Hush Money

by Susan Bischoff

  I grabbed his sleeve, and we both froze, looking at my hand. For a minute I thought that maybe he understood how crazy it was. I didn’t touch people. I encouraged people to leave me alone. And I still wasn’t letting him go.

  There was a whole jumble of things going on in my head. I was kind of feeling this growing like for him—as a person and not just a pair of shoulders—the longer we talked. I was actually feeling concerned about him, and even though I usually hated the feeling, I wanted to know more about Dylan. And about this problem he was hinting at between him and Marco. If he was. The pink frilly haze of omg, he’s really talking to me was hard to think through.

  He sighed. “It’s no big deal. He’s just…not who he used to be, and I’ve been noticing it a lot more lately.” He paused, and the self-deprecating half smile he gave me made my heart trip. “He’s been giving you a hard time for the last few years, Joss. This is the part where you call me an ass because I’m just now figuring this out.”

  “Sometimes it’s easy to ignore things you don’t want to deal with. Even if they’re right in front of you.”

  “Is it?” He had turned back to face me, and suddenly his question seemed really personal. My pulse was pounding harder than the music, and you’d think some of that blood would be going to my racing, light-headed brain, but it must have been all in my red face instead. I was definitely over-analyzing.

  A loud, authoritative voice boomed in the room’s wide entry. “If Phillip Meeks is here, we need him to identify himself and come forward.”

  Chapter 11

  Joss

  “Who’s asking?” Phil had been standing behind the couch, leaning over Jessica Morgan and looking at a magazine she was holding. He could have dropped to the floor behind the sofa, but instead he actually walked around it and swaggered forward, his hands in his pockets.

  I nearly dropped my face into my hands. The moron! Some people just cannot be helped. I had to wonder if I was one of them since I found myself moving slowly toward Kat, who had placed herself in the middle of the room, between the adults and Phil. My instinct should have been to back farther into my corner, to stay as unnoticed as possible. But I didn’t want to see Kat make the same mistake twice. Worse.

  “National Institutes for Ability Control.” Both of the men standing with Kat’s parents, dressed in loose-fitting black clothes from head to toe, flashed ID cards. “We’re authorized to take you in under suspicion that you possess an unreported Ability—”

  “Get out of my house. Dad, tell them they’re not taking anyone.”

  “Kathryn…”

  “This isn’t a matter that concerns you, Miss Dawson. We’re just here for the boy.”

  Kat started a speech about Constitutional rights and such that I didn’t even listen to. I did a quick scan as I moved carefully toward the center of the room. The agent who wasn’t speaking glanced at me, but I wasn’t the only one moving. I could feel Dylan just behind me. Other kids were slipping out through the sliding doors. I saw Jeff and Marco vault over the deck rail and others slipping away into the night. The agents didn’t seem to care, as long as they had their quarry in their sights.

  We had the two agents standing in the doorway between the family room and formal living area. I saw two others enter the lighted part of the yard, slinking smoothly toward us. The only other exit was the swinging door I had been standing near moments ago which led to the kitchen. I wondered if agents would be coming through there at any moment. I wondered why I hadn’t used it myself.

  The other girls were now standing beside Kat. Great, I thought, ready to jump right into her next stupid plan. As soon as I reached her, I put a restraining hand on her arm. She hardly noticed. Dylan moved silently around to stand in front of me, and I had to lean into Kat a little just to be able to see something besides his shoulder.

  “Come on now, son. Let’s not make this difficult,” the agent said to Phil.

  “Difficult how?” Phil asked. “You mean like this?”

  His eyes turned bright red, glowed, and then a beam of red light shot up to the ceiling. It popped with a little burst of flame and rained plaster down on the agents. Everyone jumped back, someone screamed, and then the room seemed to freeze.

