17

I scrabbled for the seat belt as we spun out of the drive onto the road, ripping down the kerb to get around the two cars abandoned on the pavement. Two men were already on the front lawn, one on the veranda, with his hand on the front door. The drivers of both cars were revving the engines and when they saw us fly past them I caught their looks of surprise.

‘Seat belt!’ Alex reached over and grabbed it from my hand, ramming it home, then spinning the car through one eighty degrees. The men on the lawn were running back to the cars but the one by the door, standing under the white security light, was motionless. It was him. I knew it.

Demos stared right back at me, a smile on his face. My mother’s killer was smiling at me. My mind went blank. And the world turned to white noise. A searing pain rocketed through my eye and ground against the inside of my skull like a blunt blade. I doubled over, clutching my head, trying to make it stop, the seatbelt cutting into my neck.

‘It’ll stop in a minute.’ Alex’s voice was cold.

The pain intensified. Then suddenly it did stop.

It took a few minutes before I could sit up straight again, pressing my hand to my head above my right eye, trying to mute the ache that remained.

‘What was that?’ I croaked.

‘A little weapon against them.’

Them. He meant me, and I shrank back against the door, my eyes on the buttons, wondering what the other one did.

‘It’s given us a head start.’

‘How?’

‘It emits a frequency that interferes with the pattern of their brainwaves. It’ll have . . . incapacitated them, like it did you.’ He was checking his rear-view mirror every second or so, but he hadn’t looked at me once. ‘They’re not following. It worked.’

Fear flooded back into me. ‘A head start to where? Where are we going?’ Was he taking us to the base?

He didn’t answer, his face as impenetrable as moulded granite. I flinched further back against the door and looked out of the window to see if we were headed north but from the road signs I could see flashing past we were on the interstate heading south. Which meant we were headed away from the base. Where were we going?

The only noise was the churning of the gears as Alex’s foot stamped down on the pedals. He was driving at least double the speed of any other car on the road, weaving rhythmically in and out of the lanes. I looked at his face, set in an expression of absolute concentration, and wondered how I could still feel such an addiction to being close to him, could still feel my heart lurch at the sight of him when his hatred towards me was so strong I could almost feel it coming off him in waves.

Alex dug around in his back pocket, then threw his phone into my lap instead, along with his wallet. ‘There’s a SIM card in the wallet, take it out and exchange it for the one in the phone.’

I fumbled with the back of the phone, eventually managing to slide the cover off. I prised out the SIM in there and Alex snatched it out of my hand, cracked open his window and threw it out. His wallet was stuffed with notes, there was at least five hundred dollars, my fingers were shaking as I tried to find the SIM amongst them. When I found it I pushed it into place in the phone and snapped the cover back on. Alex took it straight out of my hand and the wallet from my lap and shoved them back into his pocket.

Suddenly Key spoke up from the floor of the car, his voice a croak. ‘Let me out.’

Alex ignored him, so I turned round in my seat and told him, ‘It’s OK, we’re heading south. They’re not following us.’

‘Let me out.’ He was trying to sit up, rubbing his head. He was a mess. ‘I need to get back. I need to follow them.’ He looked over at Alex, put his hand on the back of his seat. Alex glared at him in the rear-view mirror. ‘Please, I can help you. Let me out. I can track them for you, warn you if they are getting close.’

I looked over at Alex, waiting to see what he would say.

‘How will you track them?’ he asked, his eyes back on the road.

Key sighed, then looking straight at Alex in the mirror said, ‘I can project. I’m not one of Demos’s group,’ he added quickly. ‘I just want my son back before your Unit catches up with them.’

Alex’s lips pressed together. I watched his jaw clench tight. Finally he spoke. ‘Who’s your son?’

‘Nate, his name is Nathaniel Johnson.’ His voice broke apart on the name.

‘You said your name was Key, not Johnson,’ Alex shot back.

‘My real name’s Johnson. Anthony Johnson. Key’s a nickname since I was a kid.’

‘I’ve never heard of you or your son. Why should I believe you?’

