Текст книги "Finding Sky"

Автор книги: Joss Stirling

Соавторы: Joss Stirling
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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

‘Not Zed?’ I asked anxiously.

‘No, just an idiot with an inflated ego and no brains, otherwise known as Nelson. He was trying to impress me.’ She threw her gear in the back of her car. ‘Ready to go home?’

‘Yeah, thanks. So he’s not persuaded you yet?’

She paused at the driver’s side door. ‘Of what?

That we are perfect for each other? Pur-lease!’

OK: that didn’t sound hopeful but I recognized a snit when I saw one and knew better than to try to advance his case when she was in this mood. I slipped into the passenger seat. She turned the ignition and the car took several tries to catch.

‘Jeez. Sounds bad. It was working fine this morning.’ She thrust into reverse. ‘Heap of junk.’

‘So I take it favourite brother is demoted?’

‘You bet.’

We puttered back into town with the unnerving sensation that the car was about to stal on us every time she slowed for a junction.

‘Ready to get out and push?’ she joked darkly.

We got as far as Main Street when the electrics gave up on us.

‘Tina, I think you’d best take this to the garage.’

‘Yeah, I’m getting that message too.’ She swung onto the forecourt of the Wrickenridge gas station.

Only the pumps were open; the workshops closed for the weekend. Kingsley the mechanic was on duty at the til and came out when hearing an engine in distress.

‘Pop the lid, honey,’ he told Tina. He peered inside and scratched his head. ‘Sounds like the alternator’s gone.’

That made it much clearer—not.

He must have noticed our blank expressions. ‘It charges the battery. Without it, the power drains and you get this.’ He gestured to the car.

‘A dead car.’ Tina kicked the tyre.

‘Temporarily dead car—it’s not fatal. I’l fix it for you tomorrow.’

‘Thanks, Kingsley.’

‘I’l push it into the workshop. It’l be safe enough to leave your gear in the trunk.’

Passing over the car into Kingsley’s capable hands, we were left without a ride.

‘Wel , that blows,’ huffed Tina.

I knew the cure for that. ‘Buy you a triple chocolate chip muffin?’

She perked up immediately. ‘Just what I need.

You’re a good friend, Sky.’

We had a quick bite in the café. I managed to talk her out of her indignation against Nelson, pointing out that he was only over-eager, not malicious, in his attempts to gain her attention.

‘I suppose, but sometimes he acts like a big baby,’ she grumbled. ‘Why can’t he just grow up?’

‘Maybe he’s just on a steep learning curve.’

She smirked. ‘Hey, who’s Yoda now?’

I assumed my best wrinkled old man expression.

‘Nelson, kind he is; chance you must give him.’

She burst into laughter. ‘Get out of here. Yoda so does not have an English accent!’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Other than that you’re saying I’m a dead ringer?’

‘If the shoe fits.’

‘Sheesh, I hate tal girls.’

Outside the café we had to go our separate ways.

It was getting dark. Streetlights on Main stuttered on, making it seem even darker in the shadows.

‘Thanks for the lesson and sorry about your car.’ I zipped up my jacket.

‘These things happen. I’l have to see if I can put some extra hours in at the store to pay for the repairs. See you later.’

I dug in my pocket for my mobile to tel Sal y and Simon I was heading home.

‘Hi, Sal y? Tina’s had car trouble. I’m walking from Main Street.’

I could hear the sound of tinny music in the background as Sal y’s voice came through. ‘Not on your own?’

‘Yes, I know. Not ideal. Can you come and meet me halfway? I don’t want to walk home alone.’

‘I’m leaving now. I’l see you by the shop. Stay where there are other people around.’

‘Fine. I’l wait inside.’

I slipped the phone in my back pocket. There was about five hundred yards between the café and the shop, and I had to cross an intersection with traffic lights. I felt happy walking it as it was wel lit and there were always lots of people mil ing about.

Setting off up the hil , I wondered how Zed was getting on. He must have stopped boarding now it was dark. Would his dad tel him I’d been over hoping to see him?

