Losing Lila (18 page)

‘No, but exciting, huh?’

I made some kind of noise, a strangled gurgle, which he took for agreement.

‘So, soon enough you won’t have to worry about a thing. This is going to be over before you know it.’ He reached across the table and took my hand.

It took a moment to register and another moment to fight the urge to shake it off – mentally.
Control, control
, I repeated over and over in my head. His hand felt hot and heavy on top of mine.

‘So, you want to go see a movie sometime or go for pizza one night? I mean . . . only if you want to . . .’

‘Um, I need to check with my dad. He’s kind of overprotective. Like Jack.’

I saw the disappointment on his face as he stood. ‘OK, well, let me know.’ He smiled, embarrassed, his cheeks flushing. ‘Because I’d really like to hang out some more.’

I nodded and tried to smile.

‘I’ve got to get back to HQ,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I’ll see you tonight, though.’

I nodded absently, then did a double take. ‘Tonight?’

‘Yeah, I’m on duty for the first part of the evening. I’m stationed outside your house – your very own security detail, just like the President has.’

‘Well, in that case, I’ll see you later,’ I said, forcing myself to keep smiling when all I really wanted to do was rest my head on the table and cry.

After he’d gone I sat for a few minutes staring mutely at the tabletop until the remaining cookie lifted a few centimetres off the table and hurtled to the floor.

The problem was that I was bugged. And I had no phone. And I couldn’t go anywhere without an armed guard. So technically, it was more than one problem I had to deal with. It was several.

I reminded myself of what Demos had said about what the Unit would have the potential to do when they made a breakthrough. It didn’t exactly spell world peace. Stirling Enterprises made its money through weapons dealing, legitimate and otherwise. They’d sell their weapons to the highest bidder and farewell world as we knew it. Hello crazy new world order. I could hear Jack in my head calling me melodramatic, but from where I was sitting it seemed a pretty good assessment. He was in a coma. What did he know?

‘Miss Loveday?’

I looked up, startled. A man in black combats was towering over me. I felt a kamikaze nosedive of fear. Was this it? Was this the moment I’d been waiting for? Then I came to my senses and started to assess his size and weapons. I could take him. For sure I could. If he touched me, I’d take his arm off. Then go for his gun. Then make a run for it.

‘Miss Loveday?’ he said again.

‘Yes,’ I said as defiantly as I could muster.

‘Would you mind coming with me, miss?’

I studied him. He was about six feet four tall, solid, oblong shaped – even his head was a rectangle with buzz-cut fuzz decorating the top. His face was expressionless. He reminded me of Robocop. I glanced round the cafeteria. It was empty except for a humming orderly clearing cups off the tables.

I looked back at the man. ‘Where to?’ I asked. I already knew, of course. He wasn’t here to take me on a guided tour of San Diego zoo.

‘There’s someone who wants to see you.’

I waited a beat, but he wasn’t any more forthcoming. ‘Who?’ I asked.

‘If you’d just like to come with me, please,’ he said, pulling the back of my chair out.

I stood up, gripping the edge of the table for support. ‘Um, I think I need to tell my dad where I’m going so he doesn’t worry.’

‘That’s been taken care of.’

Taken care of? That did not sound good. Had they taken him too?

My mind bounced around, pinging back and forth, trying to figure out whether to make a break for it now or to wait. If he took me into the Unit’s headquarters, it would be too late. But I couldn’t act now. What if it was completely innocent? I would blow everything if I let them find out about me.

Before I could figure out what to do, we were outside and the man was steering me by the elbow towards a jeep. Act? Not act? I thought again about dislodging his arm, throwing him backwards and then hopping in the jeep and driving off. But I knew I wouldn’t get far on a military base in a stolen jeep. He pushed me into the passenger seat before I could decide what to do. Maybe he was taking me back to see Dr Pendegast. Did they want to interrogate me again? I clutched the seat and tried to think straight.