I heard Key sigh again. ‘They took my boy because he’s special. Like me. Like her.’ He pointed at me, and Alex flinched. Key carried on, his voice rising. ‘I want my boy back. He’s not one of them. He’s just a kid. He’s sixteen. He doesn’t have anything to do with whatever it is you think they’ve done.’

Alex stared at him for several seconds in the mirror, then looked back at the road. ‘What do you know about anything they’ve done?’

‘Nothing. Nothing, I swear to you. I never came near them before three weeks ago when they took Nate. I followed Lila to the bar and saw one of them outside so I came to the house to warn her. That’s all. I don’t know anything more.’ Bloody foam was bubbling at the corner of his mouth and I stared at it.

Alex snapped his head round to look at Key. ‘Why were you following Lila?’ I wished he would look at the road. He was topping one fifty on the speedometer. My hands were gripping the edges of the seat.

‘It’s a long story.’

‘He wanted my help.’ I spoke up. ‘He thought I might be able to get some information from Jack or you.’

Alex ignored me but his eyes skipped back to the road ahead.

‘Look,’ Key said. ‘Why don’t we help each other? If you let me out now I can go back, catch up with them and warn you if they’re getting close. I can tell you where they’re going, what they’re planning, what their next move is. You need someone who can get close to them.’

‘That relies on you being able to communicate with me. How will you be able to? What, are you telepathic too?’ Scorn dripped off his words.

Key’s eyes narrowed, ‘You really don’t know much about us, do you?’ he said, sounding surprised. ‘I can get back to my body instantly, well almost instantly, a matter of seconds. Don’t matter where I am, could be another continent, only takes me to think about it and I’m there, back, right in my body. So you give me your phone number and you got instantaneous updates. I’m better than CNN.’

I couldn’t even imagine what he was talking about. I really wanted to ask what happened to his body when he was out floating about, but was too scared to interrupt the conversation.

Alex swerved into the fast lane, stepping on the gas some more. ‘Why? What’s in it for you?’

‘You help me get my son back. You and the Unit stop Demos but you find a way of keeping the Unit away from my son.’

‘You could go now – project from here. That way I know right where you are,’ Alex said.

‘You think I trust you?’ Key shot back. ‘No offence. But you’re one of them.’

Alex frowned, looking like he was weighing the pros against the cons. After a few more seconds he gave Key a cellphone number. I heard Key repeating it over and over, memorising it.

‘You got it?’ Alex asked.

‘Yeah, I got it. And you? I do this, you going to keep your promise to help me get my son back?’

The silence rolled around the car. Then Alex nodded, just once, his eyes not leaving the road. He pulled across to the hard shoulder and slowed to a stop. Cars whizzed past in the inside lane.

Key seemed to relax slightly, he wiped the spit at the side of his mouth and moved to the door, as though he was about to open it and dive right out. Then he looked back at Alex and nodded in my direction. ‘You need to get her as far away as you can. As in, international-sized distances.’

Alex looked round at him now, turning to face him. ‘Why?’ he asked, suddenly wary.

Key shook his head, grimacing through his busted lip. ‘Suki will be able to trace her. Now she’s seen Lila, read her mind, it’ll be easy enough, given time. Or my son could trace her. If they can make him.’

‘He can do that? Trace others?’ Alex took the words out of my mouth.

‘Yes. Others like him. From what I can tell, Suki has to read someone’s mind before she can find them. Nate can just see others.’

‘How?’ It was me asking this time.

‘It’s hard to explain.’ He didn’t look like he was about to elaborate, as he glanced out of the window, chewing his lip, and bouncing on the seat. His body language screamed that he wanted to get out.

‘Try.’ Alex wasn’t asking too politely.

Key looked at him and sighed like he was giving away a trade secret. ‘When we project we can see auras around people, like a light.’

My mouth fell open.

‘It’s how I knew Lila was one of us. It’s like she’s wearing a sign. The colour of the aura is brighter, the light shimmering, more intense. And the stronger the ability, the brighter it burns.’ It was like he was an art historian explaining the brushstrokes of a masterpiece. ‘They’ll find you. Believe me, they’ll find you. And they want you bad.’

