The Rescue (6 page)

I held my breath as Fernandez marched straight to the desk where Nico was hiding.

‘You little bastard,’ he snapped, hauling Nico up from behind the desk by his hair.

‘Ow,’ Nico yelped.

I froze, shrinking into the shadows . . . praying he wouldn’t see me.

‘What the hell are you doing in here, Nico?’ Fernandez glanced round at the desk, his gaze sweeping from the PC to the books to the papers. His eyes lit on the phone. ‘You were trying to
call
someone, weren’t you?’

Fernandez swore. He was standing sideways on to me. If he’d looked round he’d have seen me. But he didn’t look round. His full attention was on Nico. He moved closer, fury filling his face. His hands gripped Nico’s neck.

My heart pounded. Why wasn’t Nico using telekinesis to stop him?

A strangled squeak escaped from Nico’s throat. His eyes were bulging, his face turning purple. Fernandez was trying to kill him. I stood up. Lunged towards the desk.

‘Stop!’ I said.

Fernandez spun round, letting go of Nico, who fell, gasping, against the desk.

‘
You?
’ He loomed over me. He grabbed my arm and swore, his breath fierce and hot against my forehead.

Nico was still bent over the desk, clutching his throat.

I stood, panting, terrified. Fernandez shook my arm, jerking my head up. Before I could think or move, our eyes met. With a whoosh I was inside his head.

Fury. Blazing rage at the front of his mind. Then shock at my presence.

I shut my eyes, breaking the connection. It had only lasted a fraction of a second.

Surely that wasn’t enough time for Fernandez to understand what had happened?

To know that I’d been inside his mind.

He stood, breathing heavily, staring at me.

I raced over to Nico, pulled him upright and dragged him back to the door.

‘What was that?’ Fernandez gasped.

‘We didn’t get through on the phone,’ I said, ignoring the question. ‘We didn’t speak to anyone.’

‘Of course you didn’t, the phone is locked.’ Fernandez stared at me like I was some kind of alien.

‘So we’ll go back to bed, then.’ I edged closer to the door.

‘How did you get into the building . . . the office?’

‘Someone left the doors unlocked,’ I lied, still heading for the door.

‘Stop.’ Fernandez frowned. ‘Wait.’

I stood still, letting go of Nico’s arm. I fixed my gaze on the tiled office floor at my feet.

‘What did you just do . . .?’ Fernandez said. ‘Just now, when I looked at you, it felt for a second like you were . . . were inside my
head
. . .’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said.

Beside me, Nico coughed.

Fernandez’s face hardened. ‘Look at me again.’

No.
I carried on staring at the floor.

‘Ed!’ Fernandez grabbed my chin and forced my head up. ‘Look at me!’

I shut my eyes. Fernandez dug his fingers into my face till it
really
hurt.

‘Do it, or I’ll break your jaw,’ he hissed.

Praying that, against all the odds, I’d be able to avoid mind-reading him, I turned my eyes reluctantly upwards.
Don’t jump into his mind. Don’t jump
—

Whoosh.
I was inside his head again. No way of stopping it.
Damn.
This time I sensed curiosity. And fear. For a second I managed to keep my own thoughts still,and then I remembered the envelope I’d found in the filing cabinet drawer. Before I could stop myself I was diving in, probing his thoughts.

What happened to the girl from the first day? Where are the police van kids?

Immediately I felt his mind throw up the information. A place name he was instinctively trying to hide – it was coming . . . coming . . .

Ed?

Fernandez’s thought-speech hit me like a splash of cold water. What the hell was I doing, giving myself away like this? I shut my eyes and broke the connection.

What an idiot.

Freed from the telepathy, Fernandez’ questions spilled out loud. ‘How did you read my thoughts? How did you ask me that question without speaking?’

‘It was nothing,’ I said. ‘Just a trick.’

Fernandez frowned. He didn’t look convinced. ‘Why were you asking about those kids? I already told you. They were juvenile criminals. They’ll be inside a detention centre by now.’

‘I just wondered if . . . er, if they were okay,’ I said quickly. I felt for the small photo of Luz in my pocket.

Beside me, Nico stiffened. I held my breath, praying Fernandez would believe me. He shook his head.

‘Two demerits each,’ he said. ‘I’ll sort out the punishments tomorrow.’

