[English] HUNTING LILA

Hunting Lila
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I fought my way out of his arms and faced him. ‘What the hell are you doing in my house?’

‘Is Jack here? Is he back?’ Key was jigging up and down, wired and wide-eyed.

‘No.’ I shook myself and wiped my face, trying to remove the taste of his hand. ‘What the hell are you doing? I told you I’d help you, you don’t need to break into my house and—’

He lunged towards me. ‘You’ve got to get out now.’

‘What?’

‘You have to leave, right now.’ He started pulling me out of the living room, tugging me by the top of my arm. I let myself be pulled.

‘What? Why?’ I knew the answer before he said it, dread already tunnelling through me.

‘They’re coming. They’re on their way. They used one of them to set the alarm off on the base. It’s a decoy. I can’t believe your brother fell for it. And why the hell did you leave the bar? Alone! Are you insane?’

We were in the kitchen; Key was fumbling with the lock on the back door.

‘But . . . how? They were in Mexico. Jack said.’ Key had to be wrong.

‘Well, they’re not now. They’re back here. As soon as I left you, I saw one of Demos’s people outside the bar. Bold as brass. Like he didn’t care if the Unit spotted him.’

‘What was he doing there?’ I asked hesitatingly.

‘There was only one thing in that bar of any interest to Demos.’ He gave me a look that made my blood run cold. ‘Then you came swanning out on your own and jumped in a cab. And that’s all it took. Demos’s man jumped in a car and I followed you straight here to warn you. Sure as my mama goes to church twice on a Sunday they’re coming here.’

I stared at him.

‘Damn! How do you get this door open?’ He was yanking it so hard, the frame was in danger of cracking.

I knelt down and slid the bolt at the bottom and the door opened.

‘Come on!’ He pulled me out onto the back veranda.

I flew forward onto the wooden planks, whacking my elbow on the door frame and letting out a cry. Key went tumbling over me, head first down the steps onto the lawn. And then a man was on top of him, smacking his fist into his face.

I jerked onto my knees and hauled myself up, spinning around to see whether anyone else was coming up behind him. My legs were bent as though I was on a starting block but I didn’t know which way to run or what to do. Key was curled up in a ball, yelling out with each blow. I unfroze and directed my gaze at a watering can, the first thing I saw. It lifted up and I hurled it with all the force I could muster at the man on top of Key. Then I looked for something else. A wooden table at the far end of the veranda was the only other object that I thought I could lift. I stared at it hard and it flew up straight away, hovered for a split second and then rocketed towards the men on the grass.

Just before it made contact, the man rolled aside, off Key. The shock made me lose my grip and the table skidded dangerously in mid-air, coming to a rest millimetres from Alex’s face. It hung there like a feather while we both watched. Time seemed to have frozen alongside the table. I looked at Alex, feeling adrenaline pump into my limbs. He was staring at the table in disbelief, then his eyes slowly tracked over to me and I saw the cog turn and the realisation sink in.

The table smashed to the ground at his side. He didn’t flinch, he was already on his feet, and the look on his face was one I’d never seen before. I almost toppled backwards from the force of it. The anger was barely contained. Alex took a step towards me and I cowered back against the door frame. I’d never before felt fear like it. I’d take Demos over this.

I closed my eyes, waiting for him to reach me. I heard Alex swear and my eyes snapped open. Key had grabbed him by the leg and was hanging off him, being dragged along behind.

‘Run, Lila!’ Key was yelling, through a mouthful of blood.

Alex was trying to shake him off; I could see him about to take aim with the other leg and before I knew what I was doing I had launched myself off the top step. I collided with Alex hard, bringing him to the ground, landing with a crunch on top of him. I hadn’t a hope of holding him down but I clung to him tightly, holding his arms and leaning all my weight onto his chest.

‘Stop, stop, please stop,’ I was begging him. ‘Please don’t hurt him. Please stop. He’s trying to help me.’

Alex stopped pushing against me. I released my grip and sat up. I was straddling him. Key had rolled onto his hands and knees and was trying to stand.

Alex sat up and I scrambled off him, backing away fast. He drew himself up to standing, his body taut. I moved to Key’s side, helping him to stand. He spat a bloody wodge of saliva into the grass and leaned heavily on me, panting. I could see Alex’s hands clenching into fists but he stayed pacing the grass a few metres away from us, shooting glances between me and Key.

‘Alex,’ I tried to speak but it came out in a hoarse whisper, ‘Alex, this is Key. He came to tell me that they’re coming to the house.’

