Guardian Angel (3 page)

Terry called up to me, “Hey, Half-head, how about some breakfast?”

I was getting hungry too. “Alia,” I called back, “get back up here and drive so I can whip something up for the alligators.”

“In a minute!” Alia replied aloud.

I rested my elbow on the open window, gazing out at the passing farm fields along the road. Leaving a corner of my mind to telekinetically manage the steering, I thought about what I might make for breakfast. I wasn’t in the mood for fried eggs, and we were too low on milk for cereal. Did we still have some bagels left?

“Hey, Alia, what’s keeping you?” I called again, but my attention was on the side mirror, where a car seemed to have suddenly materialized out of thin air.

Then I did a double take. It wasn’t just any car. It was a black and white police car! It was already less than a hundred yards behind us, and in my surprise, I lost my telekinetic focus for a split second.

This was the first of two major mistakes I made that morning.

Before I could re-establish contact with the wheel, the motorhome had crossed over the centerline, and then rocked wildly as I overcompensated, this time taking us dangerously close to going off-road.

“Adrian!” shouted Terry.

“I got it, I got it!” I yelled back, physically grabbing hold of the steering from the side and steadying our swerving vehicle.

I had been expecting it, but I swore under my breath when I heard the blaring police siren behind us. Ed Regis appeared in a flash to take the driver’s seat. Looking in the mirror again, I saw the cop car closing the gap, red and blues flashing.

“What are you doing?” I asked as Ed Regis disengaged the cruise control and carefully pulled us to the side of the road.

“We can’t outrun them,” replied Ed Regis, cutting the engine. “Not in this tub. Get out of sight.”

I ducked back into the lounge space where I saw Terry strapping on her hook attachment. She glared at me and mouthed, “Idiot.”

James and Alia were there too.

“Good morning, James,” I deadpanned.

“Good morning,” said James, grinning. “I guess we’re off to an early start today.”

Thinking quickly, James had drawn the curtains over all the windows in the cabin. Now he was checking his pistol. Alia, hair still dripping from her morning shower, was looking at him anxiously.

“You don’t need the gun, James,” said Alia.

“It’s just a precaution,” replied James, refusing to put it down.

Alia shook her head.

I shared my sister’s dislike of firearms – mainly because I had an innate talent for getting myself shot. Ed Regis had shot me in the back once, the Slayers had put a bullet in my leg, and the Angels were responsible for my missing ear and the messy scar on my upper right arm. No, I didn’t like guns, but I was more tolerant of them than my sister. And James was right to be armed. He hadn’t come into his power yet, and even if he did end up a psionic destroyer like his Knight parents, modern weapons were usually more effective than psionics anyway.

“Everybody stay calm and quiet,” said Ed Regis from up front. “They would have radioed us in already. Let me see if I can’t talk our way through this.”

The police siren had gone quiet. We heard footsteps approach the driver-side window. We all held our breaths.

“Good morning, Officer,” Ed Regis said pleasantly.

We couldn’t see the policeman from here. I wondered if he was alone or if he had a partner.

“Good morning to you, sir,” the officer replied in an equally friendly tone. “May I see your driver’s license, registration and insurance, please?”

“Yes, of course,” said Ed Regis, pulling his fake documents from the glove compartment and passing them out the window. They were expensive, professional forgeries, but I wondered if they could really fool a policeman.

The officer’s voice carried no suspicion as he said, “Well, Mr. Reese, do you know why I pulled you over?”

“I can pretty much guess.”

“You seemed a little tipsy there.”

“I haven’t been drinking, Officer.”

“What happened back there?”

“It’s been a long night and an endless road,” Ed Regis said submissively. “I’m afraid I dozed off a bit.”

“You must be in an awful hurry if you’re driving an RV like this through our beautiful countryside and couldn’t stop for the night.”

“I’m sorry, Officer. It won’t happen again.”

Ed Regis obviously understood the importance of being polite to the police. And it worked. After a moment’s silence, the officer said, “Well, you weren’t speeding, I’ll give you that. So if you can prove to me that you’re not my first DUI today, then I just might be persuaded to let you off with a warning. How does that sound?”

