Mind Blind (4 page)

When Josh heard that, his footsteps speeded up behind me. I dropped his jacket and increased my speed. I wasn’t going to wait for him.

I could sense his frustration behind me. But I kept running. He wouldn’t catch me. Like all my cousins, he’s fit, but he got that way by playing football and working out. I just run as often as I can. So I outpaced him easily. Not to win a race, but because I was trying to do my job.

If I remembered the map right, then the target’s change of routine might mean my location was more important than originally planned.

I didn’t stop at the end of the alley containing the van and Team 1. They didn’t really need me. I kept running to the next alley down.

I heard Becky’s voice. “They’re chatting on the next corner. I think they’re saying goodbye. Yes, they’re splitting up.”

There was a pause, then Roy murmured. “She hasn’t turned back. Hold on. She’s turned right. She’s walking along the next alley down.”

“Shit,” said Malcolm. “We don’t have anyone there.”

“Yes, you do,” I said. “I’m at the end of that alley. I can grab her and hold her for a few minutes, if you send the second van here.”

“Don’t you dare, boy! Don’t be stupid. You can’t handle something that complex. We’ll have to pull out and try again later this week.”

“No,” my mum said. “We can’t afford to wait any longer.

I’m sure he can do it. Driver 2, get the back-up van there, now. That’s an order.”

I didn’t listen to Malcolm’s response. I was going to do this anyway, whether Malcolm and Mum agreed about it or not.

Because I had just seen the target 100 metres away, at the other end of the narrow alleyway.

There was no one else around. I couldn’t see anyone. I couldn’t sense anyone. It was just her and me.

“I can see her,” I said quietly. “I can get her.”

I stepped into the dark shadow behind a row of wheelie bins and pulled a thin black mask from my jacket pocket.

I waited to do my job. I waited to kidnap a girl.

Before I knocked her out and threw her in a van, I’d better be sure this was the right girl.

I recalled the briefing photos. Dark skin. Short neat black hair, almost shaved to her skull. Small ears close to her head. Wide-set brown eyes. Narrow mouth, which had been chatting and smiling in all the photos we had. Perfect brace-straightened teeth. Not tall, but with a dancer’s build. No martial arts experience, though, Malcolm had assured us.

Just a girl on her way to a dance class. Walking straight towards me.

I didn’t have any doubts at all about what I was doing.

I’ve had lots of opportunity to look back at the thirty seconds I waited in that alley. And I know that, at the time, I didn’t have any doubts at all.

I wanted to be good at my job. I wanted to prove myself to Mum, to Malcolm, to my cousins. To myself.

I didn’t think about the girl at all, except to check that she was definitely the target. I didn’t think about her feelings, except to check that she was calm as she walked towards me, swinging her stripy schoolbag.

I had no doubts about what I was going to do.

There was silence in my earpiece. No one was arguing now. What was the point? I was either going to do this right or make a monumental mess of it.

I waited.

She was so close I could hear her footsteps.

So close I could hear her breathing.

I pulled on the mask and checked my gloves.

And I stepped out.

I sensed her sudden shock at seeing a masked figure in front of her.

I checked her face. Yes. This was the right girl.

I grabbed her arm with my leather-covered left hand and sensed immediate piercing fear. Before I could buckle under the weight of her terror and before she could get a breath to scream, I aimed my right hand at the side of her neck, just below her ear.

I struck one sharp blow. The girl collapsed.

I held her as she fell, then let her slip gently to the ground. I checked all around. Still no witnesses.

“I have her,” I said. “Get the van here
now
.”

I dragged her behind the bins and waited for Kerr to drive the van round. He’s just turned seventeen and is desperate to prove he’s as good a driver as his dad. So he pulled up right beside us, and was out of the cab and opening the back doors in less than a minute.

I picked the target up, holding her close to my chest, which I couldn’t have managed if she’d been conscious. I slid her along the floor of the van and climbed in myself. Kerr chucked her bag in, closed the doors and drove off smoothly.

“Target in van,” I reported. “Target unconscious and in the van.”

Kerr said from the front, “Van proceeding back to base.”

I heard Mum’s voice. “Well done! I knew you could do it!”

Then Malcolm, less enthusiastic. “Let’s see if you got the right girl and if you can get her home in one piece, boys. Radio silence now and everyone back to base.”

I took off my earpiece, my mike and my gloves, and settled down for a long ride home.

That’s how I killed her.

I killed her because I took off my gloves and started doing my homework.