He marched us back to the dorm and double-locked the outer door.

The other three were still sleeping – Mat and Mig emitting gentle snores and Tommy sucking his thumb. Nico stumbled to his bed and lay down.

I went over. It was a clear night and the moon was shining directly in through the window, casting a silver beam of light across Nico’s face.

‘Are you okay?’ I whispered.

‘Yes,’ Nico said. ‘He wasn’t really going to hurt me. Just scare me.’

‘Why didn’t you stop him with telekinesis?’

‘For the same reason you tried to lie about getting inside his mind.’ Nico sighed. ‘Have you forgotten how Carson and all the other frigging bad guys we’ve had to deal with tried to use our abilities to get what they wanted? You know how I feel about Geri, but she was right about that: Our number one priority is to keep what we can do a secret.’

I stared at him.

‘How come you mind-read Fernandez, anyway?’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you stop yourself?’

‘He’d already seen what I could do that first time by accident,’ I stammered. ‘Then, the second time, when he made me look at him, I couldn’t help it. You
know
that if I make eye contact I can’t hold back.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Nico muttered disparagingly. He sat up. ‘At least tell me you saw something useful. Something that might help us get out of here . . .’

‘I didn’t see
anything
in Fernandez’s mind. I was deliberately trying
not
to mind-read him.’ I could feel my face reddening. It wasn’t fair of Nico to have a go at me about this. ‘But, before, I did find an envelope of police reports in the filing cabinet. It had a strange word written on it –
Escondite
. I’m not sure what it means, though.’

Nico lay back on his bed with a frustrated sigh. ‘So you’re telling me you’ve just given away the fact that you can mind-read – for nothing.’

There was a long pause. ‘I
told
you, I couldn’t stop.’ I could hear how defensive I sounded. ‘It doesn’t matter. Fernandez thinks it was just some trick.’

‘Let’s hope so.’ Nico rubbed his eyes. ‘Why were you looking for police reports in those filing cabinets anyway?’

I fingered the photo of Luz in my pocket again.

‘Information – on us, the police van kids that come through here . . . the ones we saw . . . that Tommy told us about. I don’t think Fernandez is officially supposed to have anything to do with them.’

‘For God’s sake, Ed, man.’ Nico groaned. ‘Never mind all of that. How are we going to get out of here now?’

There was an atmosphere in the camp the next morning. I could feel it as soon as Cindy called us for morning chores. She was in an evil mood, barking at everyone to hurry and giving Mig a demerit just for dropping his spade. I guessed that Fernandez must have bawled her out for believing she’d left the doors unlocked last night.

Ketty was almost in tears when she heard about Fernandez finding Nico and me in his office. Even Dylan looked shaken. She had picked up a fifth demerit late last night for talking back to Cindy at lights out and was now officially ‘in solitary’, which meant, as Cindy explained, that after breakfast she would be put to work in the barn on her own for the entire day. Anyone caught attempting to speak to her, Cindy warned, would themselves be given a demerit.

We didn’t see Fernandez until breakfast. He stood at the head of the dining table as we filed in, radiating fury. Everyone fell silent.

‘Discipline,’ Fernandez said, drawing himself up to his full height, ‘is the be-all and end-all of Camp Felicidad. Without that we have nothing.’ He paused. ‘And in the past three days discipline has been in short supply.’ He turned to Dylan. ‘Five demerits in two days is a sign of weakness and a lack of self-respect.’

Dylan shrugged. Fernandez cleared his throat. ‘Nico and Ed each earned two demerits last night for being out of their dorm after lights out. Nico’s punishment is to spend the rest of the day digging the new well.’

There was a gasp from Tommy. I glanced at him and he whispered, ‘That well is hard labour. They’ve been working on it for months and it makes digging potato patches in the field look like eating cake.’

I looked back at Fernandez. What the hell did he have in store for me?

He turned his dark eyes on me. I looked away, my face burning.

‘Ed will take his demerits by working all his shifts today in the kitchen.’

I looked up. A low – and disgruntled – murmur swept round the room. Kitchen duty was widely accepted as the easiest chore option. No way was it normally used as a demerit punishment.

‘Silence,’ Fernandez snapped. He strode out of the room.

I sat, looking down at my lap, feeling everyone else’s gaze upon me. Tommy, who was sitting next to me, leaned across and whispered, ‘How come he’s letting you off so light?’

