"I want to help."
"You can help by getting out of me way."
The door swung open, Randy's key still in the door. Freeman stood waiting. Behind him, me row of cots were neatly made. No one else was in me room.
"I'm ready," Freeman said to Randy. He glanced at Starlene. "You'd better stay out of the way, like he said."
"I only want to help," she said.
"I've been helped so much I'm sick and tired of it. I'm about helped to death. At least the people in the Trust are sincere about what they want."
"The Trust?"
"Be quiet," Randy said to Freeman.
"Oh? She doesn't know? I thought you guys were soul mates." Freeman gave a smile that was even more elusive and sardonic than usual.
"What's he talking about, Randy?"
"I thought having a psychology degree automatically made you a know-it-all," Freeman said to her. "Certainly worked for my Dad. He has three of them so he knows more than everyone."
Freeman pointed to Randy's walkie-talkie. "And that's a great way to keep a secret. Except from people who can read minds."
Randy stepped forward, mouth twisted in anger. Freeman scooted back into the room.
"Come here, you little smartass," Randy said. Freeman winked at Starlene and ran between the rows of cots. Randy yelled and gave chase. Starlene waited until they were at the far end of the room, checked me hall in both directions, men went inside and pulled the door nearly shut. Freeman was cornered now, and Randy climbed over a cot, watching the boy's eyes.
"Head him off that way," Randy shouted to Starlene. She closed in to trap Freeman. Randy lunged at Freeman, who tried to dodge, but Randy was too fast and strong. He wrestled the boy face-down onto the cot. His walkie-talkie fell from his belt and bounced to the floor as they struggled.
"My back pocket," Randy said to Starlene. "Restrain the little shit."
Starlene pulled the handcuffs from Randy's pocket. Freeman kicked and squirmed, the pillow pressed against his face so that his screams were muffled. Randy put a knee on the boy's back, then stuck one hand behind him, reaching for the cuffs.
"Here," he said. "Hurry."
Before Starlene could think, she snapped one of the cuffs on Randy's wrist. He turned toward her in surprise and, as he hesitated, Starlene closed the other cuff around the cot's metal frame.
"Damn you," Randy said, swinging his free hand at her. The blow caught her across the cheek and she fell onto the concrete floor. Randy fumbled at his belt where he'd kept his keys. When he realized he'd left the keys in the door, his face contorted into a mask of rage.
Freeman rolled off the cot while Randy tried to free himself. Freeman wiped blood from his lips and helped Starlene to her feet. She rubbed her face. Her skin hadn't split, but her pulse roared beneath her skin.
"I feel your pain," Freeman said.
"So do I," she said.
Randy jumped from the cot and clawed at them, tugging at the handcuff. The cot was bolted to the floor, though its frame rattled with his effort. "I'll kill you both."
"Great," Freeman said. "I can't wait to be a ghost so I can come back and haunt your ass."
Starlene took Freeman's hand. "Let's get out of here."
"Where are we going?" he said.
"I thought you could read my mind."
"Well, I figured you were trying to rescue me, but you don't have any kind of plan, do you?"
They reached the door. The hallway was still empty. Starlene looked back at Randy, who'd stopped pulling at the handcuff. He was busy unhooking the springs of the cot. He'd have to work his way down, removing one spring at a time, but soon he'd reach the end and be able to slide the cuff through a gap in the folded corner of the cot.
"Damn," she said. "Well, I guess our secret will be out soon."
"One thing about this place," Freeman said. "Secrets don't stay secret very long."
"So I've learned," Starlene said. She slammed the door closed, yanked the key back and forth until it broke off in the lock, then stuck the key ring in her pocket. "Hope that locks the jerk in. What now?"
"We need Vicky," Freeman said. "She's smart and she knows her way around Wendover."
"What about the other kids?"
Freeman looked at her with his piercing eyes. "You ought to know by now, you save the world a little at a time, not all at once. Even your old pal Jesus H. Christ figured that one out."
Starlene let the sarcasm pass. "To the Green Room?"
"She's not in the Green Room. She's in Thirteen."
"What's she doing there?"
"Dying," he said. "That's what we're all doing. Some of us faster than others."
As they ran down the corridor, Starlene wondered if Freeman could read her mind enough to know how terrified she was.
THIRTY-NINE
He should have known better.
If he had played the game and kept his thoughts to himself, this never would have happened. He should have stuck with the loner act, the Clint Eastwood bit, or the tough guy swimming against the current, like Pacino in Serpico. Sure, he was special and he could read minds and it was only a matter of time before the Trust broke him. But now he'd crossed the line, stepped up as yet another miserable Defender of the Weak and Protector of the Innocent. Just what the world needed. Another freaking unsung hero.
Freeman ran beside Starlene, triptrapping outward to see if any of the Trust's goons had been tipped off by Randy. But too many of them were shields. When it was working, his ESP was as reliable as radar or sonar, but he could never be sure about the thoughts floating around that he wasn't intercepting. When he was on the up cycle, the gift was golden. And he was definitely up now, the hairs on his neck like antennae, his skin alive with the force radiating from the basement.
He'd read Starlene easily enough, but she'd just undergone a treatment and was susceptible. Soft on the brain. Vicky was even softer because she'd been through several of the treatments. The freaky thing was that the treatment did different things to some people, and to others, nothing at all seemed to happen. Maybe it was a natural talent, a third eye or sixth sense or some other baloney. Maybe Freeman would have been able to do it anyway, even without the years of Dad's experiments.
Either way, he wished that God would take the gift back, because it had been nothing but a pain in the ass from the very beginning. But God hid away up there in the sky where only people like Starlene could believe in Him. No matter how hard Freeman tried to read God's mind, he drew a blank. God, if He even existed, probably had the thickest shield in the universe.
After all, if God could read everybody's mind at the same time, He'd probably gone bonkers way back around the time of Adam and Eve.
The thing about being in a manic phase, a thing that he'd only recently been able to catch himself at, was that his thoughts rambled on about stupid stuff like God and love and other people and being afraid he'd never go to sleep again and stupid, stupid, stupid worries even when he ought to be concentrating on more important things. Like surviving.
Freeman squeezed Starlene's hand as they slowed. She made an unnecessary hushing motion with her finger against her lips. Thirteen was around the next corner, and Kracowski's lab two doors down from that. If Vicky was undergoing an SST, then for sure the Trust would have a guard on hand. Freeman expected a walkie-talkie to crackle with Randyspeak at any moment.
"Is she in there?" Starlene mouthed silently at him.
He closed his eyes and concentrated. He'd heard Vicky clearly while he was locked in the Blue Room, triptrapped through the space between them as if they'd been talking via a cellular telephone at close range. But now, he picked up nothing. That could mean several things: she was shielded somehow, or she had slipped into unconsciousness and couldn't transmit her thoughts. Or she was dead.