  “That’s it. We need everyone on the ground, now!” The agents drew weapons, but they were just Tasers. They’d hurt like hell, incapacitate, but they probably wouldn’t kill anyone. I wasn’t so sure about Phil. Still, as much as a dumbass as Phil was, he was kindred, a Talent, and these guys were jack-booted thugs. No way I was lying down to make their jobs easier.

  While some of the kids, and even Kat’s parents, hit the carpet, I was surprised that there were a lot of us still standing. I felt Kat gather herself to do something, and I squeezed her arm.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I hissed in her ear.

  The agents were still yelling, at Phil, at everyone, demanding compliance.

  “Someone has to do something!” she hissed back.

  And then it happened. So fast. The lead agent took aim at Phil, pulled back on the trigger, and I just reacted, flinging out that invisible line in my mind like a whip, wrapping it around the weapon, yanking hard. What everyone saw was the gun flipping out of his hand and landing on the carpet several feet away. The electrodes meant for Phil pinged harmlessly against the stone fireplace.

  Phil was reacting too, though, this time aiming his vision at the agent and hitting him in the shoulder. The man screamed, clamping a hand over the spurt of flame from his clothing and dropping to the ground. The other three agents, also unable to hold onto their weapons, rushed toward Phil.

  I held onto Kat as she started forward, but saw Matt and Maddy rush in. Maddy threw herself on the back of one of the agents. She pressed her cheek to his, like she was bracing for a struggle, but then slid off when Matt grabbed his arm and stared at him.

  When Matt dropped his hand, the agent simply turned and started to leave.

  And that’s when the dolls started to move.

  It just started with one. A little French number in blue bonnet that only caught my eye because it was on the mantle, right near where Phil was struggling with the two agents. One of them had him in a headlock and had drawn some kind of metallic bag over his head while the other tried to hold him still from the side. I watched, fascinated, as the little figure with the blonde ringlets picked up a decorative plate and swung it at Headlock Guy. Two more plates followed in rapid succession, shards of china flying up when the plates—which weren’t flung with too much force—bounced off the agents and struck the fireplace.

  But it was enough to freak them out.

  They stumbled back from Phil, reaching for the heavy artillery they had worn slung across their backs, and they both aimed at the fireplace.

  “Rubber bullets!” Maddy shouted at the room that was erupting into another round of terrified screams, “Get down!”

  Part of my mind was trying to process all this, even as I reached out to the table legs with my mind and dumped the contents of the buffet into the floor. I slid it into position in front of us as a shield, barely missing Dylan who was already tugging me to the floor behind it. I pulled the couch that had been near the back door, only to find there had been kids behind it. They bolted outside, and then Phil hurled himself over the table and Dylan had to pull me out of his path.

  I couldn’t even appreciate it. I was too busy, my mind throwing out its lines, grabbing furniture and building up our wall, the huge pieces flying toward us and stacking, my mind racing and working so hard that there was nothing else but finding and stacking pieces until a hand clamped onto my shoulder.

  “We need a plan, Joss. What do we do next?”

  I checked my need to gather the air in front of Matt into a burst that would knock him on his ass and settled for a glare and a hiss: “Get out of my head!” Which I then realized there was no way he could hear over the shouting and gunfire.

  “Just listen. Heather says to tell you to figure out how
we’re going to get out of here. You’re the only one who can.” I tried to shake him off, opening my mouth to say something, but he must have read my face—I hoped it was my face he was reading. “I don’t know why she says that, but she just knows things.”

  Dylan’s arm came around, giving Matt the shove I’d wanted to and making him let go of me. “What the hell, Matt?” he yelled, but I think I was the only one who could hear. Matt just shook his head.

  We didn’t have time for this. Heather was right, someone needed to figure a way out of here. I had built up our little corral with three walls and the fourth being the kitchen doorway. Years of training from my dad had made thinking to include an escape route automatic, as well the thought of how I’d block it if it were compromised. Now I wondered if anyone was beyond the door, and Heather jumped into my view, shaking her head violently.

  No, I thought, don’t go that way?