Less than a minute later we pulled up outside the Unit’s monolithic headquarters. I clambered down and followed the man like he was my executioner. I had to go inside. It was too risky to make a move. We stepped into one of the pods, brushing arms as we walked, and I felt myself start to sweat, my skin prickling even in the air-conditioned cool. The door swished open and we walked into the lobby. It was too late to act. I froze, stock-still, in the middle of the lobby, my heart fluttering in my throat, making me feel like I was going to throw up. I should have tried to escape. And now it was too late. My guard looked back scowling over his shoulder and then beckoned me to keep following. I unglued my feet and walked on.

We stepped into an elevator and the guard swiped our entry onto the top floor – the fifth. At least he wasn’t taking me down to prisoner holding. Though – my stomach lurched – that was where my mum was. But now there were nine floors between her and me. That might as well be nine solar systems for how far away it felt and how impossible to cross.

The man led me down a hallway and through a door into a room that had windows on two sides and an enormous oval-shaped board table in the centre. A man in a dark grey suit was standing at the far end of the room with his back to me, staring out of the window.

The door shut with a whispering click and I spun round. My guard had left. I turned slowly back to the room. The man had turned too and was now looking straight at me, appraising me. He was late fifties perhaps, well over six feet tall, with steel-coloured hair and the tan of someone who spent his weekends sailing in the Bahamas. He seemed vaguely familiar. I looked him up and down carefully, trying to place him. There was something about the piercing blue of his eyes and the straight-backed arrogance of his bearing which reminded me of someone. He didn’t look like a doctor. Or a soldier.

The breath rushed out of me as I figured it out. He looked exactly like I’d imagine the boss of a multi-billion-dollar company to look.

‘Miss Loveday, thank you very much for coming,’ he said, striding towards me.

Richard Stirling. Rachel’s father. The man behind all of this. The man responsible for my mother’s pretend murder. The man sanctioning the experiments. That was the man walking towards me and holding out his hand. And I was expected to shake it without hurling him through the window. My whole body tensed with the effort to control the urge.

‘I didn’t have much choice,’ I said through gritted teeth.

He stopped short, frowning a little. Then he recovered, giving me an apologetic nod of the head. ‘Ah yes, the boys from the Unit, not the most subtle, I’m afraid. I’m very sorry if my request to see you has put you out in any way.’

I knew I had to behave. That I needed to play the game as Alex would call it, and use him to get information, but my brain didn’t feel too strategic. All I could think about was how much I wanted to kill him. I took a deep breath, forced myself to smile, though it hurt to do so, and then I spoke. ‘No, it was no problem. I just wanted to get back to Jack, that’s all.’

‘Yes, of course, I understand. Well, thank you for your time. I’ll keep it brief. Here,’ he pulled out a heavy chair, ‘have a seat.’ I considered it and then sat down, perching on the edge.

He stayed standing. ‘It’s about my daughter. I understand you were one of the last people to see her?’

‘Yes,’ I answered. I held his gaze and wondered if he could see the hatred burning in my eyes.

‘Can you tell me what happened?’

‘Um, I already told Sara and that doctor what happened,’ I said, grasping at my lies, trying to remember what I’d told them.

‘I know, I read the report.’ He smiled though his eyes stayed cold. ‘Thank you for all the information, it was most helpful. I was just wondering whether you’d thought of anything else in the mean time?’

Er, like the fact your daughter is bound, trussed and stashed in a hotel room in Mexico City? And that one day I’m going to kill you?

‘No. Nothing,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Sorry.’

His eyes narrowed slightly. ‘So, you’ve no idea where they might have taken her or what they want from her?’

‘Sorry, no idea.’

He stared at me, slightly puzzled, obviously unused to people not giving him the answers he wanted. He stepped closer, leaning against the table by my chair. ‘So, how was your time with Demos and his little friends? Enjoyable?’

My heart wasn’t so much beating as gasping. Did he know?

‘Obviously, I’m sure it must have been very traumatic for you.’ I nodded slowly, unable to pull my eyes from his face. ‘So,’ he continued, ‘you must see the absolute necessity of containing Demos and all the people like him before things get any more out of hand.’

He waited again for me to show some sign of agreement. I nodded once more. He smiled and then came to perch on the table right by me, his leg brushing mine. I stared at his neatly manicured hands, resting on his knee. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘we wouldn’t want anyone else in your family to get hurt now, would we?’