‘Who’s coming?’ Alex stopped pacing, his eyes flashing onto me like two lightning strikes.

‘Demos.’ Key lifted his head to spit the word.

Alex stepped towards him and Key leaned back, making me stumble.

‘What? How do you know this?’ His tone was fierce, quick.

‘They’re on their way. You need to get her out of here. They want her.’ Key coughed. ‘To exchange.’ He hacked more bloody spit out of his lungs.

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For one second Alex stood staring at Key, then he shifted his head and I felt his eyes burning into me again. I looked back defiantly, my heart rate rising. Then I felt his hand grab me by the elbow and he was dragging me across the lawn.

Key tumbled to his knees as I lost my grip on him. I dug my bare feet into the ground and yanked my arm free from Alex’s grip.

Alex turned around, his face blazing.

‘Where are you taking me?’ I was shouting.

He reached his hand to take hold of me again but I dodged it.

‘Come on,’ he said. It was an order.

I stood firm. ‘I’m not leaving him. He came to help me. They have his son.’

I saw Alex waver. He glanced over at the back door and then at Key. I could see the tension in his jaw, the tendons standing up in his neck.

‘Come on then, quick, into the garage, the car.’ He moved towards Key and put an arm around his shoulders, hauling him to standing.

‘Come on, move!’ Alex shouted and I ran.

I flicked on the garage light and held the door open as Alex half carried Key through. He leaned him against the car. ‘Stay here.’

I ran to Key’s side to prop him up while Alex ducked through into the hallway. He was back in a second with the car keys, beeping open the doors. He took Key from me and half pushed him onto the back seat.

‘Get in!’ he yelled.

From outside we heard the sudden noise of screaming engines, of cars, or trucks. It was loud, tearing apart the still night. All three of us lifted our heads. They screeched to a stop out the front of the house.

Alex dived into the driver’s seat and threw open the passenger door. He leaned over and grabbed my wrist, pulling me into the car. I slammed the door shut as the garage opened up.

The thrust of the acceleration as Alex hit his foot to the floor and reversed out threw me against the dash. I heard Key roll off the back seat and a heavy thump as he crashed onto the floor.

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.’

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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.’

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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.

18

When I opened my eyes I was staring at the seat buckle, my head and body twisted into the side of the car door and my hand resting on the handle, as though in my sleep I’d been trying to hide, or escape.

I glanced up and out of the window. We weren’t moving anymore, we were just sitting on the side of the road as the dawn broke around us. There was no movement, no people, no cars and no noise – it was like the hiatus between breaths. I tried to work out where we were.

It looked like a desert town, flat and arid with dust already layering the windscreen, and even at this hour the road was throwing up a long-distance shimmer. Through the tinted window I could see a couple of buildings, mainly hardware and building supply stores spaced out at intervals. I had no idea what we were doing here other than maybe that Alex had pulled over to sleep.

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I shifted slowly in my seat and turned towards him. He was staring out of his window and I felt both relief that he was still in the car and a shot of pain when I remembered that he wasn’t here out of love or friendship but out of some dubious code of honour. That’s what he had meant when he’d said he had no choice. It was so obvious. And so Alex.

I followed his gaze across the street. We were sitting opposite a second-hand car dealership. About forty cars plastered with ‘for sale’ signs were lined up facing us, like the start of a gumball rally.

We sat in the silence of the car, the air con***ioning running, for another hour and forty minutes. Neither of us said a word. I brought my legs up onto the seat and sat there holding them, freezing but too scared to touch the buttons in the car or to open my mouth. I tugged at my dress to try to pull it over my legs and realised the seam had split up my thigh. My knees were hatched with blood and dirt. There was a small rent in one of the straps too which looked like it might at any moment lead to a wardrobe mishap. I remembered my flying tackle from the night before and glanced quickly over at Alex, remembering the hatred I’d seen in his face when I’d been standing on the porch. What would he have done if he’d reached me?

Eventually, things picked up a pace, like someone hitting the forward play button. A car pulled up outside the car dealership and a man in a short-sleeved shirt and golf trousers got out and unlocked the double padlock on the chain-link fence. He pulled into the lot and Alex started the engine.

I pushed my feet down off the seat as he drove across the road and into the dealership. I had an idea of what he was about to do and I was guessing Jack was not going to be too happy about it.

The man in the chequered trousers came straight out of his little Portakabin office, a coffee mug in his hand. I saw the look of surprise on his face quickly replaced with a broad, dental-worked smile.

‘Stay here,’ Alex said under his breath, already opening his door.