I’d almost reached the intersection when a man jogged up behind me. I took a quick glance. Big.

Heavy stubble. He had almost completely shaved his head, apart from a long tail of curly hair at the back. I moved to one side to let him pass.

‘Hey, I think you dropped this.’ He held out a brown leather purse.

‘No, no, it’s not mine.’ I clutched my bag closer to me, knowing ful wel that my red wal et was tucked deep inside it.

He gave me an ‘aw shucks’ grin. ‘That’s kinda strange—because it has your photo in it.’

‘That’s not possible.’ Perplexed I took the purse from him and flipped open the front section. My face stared back at me. A recent candid shot of me with Zed in the school yard. The note pocket was crammed with dol ar bil s, far more money than I ever had. ‘I don’t understand.’ I glanced up at ponytail guy.

There was something off about him. I backed away, thrusting it in his hands. ‘It’s not mine.’

‘Sure it is, Sky.’

How did he know my name? ‘No, it’s real y not.’ I broke into a run.

‘Hey, don’t you want the money?’ he cal ed, chasing after me.

I reached the corner but the traffic was going so fast I couldn’t risk crossing without causing an accident. My moment’s hesitation al owed him to catch up. He moved in and I felt something dig into my ribs.

‘Then let me explain things more clearly, cupcake.

You’re going to get in the car with me now without drawing attention to yourself.’

I took a breath to scream, pul ing away from his hand.

‘Do that and I’l shoot.’ He jabbed what I now realized was a gun in my side.

A black SUV with darkened windows screeched to a halt alongside.

‘Get in.’

It happened so quickly, so smoothly, I didn’t have a chance to formulate a plan of escape. He pushed me into the back seat, forcing my head down as he closed the door. The car accelerated away.

Zed! I screamed in my mind.

‘She’s using telepathy,’ said the man in the front seat, sitting next to the driver. In his late twenties, he had short red hair and a mass of freckles.

Sky? What’s wrong? Zed replied instantly.

‘That’s good. Let him know we’ve got you, darlin’.

Tel him to come get you.’ The passenger in the front had a strong Irish accent.

Immediately I shut off my link to Zed. They were using me to draw the Benedicts out.

‘She’s blocked him out,’ said the red-haired man.

The thug in the back seat pul ed me up by the scruff of the neck. I got a brief glimpse of my mum waiting outside the store, pul ing out her mobile. The one in my back pocket rang.

‘Is that him now?’ the thug asked. ‘Go on, answer it.’

He might not let me speak if I said it was my mother. I slid it from my ski suit but he grabbed it off me and pressed connect.

‘We’ve got her. You know what we want. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, two Benedicts for the two of ours.’ He cut the cal then chucked the phone out of the window. ‘Who needs telepathy? That should do it.’

‘It wasn’t them—it … it was my mum.’ I was beginning to shake. The few dul moments of shock were passing into bone-deep fear.

‘Same difference.’ He shrugged. ‘Let her tel the Benedicts.’

I could hear the buzz of voices trying to reach me

–not just Zed but the rest of the family too.

I couldn’t stop myself answering. Help me!

Please!

But then the noise deadened and faded out to nothing.

‘I let her get one heart wrenching plea through.’

The red-haired man rubbed his forehead. ‘But those Benedicts are battering away at the shield. Let’s get wel away from here.’

So he was the savant.

‘That’s harsh, O’Hal oran. You let them hear the little girl’s final words and then stopped?’ The thug was laughing.

‘Yeah, I think it was a nice touch myself. Brings tears to the old eyes, don’t it?’ He turned round to wink at me. ‘Don’t fret, my darlin’, they’l come for you. The Benedicts won’t let one of their own down.’

I curled up into a bal , hugging my knees, putting as much distance as I could between me and the men. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on finding a way through the shield.

‘Stop it!’ snapped O’Hal oran.

My eyes flew open. He was glaring at me in the mirror. I’d managed to affect him with my attempts but I was too clueless about savant stuff to know how to exploit it.

