‘Yeah, I think it was a nice touch myself. Brings tears to the old eyes, don’t it?’ He turned round to wink at me. ‘Don’t fret, my darlin’, they’l come for you. The Benedicts won’t let one of their own down.’
I curled up into a bal , hugging my knees, putting as much distance as I could between me and the men. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on finding a way through the shield.
‘Stop it!’ snapped O’Hal oran.
My eyes flew open. He was glaring at me in the mirror. I’d managed to affect him with my attempts but I was too clueless about savant stuff to know how to exploit it.
‘I’l tel Gator to knock you out if you try that again,’
O’Hal oran warned.
‘What she do?’ ponytailed Gator asked.
O’Hal oran rubbed his temples again. My assault and that of the Benedicts on his shield was getting to him.
‘We have here a baby savant. I’ve no idea why she don’t know what to do with her powers but she has some locked up inside her. She’s a telepath.’
The thug looked unsettled now. ‘What else she do?’
O’Hal oran dismissed me with a shrug. ‘Nothing, as far as I know. Don’t worry, she won’t harm you.’
Gator was scared of savants? That made two of us. But it was worth knowing—not that I could do anything with it at the moment. O’Hal oran was right: I was a baby in savant terms. If I was going to help myself out of this mess, I had to grow up very quickly.
* * *
We had been driving for over an hour. I’d passed through abject terror and now felt a sense of deadening hopelessness. We were much too far from Wrickenridge for anyone to catch up with us. ‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked.
Gator seemed surprised to hear me speak. I had the impression that I was just a means to an end—
getting the Benedicts—and no one in the car real y considered me as a person.
‘Shal I tel her?’ he asked O’Hal oran.
The savant nodded. He’d been silent, his battle on an invisible front as the Benedicts desperately tried to break his shield.
‘Wel , cupcake, we’re taking you to see the boss.’
Gator took a pack of chewing gum out of his breast pocket and offered me a strip. I shook my head.
‘Who’s your boss?’
‘You’l find out soon enough.’
‘Where is he?’
‘At the other end of that plane ride.’ He gestured towards an aircraft waiting on the tarmac of a little provincial airfield.
‘We’re flying?’
‘We sure ain’t walking to Vegas.’
We drew up alongside the jet. Gator pul ed me out of the car and bundled me up the short flight of steps.
As soon as the SUV was clear, the plane took off immediately, heading south.
My room was on the top floor of a half-finished skyscraper hotel on the street in Las Vegas known as the Strip. I knew my location because no one made any attempt to stop me looking out of the ceiling to floor window. Lights from the casinos bled into
the
sky—neon
palm
trees,
pyramids,
rol ercoaster rides, al glittering with zany promise.
Beyond this thin layer of madness, past the twinkle of the suburbs, was the desert, dark and somehow sane. I leant my forehead against the cold glass, trying to calm the whirl of emotions beating away inside me. My head was on spin cycle.
After a long flight, we had put down at an airfield and I’d been bundled into another black car, this one a limo. My hopes of getting away from Gator and O’Hal oran at the other end were dashed when we entered an underground car park and I was transferred into the hotel in a private lift. Whisked up to the penthouse, I’d then been left in my room and told to go to bed. My part was over for the moment, O’Hal oran had explained, and he advised me to get some rest.
Rest? I kicked the white leather armchair stationed by the window. Five star accommodation didn’t make this any less of a prison. They could take their flat screen TV, Jacuzzi bath, and four-poster bed and stick it … wel , I had some creative suggestions as to where.
As no bodily harm had been done to me, I was less worried for the moment about my own fate. Most tormenting was the knowledge that Zed and my parents would be going through hel . I had to get a message through to them that I was al right. I’d already tried the phone—no surprise that it had no dial tone. The door was locked and I couldn’t attract attention at this height from any living creature but the birds. That left telepathy. Zed had never answered my question as to whether he could talk to his brothers in Denver but he had managed to contact me over the couple of miles between his home and mine. Was it possible to communicate with him over the hundreds between Colorado and Nevada? I wasn’t even sure exactly how far apart we were.
I rubbed my head, remembering the ache I’d got just sustaining that ‘local’ telepathic cal . And there was O’Hal oran to consider. Would he bother keeping the shield up now we were out of range? He knew I had few powers as a savant so probably didn’t expect me to try anything so ambitious, but if he was playing safe and detected my clumsy attempts, he’d be furious and might punish me.
Fireworks went off in the distance, part of some nightly entertainment at one of the other casino hotels. Mine was cal ed The Fortune Tel er: I could see the crystal bal revolving on the roof in reflection in the windows of the building across the street. Only part of it was complete. ‘T’ shaped cranes stood sentinel over the rest—the offices, apartments, and mal s that were waiting for the end of the recession so that their skeletons could be clad in something more attractive than iron girders. The rubble-strewn site to my right had weeds growing on the heaps, showing just how long the building project had been put on ice—ironical y, given the name, not something the hotel owner had foreseen. He could’ve done with a savant to tip him off.
I hugged myself, missing Zed with a ferocity that surprised me. Unlike my boyfriend, I didn’t know what the future held. I’d have to risk annoying O’Hal oran but I could lessen the chances by choosing a time when he should be asleep. I checked my watch: it was midnight. I’d leave it to the smal hours before making my move.
Turning away from the window, I contemplated my room, looking for anything that could help me. I’d already had to peel off the ski suit, being far too hot.
I’d put on the hotel robe but I real y wanted a change of clothes, feeling at a disadvantage in nothing but long thermals. There was a nightshirt neatly folded on one of the pil ows. I shook it out: it bore the hotel logo and looked like the kind of thing you could buy in the gift shop. Wondering if someone had thought to provide more of the same, I opened the wardrobe and found a neat pile of T-shirts and shorts. Did that mean they expected me to be here for a while?
This was al too much for me to take in. I felt out of place, unable to focus. The wonderful high definition perception I had with Zed had col apsed, throwing me back into my old Manga-izing habits, flat colours, disjointed images. I hadn’t realized until separated by hundreds of miles how I’d come to take his presence near me almost for granted. Even if we couldn’t spend a lot of time together, I’d had the reassurance that he was there. He’d grounded me, making al that I was learning about the savant world less frightening. Now I was open to al fears and wild guesses as to what was going to happen. He’d been my shield, not the ones I’d practised in my head.
I hadn’t seen it, but he had been acting as my soulfinder al along, even though I hadn’t acknowledged him. Now it was too late to tel him.
Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I could reach him.
Exhaustion crept up on me. I found my eyes blurring and I had to grab the wardrobe door as I swayed. If I wanted to have the energy for my plan, I needed to get some sleep. Even a few hours would make a difference. Changing quickly into the nightshirt, I set the alarm on the bedside clock and rol ed under the satin sheet.
The neon lights were stil pulsing outside when the alarm jolted me awake three hours later. A police helicopter circled overhead briefly then went north.