I knew she hadn’t stayed unconscious. I sensed her mind get sharper when she woke up ten minutes after the grab. She tried to slow her terrified breathing, to convince me she was still out cold. She didn’t fool me, but I didn’t think she was any danger. I could sense her trying to stay calm by thinking rather than panicking. Fair enough. At least she wasn’t crying. But unless she could dance her way out of a moving van, she wasn’t going anywhere.

So I let her pretend to be unconscious. I stopped concentrating on her and started practising my weakest skill: I started doing my homework by trying to build a wall against other people’s emotions.

And I almost managed it. That’s why I didn’t notice her change of focus until she moved.

Until she leapt across the van and pulled my mask off.

I grabbed at her, my bare hands gripping her arms, pressing against the muscles under her coat, forcing her away from me.

And one of us was screaming. Not her. Not the kidnapped girl locked in a moving van. She didn’t start the screaming.

I started it. I was screaming.

That’s why I’m useless. I always overreact to other people’s thoughts.

I was screaming at her as I held her away from me.

Then she started yelling back at me.

We were both screaming with shock and panic and regrets, screaming right in each other’s faces.

I couldn’t think while I was so close to her, while I was touching her.

So I dropped her. I opened my hands and dropped her. Then I shoved at her with my boot, pushing her towards the metal wall at the front of the van. She scrambled away from me across the ridged floor.

I stopped screaming, and started thinking again. I realised she still had my mask crumpled in her hand.

I took two steps towards her and leant over her, bracing myself against the van wall, trapping her in the corner. I didn’t touch her, but I got as close as I could bear. I whispered, “Don’t tell them you saw my face!”

Kerr must have heard our screaming competition from the cab, but he mustn’t hear what I was saying now.

The van was slowing down.

“Don’t even
think
about seeing my face.”

She whispered back, “Why? Will you get into trouble? Do you want
me
to protect
you
?”

“No! You need to protect yourself. If they know you’ve seen me, they might…”

The van was turning right, slowing even more.

She was puzzled, shaking her head.

I held out my hand. It was trembling. I am such a wimp.

She slapped my hand away and I jerked back from her hatred.

The van stopped. I moved nearer to her again and whispered, “Give it back!”

“I’m not giving you anything.”

“The mask, you idiot. Give it back.”

She shrugged and threw the mask at me.

I fumbled it on, whispering one last time, “Don’t think about my face.”

The door rattled open.

“What was all that noise?” Kerr was wearing his mask too. “Were you wrestling or snogging or what?”

“She tried to reach the doors. I stopped her. No problem.”

I didn’t look back at her. I jumped out of the van and walked away. If I didn’t think about her pulling my mask off and she didn’t think about my face, we might be alright. She might be alright.

So I walked away.

I went to my room to work on my essay on drug smuggling routes.

And I left her to die.

Even on the far side of the warehouse, I sensed the decision. Deciding to kill a target is serious enough for everyone to sense the senior readers’ doubt or guilt or excitement. I knew who they must be discussing, so I threw my laptop on the bed and ran out of my cabin.

I ran across the warehouse and crashed into the outer room of the Q&A suite. The door to the inner room was shut, but I could sense the girl’s fear thrumming out of it. I’d been trying to ignore her fear when I was writing my essay, but this close it was overwhelming.

Half my family were in the outer room, all in masks for questioning a target. Shit. So she wasn’t just a hostage. They’d been questioning her, reading her thoughts as well as her words. She wouldn’t have been able to keep anything secret.

“It was just for a second!” I yelled at Malcolm. “Not enough to identify me. And she hasn’t seen any of you.”

My family can argue without words, but we usually speak out loud, because we all read minds in different ways and at different strengths.

Malcolm answered me. “I saw your face in her head, Bain. Clear as piss in snow.”

Kerr pulled his mask off. He was training here today. Apparently I wasn’t old enough, or not controlled enough, for the Q&A suite. Kerr said, “I heard your conspiring little voice in her ears.
‘Don’t tell them. Don’t even think about it.’
How stupid can you be? How stupid do you think we are?”

“We already know how stupid Bain is,” sneered another voice: Daniel, also training in Q&A, though he’s only a month older than me. He stepped towards me, trying to intimidate me with his size. “But we don’t know whose side Bain is on. Hers or ours?”

I ignored Daniel. I tried to make a sensible case for not killing the girl. “She’s only a teenager, Malcolm. She can’t be a threat to anyone. She must have given you whatever information you need, so why don’t you just let her go?”

But Malcolm wasn’t arguing with me. He was simply telling me how it was. “Too late, Bain. She’s seen you. You made such an impression, she could draw the police a perfect picture of you.”