“That sounds real good, Officer. Thank you.”

“Alright, I need you to step outside for a moment.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ed Regis got up from the driver’s seat and gestured to us to move to the back of the cabin so we wouldn’t be visible when he opened the side door. We moved quietly, and Ed Regis gave us a confident smile before stepping outside and closing the door behind him. I breathed easier. We were going to be just fine.

Outside, the cop asked Ed Regis, “Where are you headed?”

Ed Regis gave him the name of the next town, which wasn’t all that far from our real destination anyway.

“You look a little familiar,” said the cop. “Have I seen you around here before?”

“I don’t think so, sir,” said Ed Regis. “I’m just passing through.”

“Is anyone else in there?”

Ed Regis hesitated for a moment before answering, “Yes. Two boys, one girl.”

“Your children?”

“My nephews and niece.”

“How old are they?”

“Uh, fourteen and seventeen, and about nine, I think.”

“Eleven,”
Alia said crossly into my head. I smirked at her.

Actually, Ed Regis had missed my age by two years, too. I was sixteen going on seventeen next month but, like Alia, I was small for my age. I envied James and Terry, who had turned seventeen and eighteen over the summer and actually looked like it.

We heard the cop say to Ed Regis, “Could you have them all come out, please?”

“Certainly.” Ed Regis opened the door and stuck his head into the cabin. “Jason, Adam, come on out. Alice, you too.”

Ed Regis had left Terry out on purpose. A teenage girl amputee would be conspicuous enough to raise unwanted questions. Besides, if things went sour, it would be better to have someone with a gun hidden in the shadows. I just hoped that the policeman wouldn’t try to look around inside.

James silently passed his pistol to Terry, and then exited the motorhome. Alia took hold of my hand as we followed, carefully stepping out onto the side of the road.

Squinting a little in the morning sun, I saw that the police officer was a middle-aged man with a white, bushy mustache. And he had a partner standing nearby: a slender man who looked young enough to still be on his first year of duty. Their squad car was parked about ten yards behind our motorhome, its red and blue lights still flashing. I realized that we were probably being filmed by its onboard video camera, and though it was already too late, I turned my face away from it.

Not that being videoed by the police was a major problem. I looked very different from the kid who went missing from his house four years ago, and the only government organization that could identify me as a psionic was the Wolves. Still, it was always better to be safe than sorry.

Keeping a tight grip on my hand, Alia looked nervously up at the senior officer. He gave her a reassuring smile and said, “It’s okay, kid. Just stretch your legs a bit. I just didn’t want anyone inside at the moment. Is your name Alice?”

Alia nodded silently.

“Had a bit of a scare this morning, huh?”

She nodded again.

“This won’t take too long, honey,” said the senior officer, and returned to his conversation with Ed Regis.

The younger cop approached us. “Good morning, kids,” he said, his tone just as cordial as his senior. Then he looked down at Alia and asked, “Are these your brothers?”

Though not blood-related, Alia and I both had brown hair, and though Alia’s hair was a touch lighter than mine, we could probably pass for siblings. James, on the other hand, was blond and had a much stockier build than me, much like Ed Regis, and no doubt the officer had noticed.

Alia still didn’t speak, so I explained to the young cop, “I’m her brother. Jason is our cousin.”

James gave the man a little wave. “Hi.”

“Hey there, Jason,” he said to James. Then he looked back at me, asking, “So, your name is Adam?”

I nodded.

The young cop looked curiously at my eyes for a moment, having noticed that they weren’t the same color. My right eye was brown and reddish purple, my left was yellow-green, and I was used to people staring at them by now. I just smiled up at the man, who didn’t comment.

He said instead, “Your sister’s awfully quiet, isn’t she?”

“She’s scared, that’s all,” I said.

Alia had long since overcome her fear of strangers, but a pair of uniformed, armed cops was an entirely different matter. They made me feel pretty nervous too, especially considering the load of illegal weapons we had stashed in the back of our motorhome.

The senior officer, who had been explaining something to Ed Regis, stopped and gave Alia a sympathetic look. “Don’t you worry, dear,” he said reassuringly. “No one’s going to hurt you. You can go back inside if you want.”