Key’s hand was on the door handle, already opening it.

‘Why are they still coming for me? Why do they want me so badly? Why don’t they give up?’ I could hear the creeping hysteria in my voice.

Key looked at me like I was stupid. ‘Because, Lila, they want you to exchange for Alicia. They know if they got you Alex and Jack will give them whatever they want.’

I swallowed hard, avoiding Alex’s eye. ‘Are you sure about that?’ Wasn’t that before Alex knew what I was? I doubted I held the same ransom value now.

Key suddenly seemed to realised what I was getting at. He shrugged. ‘Well maybe Demos just wants you then to join his little army? What do I know? All I know is they won’t stop until they find you.’

And with that he pushed open the back door and was out, limping to the line of trees and bushes on the side of the road. Then he was gone.

Alex had already put the car in gear and now he pulled out into the traffic again. Within a few seconds the arm of the speedometer was stroking the one hundred mark.

With just the two of us left, the atmosphere became so intense it felt like the slightest noise or movement would ignite the car into a blue ball of flames. My whole body was rigid, poised for flight or fight, though realistically flight was not an option unless I fancied being roadkill.

‘Alex,’ I took a deep breath, ‘why aren’t you taking me to the base?’

He thought about it before answering, his voice terse when he did. ‘The alarm’s gone off. It’s not safe.’

‘No, that’s not what I meant.’ I couldn’t look at him, choosing my words carefully. ‘I don’t want to be anywhere near the base or the Unit, obviously, knowing what I do about what it is you do there and how you feel about us.’

I saw his face darken with what looked like anger. He would be wondering what I knew and how. I struggled on. ‘What I don’t understand is why you aren’t handing me over, “containing” me or whatever it is you do.’

I felt the engine growl deep as Alex pressed down the accelerator. His foot would be through the floor soon. If looks could kill, the road would be dead. I was glad he wasn’t looking at me, and that he hadn’t looked at me since we got in the car. And just as I was thinking that, he did look at me. His eyes were in shadow but the tone of his voice was enough to let me know he was tipping over the brink of calm.

‘Jack will think Demos got to us both. He’ll go after them. Either he’ll catch Demos or he’ll slow him down, which might give us the chance to get you out of the country to someplace safe before either the Unit or Demos catches up with you.’

It didn’t answer my question but it did open up a whole load more. Out of the country? How was he going to explain that to Jack? And where was he planning on sending me? I couldn’t go back to London, where they wouldn’t need Suki to find me, just a phone book. So where could I go? Where on the planet would be safe?

I looked out of the windows at the red and white lights of cars making constellations in the distance and played Alex’s words over in my mind, trying to imagine Jack’s response. Then something registered and I stared at him wide-eyed. Had he meant he wasn’t coming with me when he said it would give us a chance to get me out of the country? That was crazy. I couldn’t go alone, I wouldn’t make it as far as check-in before getting caught. For a moment I considered pleading with him, actually begging him, to come with me but the scowl on his face dissolved the words before I could even speak them.

The clock on the dash showed the time was now 3.06 a.m.

‘Alex,’ I said, when it hit 3.30. ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you . . . helping me?’

His face was disappearing in and out of the strobing shadows and I couldn’t see his expression.

‘What?’ he asked, as though he hadn’t heard the question.

‘Why are you helping me?’ I said again, my voice shaking. If he hated us – me – so much, why all this effort to protect me?

He turned back to the wheel, slamming through the gears. ‘I didn’t have a choice,’ he said, his voice a low snarl.

I looked away too, counting the white lines on the road as they blurred into one. As if I had a choice, I thought, as if I chose to be like this. Did he think I would choose to have him and Jack hate me?

I smacked my palm down on the door handle in frustration. Alex’s arm shot across me, pressing me hard into the seat. He was looking at me like I was insane and I realised he’d thought I was trying to open the door. I stared at him in shock and he slowly moved his hand back to the wheel, giving me a look that fell somewhere between a warning and a threat. So now he thought I was suicidal too. Great. Telekinetic and suicidal. Just great.