Mum turned round from the keyboard, her frustration and disappointment cutting into me. “Malcolm’s right. It’s too late. She’s too dangerous. Especially to you, Ciaran.”

I could keep arguing, but once Mum and Malcolm agree on something, it’s inevitable.

There was nothing I could do. It was too late.

I didn’t see her again.

I didn’t even open the door into the inner room. What would be the point?

I walked away. From Malcolm ordering me to stay, from Mum ordering me to come back. I just walked away.

Her name was Vivien Mandeville Shaw.

She was sixteen years old.

And I killed her.

I walked away from her fear and from its inevitable end.

But I couldn’t go far dressed like this. I’d leapt off my bed in nothing but jeans, t-shirt and socks. I didn’t even have shoes on. I rushed into the changing rooms beside the dojo and gym, to grab a pair of running shoes from my locker.

I was lacing the left shoe when I sensed someone approaching. Someone radiating bewilderment, someone without the business-like certainty of the group in the Q&A.

Roy pushed through the door, looking like a rugby player who’s been kicked in the head once too often, all big shoulders, squint nose and confused face.

He’s not as dumb as he looks. He’s the only one of my cousins who bothers to sit proper exams and he passes them all. But he’s such a useless mind reader that he spends a lot of time confused about real life.

“What’s going on? There’s a horrible feeling and I can’t pin it down. Have you done something stupid again, Bain?”

“They’re going to kill her.”

“Who?”

“The girl we just grabbed. They’re going to kill her, any minute now.”

“Why are they going to kill her? She’s only sixteen. She can’t be a player. Isn’t she a hostage, someone’s daughter or something? Why do they need to kill her?”

“It’s my fault, Roy. I let her see my face in the van.”

“You idiot. You absolute idiot.”

“I know. I was practising blocking emotions and I got it right for once, so I didn’t notice her working up the courage
to attack me. She pulled my mask off and got such a good look at me that everyone in the Q&A saw me in her head. And my face in her head is a death sentence. I’m getting out of here before it happens.”

Both shoes were laced now. I stood up.

“You can’t just walk away,” said Roy. “Can’t we stop them?”

“I did try, but Mum and Malcolm both agree she has to die.”

“Can’t we go in there, grab her and get away?”

I was shaking my head, when Malcolm’s distorted voice boomed through the intercom: “Boys, boys. If you’re thinking of doing something heroic, stop it now. I can sense your plotting from here, so you should know that the Q&A door is locked, and all my loyal family are around me. Settle down and get used to it.”

Secrets are hard to keep in my family. Conspiracies are difficult to hide.

The intercom buzzed and went silent. Roy and I looked at each other. I shrugged. He sat down and put his head in his hands. He’d been happier when he was confused.

I banged out through the door. I probably still had a few minutes to get clear.

I’d never actually been responsible for anyone’s death before, but I’d been on base during a couple of deaths. I’d responded much worse to the targets’ terror than anyone else in the family.

So even though I hate being on the streets surrounded by people, I knew it would be better than the moment of someone’s death. Especially someone who was so strong in my mind.

As I ran out the side door, I wasn’t sure who I hated most.

I hated myself, obviously, because I’m useless. If I hadn’t taken my focus off her in the van, she wouldn’t have to die.

I hated Vivien, for pulling my mask off. Everyone knows you don’t look at your captors’ faces if you want to live. Stupid
suicidal girl.

I hated my Uncle Malcolm, because he treats me like some crap he’s stepped in.

I hated Mum, for giving me this horrendous genetic gift.

I hated Daniel, because he’s the kind of son my mum should have had.

I hated Roy, for being so reasonable all the time.

At that moment, I hated pretty much everyone.

So I ran. I just ran away. It’s the only thing my dad gave me. A good strong running away gene.

I didn’t even know who was going to kill her. Or how. I didn’t want to know.

I put as much distance between us as I could, but I didn’t have time to run far enough. So I sensed the moment she went from simple fear to spiralling highs of panic.

She had been afraid before, but she’d been keeping it under control, because she hadn’t been afraid enough. She probably thought she’d been as scared as it was possible to be in that van with that weird screaming boy. But now she knew she was about to die.

I didn’t know exactly what my family were doing. Perhaps they’d opened the door and she could hear them talking about disposing of her body. Perhaps they’d walked in with a body bag.

I don’t know what she heard or saw. But I know what she felt. I sensed all her confusion burn away in the white heat of the one thing that matters. Life, and losing it.

I was walking now. I couldn’t run any more. Her terror was making my knees weak. I was reeling all over the pavement, trying not to bang into other pedestrians. I was aware of their emotions, but they barely registered above the terror in my head from the girl in the warehouse.