  She looked exasperated and started climbing over kids to get to me. At the same time, the agents began to body-slam my furniture wall, and I diverted my attention to holding it steady and keeping a wing-back chair from falling on Elizabeth’s head. I wanted to call out to her, but she was oblivious, and through the opening she was watching from I could see once-pretty dolls with disheveled clothing and missing limbs tearing at the agents and being shattered by rubber bullets.

  “Kitchen’s clear! I think!” she yelled right in my ear.

  You think?

  I scuttled to the door to check, but Dylan grabbed me before I could push it open and looked at me like I was out of my mind. Then he slipped through without another word.

  Boys. Idiots.

  He came right back and practically dragged me through. I saw Matt darting around touching everyone for a brief moment before they turned and headed for the kitchen too. Because I’m just that paranoid, I waited until a few people were through before I slid the refrigerator in front of the door that led off to the rest of the house. Nope, can’t pin that on me.

  When Eric dragged Kat through the swinging door and everyone was in kitchen, I visualized my wall outside and pulled as much of it in toward the kitchen as I could. It’s hard for me to move what I can’t see, so most of it I just let fall and it was enough for now.

  “But my parents—”

  “They don’t want your parents.” I interrupted Kat. “They’re cooperating, and these guys are obviously supposed to use non-lethal force. So don’t worry about them, ok? We need to know how to get out of here. What’s out that way?”

  “But—”

  “The garage,” Maddy supplied. “There are a few steps down, but it opens right into the two-car garage.”

  I remembered that now. I’d come in that way twice already. I’d hated the drills my dad had put me through, the prolonged, vigorous use of my ability, or using it under distracting conditions. But it was the only way I was able to do it now while I was trying to hold the doors, figure out our next moves, and trying not to think about all the Talents I was seeing in people I had been going to school with my whole life.

  “Of course.” I looked at Heather who had known there was no one in the kitchen. Would she know about the garage too? She gave me a thumbs up. What Matt said flitted through my head, that thing about Heather thinking I was the one who could figure a way out of this. That girl is out of her freakin’ mind.

  Everyone was watching me or the door. Heather twirled her finger at her head in the universal crazy sign before pointing to herself, smirking at me the whole time.

  Bitch was reading my mind!

  She mimed an offended expression and the hallway door started to give way. I hadn’t been paying enough attention. I panicked, knocked over the fridge, took the range next to it and flipped it on top. I heard someone—Matt, maybe—say, “Holy shit! Who’s doing that?” Belatedly, I noticed that it was an electric range, thank God.

  Heather already had the door open, and I shouted at everyone to get down into the garage. As soon as their backs were all turned, I started pulling the cabinets from the walls. I went last, Dylan trying to tear my arm from the socket, the invisible strings to my mind pulling them all with me into a stack against the door as I slammed it closed.

  Now what? I’ll figure out what’s next just as soon as I throw up. My head was pounding with the stress and effort as I literally stumbled down the steps.

  “Ok, everybody just calm down.” I said. “We’re doing great. We’ve got trained government agents out there, and a few Talent kids just showed them their asses.” Someone whooped. Dad always said that morale’s important. Not everything, not at the expense of reality, but if you don’t believe in yourself or your team, you’ve probably lost already. “Now it’s Phil they’re after. We have to get him out of here. I wish I knew how many there are…”

  “There are the four agents in the house,” Maddy said, “and there were supposed to be two more in the backyard for backup. But they didn’t come in at the signal, so they might be incapacitated—”

  “What signal?”

  “Radio signal.” Maddy held up her hand to shut me up. “There are four more agents in two cars, waiting give chase if—”

  “Did someone say ‘chase’?” Eric asked, grinning.

  “Quit kidding around,” Dylan snapped.

  “Who’s kidding? Look at this baby.” Eric ran his hand across the top of Kat’s dad’s Corvette. “I don’t care what they’re driving, they’ll never catch this.”

  “They’re driving Crown Vics,” Maddy said.

  Eric just laughed.