‘I’l tel Gator to knock you out if you try that again,’

O’Hal oran warned.

‘What she do?’ ponytailed Gator asked.

O’Hal oran rubbed his temples again. My assault and that of the Benedicts on his shield was getting to him.

‘We have here a baby savant. I’ve no idea why she don’t know what to do with her powers but she has some locked up inside her. She’s a telepath.’

The thug looked unsettled now. ‘What else she do?’

O’Hal oran dismissed me with a shrug. ‘Nothing, as far as I know. Don’t worry, she won’t harm you.’

Gator was scared of savants? That made two of us. But it was worth knowing—not that I could do anything with it at the moment. O’Hal oran was right: I was a baby in savant terms. If I was going to help myself out of this mess, I had to grow up very quickly.

* * *

We had been driving for over an hour. I’d passed through abject terror and now felt a sense of deadening hopelessness. We were much too far from Wrickenridge for anyone to catch up with us. ‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked.

Gator seemed surprised to hear me speak. I had the impression that I was just a means to an end—

getting the Benedicts—and no one in the car real y considered me as a person.

‘Shal I tel her?’ he asked O’Hal oran.

The savant nodded. He’d been silent, his battle on an invisible front as the Benedicts desperately tried to break his shield.

‘Wel , cupcake, we’re taking you to see the boss.’

Gator took a pack of chewing gum out of his breast pocket and offered me a strip. I shook my head.

‘Who’s your boss?’

‘You’l find out soon enough.’

‘Where is he?’

‘At the other end of that plane ride.’ He gestured towards an aircraft waiting on the tarmac of a little provincial airfield.

‘We’re flying?’

‘We sure ain’t walking to Vegas.’

We drew up alongside the jet. Gator pul ed me out of the car and bundled me up the short flight of steps.

As soon as the SUV was clear, the plane took off immediately, heading south.

My room was on the top floor of a half-finished skyscraper hotel on the street in Las Vegas known as the Strip. I knew my location because no one made any attempt to stop me looking out of the ceiling to floor window. Lights from the casinos bled into

the

sky—neon

palm

trees,

pyramids,

rol ercoaster rides, al glittering with zany promise.

Beyond this thin layer of madness, past the twinkle of the suburbs, was the desert, dark and somehow sane. I leant my forehead against the cold glass, trying to calm the whirl of emotions beating away inside me. My head was on spin cycle.

After a long flight, we had put down at an airfield and I’d been bundled into another black car, this one a limo. My hopes of getting away from Gator and O’Hal oran at the other end were dashed when we entered an underground car park and I was transferred into the hotel in a private lift. Whisked up to the penthouse, I’d then been left in my room and told to go to bed. My part was over for the moment, O’Hal oran had explained, and he advised me to get some rest.

Rest? I kicked the white leather armchair stationed by the window. Five star accommodation didn’t make this any less of a prison. They could take their flat screen TV, Jacuzzi bath, and four-poster bed and stick it … wel , I had some creative suggestions as to where.

As no bodily harm had been done to me, I was less worried for the moment about my own fate. Most tormenting was the knowledge that Zed and my parents would be going through hel . I had to get a message through to them that I was al right. I’d already tried the phone—no surprise that it had no dial tone. The door was locked and I couldn’t attract attention at this height from any living creature but the birds. That left telepathy. Zed had never answered my question as to whether he could talk to his brothers in Denver but he had managed to contact me over the couple of miles between his home and mine. Was it possible to communicate with him over the hundreds between Colorado and Nevada? I wasn’t even sure exactly how far apart we were.

I rubbed my head, remembering the ache I’d got just sustaining that ‘local’ telepathic cal . And there was O’Hal oran to consider. Would he bother keeping the shield up now we were out of range? He knew I had few powers as a savant so probably didn’t expect me to try anything so ambitious, but if he was playing safe and detected my clumsy attempts, he’d be furious and might punish me.