I watched through the window as Alex started talking. He had his back to me and I couldn’t hear a word. At one point I saw him gesture towards me and the man leant a little forward and glanced into the car, waving. I fidgeted with my dress, aware that I was looking exactly like someone who’d stayed out all night and then been dragged through a hedge backwards; hair all over the place, dark smudges under my eyes where my mascara must have run, and looking altogether the worse for wear. God only knew what story Alex was spinning the man. I glanced up again and caught him pointing to a car on the far side of the lot and I sat forward to get a better view. It was a little white Toyota, fairly old-looking. Not exactly Alex’s style. I didn’t care what it looked like, though, so long as it went fast.

The man started to circle Jack’s car. He opened the driver’s door and got in next to me, giving me a grin.

‘Hi there,’ he said.

I looked at him blankly then forced a smile, trying *****rreptitiously smooth my hair and hold my dress together at the same time.

He wobbled the gear stick, turned on the engine, checked the speedometer. His hand hovered over the buttons by the radio and I felt sickness well up in the pit of my stomach.

Alex leant in the door. ‘That’s just the radio tuning.’

The man put his hands back on the wheel. He turned his head and noticed the bag on the back seat. ‘So, you two lovebirds are heading to Vegas, I hear. Congratulations.’

I stared at him, wondering if I’d misheard. Alex’s face appeared again behind the man’s shoulder, nudging me with his eyes. I realised straightaway what the message was and looked back at the man in shock.

‘Oh, er, thanks.’ I looked up at Alex again, who gave me the tiniest shrug. ‘It’s kind of sudden.’

‘Well, good luck to you both,’ he said, shaking my hand.

He got out of the car and I sat there in shock. I’d dreamt quite a lot when I was younger about marrying Alex. When I was nine I’d scrawled Lila Wakeman all over my diary about six hundred times. I’d even designed my wedding dress and practised saying ‘I do’ to a photo of Alex propped up on my dresser. Our wedding would have taken place in my parents’ garden or a little white church. There was probably a pony in there somewhere, too. But never in all those imaginings had I imagined Vegas and a getaway car. I had to laugh at the irony of Alex now being the one pretending we were getting married.

When I glanced up I saw the man indicating his Portakabin. Alex shook his head and the man shrugged and walked inside by himself.

The next thing I knew, Alex had opened my door and pulled me out. Then he walked to the trunk and grabbed a black holdall that I assumed was Jack’s.

Alex put his arm around me, his grip tight. It was pleasurable pain, my body reacting as it normally did to his touch. I was so tired I longed to put my arm around him too but I knew he was only holding me this way to keep up appearances for the car dealer. We had to look like we were in love, not like we were on the run from a secretive government unit and a pack of homicidal maniacs with mind control powers.

The man came out of his Portakabin, holding some keys and several stacks of paper in his hand that I realised were hundred-dollar bills. Alex held out his hand and the man counted out five stacks into it. I shifted uncomfortably, my bare feet starting to burn on the tarmac.

‘Fifty, and I throw in the Toyota.’

Fifty thousand? Jack had said it was worth one twenty. But that was with extras that Alex couldn’t demonstrate, unless he thought the man might up his price if he saw me flop to the pavement clutching my head. So fifty was probably a good amount. Jack would still go mad.

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Alex took the keys from the man and handed him the Audi’s in exchange.

‘The paperwork’s all in the glove box.’

‘OK, sir, if I can just get you to sign this here piece of paper and check your licence we’re all done.’

I couldn’t see Alex’s face because he was holding me so tight, I could only look up at his chin. He had to let me go though to reach for his licence in his pocket. I felt him edge ever so slightly towards me so his body was still touching mine. He was clearly nervous about me doing a runner. I instinctively leant into him to close the distance. I was definitely through with running away from Alex.

‘OK, Mr . . .’ the man peered more closely at the document in Alex’s hand, ‘Hunt. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.’ I looked up in surprise. He turned to me. ‘And the soon-to-be-Mrs-Hunt, a pleasure.’

He held out his hand and I looked at it until I felt Alex gently nudging my back. I took the hand and shook it, murmuring my thanks.

‘Mr Hunt?’ I asked. We were walking fast towards the Toyota. Alex had picked up the holdall and slung it over his shoulder, his other arm around me. I was walking awkwardly over the ground and he hadn’t seemed to notice that I wasn’t wearing any shoes. ‘How do you have fake ID?’

Alex was unlocking the car and popping the trunk. He let go of me.