  “But I don’t have keys to that!” Kat wailed.

  “Who needs keys?” Eric put both hands of the hood and closed his eyes for a moment. The engine roared to life and everyone jumped. Everyone except Dylan. “Phil and I will tear up the road in this. They’ll chase us, but I’ll lose ’em and drive him far enough to get safely out of town. I’ll probably have to change cars somewhere—”

  “You’re going to take my dad’s car in a high speed chase and then ditch it??”

  “Kat, I’m going to take very good care of this beauty, I promise. He’ll get it back, good as new.”

  “I don’t believe this…”

  “I don’t believe you’re sticking me with this minivan,” Dylan groaned and Eric laughed.

  “Who says you’re driving my mom’s car?”

  I guess I could see how this would be upsetting to Kat, but her priorities were confusing to me. I’d just ripped out all her kitchen cabinets, but this is what she was worrying about. “If Eric’s taking Phil, that leaves Dylan as the first runner-up delinquent to drive the second getaway car, ok?”

  “Sweet!” Eric exclaimed, slapping his hands down on the hood of the van and working his mojo to get it started.

  “That’s great. Now we can all die of carbon monoxide poisoning. And who are you calling a delinquent?” Dylan asked me.

  “I wish I knew what was on the other side of that door. I’d hate to back up into anything when I go tearing out of here.” Eric said.

  Kat put her arms over her head.

  “Um, I can help with that.” Jessica walked to the garage door and put her hand on it. It disappeared.

  We all jumped back.

  “Don’t worry. It…looks the same from out there—as it did before.”

  “Ok, Jessica. That’s…awesome. Thank you,” I said, wondering if there were anyone here who had the least little sense of discretion about using their Talent in front of others. Maybe this was some big “We Are Family” moment for some of them, but I wasn’t feeling it. As soon as the thought went through my head I automatically looked over at Heather who pretended to be ignoring me. Great. You and I are so going to talk after this.

  “Yeah, thanks, Jessie!” Eric walked over to study the lay of the land. I couldn’t help but stare for a moment myself. I could still sort of see the outlines of the door, the horizontal lines of the panels, and the whole thing was kind of blurry. That and the classical music coming out of the ‘Vette m
ade me feel like I was in a movie.

  From beyond where we could see, something came flying right at us. We all ducked, but of course whatever it was bounced off the door and onto the pavement.

  “Gas!” Eric yelled, and then we all saw the smoke coming out of the canister, two more hitting the ground and smoke starting to curl up under the invisible door.

  Chapter 12

  Joss

  “Just anywhere back in here is good. They won’t be able to see us from the road, if anyone’s looking.”

  Dylan pulled the van up onto the lawn where I said. He had to leave the engine running because, well, we didn’t know how to turn it off. But at least it was quiet. We were at the rest area on the interstate, off the service drive and behind a hill. It was one of my family’s emergency rendezvous points and the place I thought of automatically as a place for us to hide out and regroup.

  The enormity of what had happened was trying really hard to get to me, and I was trying really hard to ignore it. My head was pounding and I kept seeing all the things I had done, all the ways I had used my abilities—in front of all these kids. In front of government agents! It was all sort of a blur now, and I was so tired I felt like I could curl up and go to sleep and convince myself it had been a nightmare—except for the smell of tear gas in my hair. We had all piled into the van, and I made Dylan wait to pull out until we saw Eric lead the agents away from the house. The gas had started to seep inside. Good luck getting that out of the upholstery.

  Dylan tugged at my sleeve.

  “Come on. Let’s get some fresh air.”

  We all piled out, some of the kids dropping onto the grass just a few steps from the van, faking nonchalance and failing badly. I wasn’t the only one who was damned shaken up from the evening’s events—I didn’t have to be psychic to know that. Speaking of which…

  “How are you doing?” Dylan asked. “You don’t look so good.”

  A) Aren’t you the charmer, and B) Stop paying attention to me, it’s freaking me out!!