Lila Shortcuts (7 page)

The Unit are after Demos like he’s an A class drug. They’re after all of us, but Demos is the one they want the most.

The rest of us have powers – Nate can fly outside his body, Alicia can read minds, Ryder can sift memories – removing whole chunks of your past. Harvey and Bill can rob banks and make things move just by looking at them, and Amber can see people’s auras, which are apparently big balls of light. But Demos – he can freeze people with just a single look. He can stop people from thinking, from moving – even from feeling. And that’s why the Unit want him so much. He’s what Ryder calls
the motherlode.

Sometimes I wonder if Demos did something to my head to convince me to join his group of psys, which is what the Unit calls us, because I’m not sure how else he got me to agree to live on this bus with no closet space, but here I am.

It was Amber who found me. I was shopping and her and Demos cornered me in a changing room. Amber can spot a psy a mile away just by scanning auras. If you’d told me that was possible before I would have thought you were crazy but I’ve seen her do it – with Nate – so I know it’s true. At first I thought Demos and Amber were whacko people trying to kidnap me. But then they introduced me to Alicia and Ryder and Bill and it was the first time in my whole entire life I’d ever met anyone else with a superhot mind power, never mind a whole group of them.

‘We need to find out what the Unit are planning next,’ Demos says, interrupting my thoughts. ‘We can’t keep waiting for them to catch up with us. We need to fight back – put an end to this – to them.’ He turns to me, ‘And Suki, we need you for this.’

I cross my arms over my chest. ‘I thought you just said you could do without me? Don’t you have another mind-reader you can use?’ I widen my eyes at Alicia.

‘The Unit know Alicia,’ Demos answers. ‘They don’t know you. We need you to get close to them.’

I hear Nate snicker behind me.

‘So,
ergo,
you do need my shoes,’ I say, grinning, ‘Admit it.’

‘OK, Suki,’ Demos sighs, ‘I need your shoes.’

The bar is called
Belushi’s.
It has a flashing neon sign outside, advertising Budweiser and T-bone steaks. It is not the kind of establishment that has valet parking and a security man on the door who’ll let me skip the line. There is no line. I don’t think this is the kind of place people would ever line up to enter. Though maybe to leave.

I walk slowly towards the door, like a lamb entering a lion’s den. I might be torn to shreds or end up being manhandled by the Unit back to their headquarters and God only knows what would happen to me if I ended up there. We’ve never been able to get inside because of their alarm thing. But a quick scan of the bar reveals that most people inside are thinking about three things: who’s winning the game, who’s buying the next round and which girl they’re going to try their luck with next.

I walk inside, throwing back my shoulders and striking a pose I should have patented because I saw it the other day on
America’s Top Model
and they’d blatantly stolen it from me.

Men in uniform.
Lots
of men in uniform – on every surface, playing pool, propping up the bar, chatting up girls with nylon hair extensions, drinking beer, yelling, laughing and thinking generally about one thing. A few men notice me as I stand in the doorway. I pause a moment to lap up the thoughts. Yes, I was right about this dress. It’s
grrrrrr.

I hear Alicia all of a sudden in my head, yelling at me to focus. She’s sitting outside in the getaway vehicle with Demos. My own personal walkie-talkie.

OK,
I yell back,
I hear you. Now shhh, so I can focus.

I scan the room. There they are. Lieutenant Jack Loveday and Lieutenant Alex Wakeman. I’ve only seen their photos so far and the pictures that are in Demos’s head, but the truth is Demos did not do them justice. In fact, Demos’s head needs a tune up or a reboot or an entirely new operating system altogether.

Jack’s profile is turned towards me. He’s glowering at his iPhone. He’s got dark hair and the kind of face Nate would roll over and play dead for. Alex is facing me, sitting on a stool, one leg propped up on the rail. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and it’s clinging to his body so hard I’m actually jealous – if it’s possible to be jealous, that is, of a piece of clothing.

Alex has blond hair and eyes so blue I can see their colour from here. I scan his body. Forget his mind.

His jeans are in the way.

For not the first time in my life I wish my superhot power wasn’t mind-reading but X-ray vision.

Suki!

Ah. Alicia is in my head again.

Remember why you’re there! she
yells.

My mission, which I chose to accept, is to infiltrate the enemy. Jack and Alex are the enemy. I pause, wondering how Demos defines
infiltration.

Not that way,
Alicia answers for him.

I wander up to the bar, standing several feet away from Jack and Alex.

