Accused (Ganzfield) (3 page)

“She needs something to write on.” She opened the door to ask one of the other agents for paper and a pen. These were provided almost instantly—they thought I wanted to write my confession.

I WANT MY LAWYER.

I held it up for the FBI agent to read before I tossed it on the table in front of Hunter.

“We’re done,” she said to Hunter.

His brow lowered. “We’re not done.” His voice was a near-growl.

“She asked for a lawyer. You can’t question her further.”
He hasn’t given them their phone calls, either.

“Get out.” Hunter’s voice was cold, although scarlet anger popped around him.

I looked at the FBI agent. Was she going to leave me alone with this guy? I’d seen enough TV to know he wasn’t supposed to interrogate me after I’d asked for a lawyer. I felt a sudden flash of
oh, crap
trepidation—this situation might be a lot worse than I thought.

This guy wasn’t playing by the rules.

Hunter felt the FBI woman’s hesitation. “Leave now or I’ll place one phone call and you’ll be reassigned to some podunk little town in the middle of cow country.”

I decided to risk floating a light thought into her mind.
I can get Trevor Laurence released, at least.
If I projected lightly enough—like a mental whisper—most people believed the ideas were their own.

She frowned as though her own thoughts were being disloyal. Crap. She wasn’t following my mental suggestion. At that moment, I really wished I could charm. She left the room, but went down the hall to watch Hunter and me on the video feeds.

Nice try.
Trevor was still in my head.

You’re following along?

There’s nothing good on TV.

Make sure Coleman knows this guy continued to question me after I asked for a lawyer, okay?

Like they’re going to let me go, either.

They will.
I could feel the seething resentment from the female FBI agent. With all the time I was spending in her head, I probably should’ve bothered to learn her name.

Wait, I had skills.
What’s this FBI agent’s name again?
I floated the question into the head of the cop in the surveillance room.

Special Agent Forbes.
Either “Special” was her first name, or she was too tough to have one. Whatever. She was the ranking agent on-scene, even though Hunter seemed to have some extra status.

Hunter banged his fist on the metal table—hard. The clang jarred me back into my own head. His frustration flashed orange around him.
She’s not answering my questions!

I’d been so distracted, I hadn’t realized he’d asked any—not that I was planning on responding.

I may have rolled my eyes at him.

He had to work at suppressing the urge to slap me—only the fact that he was being recorded restrained him. Too bad. A recorded slap would’ve given me grounds for a huge
lawsuit.

What? Like you need MORE money?
Trevor asked.

In the surveillance room, Special Agent Forbes was on the phone to her supervisor, discussing the inappropriate behavior of Colonel Hunter.
“Drop it, Forbes. Colonel Hunter’s got some powerful connections.”

She was by-the-book enough to be disgusted.

Crap.

We need to release Trevor Laurence. He hasn’t been charged with anything.
I threaded the thought into her mind, hoping she’d be more receptive this time.

“We need to release Trevor Laurence. He hasn’t been charged with anything,”
she said to her supervisor.

Did you just charm her?
asked Trevor.

I wish! No, that was just a suggestion. If I could charm them, we’d be in Aruba right now!

I’d settle for not being in a detention cell.

I’m working on it.

You should be paying attention to the guy threatening you. He just said the Feds have frozen your “suspicious” bank accounts.

Crap! I have a Visa bill due in four days!

Yeah, like that’s your biggest problem right now.

It’ll mess up my credit rating
. I pouted. I didn’t think even a charm lawyer could help with the credit bureau.

Agent Forbes internally debated how to handle this ugly situation. Her supervisor was telling her to leave Colonel Hunter alone.
No. America is better than that.
Government agents have a greater responsibility than just following orders.

I was becoming rather fond of Special Agent Forbes.

Cooperate and we’ll release your boyfriend
.

Hunter hadn’t said anything aloud, but his framed thought pulled my attention back to him. I froze as I suppressed my urge to meet his eyes.

Don’t give him any proof!