I shook my head. I had no idea – maybe kitchen chores would involve something disgusting today, worse than the fish gutting I’d done the evening before last.

As breakfast finished, everyone filed out. Ketty was on breakfast duty with me.

‘What were you and Nico
thinking
last night?’ she asked as we cleared the plates and bowls onto trays. ‘Surely you realised Fernandez would have disabled his office phone when he wasn’t there?’

I shook my head, then explained how I’d been trying to work out what Fernandez was doing with the police van kids – and what information he held on us. I mentioned Luz too, though not how much I’d wanted to find out about her.

‘Please be careful, Ed,’ Ketty said, looking up at me with anxious, golden-brown eyes. ‘I want to get out of here us much as you do, but we can’t mess with Fernandez . . . I keep trying to see into the future and I can’t. I don’t know why.’ She shuddered. ‘I just know that I’d hate it if you got hurt.’

I stared at a spot to the left of her eyes, feeling my face going red again.

‘There’s something else,’ I stammered. ‘Fernandez knows I can mind-read.’

‘What?’ Ketty said, her eyes widening. ‘How?’

I explained what had happened while Ketty ran a bowl of washing-up water, her forehead screwed up into a frown. She was silent for a while.

‘Maybe that’s why Fernandez hasn’t punished you properly yet for breaking into his office last night,’ she said at last, ‘because he’s realised you can mind-read and wants more time to work out what to do about it.’

I shrugged, following Ketty’s gaze out of the kitchen window. The new well was clearly some way in the distance, beyond the field. I could just make out the top of Nico’s head, deep inside it. Every few seconds a shovelful of earth appeared, tossed out of the hole he was digging.

‘Is he using telekinesis to do that?’

‘Course he is – and he’s getting really good at it too,’ Ketty said. She glanced sideways at me and smiled proudly. ‘You know what he’s like.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I know.’

The rest of the day passed easily enough. Spurred on by my discovery of the
Escondite
files, I made my first serious attempt to contact Mum and Dad by remote telepathy, willing my brain to find theirs, wherever they were.

All I got was a headache.

I did at least find out what
Escondite
meant, though –
hiding place.

Fernandez didn’t reappear for the rest of the day. Cindy remained in a foul mood, snapping at me three times for peeling potatoes badly, leaving smear marks on the washing-up and spilling a pint of milk on the kitchen floor. At one point she marched me across to the barn to fetch a fresh mop. Dylan was in there alone, gluing a chair leg together. I glanced at her as I fetched the mop, but she didn’t look round.

Nico joined us for supper, though Dylan was made to eat alone in the barn. He was in quite a good mood, considering he’d been outside in the heat all day. He sat next to Ketty, telling her in a low whisper how he’d perfected the telekinetic act of digging earth with his spade without actually touching it.

‘Ed.’ Fernandez’s voice appeared from nowhere.

I turned as he walked over.

‘Come on.’ He indicated the door.

‘What . . . er, where . . .?’

‘I didn’t give you permission to speak,’ Fernandez snapped. ‘Follow me.’

I cast a swift look round at Ketty and Nico. They stared up at us, open-mouthed.

I wanted to mind-read with Ketty, but I didn’t dare do it right under Fernandez’s nose. So I turned and followed him out of the room.

He led me outside to the front of the main building. I hadn’t been out here since our first day. This time I took in details I hadn’t before, like the rubber tyre propped up against the wall and the faded yellow ribbon someone had tied in one of the thorny bushes by the front door.

Fernandez strode over to his car – a battered old Ford. ‘Get in.’

As I opened the door my heart started thumping. God knows I hated Camp Felicidad, but no way did I want to be leaving like this – without the others and not knowing where I was going.

We set off, into the desert. The mountain range was behind us, the sun low in the sky to our rights. Around us, sand stretched out in all directions. Bleak and bare.

Fernandez eyed me curiously. ‘Tell me how far this telepathy thing of yours goes,’ he said.

‘It isn’t telepathy,’ I lied. ‘I told you, it’s just a trick.’

Fernandez snorted. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘I could feel you last night – your voice inside my head, reading my thoughts and telling me your own.’

I looked down. Oh God. Nico was right. I really had given myself away – and for no advantage whatsoever.