26

We stopped by a huge RV bus with West Virginia plates. Harvey went to unlock the door. This was the Batmobile? I took another look. It was vast and cruddy-looking. There was a sticker across the bumper saying, Honk if you love Jesus! and a Children on board warning sign with a smiley face leered out at us from a side window.

‘Good getaway car, huh?’ said Demos in my ear.

‘Er, yeah,’ I mumbled, as he pulled me up into the back.

Inside was a whole other story. It looked like there was room to sleep a small army, with space for a ballroom at the back just in case they got bored with the flat-screen surround-sound home cinema system. Cream leather sofas lined two sides, and at the back was a darkened corridor that appeared to have several doors leading off it. This must be what if feels like to be a groupie on a tour bus, I mused as I stood there gawping, while the others started to move around and make themselves at home.

‘Where are we going?’ Amber asked Demos as she curled up on one of the seats.

‘To Joshua Tree.’

‘Cool,’ squealed Nate. ‘I love U2.’

Suki raised her perfect eyebrows at him and shook her head. His face fell momentarily, then he punched her lightly on the arm and they fell onto the seats and started to giggle together.

I watched as Harvey climbed into the driver’s seat up front, with Bill in the passenger seat next to him. They started messing around with a sat nav screen that emerged at the press of a button from a dash lit up like the flight deck of a plane.

Demos disappeared down the corridor and into one of the rooms at the back of the bus and I looked around for somewhere to sit. Amber and Ryder were lounging on one of the sofas opposite Nate and Suki. I edged towards them. I’d take the loved-up couple over the hyped-up, mind-reading, U2-loving duo.

‘Hi,’ I said as I sat down. This was slightly uncomfortable.

‘Hi,’ they said back, smiling at me.

They were waiting for me to say something. My mind went completely blank.

‘So – what’s a sifter?’ I blurted out.

Ryder threw his head back and laughed. ‘Straight to the point. I like it.’

Amber leant her head back against his shoulder and kissed the underside of his jaw. I waited for the searing stab of envy. But it didn’t come.

Amber started to laugh and shake her head, her curtain of flame-coloured hair undulating around her, if that was physically possible. ‘You are so funny.’

‘Huh?’ I stared at her, confused.

‘I get these waves and waves of emotion off you. It’s never still, never one colour. It’s like tuning into a rainbow. It’s beautiful.’

I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d never been called a rainbow before.

‘Young love.’ Ryder laughed and kissed Amber on the top of her head.

Young? I’d been in love with Alex for seventeen years, give or take a few. It wasn’t young love.

I turned to Amber. ‘So, you can see emotions like colours?’

‘Mmm, colours. If I try, I can change the colours, make feelings go away. With your brother earlier, that was horrible. But with you and Alex, it’s . . .’ she laughed to herself, ‘. . . it’s so . . .’ She shook her head, trying to find the word. I waited with bated breath. So what? ‘. . . So extraordinarily lovely. You have to understand, I’m mostly around worry and fear, so it’s nice to be around happiness once in a while.’

I looked at Ryder. It looked like she was around happiness more than just once in a while. He was good-looking. Very good-looking. And very adoring. I grinned at him some more. He wasn’t anywhere near as good-looking as Alex, though.

He noticed me looking at him and a slow, easy smile crossed his face. ‘So, Lila, Demos got you onside, then?’

The question surprised me. ‘Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I don’t know. It’s all so confusing. So much to get my head around. But I guess so. I mean – the photo of him and my mum. And what he said about the Unit. And all of you . . .’

What I meant, was that just these few hours with them had dispelled so many fears. None of them were in any way intimidating. They were all lovely. OK, I still didn’t get my mother’s thing with Demos, but everyone else was so kind.

‘We’re not too bad,’ he said, cocking a smile at me.

I was suddenly reminded of the photograph I’d seen of Ryder on Jack’s computer and the list of crimes beneath it. Were any of them true?

Ryder noticed my change of mood. ‘So what did Alex and Jack tell you about us?’

‘Ryder!’ Amber poked him in the ribs.

I blanched. ‘Er, they didn’t tell me much. What I know I heard from Key and from the files I found on the computer.’ I couldn’t catch his eye. ‘It wasn’t exactly flattering.’ I looked up and saw he was looking at me quizzically. ‘I thought Demos killed my mum. That’s what Jack thinks too.’

‘He didn’t.’

‘Yes. I know that now. But all the newspaper reports, what the police told us about how she was murdered . . .’ I shuddered, recalling the nightmare I always had.

‘Do you want me to take that away?’

I looked at Ryder, confused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The image you have in your head. Do you want me to take it away?’

‘That’s what you do?’

‘Yes. Sparingly.’

Did I want to not have the image of my mum lying dead in a pool of blood in my head?

‘Yes.’ I nodded.

Amber adjusted herself, moving along the seat to give him space. Ryder sat forward and placed one hand on the side of my head, his index and middle fingers on my temple. He stared at me and I noticed his eyes were grey. A really unusual colour, like a pebble thrown up by the waves on a stormy beach.

‘OK, it’s gone.’

‘What?’

‘Think about your mum.’

I closed my eyes. There was my mum, laughing and trying to put hair clips in my hair before my first day at school. Then a memory of her carrying a cake with eight candles on it and singing me ‘Happy Birthday’. I started smiling as I recalled another memory of her lying curled up next to me reading Harry Potter.

‘What did you just do?’ I asked, looking at Ryder in wonder. I hadn’t remembered any of those things in so long.