‘How do you think I have fake ID? It’s just a shame I don’t have one for you, too. It would be a big help right now.’

He opened the passenger door for me and I got in. The white leather seats stuck to the back of my bare legs and the inside smelt of stale beer with overtones of upholstery cleaner.

‘Nice choice,’ I said, when Alex got in his side.

He looked over at me briefly and I thought I detected the start of a smile at the corner of his mouth. My stomach muscles contracted with it. It was the first sign of warmth he’d shown me. The arm around me didn’t count, that had been acting. I let my eyes travel all over his face. He was busy reversing out of the space, looking over his shoulder. Maybe it was because it was daylight and the shadows were gone but the anger from last night seemed to have dissipated. He was still tense, I could tell from the furrows in his brow and the way his mouth was set in a line, but he didn’t seem angry anymore, just very focused.

‘Why did you sell Jack’s car?’

‘We’re going to need the money. Plus they’ll have an APB out on us. Every cop in the country’s going to be on the lookout for us. The Audi’s fairly conspicuous.’

We drove a few miles out of the town. Alex was quiet the whole way and the air was saturated with unspoken questions. I had so many to ask I didn’t know where to begin but I knew that he most certainly had questions for me too. I wondered when he would start the inquisition.

Just as I was about to test the water by asking again where we were going, Alex swung into the car park of a giant mall. He pulled into a space away from the entrance, between two big SUVs. Before I could ask what we were doing there, Alex started unbuttoning his shirt. My jaw went slack as I watched. When he was done with the buttons he pulled it off. He was wearing a white vest underneath and I couldn’t help but stare at his bare arms and shoulders, wondering what on earth he was doing.

‘Here, put this on.’ He chucked the shirt at me.

I looked at him with a question in my eyes.

‘You can’t walk into a mall like that,’ he said indicating my ripped dress.

He had a point. I didn’t reply, just put the shirt on over my dress, my fingers mangling the buttons they were shaking so much.

I peeked up at him when I was done. The sleeves were much too long, hanging over my hands. Alex took my arm and started rolling one sleeve up.

His eyes, I noticed, were back to their normal cool blue but they were shuttered and I couldn’t read his mood. When he was done he got out of the car and I took a second to look at myself in the little mirror on the inside of the visor. Eyes like a raccoon, hair like it had been dreaded. There was little I could do besides wipe some of the black soot from under my eyes. I got out of the car.

‘Can you make it in bare feet?’ He was nodding towards the entrance.

I nodded back. We crossed quickly to the front of the mall and walked into the air-con***ioned cool. Alex didn’t put his arm around me this time, though he stayed close. I was super-conscious of how we looked, the shirt not being much of an improvement. I’d gone from looking like a dirty stop-out to looking like a dirty stop-out wearing the shirt of the man I’d stopped out with. Still, I wasn’t going to take it off. Actually, the Vegas line had been kind of genius. That was exactly what we looked like. Two hungover, partied out people on their way to or from Vegas.

We went into the first store we came to, a Gap. Alex strode through it, clearly in a hurry, and I jogged after him. He was in the women’s section picking out T-shirts. He crossed to the jeans and held up a pair, threw them down and picked up another pair, examined them for a second then threw them over his arm. He seemed to remember I was there and looked around.

‘Shoes,’ he said, as though he thought I’d have already figured out that’s what I should have been looking for.

I turned around and saw a rack of flip-flops by the till. I grabbed the first pair in my size and turned back to him. He was standing by the underwear section now.

I hurried over, feeling my cheeks burn. I hoped to God he wasn’t going to estimate my size in this department too, but when I came up to his side he said, ‘You’d better get some things. I’ll be just over there.’

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He walked off to the men’s section. I panicked at the few feet he was putting between us and reached out and snatched hold of the first things I could see then scurried over to where he was.

‘Did you get a sweater? You’re going to need something warm.’

Where were we going? Alaska? I turned around again and ran over to the table with the sweaters on. It was the desert, they didn’t sell many sweaters in this store, at least not ones that would keep me warm if I was Arctic-bound. I pulled one from the pile and rushed back to Alex. The woman behind the counter handed Alex some scissors so he could snip the tag attaching my flip-flops. She looked like she would have liked to hand him a whole lot more, like her naked body across the counter. I slipped the shoes on while glaring at her.

Alex took me by the arm and marched me out the store. ‘You hungry?’

It wasn’t so much a question. We were already walking towards a fast food restaurant. I hadn’t thought about it until that point. My stomach had been in so many knots but now he’d said the word it growled like a wolf to the moon. I clutched it and looked up at Alex nodding.