Especially when he had no intention of honoring the deal he’d just silently offered me. Hunter really didn’t know how mind-reading worked—I heard his true thoughts under the lie. Still, dangling Trevor’s freedom in front of me meant he understood a few things about motivation.

“I’ll let you think about that for a while.” He left the room and I felt him go next door to watch me through the one-way glass.

I’ve got to hand it to Isaiah,
I thought to Trevor.
He sure knew how to pick people who wanted to destroy us.

We’ve got another problem.

You mean the one where night’s coming and if you fall asleep here, you’ll probably smash the place up on camera?

You read my mind.

I’ll keep you awake until we can get you out.

Oh?

I sent him rather vivid images of some things I’d planned to do with him while we were on our private beach in Aruba. I felt Trevor suppress a groan and I smiled. Yeah, he was awake now. I leaned back against the cinderblock wall. Trevor leaned against the other side and we escaped into our shared daydream for a while.

I felt the mental landscape shift as Hunter left the facility.

Finally.

I reached out and found the mind of Special Agent Forbes.
Colonel Hunter has no right to keep that boy here,
I whispered into her head.
I should release him right now. Hunter’s not even on-site.
Technically, Hunter had just gone into the main concourse of the airport to grab some dinner, but he hadn’t mentioned anything to Special Agent Forbes.

It wasn’t a hard sell—Forbes wanted to release Trevor, anyway. I felt her decision and suddenly faltered. I’d done it. Trevor was getting out… and I was going to be here alone. The lump in my throat made it hard to swallow.

Once you’re out, get away quickly, and then call Coleman.
I heard the thoughts and footfalls of several people in the hallway outside our doors.
I love you, Trevor. Never doubt that, okay?
I hated the feelings of insecurity that always nagged at me when we were apart, and I knew he had them, too.

I hate being apart from you
.
I love you, Maddie. Don’t ever doubt it. And I’ll do whatever I have to to get you out of here.

I squeezed my eyes shut as I sent him as much love as I could through our mental connection. Under my arm, I clasped the invisible hand still wrapped around my waist. My hammering heart felt like it was lodged in my neck. I blinked back tears as I felt Trevor’s invisible touch slide away from me.

The agents escorted Trevor to the exit, and I mentally followed along as though running after his departing train. They handed back his passport, wallet, keys, and backpack. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell them to give him my cell phone, too.
Note to self: Trevor needs his own cell phone.
His mind faded from my range and I closed my eyes as two tears escaped down my cheeks.

Trevor was gone.

No. Trevor was
safe
—safe from this Colonel Hunter person. At least he would be if no one intercepted him before he could get back to Ganzfield. Trevor would be okay—I had to believe that. I kept repeating that to myself until I felt Colonel Hunter’s dark flash of anger.

He’d returned to find that Trevor Laurence had been released while he’d been having a slice at Sbarro. I closed my eyes and smiled as I savored his reaction—Trevor had gotten away.

Hunter opened the door to the detention room. His face remained emotionless, but a fury burned under the surface, held down through sheer willpower. “You are going to talk. You are going to tell me what you did to those boys. You are going to tell me how you did it. You are going to tell me about the other freaks at that place up in New Hampshire. And then we are going to find a way to use you… or you are going to disappear.”

I met his gaze with a smirk. He was just mad because he didn’t have Trevor anymore. He couldn’t threaten me like this. This was America. I folded my arms and looked back at him through my own cold mask—my own game face.

I felt his intentions a moment before he crossed the room and slapped me across the face.

Hard.

I felt the shock more than the pain. Behind the mirrored glass, the two observers gasped. He leaned in close, his mouth nearly to my ear. The smell of garlic wafted over me as he whispered, “If you’re not human, you don’t get human rights.”

I tasted blood from where my teeth had cut into my cheek. My hot anger at this mistreatment collided with cold fear as I read his thoughts. He had a few “enhanced interrogation techniques” he wanted to use, and he didn’t want the FBI’s oversight or other witnesses.

