding a plastic A3 folio case.
    ‘I got Grace and Chloe’s project!’ Ryan said excitedly.
    Like Alfie, Ryan was in Karate kit and the lads stood over the end of Ryan’s bed to study the folio’s contents.
    ‘Finally something useful out of you getting off with Grace.’
    Ryan looked anxious. ‘She’s on that late night training thing. So I swiped it and she’ll murder me if she knows we’re copying her stuff, so let’s not hang about.’
    Ryan opened the folio’s plastic catch and was simultaneously awed and irritated by the girls’ weather project. The first page was a carefully drawn cartoon of a hurricane with dustbins, stick-men and stick-dogs getting blown around in the vortex.
    ‘They’re such swots,’ Alfie complained. ‘Our project’s gonna look so crap compared to this.’
    Ryan shrugged. ‘Who gives a damn about humanities? Let’s just glue some shit on, rip off a couple of the girls’ articles and try getting to bed before midnight. I don’t care what mark we get as long as there’s a bunch of pages we can hand in to old cock face tomorrow morning.’
    ‘I’ve got fitness training first thing and we’re supposed to be going to the cinema tomorrow night,’ Alfie groaned. ‘I will be shattered.’
    ‘You’ll have to try catching up on your sleep during lessons,’ Ryan joked.
    Ryan had left his door slightly ajar and twenty-two-year-old Beatha Johannsson leaned into the room. The sturdy brunette was a former CHERUB agent, whose career ended at age fourteen when a mission led to her face being all over the national news. She couldn’t work undercover after that, but after a forced exile in Switzerland and university in Canada she’d recently returned to campus to work as a carer.
    ‘Why aren’t you two in bed?’ Beatha asked, stepping in and then hurriedly wrapping an arm over her nose. ‘Jesus, it reeks in here. Open the windows, then take showers!’
    ‘We’ve got to finish this project,’ Ryan explained, as he dragged a pillow over the girls’ project to hide his intention to copy.
    Beatha crouched down and looked at some of the sheets that Ryan and Alfie had put together with Pritt Stick and poor scissor skills.
    ‘This looks really shoddy,’ she said. ‘Why’d you leave it until the last minute?’
    Ryan shrugged. ‘Forgot . . . Kinda.’
    ‘Well you’re not gonna get it done tonight, anyway,’ Beatha said. ‘Ryan, you’re wanted in the meeting room downstairs.’
    ‘Who?’ he asked anxiously.
    Nobody had been fingered for the canal incident, but even after