We ordered enough to feed about ten men and a large, black coffee, which Alex piled sugar into. I felt bad at how little sleep he’d had. And on his birthday, which I realised I had totally ruined.

We sat at a table out of the way, near to the fire exit. Alex kept his back to the wall, eating like he didn’t know what he was putting in his mouth, not looking at it once, his eyes too busy moving over the restaurant. I ate until I was full and then leant back in the chair, suddenly feeling the smack of exhaustion hit me full on. I could have put my head on the table right there and fallen into a coma without caring an ounce whether Demos found me. Or the Unit for that matter.

I rested my chin on my hand and watched Alex scanning the room. Circles were starting to shadow his eyes.

‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked.

‘What?’ Alex moved his eyes back to me. The frown line, the same one I usually caused, was back.

‘I still don’t understand why you’re helping me.’

He looked away again, over to the entrance, at a couple of noisy teenagers who had just come in. ‘I told you, I didn’t have a choice.’ His voice was neutral, no anger in it, just stating a simple fact.

I carried on. ‘But I know what you think about people like me.’

He shook his head and a half-smile, slightly sad, pulled at the side of his mouth. ‘You don’t know what I’m thinking.’

That was true, but last night I hadn’t needed to be telepathic to know how much he despised me. ‘You hate me.’

I waited to see what he would say. He was looking over at the entrance again, as though fully expecting to see Demos breeze through at any moment. After a couple of seconds he turned his head slowly to look at me again. ‘Lila, I don’t hate you.’

I picked up on the slight emphasis he put on the word ‘hate’ as though he was denying the one word while replacing it with another in his mind, like ‘loathe’ or ‘despise’. It was just semantics, though.

I looked at the table and picked up a napkin, twisting it into a rope. ‘Why did you lie?’

He frowned at me. ‘Lie? About what?’

‘About Demos. I know he killed my mother. I know that he’s the one after me. But you told me it wasn’t the same people. That I didn’t need to worry. And you said that Suki had no connection to the people who did it and I know she does.’ An associate sure as hell was a connection.

For a moment, Alex’s brows drew together and he narrowed his eyes at me. I felt myself flushing under his examination. His expression calmed after a moment, his forehead uncreased. ‘I’m guessing you know all this through Key?’

‘Something like that.’ Best leave out the hacking.

He nodded. ‘I’m sorry I lied to you.’

I was thrown a bit by his apology, it was so unexpected. I shook my head as though it didn’t matter. An apology was nice but I wanted to know why he had done it.

He looked at the table for an instant, then back towards the door, then finally back at me.

‘Would you believe me if I told you that I was doing it to keep you safe?’

I raised my eyebrows to indicate no, I wouldn’t believe him.

He sighed. ‘I thought that if you knew the same people who killed your mum were after you, you might try to do something stupid. Like act as bait. Or that you’d run away, thinking we couldn’t protect you. You looked so scared.’

‘You thought I’d run away?’ Before last night, I’d never have run away from Alex. I’d run to him all the way from London in the first place.

‘It has been known, Lila, it’s not that absurd a conclusion to draw.’ He took a sip of coffee.

He had a point, so I pressed my lips together and let him carry on.

‘I thought you deserved to know about Jack and your father – the reason Jack was appearing so unreasonable.’ He placed his hands on the table. ‘But I didn’t think you deserved to know that the same people were after you as killed your mother. Why would you deserve the fear that would cause? When the threat wasn’t even established—’ He ran a hand through his cropped hair then put it back on the table, around his coffee. He looked up at me through his dark gold lashes and he was suddenly my Alex again. The boy who was holding my hand at the funeral, keeping strangers at bay. ‘Lila, I hate seeing you scared or hurt and I wanted to protect you. It’s as simple as that.’

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I nodded. He hadn’t used the past tense. He had said I hate seeing you scared. It was enough to spark a flame of hope that he didn’t despise me after all.

‘Why did you leave the bar and run off like that?’

‘Key was there. He told me – he told me what you and Jack do for a living.’

I didn’t need to tell him that the deciding factor was not that but seeing him with Rachel.

Alex was glaring at me. ‘What did Key tell you?’

I started tearing the napkin into little pieces and scattering them over the table. ‘That the Unit’s mission was to hunt down people like me and that they – that they disappeared and didn’t come back once you caught them.’

‘How does he know that?’ Alex said under his breath.

I shot back in my seat. If I’d wanted a confirmation about what the Unit was doing, here it was.

