"Applegate, Katherine A - Animorphs - 23 - The Pretender" - читать интересную книгу автора (Applegate Katherine A)

and found out that no one knew where you were. I guess she contacted
this lawyer of your dad's. She told him and Chapman she wanted to take
you in."



"Give you a home, Tobias. A home."

17

The lawyer's name was DeGroot. His office didn't look like much. It was
in one of those strip malls with a convenience store at one end and a
State Farm Insurance office on the other end.

It didn't look like a place to lay a trap. But that's the thing about
traps: If they looked like traps, they wouldn't be very effective.

And the place did have one big problem for us: There was nowhere to hide
any big morphs. Nowhere to conceal Jake's tiger or Rachel's grizzly bear.

Behind the building was a fenced-in Dumpster. Between the Dumpster and
the back wall of the building was a narrow space. Dark enough, private
enough for me to morph.

18 But I hesitated, floating above the building on the wonderful

updrafts created by sun and concrete. I could see in the front window of
the lawyer's office. I saw a secretary sitting at a desk. I saw some old
magazines on tables in the waiting room. I couldn't see DeGroot.

Didn't matter. Seeing a man's face doesn't tell you much. Not when the
most important thing about him is the slug hiding, wrapped around his brain.

I looked around. I saw some of the others. Jake and Cassie were sitting
on the outside benches of a Taco Bell across the street. Jake was eating
nachos, looking past Cassie at me. He knew I could see him. I did a
little roll, you know, rocking side to side to say "hi." He raised a
nacho to me, like he was making a toast.

I saw Marco coming out of the convenience store with a drink I could
have taken a bath in. He acted like he'd just noticed Ax - in human
morph, of course - and ambled over to say hello.

I could not see Rachel. But I knew she was in the Laundromat next door
to the lawyer's office. She was my first backup. If I yelled for help
she'd head into the Laundromat's bathroom, morph to grizzly bear, and
come straight through the wall to save me.

19 I pitied any poor soul who happened to be using the bathroom if
Rachel needed it.

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