Fireworks went off in the distance, part of some nightly entertainment at one of the other casino hotels. Mine was cal ed The Fortune Tel er: I could see the crystal bal revolving on the roof in reflection in the windows of the building across the street. Only part of it was complete. ‘T’ shaped cranes stood sentinel over the rest—the offices, apartments, and mal s that were waiting for the end of the recession so that their skeletons could be clad in something more attractive than iron girders. The rubble-strewn site to my right had weeds growing on the heaps, showing just how long the building project had been put on ice—ironical y, given the name, not something the hotel owner had foreseen. He could’ve done with a savant to tip him off.

I hugged myself, missing Zed with a ferocity that surprised me. Unlike my boyfriend, I didn’t know what the future held. I’d have to risk annoying O’Hal oran but I could lessen the chances by choosing a time when he should be asleep. I checked my watch: it was midnight. I’d leave it to the smal hours before making my move.

Turning away from the window, I contemplated my room, looking for anything that could help me. I’d already had to peel off the ski suit, being far too hot.

I’d put on the hotel robe but I real y wanted a change of clothes, feeling at a disadvantage in nothing but long thermals. There was a nightshirt neatly folded on one of the pil ows. I shook it out: it bore the hotel logo and looked like the kind of thing you could buy in the gift shop. Wondering if someone had thought to provide more of the same, I opened the wardrobe and found a neat pile of T-shirts and shorts. Did that mean they expected me to be here for a while?

This was al too much for me to take in. I felt out of place, unable to focus. The wonderful high definition perception I had with Zed had col apsed, throwing me back into my old Manga-izing habits, flat colours, disjointed images. I hadn’t realized until separated by hundreds of miles how I’d come to take his presence near me almost for granted. Even if we couldn’t spend a lot of time together, I’d had the reassurance that he was there. He’d grounded me, making al that I was learning about the savant world less frightening. Now I was open to al fears and wild guesses as to what was going to happen. He’d been my shield, not the ones I’d practised in my head.

I hadn’t seen it, but he had been acting as my soulfinder al along, even though I hadn’t acknowledged him. Now it was too late to tel him.

Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I could reach him.

Exhaustion crept up on me. I found my eyes blurring and I had to grab the wardrobe door as I swayed. If I wanted to have the energy for my plan, I needed to get some sleep. Even a few hours would make a difference. Changing quickly into the nightshirt, I set the alarm on the bedside clock and rol ed under the satin sheet.

The neon lights were stil pulsing outside when the alarm jolted me awake three hours later. A police helicopter circled overhead briefly then went north.

On the street below, cars and hotel shuttles continued to cruise the Strip, gamblers unwil ing or unable to stop even in the middle of the night. I dashed cold water in my eyes to clear my head.

OK. Time to take a chance on O’Hal oran having gone to bed. I had to hope that abduction made for a tiring day for him.

Zed?

Nothing. I probed the darkness in my head, feeling the absence of the muffling blanket that had been in place in the car. That gave me hope that O’Hal oran had dropped the shield.

Zed? Can you hear me?

No reply. I pressed my fingers to my temples.

Concentrate. Perhaps Zed was asleep too?

No, he wouldn’t be. He wouldn’t be sleeping knowing I’d been taken. He’d be straining to hear the least word from me. Perhaps what I was trying was impossible?

I paced the room for a moment, my toes sinking into the deep pile of the rug.

Or maybe I just didn’t know what I was doing? I thought back through the things Zed had told me about telepathy, how he had made contact with me despite himself. He’d said I was a bridge.

Perhaps it would work like shielding, but in reverse? Opening up and building a link rather than closing down and constructing barriers?

I tried again, imagining I was building a thin arching bridge between my mind and Zed’s. I saw it like an image stretching out of a comic book frame, breaking the conventions to close the distance to the next picture.

After an hour of migraine-inducing thought, I felt a change, a subtle flow of energy in the other direction.

Zed?

Sky? His thoughts sounded faint, moving in and out of reach like a thread of a cobweb dancing in the wind.

