“You were sent to jail?”
“I was sent to a juvenile hall – just for a couple of weeks. The judge said it would be a wake-up call. I ended up in a place just outside Reno. I was also told I’d have to work after school hours to pay back the cost of the tyres.”
He drank again. A cloud slid across the moon. It was like a knife, cutting it in half. Somewhere in the distance, an ambulance screamed its way along the boulevards.
“Juvie wasn’t too bad,” Jamie went on. “It was clean and the food was OK and I actually got on with the other kids. It was just boring, mainly. The worst thing was when I got home again. Scott was waiting for me; I thought he’d be pleased to see me – but he wasn’t. He was furious. He said what I’d done was stupid. He said things were bad for us already and I’d just made them worse.
“He was right. After I got back, things were never the same with Ed and Leanne. They were having problems anyway. They were always fighting… shouting at each other. But now they decided that Scott and me were just in the way and that they should never have taken us in to begin with. Ed had started drinking. Vodka, mainly. He’d get through half a bottle a night, easily. About a month after I got back, he had an argument with Scott and he hit him. That was the first time he ever did that. And the power was still working – the link between us – because I was the one who got the bruise even though I wasn’t even in the room at the time.
“At the same time, Derry – my case worker – got sick. She’d been looking out for us right from the start, but now she couldn’t work any more and all her files were farmed out. She wrote to us, but I never saw her again and I never saw anyone else either. They had overload. They couldn’t handle the number of cases they were already dealing with and they figured Scott and me were OK, so they just let us go. They probably think we’re still with Ed and Leanne even now. I don’t know.
“We weren’t OK. Ed’s temper was getting worse and worse. He lost his job and that was when he told us we were going to be moving on again. I remember it so well. Leanne was out, and we were alone with Ed. He’d been drinking again and, maybe just for the fun of it, he started taunting Scott. He said that he’d already spoken to Child and Family Services and the two of us were finally going to be separated. Scott was staying in Carson City. But I’d be in another state.
“I don’t know if he was lying or not. But he made it sound so real, like it was going to happen any time. He and Scott were yelling at each other and he was drinking, straight out of the bottle, and laughing at us. That was when it happened. Scott looked him in the eyes and I’ll never forget what he said. I can tell you the exact words. ‘Nobody’s going to separate us. You can go hang yourself.’”
Jamie fell silent.
“Oh my God!” Alicia whispered.
Jamie nodded. “That’s right. Ed got up and there was this weird look on his face. As if he’d been shocked… told something worse than anything he’d heard in his life. He just got up and walked out of the room and into the kitchen and then into the garage. We heard the door open and close. I thought about running after him but I was so fazed by what had happened, and you have to remember I was only eleven years old.
“Leanne was the one who found him when she came back. He’d gone into the garage. He’d climbed a stepladder. And he’d hanged himself with a cord tied to a metal bracket. Of course, nobody was surprised – what with the drinking and the arguments and losing his job and everything. He’d just had enough. That’s what they all said.
“Only Scott and me knew the truth. We spoke about it only once: Scott said it was an accident and that’s how we always thought about it afterwards. The Accident. Because Scott hadn’t known what he was saying. He hadn’t meant for anything to happen. It was just words.”
“It wasn’t Scott’s fault,” Alicia said. “Neither of you should blame yourselves.”
Jamie shrugged. “The next few weeks were a mess. There was the funeral, of course, and that was where we met Don and Marcie. She was Leanne’s sister. It turned out that Ed had been talking to Don and the two of them must have known more about us than we thought, because they were already planning to put us into some sort of show…”
“We moved in with Don and Marcie. They were living in a trailer park just outside Reno then. They took us out of school… Marcie said she’d home-school us from now on and after the business with the tyres the school wasn’t going to complain. But she never taught us anything. Don persuaded us to perform for him. He hurt me because he knew that was the only way to get at Scott and in the end we agreed. We worked out a half dozen tricks – but that was all we did. You remember the policeman at Marcie’s house?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“What I did to him… that was the first time I ever did it. Scott made me swear that I would never try it with anyone. He was scared for me. Because if I started doing that, who knows what would happen? What if I got angry with you and said something and the next thing I knew you were injured or dead? Don’t you see? I can kill you just by thinking! That’s my wonderful power. I can hurt you just with the blink of an eye.”
“But you won’t,” Alicia said. “I trust you, Jamie.”
“I won’t because I won’t let myself. And now you know why I reacted the way I did. Why I didn’t want to do what you asked and read that man’s mind. You think being a telepath means being able to reach into someone’s head like picking an ace out of a deck of cards. But it’s not like that. Even with Scott it isn’t, and he’s my brother. These men… if I go into one of their heads, I’ll see everything bad they’ve ever done. I’ll be part of it. The people they’ve killed. The kids they’ve hurt. Everything! It’ll be like diving into a sewer and I still might not find out what he’s done with Scott.”
“We’ll just have to find another way,” Alicia said.
“No.” Jamie shook his head miserably. “There is no other way. What else can we do?”
“Find Colton Banes. Follow him wherever he goes.”
“That could take weeks. We don’t have the time.” Jamie looked exhausted. He had never talked as much as this. “I’ll go in there first thing tomorrow. I’ll find Banes and I’ll ask him what he’s done with Scott.” Jamie smiled grimly. “And even if he doesn’t open his mouth, I think he’ll tell me what I want to know.”
BAD THOUGHTS
“I wish I hadn’t talked you into this,” Alicia said. “I’m going to be worried sick about you.”
Jamie shrugged. “You don’t need to worry. I can look after myself.”
“I just don’t like the thought of you going in there alone.”
“It’s broad daylight. We’re in LA. Nothing bad is going to happen.”
Jamie looked through the windscreen at the office building across the road. It seemed very ordinary in the morning light with the sunshine bouncing off the windows. There weren’t so many people around now. The traffic had died down and the pavements were virtually empty. Jamie had quickly learned that in Los Angeles, nobody ever walked anywhere.
And yet there were at least a thousand people inside. Jamie tried to imagine what it must be like to work on the twentieth floor of a skyscraper with your own office and a personal assistant and a pay cheque at the end of each month. Ordinary life. There had been a time when this had been his dream, all that he wanted. To have a job. Holidays. Promotion. He had looked at the office buildings in Reno with a sort of envy. This sort of life would always be beyond his reach.
Once, he had said as much to Scott. But Scott had laughed at him.
“I don’t want to work in one of those places, Jamie. You go in young, you come out old. And you don’t notice what’s happened in between.”
“I thought you wanted to be Bill Gates.”