‘Nothing.’ Ryder leaned back into the seat, stretching his arm out, and Amber fell into him, leaning her head against his chest. They were so adorable.

Amber laughed again.

A voice interrupted the laughter. ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

I looked up. Demos was standing over us.

‘Not at all.’ Ryder moved his feet out of the way and Demos sat down next to him.

‘Everything OK?’

‘I think so,’ I mumbled.

He didn’t seem to hear me. ‘We’re going to be meeting them in an hour or so.’

My heart started to skip a path through my ribcage.

‘I need your help.’

I eyed him suspiciously. ‘With what?’

Demos fixed me with one of his looks and I felt my muscles constrict. ‘We need to stop them, Lila.’

No. I needed to be back with Alex and to go with him and Jack somewhere far away.

Suki appeared and dropped to the floor by Demos’s feet.

‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked nervously, glancing at them both.

‘We need you to convince Jack and Alex to fight on our side,’ Demos said.

I felt four sets of eyes on me, and I could have sworn Harvey threw an anxious glance at me too, via the rear-view mirror. ‘Fight?’ I said the word as though it was an unfamiliar concept.

‘Yes. Fight.’

No. I didn’t like the way this conversation was going. There was going to be no fighting happening.

Demos looked over at Suki. She pressed her lips together until they went white and shook her head at him. He looked back at me.

‘Lila. Please.’

I looked around me. Everyone was fixing me with pleading looks. ‘How are you going to fight them?’ I asked. ‘What can we do? Alex said the Unit operate under an even higher authority than the President.’

A little smile started to lift the corner of Demos’s mouth. ‘If we have Rachel, we’ll have leverage.’

‘But Alex told me the Unit would never exchange or barter for anyone.’

‘They will for her.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t you know?’ Demos narrowed his eyes at me in surprise.

‘Don’t I know what?’

‘No, she doesn’t.’ Suki was shaking her head.

‘What?’ I asked again.

‘Rachel’s father owns Stirling Enterprises.’

‘Oh.’ I wasn’t sure why I was surprised. Surely my facility for surprise was totally neutralised by now. I leant back into my seat, suddenly relieved. ‘Well, in that case, you don’t need me. Or Jack or Alex. You have all the leverage you need. You just said so.’

‘No.’ Demos was shaking his head at me. ‘It’s not enough. We need people who know how the Unit operates, who can help us to stop them from the inside. We need Jack and Alex.’

‘No.’

‘Lila, I don’t think you have fully understood what your life will look like if you run from this. You will spend the rest of your days hunted. You will not be able to go home. You will not be able to see your father. You will not be able to settle in one place for longer than a few days, a week at the most. You will always be looking over your shoulder, wondering if they’ve caught up with you. They won’t leave you alone. You know too much and, genetically, you’re too valuable. They will find you. They will kill Alex and Jack, like they killed your mother, and they will contain you.’ He paused. ‘Am I making myself clear?’

Crystal, I thought. I sat there, unable to move, my head whirring through the options. Could we run? Would we have a chance?

‘You can’t run, Lila,’ Suki said.

I frowned at her. Why couldn’t I?

‘The Unit killed your mother, Lila,’ Demos said. ‘Don’t you want revenge? Isn’t that what Jack and Alex have been after all these years? Don’t you think they’ll want the chance to stop them?’

My head snapped up and I glared at him. He knew he had me. In that one instant, I knew I would stay. I didn’t have any other option. And if Jack and Alex could be made to believe, I knew there was nothing on this earth that would stop them from going after revenge.

Demos scented victory. ‘We need to fight back. And to do that we need Alex and Jack to join us.’

I stared at him for a long while until Suki started to grin. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll help. What do you want me to do?’

There was a collective unleashing of held breaths all around me.

‘You need to talk to them. We need to convince them of the truth. They won’t listen to me. But they trust you.’

Yeah. I could see a huge flaw with his plan. Jack would never be convinced that Demos didn’t kill my mum. ‘You met my brother, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK. And you realise I’m not really in his good books right now? And you – well, let’s not even go there. What makes you think he’ll listen to me? That he’ll ever trust you?’

‘You can be pretty persuasive when you want to be.’

I could? I hadn’t been able to persuade Jack to let me stay in California. And I hadn’t been able to persuade Alex to stay with me and not go back to stop the Unit single-handed.

‘You’re asking me to basically announce to them that they’ve been living a lie for the last three years. I have no proof other than the photo you showed me of you and my mum. And they hate you. I’m not sure I can do this. Jack will kill you before he listens to a word I say.’

‘But Alex won’t. He’ll listen.’

Would he? I thought about it. He might. He had already started having doubts. Maybe he would listen? And maybe he could convince Jack? I certainly wouldn’t have a hope on my own.

‘What about Rachel?’

We all looked over at Nate, sitting on the opposite sofa, by himself. ‘Why don’t we get her to talk? She must know what’s going on. Maybe, if they don’t believe Lila, which I’m thinking they might not, Rachel could, you know, convince them.’

Demos looked at him with interest. ‘Good thinking, Nate.’ Then he knelt back down on the ground next to me. He rested a hand on my knee and I looked at it, thinking how weird it was that I wasn’t flinching away in revulsion.

‘When they arrive, Lila, I need you to stay back. Remember they still think we’re holding you against your will. We need to make sure we get Alicia and Thomas and then you can go to them.’

‘OK,’ I said, almost mutely.

‘We’re there,’ Bill yelled from up front.