I’m in Vegas.

His shock was clear enough. You can’t … How can you … me … Vegas?

You tell me. You’re the savant, remember?

… miracle …

I’m OK. They’ve got me on the top floor of theFortune Teller.

Can’t … you. Breaking …

Fortune Teller. Top floor.

My head was screaming with the pain of maintaining the bridge but I was determined to get my message through.

I … you.

He wasn’t hearing me. I repeated my location.

… love you…. come for you.

No!

Easier … closer.

No, no. It’s a trap. The bridge was col apsing. I could feel it going, feel my stomach churning, head pounding. Just a moment longer. I love you too, butdon’t come. It’s what they want.

Sky! He’d felt the link fracture, scrambling my last words.

‘Zed.’ I was on the floor, perspiration running down my back, nausea gripping my stomach. I crawled on hands and knees to the bathroom and was sick.

Though shaky, I felt a little better for it. Hauling myself to the bed, I fel on the covers face down and passed out.

I did not wake properly

until mid morning. The sky

was a pale blue through the tinted windows, tiny puffs of cloud smudging the perfect surface. Feeling numb, I cleaned my teeth with the hotel-supplied brush and paste and got dressed. It seemed odd to be wearing shorts in the middle of winter but the climate control ed environment of the hotel meant it was always summer inside. My stomach growled. I investigated the contents of the mini bar and helped myself to a chocolate biscuit and bottle of Coke, then sat down to wait. I was in the middle of a crisis but things were strangely calm. The eye of the storm.

I didn’t dare risk trying to contact Zed again.

O’Hal oran would probably be up and about and I didn’t know enough about shield-busting to give it a go. I just hoped Zed got my message not to come rushing in. We needed a plan to get me out, not a second hostage.

There was a knock at the door. Not behaviour I expected of my kidnappers. It opened to reveal Gator carrying a tray.

‘Rise and shine, cupcake. You slept wel ?’

‘Not real y.’

Ignoring this, Gator dumped the tray on a table by the window. ‘Breakfast. Eat quickly. The boss wants to see you.’

I wasn’t sure I could manage anything. Deciding not to rile him by refusing co-operation over so smal a thing, I lifted the lid. Nope, I couldn’t stomach those eggs. I sipped at the orange juice and nibbled a slice of toast instead. Gator didn’t leave. He stood at the window pretending to shoot at the birds flying over the buildings, giving me a good view of his ponytail which he’d secured back with a leather tie.

He seemed in a cheerful mood, not at al on edge for someone who was part of a kidnapping. It struck me then that whoever was behind this must control this entire hotel or Gator would be less relaxed about holding me here.

‘I’ve had enough, thanks.’ I stood up. The fact that I was meeting the boss face to face did not bode wel for what they had planned for me. I tried to think up a scenario where they didn’t kil me to protect their identities at the end of this and couldn’t imagine one.

‘OK, let’s go.’ He took a firm grip of my upper arm and marched me out into the hal way. We turned left, walked past the elevator and on into a waiting area.

Through the frosted windows, I could see people sitting around a boardroom table. Gator knocked once, waited for the green light, then entered with me in tow.

Fear made the images sharp. I tried to absorb as much information as I could just in case by some miracle I did get free. Three people sat at the table.

My eyes were drawn to the oldest: a man with dyed black hair and dodgy tan, punching away at his BlackBerry. His suit screamed designer, though his choice in ties did not: today’s a tangerine shade that clashed with his skin. He had the seat at the head.

On either side sat a younger man and a woman. The family resemblance was strong enough for me to hazard a guess that these were his children or close relatives.

‘Here she is, Mr Kel y. I’l wait outside.’ Gator gave me a little push towards the table and walked out.

Mr Kel y sat looking at me without speaking for a while, his fingers touching in an arch. The others were clearly waiting for him to make the first move, which left me stranded. I knew only that the Benedicts had helped in the conviction of two of the Kel y family. From the way he sat so confidently in the head chair, I guessed I was looking at the famous Daniel Kel y himself, head of the Kel y business empire, the man whose face appeared more regularly in the business pages than Donald Trump and Richard Branson combined.

