Beat the Odds

By Megan Atwood

The prize: $10 million
The rules: Be the first to complete ten tasks assigned by the Benefactor. Do not ask questions. Do not tell anyone what you're doing. Do not fail.
The consequences: Unknown

Ana has three choices: One, stay with her abusive foster parents and watch her little sister, Izzy, get hurt. Two, expose their abuse and risk being separated from Izzy. Or three, join the Contest, win the prize money, and escape together. No matter what Ana chooses, the odds are against her.

But the Contest may turn out to be the most dangerous option of all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512404999

Megan Atwood

Megan Atwood is a writer and professor with over 45 books published. She lives in New Jersey where she wrangles cats, dreams up ridiculous stories, and thinks of ways to make kids laugh all day.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

In here, Ana whispered to her little sister. She opened her closet and pushed Izzy through to a clothes nest she’d made in the back. Izzy covered herself in clothes like usual and Ana watched her big eyes disappear under a sweater. She moved out of the closet, closed it, and hooked her backpack straps around both door handles.

Her foster dad stormed into the room, red faced. The smell of alcohol swirled around him. Scotch. Philip Davenport drank only the best. She had to stop herself from wrinkling her nose when his breath hit it.

Ana pretended to be looking for something on her desk.

Where is she? Philip could make Ana’s huge bedroom feel as small as Izzy’s hiding spot. Already she’d begun shaking, and she had to stop that too. He fed on weakness.

How should I know? she snapped. It’s not my fault your house is big enough to hide an army.

She and Izzy had been here for almost a year. Put into a seemingly perfect home in the rich part of Minneapolis. The Rivera sisters went to the best schools, had the best clothes. And Ana knew she had to get them out of here.

She wet the bed again. She’s eight years old. She needs to learn a lesson!

Anger coursed through Ana’s veins. With each punishment, Izzy’s bed-wetting got worse. As if Philip thought hitting Izzy would solve the problem.

Ana knew she should keep quiet, but she couldn’t help herself.

Maybe if you didn’t bully her, she wouldn’t have those problems. Did you ever think of that? That you’re the reason she’s so scared?

Ana could feel the anger radiate off him. He’d gone quiet—way more terrifying than when he was yelling. She knew what came next.

*****

Ana couldn’t find a comfortable position to sit or lie down. So she stood in front of her desk as she booted up her laptop. Her back stung and ached. She could feel the welts through her shirt. It didn’t matter though. What mattered was that the camera had been recording.

Anybody looking at her desk would only see a laptop, a printer, a few school notebooks, and some pens and pencils in a holder. But one of those pens was actually a camera.

For the past couple of months, Ana had been swiping Yvette Davenport’s credit card to order gadgets online—a lock-picking set, a Swiss army knife, even some pepper spray. One good thing about Ana’s foster mother: she never paid attention to her credit card charges.

The pen was Ana’s latest buy. She’d also bought a similar pen that made audio recordings. She’d stashed the audio pen in Izzy’s room and kept the camera here.

The pen’s camera had ten hours of battery life and streamed all its footage to a website. The website Ana was pulling up on her laptop now.

She loved this system. If anyone checked her browser history—or monitored her computer activity in some more high-tech way—this would show up as a website about sloths. The company that made these pens thought of everything. Including control-freak foster parents.

Ana opened the video the pen had recorded. It didn’t take long to edit it down to the events of the last few minutes. Proof. She finally had proof. A thrill shot through her even as the marks on her back burned.

She could expose Philip Davenport for who he really was. Not a respected lawyer at a top firm. Not a person who gave back to the community, donated to charities, served on boards.

A monster.

She popped a jump drive into her laptop, transferred the evidence onto it, and deleted the original recording from the website. Ana knew her foster dad often checked her computer when she went out. There wasn’t much chance he’d find this cleverly disguised website, but Ana was hedging her bets.

The footage would be safer on her secret jump drive.

She put the jump drive into her backpack—the backpack Philip had gotten from one of his clients, Huffmann Industries. She felt like a walking advertisement, carrying the thing around. But she’d refused the fancy brand-name backpack her foster mother, Yvette, had wanted to buy her. So she had to use this instead. At least it wasn’t sequined or made of eel skin. Ana’s foster mother had very expensive, very