Jack suddenly turns. He notices me and his eyes graze up my body. Then he turns back to Alex. ‘Check out the cute girl,’ he says.

I turn my head and pretend I’m not listening.

‘I thought you weren’t looking anymore,’ Alex laughs. ‘I thought you’d turned over a new leaf.’

‘I have,’ Jack protests. ‘I’m looking for
you.
It’s about time you hooked up with someone. It’s been ages.’

‘You know the rules,’ Alex answers.

‘Who’s saying you have to
date
anyone?’ Jack laughs.

‘Not my style, Jack,’ Alex says.

‘Well then, what about Rachel?’ Jack asks. ‘That would be allowed. She works for the Unit.’

I slide slightly around so I can peek at them out of the corner of my eye.

‘She’s blonde, hot, seriously rich . . . you telling me you’ve never considered it?’ Jack asks with a grin.

‘You’re so shallow,’ Alex says, laughing and taking another swig from his bottle. ‘Does Sara realise this? Maybe I should tell her.’

Jack smirks at him. Alex nods his head at the iPhone in Jack’s hand. ‘What did it say exactly?’ he asks.

‘Here, read it—’ Jack says, handing it to him.

I can’t see what he’s looking at so I scan Alex’s head as he reads. It’s an email.

Surprise! I’m coming to LA. My flight gets in around midday. Lila x

In my head I hear Alicia conferring with Demos outside but I zone them out so I can concentrate on Alex and Jack and what they’re saying about this girl Lila.

‘Something’s up,’ Alex says, handing the phone back to Jack.

‘Not necessarily,’ Jack answers, pocketing it. ‘You think this is the first time Lila’s been impulsive? Seriously, dude, you do remember my sister, right? Short, blonde, impulsive as shock therapy? Stubborn as a mule who won’t take no for an answer?’

Alex raises an eyebrow. Without reading his mind I can tell he’s thinking that that’s like the ear wax laughing at the snot.

Jack sits up straighter on his bar stool. ‘Hey, I’m not short or blond,’ he says. He is standing in such a way that forces me to admire his backside. Jack has what Alicia calls an
ego.
But, let me tell you, this boy’s ego is writing cheques his body can most definitely cash.

‘It could be about a boy,’ Alex says, shrugging and taking another swig.

‘A
what?’
Jack asks.

Alex laughs under his breath. ‘A boy. You know? A Y-chromosome holder?
You
don’t notice them as much as you do the X-carriers.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Jack asks, frowning in confusion, ‘A boy? She’s just a kid.’

‘She’s seventeen,’ Alex says, ‘She’s not a kid anymore.’

Jack’s face pales, his eyes bulge. I can hear his thought process. It makes the mental leap evolutionarily slowly between the hypothetical boy and what the hypothetical boy might be doing to his sister and then, when he’s figured it out, he jumps off his stool.

‘If any boy ever lays a finger on my sister I’m going to kill him,’ he snarls. Then he pauses to look at Alex. Alex just stares back at him with one eyebrow raised, remembering a whole parade of girls that Jack has laid fingers on, and much more besides, but deciding not to mention that to his face.

Finally, Jack sinks down onto his stool again. ‘You think that might be it?’ he asks, looking as if he just sat on an upright beer bottle.

Alex shrugs. ‘I’m just speculating. When did you last speak to her?’

Jack shakes his head. ‘A couple of weeks ago. She seemed OK.’

‘She seemed a little down to me.’

‘When did you talk to her?’ Jack asks. I hear guilt mixed in with a little bit of irritation in his head. He wishes he was a better brother. He thinks maybe Alex is right but would never in a thousand years admit it.

‘She emailed a couple of days ago,’ Alex says, wary now. He can read Jack. He knows he needs to tread carefully around the topic of Lila.

Jack frowns.

‘Go gently, OK?’ Alex says, ‘She’s been through a lot.’

Jack rolls his eyes. ‘She shouldn’t be coming. She needs to go back to London. I’m sending her straight back.’

‘You can’t, Jack. Let her stay a few days – a week. Find out what’s up. You owe her that.
We
owe her that.’