‘Come here.’ Kel y beckoned me closer.

Reluctantly, I walked round the table.

‘O’Hal oran said you are a savant?’

‘I don’t know.’ I tucked my hands in my pockets to disguise the fact that they were trembling.

‘You are. I can tel . It’s a shame real y that you’ve been caught up in this.’ He flashed me an unapologetic grin, displaying improbably even teeth.

The man on his right stirred. ‘Dad, are you sure the Benedicts wil trade themselves for her?’

‘Yes, they wil try. They won’t be able to stop themselves trying to protect an innocent like her.’

The younger Kel y poured a cup of coffee. ‘And the police? They must be involved by now.’

‘They wil never be able to trace it back to us. And she wil tel them exactly what I tel her to say.’ Mr Kel y leaned back in his chair. ‘Fascinating. There are such dark spaces in her mind.’

I stepped back in alarm. He was reading my mind somehow. Zed had said I always gave too much away to another savant. I threw up wal s as fast as I could.

He drummed his fingers lazily on the table.

‘Turquoise. Such a girlish colour, don’t you think?’

‘Not very strong though,’ commented the younger woman; she had the sleek looks of a wild cat, groomed but deadly. ‘I could break them for you, Daddy.’

‘Oh no, I don’t want her broken just yet.’

The bottom fel out of my world. The Benedicts had thought there was only one savant involved; what they had failed to anticipate was that the Kel ys had powers like theirs. This had suddenly got a whole lot more complicated.

‘You’re wondering what we’re going to do with you, aren’t you, Sky?’ Kel y held out a hand to me, his face lined with dissatisfaction. He looked as if he was suffering from deep disappointment and wanted others to suffer with him.

I’d prefer to touch a snake so I kept my hands in my pockets.

‘We’re not going to kil you, if that is what you are thinking. You are not our enemy.’ He let his hand drop. ‘I’m a businessman, not a murderer.’

‘So what are you going to do with me?’

He stood up, tugging his jacket straight.

Approaching me, he walked round, assessing me like an art critic at a showing of a new work. His presence grated on my nerves like a piece of discordant music.

‘You are going to become my very good friend, Sky. You are going to tel the policemen that neither I nor my family had anything to do with your kidnapping, that it was two of the Benedict boys who took you for their own disgusting and evil purposes.’

He smiled with evil relish. ‘You know how savants can so easily go wrong—too much power, too little to hold them sane. The fact that they died trying to stop you escaping is no tragedy but saves the American taxpayer the money for housing them for the rest of their natural life in jail.’

‘I like that,’ commented the young man. ‘I think disgracing them is better than just kil ing them.’

‘I thought you would, Sean. I told you that you could trust me to think up a suitable payback for your uncles.’

I gaped at them. ‘You’re mad! There’s nothing you can do or say to make me tel the police such a lie, even if you threaten me! And I won’t let you kil Zed or

… or his brothers! I won’t!’

Kel y found my anger funny. ‘Such an amusing little foreigner, isn’t she? Al hissing and spitting like a furious kitten and about as threatening.’ He laughed.

‘Of course you wil say what I tel you, Sky. You see, it is my gift. You wil remember what I want you to remember. People do, you know, like the prison guards who wil very soon be letting my brothers out of prison, thinking they received word from the governor to release them. There’s no point resisting.

Bending people to my wil is what I am good at. I’ve built my fortune on it and you’l be no different.’

Oh my God, he was like Victor. But could he real y make me say and do something so out of character?

I could see that making a couple of guards misinterpret their duty might be possible, but to fabricate a whole complicated lie that flew in the face of the evidence, surely I wouldn’t go along with that?

Could I forget myself so far as to betray Zed? Betray my soulfinder?