My eyes flew back to his face. Was that a threat? He merely raised his eyebrows and gave the tiniest of shrugs, almost imperceptible through the cut of his suit. I sat on the edge of my seat, toying with the idea of shoving him hard through the plate-glass window behind him. It would only take a flicker of a glance. But then he turned around and his question almost shoved me off my seat.

‘Your father’s told you all about the Unit’s mission, I’m sure. Actually, you probably knew all about our mission before he did – didn’t you?’

I sat speechless. What mission was he referring to? The pretend one my dad thought they were working on, to find a ‘cure’, or the real one, to create new weapons of mass destruction?

He smiled as if he understood my confusion. ‘It’s still early days,’ he continued. ‘We’re not quite as far advanced as I’d like to be, but we’re making progress. Good progress. With your father’s help, we’re going to crack it soon.’

It.

‘We’re starting to unlock the secrets behind the telepath gene.’

Oh my God. This had to be the breakthrough Jonas had mentioned. My eyes flitted round the room like a butterfly trying to settle on a piece of solid ground.

‘If we can hear their thoughts then we’re so much stronger. We’re still trying to crack that one, but the exciting news is that, thanks to all our research, and your father’s research, of course, we’ve had a breakthrough.’

My gaze travelled from the floor back to Richard Stirling’s face. He waited until he had my undivided attention. ‘We’ve found a way of blocking telepaths. Isn’t that something?’ I stared at him blankly.

‘You know,’ he said. ‘It’s their telepaths who hear us coming. Now it’ll be like pressing the mute button on a phone. They can’t hear us – so they won’t see us coming. It’s a very handy tool for the arsenal. Soon we’ll be able to read their minds too.’

It felt like my seat was tipping, as if the floor was tilting under me.

‘It’s amazing the research we’ve been doing.’ He paused. ‘Obviously, it helps having two telepaths to research on. Well, only one now . . . since your brother and Jack broke Alicia out.’

. . . Mum . . . my mum . . .
I looked into his eyes. And my heart stilled in that instant. He knew. He knew that I knew about my mum. It was obvious in the smile contorting his face.

‘Though for obvious reasons your father is going to have to be kept in the dark as to our guinea-pig situation. But once we get him working in our labs, it’ll be no time before we’ve cracked the telekinetic gene code.’ He stared at me unblinking. ‘We just need to get our hands on one.’

I flinched back in my chair, before I could stop myself. He paused again, smiling at my reaction. ‘But of course this is all for one end. As you know. To catch Demos,’ another pause, ‘and his people.’

And his people.
Meaning me.

The table slanted to a forty-five-degree angle. No, it didn’t. That was my head, sliding down my arm. It felt like I was running off a cliff face. Pure panic and a wall of terror rushing up to meet me. They knew about me. My breathing was coming in fits and starts. My lungs were screaming. I couldn’t get any air into them. I flattened my hand on the tabletop, trying to steady myself as the room spun around me.

‘You should get back to your father, Lila. He’ll be worried.’

I looked up. Richard Stirling looked hazy, as if he was painted in watercolour. I knew it was the tears filming my eyes and tried desperately to blink them away. I gripped the table edge and stood up, suddenly unsure of how to walk. He was letting me go? Why was he letting me go?

‘Oh, Lila,’ he called as I reached unsteadily for the door handle. ‘I’m sure you know how much we value your family’s contribution to our little project.’

I gripped the handle for support.

‘Your cooperation is something I personally am very grateful for. I understand it must be hard for you. But I know you want Jack to get the best care imaginable and I know it must be a relief having your father nearby.’ Another pause while he waited for me to give some sign that I had understood his true meaning. ‘And the protection we can offer you and your father is second to none. We wouldn’t want what happened to your mother to happen to any of you, now would we?’

I stood there as still as if Demos was in the room freezing me and watched as Richard Stirling strolled towards me.

‘No one can reach you now,’ he said softly. ‘You’re entirely safe. So you shouldn’t worry. This will all soon be over.’

So that was why he was letting me go. It was with a warning. If I did anything stupid, he’d hurt Jack and my dad as well as me.

Something was going to break. The door, his neck, my grip on sanity and my even slenderer grip on my ability. If I stayed one more second, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I could feel my control slipping. I had to get out of here.