When we got outside, Alex became quiet. He scanned the car park several times before stepping out of the shadows by the entrance. He took my hand this time, pulling me along behind him. I was holding the shopping and he had his other hand resting behind his back on his gun. My heart was racing; coming outside again felt like being a rabbit out of a hole.

We got back to the Toyota and I waited for him to unlock the door, bouncing on the balls of my feet. But Alex didn’t unlock the doors, he just opened the trunk, took the holdall out, then shut it again.

‘Come on,’ he said.

We walked several rows down and stopped by a brand new black Lexus. I hoped that we were just admiring it but I had a sinking feeling I knew what he was about to do. He slipped down the side of the car, pushing me ahead of him. My eyes darted around the car park to see if anyone was coming, adrenaline starting to pump. Alex stayed as cool as ice. In one fluid movement he pulled something out of the holdall and held it against the key lock. The thing in his hand beeped and the electric locks on the car flipped up.

He looked at me and tilted his head. ‘Coming?’

I swallowed, looked around me again and jumped into the passenger seat which he was holding open. He walked quickly around to the other side, threw the bags into the back and got in. The same machine, held by the ignition, switched the engine on. I stared at him in disbelief as we swung out of the car park, and slid down in my seat as far as I could go. It wasn’t enough that we had Demos and the Unit after us, Alex had to bring the police into the equation too?

19

From the signs on the interstate, we were headed north towards Palm Springs. Alex had, at some point in the night, doubled back and headed north-east.

‘What are we doing?’ I asked. ‘What’s the plan?’ I hoped that he had one, and that it was a good one – and that it involved him coming with me all the way, not just to drop me off at an airport. Then I remembered that I didn’t have a passport. Alex might have a whole bag stuffed full of useful toys, gadgets and fake IDs but he didn’t have a passport for me. So I wouldn’t be going anywhere.

‘We’re going to find a motel and get some sleep.’

Apart from a motel. ‘OK . . . and after?’ I asked.

‘One thing at a time.’ He glanced at me and I felt my heart skip a beat. I wished he’d tell me what was going on and what he was thinking.

He kept his speed down in this car, brushing the limit. An hour later, on the road into Palm Springs, he pulled up at a motel, one of several lining the road. It had palm trees out the front and a square pool with railings around it. The rooms were laid out in an L shape over two floors. He drove in and pulled up next to a car with a trailer, well hidden from the road.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, turning off the engine.

He paid for a twin room on the ground floor. Alex unlocked the door, letting me in first. I hovered in the middle of the room, unsure what to do next. He came and piled the bags onto the chair by the door.

‘Why don’t you take a shower? Here.’ Alex handed me the bags with my clothes in.

I took them and closed the bathroom door behind me. The mirror was not kind. I looked awful. I eased off Alex’s shirt and my dress, catching sight of the fading, green-tinted bruise on my thigh. For a few seconds I stood there experiencing déjà vu, reliving the exact moment that had set in motion this whole chain of events. I’d been standing in a bathroom then too, in a pretty similar state. Though in retrospect that situation was a kids’ ride compared to the roller coaster I was now on.

It was a quick shower – I felt too scared to stay in it long, conscious that if Demos chose to find me now, I didn’t want to have to put up a fight while naked.

When I was done, I towelled off quickly and threw on a vest and the jeans that Alex had picked out. They fitted perfectly. He had chosen my exact size.

Alex was standing by the window looking out through a crack in the curtain when I came out. He looked round at me and said, ‘Come here.’

I came towards him slowly. His face was hard again and I was scared suddenly. He looked like he was going to interrogate me.

When I was standing in front of him he reached behind and my stomach dropped – he was going for his gun. He didn’t need a gun, I would tell him whatever he wanted to know. He took it out, keeping the barrel pointed down.

And then he handed it to me. ‘Do you know how to use this?’

I shook my head.

‘Here.’ He pressed my hands around the grip. The gun was heavier than I expected and warmer, from where it had been pressed against his back. ‘This is the safety catch. It’s on now, click it down to release it.’ He pushed the catch with his thumb over mine and, standing behind me with his arm over my shoulder, he pulled the gun up so it was pointing at a painting on the opposite wall. ‘Point and fire.’

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He clicked the safety back on and took his hand off mine. The weight of the gun dropped my hand a few inches; he lifted it back up to chest height. ‘Aim high, but for the chest. I guess you don’t need much help in the way of weapons, but just in case.’

I felt my cheeks start to burn but chose to ignore the comment. ‘Just in case what?’