Then Vivien Mandeville Shaw stopped.

Her terror just cut out. It didn’t fade. It didn’t stutter. The volume didn’t slide away. It just stopped.

She had been the loudest, strongest, most violent emotion for miles around. And then she wasn’t. She just wasn’t there any more.

I’d felt her die.

For a moment, I felt the freezing silent nothing of death. Just as she felt it, just before her mind switched off.

I wasn’t walking any more. My legs had given way. I was sitting on the pavement, propped up by the greasy corner of a chip shop.

Now her terror was gone, I could sense everyone on the street.

I could sense the disgust and curiosity of people staring at me as they went past, probably assuming I was on drugs, or drunk on a Monday afternoon.

I should go back to base now. She was dead. I wouldn’t have to feel like that again. Not until next time we found a mole in a people-smuggling chain, or an undercover cop in a drugs gang, or next time someone we questioned started to guess how we knew so much, or I made a mess of my job and condemned someone else to that sudden complete end.

The chip shop wall was digging into my ribs, and I was struggling to breathe, sinking into the river of critical emotions around me. So I dragged myself up and started to walk.

I didn’t walk back to base. I staggered towards the nearest peace and quiet, which turned out to be a golf course. I walked past the clubhouse, followed the boundary fence behind a screen of trees between the course and the road, and climbed over a dragged-down section of wire the local kids must use to get in.

Then I headed for a wide tree in a patch of smooth grass. I crouched against the trunk and tried to calm down. A few gently competitive golfers were wandering round the course, but it was less stressful than a busy street.

I took a few deep breaths, and tried to work out what had gone so appallingly wrong with my day.

It wasn’t a surprise that my family weren’t law-abiding citizens. I’d known that for years.

My family’s been in this business since the Second World War. It was my great-grandfather Billy Reid who took us out of the fortune-teller’s booth, stopped making an exhibition of himself and started using his skills in other ways. He offered information gathering, bodyguarding and identifying his clients’ enemies. Even, for a higher price, getting rid of those enemies.

Spying on the mindblind, for the mindblind.

My family didn’t worry about breaking laws that weren’t written for people like us. We never explained our methods to our clients. We kept it in the family and trained our own staff, from the nursery up.

But I’m crap at it.

I’m not crap at the reading. I’m stronger and more accurate than any of my cousins. I’m not crap at lock picking, martial arts or any of our other basic skills, either. But I am crap at using those skills in the field, because I can’t get close to the targets.

I can’t stand being attacked by people’s feelings, being ground down by their thoughts. I can’t keep my mind on the job when I’m being assaulted by other people’s fear and pain. It’s not like I care. I don’t
care
. I just can’t help being crushed by it.

I was trying to learn to handle it, to stop it distracting me at the time or destroying me afterwards. That’s what I was practising in the van. Building a wall against Vivien’s emotions, so I didn’t sense her fear.

So what went wrong?

Easy. I shouldn’t have done my homework in the van, and I certainly shouldn’t have taken my gloves off.

But no one else in the family would have freaked out like that when she touched them, no one else would have started
screaming at the terrified thoughts crashing about in her head: her worries about her family, and had she dropped her phone, and sorry to her gran, and grit on her empty fingers, and a maths test she wouldn’t need to revise for if she really was being kidnapped.

I had kept her feelings out, which let her attack me; I had let her thoughts in, which stopped me defending myself. I’d made a total mess of it. But she was the one who died.

Uncle Greg says I can learn to control my overreactions. It’s not that I’m useless, he says, it’s just that I’m more sensitive.

I’ve asked him not to say that in class though. The first time Greg said I was ‘sensitive’, Daniel bought hypoallergenic mascara and sensitive skin make-up remover, and left them on my pillow.

Most of what Uncle Greg says in the classroom is no use to us anyway, because he won’t get involved with the illegal aspects of our business.

I already knew I was too sensitive to operate in the real world. People thought I was on drugs when I was out on the street. I had to sit on a golf course to breathe properly.

No one could show me how to cope. Mum found reading easy and enjoyable, so she couldn’t understand why I hated it. Uncle Greg saw our skills as a gift and wanted me to share that optimism. Roy was such a useless reader that he couldn’t grasp why it affected me so much.

If I couldn’t learn to control my overreactions, then I would never be any use to my family. But even though I was useless, I knew I should head back to base. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

I was about to stand up when I was suddenly aware of sharp and dangerous emotions, newly arrived outside the golf course.

This wasn’t honest competition between golfers. This was the intense concentration of a hunter.

Someone was hunting near the golf course.

Who was the hunter? And who was the prey?