Hunter pulled out a cell phone, jabbing the buttons with excessive force. “We’re moving the prisoner. Immediately.”

A rock formed in my gut when the phrase
undisclosed location
floated through Hunter’s mind. He left the room, although his thoughts still seethed close by. My breath came fast and shallow, like I’d been running. This was
so
much worse than I’d thought. Could I escape? My eyes darted to the locked door. Hunter’s people would come for me and I could blast them and then… and then get shot by other guards out of my mental range
and
leave a video record of my G-positive abilities. I pulled my arms tight around my waist and shook my head.

Bad plan.

No, I wasn’t blasting my way out. I squeezed my eyes shut and swallowed hard. It’d be okay—the RVs would find me, no matter where Hunter’s people took me.

Two new men arrived a few minutes later. My hands were cuffed in front of me with a plastic strip thingie. The edges of the plastic still had a little rim from the mold; it sliced into the skin of my wrists, although not deeply enough to draw blood. The men grabbed my upper arms, one on each side. Their thoughts steamrolled through my brain with the physical contact.

This one’s supposed to be especially dangerous.

Her little girl appearance doesn’t fool me. She’s a killer.

I didn’t resist when they hauled me down the hall and out into a darkened loading area in a part of the airport where people didn’t usually go. I’m only five-foot-three, and these guards were built like trees—carrying me didn’t even register as an issue.

I briefly considered shocking their minds once we got clear of the security cameras in the detention area, but Hunter seemed prepared for that. Other guards held positions at varying points along the route. Half of the men kept cameras trained on me. The others pointed nasty-looking assault rifles.

Unlike the FBI agents, these guards seemed to know a bit more about us. They were watching me for a sudden burst of—
telekinesis.
My lips twitched. Did they think I was the telekinetic? A manic little sing-song passed through my head.

Somebody messed up the briefing.

How could I use this to my advantage? Hunter, at least, suspected I was telepathic. He’d thought that fake offer to release Trevor at me. Still, it meant these others weren’t going to guard their thoughts around me. I might be able to gather some valuable intel. They also didn’t know I couldn’t talk.

How long will it take them to figure out these things?

I really hoped Coleman would get me out before I knew the answer.

My super-sized escorts lifted me into the back of a short bus with bars on the windows. Four armed guards and a driver shielded behind a steel cage up front. Hunter rode in the back of a boxy sedan that led our little caravan into the night. A black SUV followed my short bus, carrying the rest of the guards. This late, the minds of the city weren’t overwhelming—the mental noise was like a loud party, not a stadium of screaming fans.

I discarded the idea of blasting the driver and guards. The risk of causing an accident was too high and I didn’t have line-of-sight on the people in the other two vehicles. I followed Colonel Hunter’s thoughts as he brought out a laptop and checked the files he had on us—I didn’t need line-of-sight to listen in. There I was, in his files… sort of. They’d misspelled my name as “Maddy” and listed my ability as “telepathic mind-reader.”

I snorted. That seemed pretty redundant.

A fresh wave of anger flowed through his mind when he checked Trevor’s file.
Dammit! She let the telekinetic one go!
He’d wanted a telekinetic assassin.
How could a “telepathic mind-reader” be used to kill?

I sighed. People wanted me to kill
again
? I squeezed my lips together at the memory of what it’d felt like when Del and his friends had died.

Killer. Freak. Monster.

When would someone’s first thought be something like, “How could a mind-reader save Christmas?”

Oh, crap.

My hand flew up to cover my mouth, bringing the other one along and knocking it into my cheek.
Stupid handcuffs.
The part in my file that read, “Senses other people’s thoughts, emotions, and
pain
,” had inspired Hunter, and his thoughts filled with nasty glee.

A new sense of dread pulled the warmth from my soul. We exited and U-turned, and I completely lost any sense of direction as we headed back into the heart of Boston. Minds pressed at me more loudly, but that wasn’t what twisted my gut. Hunter was so proud of himself—he’d just come up with a great form of torture.