I slammed that thought deep behind al my barriers. Kel y must not learn what Zed was to me—

he’d exploit that weakness without mercy, knowing what savants would do for their other half.

Absolutely brilliant, Sky. I kicked myself. What a time to accept Zed is your soulfinder.

I’d been scared before; now I was terrified.

‘I see you are beginning to believe that I can do it.’

Kel y tucked his BlackBerry away in his breast pocket. ‘Don’t worry: you won’t suffer. You’l think you’re tel ing the truth. I’l have to keep you close by, of course, to make sure you carry on singing the same tune for a year or so until everyone forgets, but we can see to that can’t we, Maria?’

The younger woman nodded. ‘Yes, Daddy. I think we can make a place for her in housekeeping in one of the hotels when she drops out of high school to live in Vegas. Tragical y, the memories of Wrickenridge wil be too painful for her to return.’

‘But my parents …’ This was worse than a nightmare.

Kel y gave an insincere sigh. ‘They’l feel they failed to protect you and I’l persuade them that they want to give you the space our doctors say you need after your trauma. We know al about them and your adoption—how fragile your mental condition is. I’m sure they’l be too busy with their careers to worry too much as long as you tel them you’re happy—and you wil tel them so.’

How did he know so much? ‘You’re taking my life away from me.’

‘Better than kil ing you, and that’s the only other option.’

Sean came to join his father. He was a good head tal er, but much fatter, his bel y rol ing over the top of his thin leather belt that kept up his sagging trousers.

He had a Zorro-style moustache arching over his lip which looked ridiculous on someone who had only a few years on me, like someone had drawn it on him for a joke while he slept and he hadn’t yet noticed.

‘You say she has darkness inside her?’

Kel y frowned. ‘Can’t you sense it?’

Sean seized my hand and pul ed it up to his nose, sniffing the palm, eyes closed as if reaching for a faint perfume. I tried to tug free but his grip pinched.

‘Yes, I can feel it now. Wonderful seams of pain and abandonment.’

As he touched me I could feel my panic heighten; the calm I’d struggled to maintain was being shredded away like paper ripped off a present.

‘Why not give her to me? I would enjoy draining her of her emotions—I can sense she would provide hours of entertainment.’

Daniel Kel y smiled indulgently at his son. ‘Is her emotional energy that strong?’

He nodded. ‘I’ve not felt anything like it.’

‘Then you can have her after she’s served her purpose with the Benedicts. Just keep her wel enough to convince her family she’s here of her own free wil .’

‘I’l take care of it.’ Sean Kel y kissed the palm of my hand and let it go. I wiped it on my shorts with a shudder. ‘Hmm.’ He licked his lips. ‘You and I are going to get to know each other very wel , my sweet.’

‘What are you?’ I hugged my arms to my sides and retreated to the window. I wanted to scream in his face but it would only show them how scared I was.

Maria Kel y rol ed her eyes impatiently. ‘My brother’s an emotion miner—gets his kicks from drawing the stuff out of other people’s brains. I could’ve done with a new maid, Daddy: it’s not fair.

Not even good business. She won’t be any use if Sean gets his hands on her—you know that. The last one only lasted a month before we had to get rid of her.’ Her voice rose in a whine.

‘I’l make it up to you, darling.’ Daniel Kel y stamped his authority on the situation with a slice of his hand. ‘Now enough of this: I must get to work on our guest. The police search for her is wel under way and our source has reported that the Benedicts have made their move from their base. It’s time the authorities were pointed in their direction. Come, Sky, I have something I want you to remember.’

Daniel Kel y looked round for me but I was already running. No way was I meekly going to succumb to his mind-manipulation.

‘Sean!’ he barked.

I was faster than that doughnut. I burst out of the doors and bolted for the elevators, hoping to find one waiting or at least a stairwel . But I’d forgotten who was outside. I got as far as the hal way before Gator tackled me. He took me down, forcing al the air from my lungs. My head cracked on the tiles but I continued to kick and bite as he hauled me up. He held me at arm’s length and shook me.