‘I’d just feel better knowing you know how to shoot. Just don’t shoot me while I’m in the shower.’ I didn’t know how he could joke. Or was he joking? Did he think I would do that? If he did he wouldn’t give me his gun, surely?

Alex walked into the bathroom but kept the door cracked open. I stood by the window, looking out, the gun hanging in my hand, pointing at the floor. I wanted to put it down but I also felt oddly comforted holding it.

The shower started to run. I turned from the window just as Alex walked back into the room. He was wearing a towel around his waist and had his clothes in his hands. He dropped them onto the bed and took a few new clothes out of one of the bags. Then he walked back into the bathroom without a second glance at me. I commanded myself to breathe.

I heard Alex get into the shower and I walked over to the window, looking out across the parking lot to the empty, leaf-strewn pool. There was no sign of the police, no sirens, no black SUVs screeching up the road. I rested my head against the glass. When would this chase ever stop? And who was going to win?

A hand closed over mine and I almost jumped out of my skin. I hadn’t heard him even come out of the bathroom.

Alex prised the gun out of my hand. ‘Lila, I give you a gun and you don’t even hear me coming.’

‘I haven’t done three years of Marine training, I don’t have special . . .’ I trailed off. I had been going to say ‘skills’. Alex was ****ing an eyebrow at me.

I sank down onto the bed. He stayed standing, watching me carefully. He looked like he was about to ask me something and I readied myself for the question about to come.

‘You should sleep. I’ll keep watch.’

I looked up at him confused. ‘No, you need to sleep. You’re exhausted.’ He looked so tired, the circles under his eyes darkening, a day’s worth of stubble giving his face a golden glow.

‘It’s OK. You go first. I’ll wake you in a few hours,’ he said, already turning away.

I lay down on the bed – I didn’t have the energy to argue. Alex shifted the chair nearer the window and sat down in it, the gun in his hand pointed at the door. I rolled over so my back was turned and stared at the other wall, trying not to think about anything, trying to breathe through my fear. I had given up trying to figure out what Alex was thinking or feeling.

This time, the men in my nightmare had faces.

As I followed the path of blood I noticed the smashed vase on the floor by the front door and the table overturned in the living room. My mum lay on the stairs like a broken doll, blood pumping from her chest, and I dropped to my knees, my hands turning red as I tried to scoop her life-blood up and push it back.

A sudden noise made me turn my head. Demos was standing right next to me, a knife in his hand. Behind him were three other men, the men whose photos I’d seen in the file. One flicked his cigarette butt towards me, smiling. Suki was a blur behind them, skipping in a puddle of blood. I started to scream and tried to lunge towards Demos to knock the knife from his hand, but my arms wouldn’t move, they were held so tightly.

‘Shhhh, shhhh, it’s OK.’

I was pulling and pulling, trying to get free.

‘Lila, it’s OK. Calm down.’

My eyes snapped open at the voice. Alex was sitting on the edge of the bed holding my wrists in his hands. I was reaching towards him as though I was trying to strangle him. I stopped fighting and let my arms go limp. Then, without thinking, I fell forward towards him. There was no movement on his part to catch me and I remembered too late, as my head collided with his chest, that Alex didn’t think of me as Lila anymore, that he was repulsed by me. I started to pull myself up and roll away when I felt his arms suddenly wrap around me and his hands in my hair, stroking it back. The feeling was so electric that I wondered if I was still dreaming. It was like a cotton reel inside me was being unspooled. Everything, all the dread and the fear and the humiliation was spinning away, leaving me feeling like I’d just inhaled a tank of gas and air.

‘It’s OK.’ He was saying it over and over again and I started to believe him, to calm down and let his touch sedate me. Then I remembered the dream and the fear rolled back in, waves and waves of it, drowning me.

I started crying hard into his shoulder, shaking my head. ‘No, it’s not OK, it’s not OK. They’re going to find me.’ How could they not? There were two of us and lots of them, with abilities far beyond mine and weapons far beyond Alex’s.

Alex’s arms tightened around me and I shrank into him, trying to limpet myself onto him, terrified he’d let me go. I couldn’t believe he was this close to me, let alone pulling me closer. What had changed while I’d been sleeping? Since last night, when he’d come towards me in the backyard looking like he wanted to kill me?

‘I’ll get you away . . .’ He was murmuring the words and where his lips brushed my hair my scalp was left tingling. ‘I’ll get you somewhere safe, I promise. Then we’ll stop them.’ His voice was calm and the warmth in it was such a contrast to the cold front of the anger I’d been dealing with until now, that it started me crying again.