He mumbles this last bit and I see a picture in his head of this girl, Lila. She’s only about fourteen but the memory has a foggy feel to it, which makes me think it’s at least a few years old because isn’t she seventeen now? That’s what Alex just said, anyway. This girl Lila’s got skinny legs, and she’s playing basketball in a back yard somewhere. She has dirty blonde hair tied back in a ponytail and she’s smiling in his memory, kind of gawky and wide-eyed. And then the memory picture flits to some other place and everyone’s wearing black and I’m guessing it’s a funeral and Alex is holding Lila’s hand at the edge of a grave. But then the memory wipes and Alex is back in the moment.

‘It’s not safe for her here,’ Jack says, scowling at the bar.

‘We’ll keep an eye on her. She’ll be fine.’

Not if Demos has his way,
I think to myself.

Alicia suddenly bursts into my head-space again, as though she’s an air traffic controller and I’m a circling plane.

Suki, start talking to them. Find out more about Lila if you can and about what the Unit’s next move is. And please, try to focus on gathering useful intel about their next move, we don’t need to find out what their relationship status is.

I tell Alicia silently to roger that and then I lean over the bar, angle my body towards Alex and give him my sultriest smile. ‘What does one have to do to get service around here?’ I say, ‘Strip naked and dance on the bar?’

Jack pauses, shifts on his stool and then gives me a wide smile. ‘You could try that. We wouldn’t stop you,’ he says.

‘Jack,’ Alex warns, shaking his head. He smiles apologetically at me then sticks his hand in the air and nods at the barman, who comes straight over.

‘What can I get you?’ the barman asks.

‘Would you like anything?’ I say, turning to Alex and Jack.

I’m hoping I will hear Alex say ‘
just you’
in his head, but he doesn’t. He says, ‘No, thank you,’ to my face, his thoughts distracted, still on this girl Lila.

Jack, on the other hand, is definitely checking me out. I catch him staring at my shoes. He thinks I have cute legs but then he remembers a girl called Sara and looks away guiltily.

‘A diet Coke, please,’ I tell the barman.

‘I’m Jack,’ Jack says to me, ‘and this is Alex.’ He tips his head in Alex’s direction.

‘I’m Suki Nakamura,’ I say, holding out my hand.

Oh, good one, Suki, why not just tell them you’re a psy and ask them to contain you whilst you’re at it?
Alicia hisses.

‘So,’ I begin, hurrying on, hoping if I smile brightly enough and flutter my eyelashes they’ll forget my name. ‘What do you two do?’ I pause. ‘No, don’t tell me! Do you catch bad guys?’

‘How did you guess?’ Jack asks, smiling.

‘I’m a mind-reader,’ I say, then laugh loudly trying to cover up Alicia swearing in my head. ‘Haha, just kidding. I just know that this is where all the Marines hang out.’

‘So, you like a man in uniform then?’ Jack asks. He’s propped up against the bar but he leans in towards me, and in a low, conspiratorial voice that almost sends me into spasm, says, ‘Maybe Alex can show you his weapon later.’

I glance at Alex. He looks like he’s deeply interested in the game playing on the television over the bar but, in actual fact, he’s thinking about how he’s going to kill Jack later.

I giggle. He can show me anything, so long as it’s not that weapon the Unit use to paralyse us.

‘Are you good at catching bad guys?’ I ask, forcing a light tone into my voice.

Jack’s expression turns grim. He frowns and for a second he looks like he’s about eight years’ old. An image of Demos appears in his head. It’s painted red.

‘We’re good at catching bad guys,’ I hear Alex say. ‘And very soon we’ll have caught the bad guy we’ve been hunting for a very long time. And then we’re going to make him pay.’

Before I even turn around I see the same image of Demos in Alex’s head. ‘Soon?’ I ask, turning around to face him, smiling innocently. ‘How soon? As in tomorrow? What did he do this very bad bad guy?”

Alex frowns at me, his eyes narrowing. ‘I didn’t say that out loud,’ he murmurs, slowly rising from his stool.

For an instant I’m frozen like a bunny in headlights on a dark road. I hear an intake of air from Jack . . . and then I’m out of there.

Mr Blahnik might not have designed his shoes for running in but somehow I manage to make it to the door, sliding under someone’s arm even as the shout goes up around me . . . and Alicia is yelling in my head at me to run and I burst through the front door and Demos has flung open the car door and I sprint towards him, reaching for his outstretched hand even as Alicia guns the engine, and I throw myself into the car as we take off in a screech of wheels. I look back over my shoulder, panting and clutching the side of the seat as we swerve into traffic. Alex and Jack are standing on the sidewalk guns in hand, but they’re not firing. Then I see that they are frozen solid as statues.