Alia let go of my hand and disappeared into our motorhome, slamming the door behind her.

The senior officer asked Ed Regis, “Is she going to be okay by herself?”

“She’ll be fine,” replied Ed Regis.

“Well, all the same, I think we’ll let your boys go on back inside.”

In stark contrast to cops in movies, these guys were true gentlemen. I was glad that we wouldn’t have to kill them.

Ed Regis said to us, “Jason, Adam, wait inside.”

James and I turned to go. Before we reached the door, however, the senior officer called my name.

I obediently stopped and turned back toward him, and that was my second big mistake of the day. One second too late, I realized that he hadn’t called me Adam. He had called me Adrian.

James and I froze on the spot.

The senior officer’s hand went to his belt, and in a blink his gun was pointed at Ed Regis’s chest.

“Keep your hands where I can see them!” he said sharply, all the friendliness gone from his voice. “Now I remember where I’ve seen you before, sir. I’m placing you under arrest on suspicion of kidnapping and murder. Get down on your knees. Slowly.”

Ed Regis complied.

Keeping the pistol pointed at him, the officer commanded, “Lie down flat on the ground with your arms stretched over your head and your legs spread wide.”

As Ed Regis lay facedown on the ground, I could sense James bristling at my side. But James had taken a bullet on the way to the Historian this spring, so he knew what it felt like, and he was smart enough not to rush an armed policeman.

“Please don’t do this,” I said to the cop. “No one has been kidnapped, and my name isn’t Adrian. This is a big mistake.”

“Stay there, boy,” he said. “I don’t care what your name is right now. Your eyes match the description of a missing child and the man you’re riding with matches the description of your abductor. We’re going to have to take you all in. If this really is a mistake, we can sort it out at the station.”

Keeping his eyes and gun on Ed Regis, the senior cop said to his partner, “Hank, go radio it in. Call for backup.”

“You really do not want to do that,” I said quietly.

I knew I had only seconds, not to save ourselves, but to save the police officers. No doubt Terry was about to shoot them both from inside the motorhome.

The senior officer still had his gun on his prime suspect, Ed Regis, and that might have been the correct way to deal with a normal arrest situation. This, however, wasn’t normal. I made sure of it.

Thrusting my arms forward, I released a telekinetic blast, knocking the man onto his back. The gun flew out of his hands, and I focused my power on it, catching it before it hit the ground. Made of metal, the gun was hard to levitate, but within my power, and I pulled it into my right hand. The moment it touched my hand, however, my power instantly dissipated due to the draining effect that metal contact had on psionics.

Alia’s panicked voice cried into my head,
“Please don’t hurt them, Addy!”

The younger officer, recovering quickly from the shock of what he had just witnessed, was going for his gun.

“Don’t!” I shouted, sighting him down the barrel. “I don’t want to kill you but that could easily change. Take your hand away from your belt!”

His hand gripping the pistol in its holster, the officer seemed undecided on the matter. He must have seen the hesitation in my eyes, though. He decided to chance it, and a split second later, we were pointing our pistols at each other’s hearts.

“Addy, don’t!”

Neither of us fired.

“Put it down!” the cop shouted. “You don’t want to do this.”

He was right: I didn’t want to kill him. And not only because of Alia’s plea. These guys were just policemen, not Wolves, not Slayers, not Angels, not even random psionics. They weren’t a part of our war.

“Put it down, kid!” the young officer shouted again. “Right now!”

He was only seven yards away, and I was confident that I could telekinetically disarm him as easily as I had done to his senior. The problem was that as long as I was being drained by the pistol in my own hands, my psionic power was completely useless. The answer was simple.

“Alright,” I said slowly, “I’m going to put the gun down. Please don’t shoot me.”

“Nice and easy, boy,” said the young officer, keeping his pistol leveled on me.

I complied, gently placing the gun on the dirt.

Then I telekinetically flipped the safety on the young officer’s pistol before yanking it out of his hands. The officer’s jaw dropped as he watched his pistol fly into my right hand. Quickly flipping the safety off again, I pointed the pistol at his head.