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I wished I could believe him. It would be so easy to let him hypnotise me with his words but I pushed away slightly so I could look him in the face. ‘What’s a psychokenosist?’

His hands tightened on my arms. ‘How do you—’ Then he stopped and disentangled himself, stood up and walked away.

My whole body went cold and started to shake, like shock was setting in. Delayed shock, from all the way back to the mugging, like it had been storing itself up for the last week. I hugged my arms around myself, trying to get warm and to stop my teeth chattering.

‘It derives from the Greek. Psyche meaning “mind”, and Kenosis, meaning “to empty”.’ Alex waited to gauge my reaction.

‘Mind empty?’

‘Yes. Demos’s power is unique. He can literally empty your mind of every thought and every feeling you possess. He can effectively stop anyone from doing anything.’ He paused to see that I had understood. ‘Demos is the most powerful one of your kind that we know of.’

My kind? So that was how he saw me.

‘How many do you know of?’ I asked in a whisper.

‘Nine. Well, twelve now if I count you and Key and his son. But the Unit doesn’t know about you three. Yet.’ He was pacing the small square of area between the bed and the bathroom door.

Yet? Was he planning on telling them? How else would they find out?

‘Just nine? How many more do you think there are?’

‘Conservative estimate? We think there are probably two hundred or so in the United States. Based on the numbers so far. But maybe it’s higher.’

Two hundred? Two hundred people like me. What were the odds, then? It wasn’t many. But it was actually quite a lot of people, if you put them all together in one place.

I was still shaking. ‘How long has the Unit been hunting them – I mean us?’

A scowl made its way onto Alex’s face. The anger was back and I instinctively flinched away, edging into the headboard. He must have seen my expression, because his scowl disappeared. He yanked the cover off the other bed and sat down on the edge of mine, wrapping it around my shoulders.

‘About five years.’ It was said through gritted teeth.

Five years was how long it had been since my mother died. ‘And you’ve only found nine?’

‘You’re good at keeping what you can do below the radar.’

I couldn’t interpret the look on his face. Rancour, impatience, maybe. He carried on. ‘Our focus is on Demos. And his people.’ The scowl was easier to interpret, and this time I recognised it wasn’t about me.

‘Why? Why the focus on him? You said that the Unit’s mission wasn’t to find my mum’s killers.’

‘It isn’t. I didn’t lie. The mission is to stop them, yes, but it’s not about solving a homicide.’

I frowned at his casual use of the word homicide. This was my mum’s murder he was talking about.

He hurried on, as though wanting to explain. ‘When we joined the Unit all we cared about was getting justice for what he did to your mum. But after a while it became more than that. When we saw what he was capable of, and what he was planning, it stopped being all about our vendetta and became more about stopping him before he could do far worse.’

I swallowed. What could be worse than murder? ‘This thing that he’s planning, could it have something to do with why he killed my mum? Because she found out about it? Is that why he killed the senator too?’

Alex looked at me in shock. ‘You know about him?’

‘Yes.’ I ignored the questions in his eyes, forming on his lip. ‘Why did he kill her? Them, I mean. What’s he planning?’ I needed to know what worse could look like. I might be on the receiving end of it.

Alex bit his lip and paused, then shook his head slowly, looking at me with an odd expression on his face. ‘You know what? I thought I knew. I was so sure – we were all so sure. Jack too. But now I don’t know if everything the Unit has been telling me is the truth or a lie.’

I stared at him, stunned. After a minute or so I broke the silence. ‘What were you told?’

‘Lila, it’s going to sound so crazy.’

‘Yes, because my life is so completely sane right now. Tell me.’

‘OK, well, the Unit – our whole mission – is basically counter-terrorism. With a twist.’

‘Terrorism?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what are you saying? That Demos is a terrorist? I’m sorry, but you’ve lost me.’

‘Listen, when the Unit found out about Demos it was because he had been using one of his associates, a telepath, to access information from a senator working on nuclear defence. This was during the Bush administration. Remember those rumours about the design of new nuclear weapons after 9/11?’

I looked at him blankly.

‘Maybe you were too young. Well, it wasn’t a rumour. It was the truth. The project was so secret that only a few people were involved in the initial research. A small team within the Department for Homeland Security.’

‘My mother—’

‘No. Not at this stage. Your mum had nothing to do with the initial research and development. The rumours that weapons were being built kept circulating around Washington and further afield. It’s difficult to keep something that huge a secret. In 2004 your mother was asked to sit on a secret committee that was looking at the issue of weapon stockpiling.’