Losing Lila (28 page)

That wasn’t going to happen. Suki’s eyes narrowed in my direction when she saw me. Nate winked at me and gave me a thumbs up. I shook my head at them. But I couldn’t stop smiling. I could breathe again. I could breathe deep without it feeling like a fish-hook was caught in my diaphragm. And then I pulled up short. Amber was sitting in the corner. She looked thinner than before and there was a coldness about her that made me stop from running over and hugging her.

‘Amber,’ was all I said in surprise. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I thought about what Ryder would want me to do,’ she said quietly. I didn’t know what to say so I said nothing. I just nodded and went and sat next to Alex.

It was only then that I noticed the silence in the room and the tension, so heavy it was almost tangible. I turned. My dad, who had come into the room with me, was now standing in front of Demos and neither man was speaking. Neither man was smiling. They were just staring at each other like two opponents weighing each other up before a prize fight. I had to hand it to my dad – I wouldn’t weigh myself up against Demos.

Alicia was standing in the corner of the room. She looked nervous, kneading her hands as she watched them. I dreaded to think what she was reading in their minds, but from the anxious expression on her face I could tell none of it was pleasant.

Harvey was sitting at the table, coffee mug in hand, observing it all with an amused expression on his face. I wondered suddenly whether it was such a good idea bringing my dad and Demos together and was about to stand up and say something – anything to break the tension – when Alex suddenly jumped to his feet.

‘Dr Loveday, this is Demos,’ he said, stepping over Suki and moving to stand at my dad’s side.

‘We’ve met,’ my dad said, not taking his eyes off Demos.

‘Michael,’ Demos said, nodding at my dad in greeting.

‘You had to bring my kids into this?’ my dad asked. I cringed.

Demos arched a dark eyebrow. ‘They’re not kids anymore, Michael. And besides, Jack was already a part of it.’

‘Maybe we should agree to let the past lie and move forward,’ Alex interrupted, stepping between the two men and shutting down the conversation. ‘We need to move fast,’ he said, ‘before the Unit discover what we’ve done in Washington. We need to time it so they raid Stirling’s house and office at the same time we break into the headquarters on the base. It’ll create another diversion for us.’

‘We need a plan,’ Harvey said, licking the edge of a cigarette paper.

I was so sick of hearing those words. Why couldn’t there just be a blueprint already in existence? Why weren’t we able to just google a solution? Why always this hashing together of crazy ideas – usually stolen haphazardly from my head – until we came up with something suicidally stupid and bound to fail?

But nothing had failed yet, I reminded myself. Though
yet
did seem to be the operative word. We were hanging on a thread of good luck and at some point, with all the weight on it, it was going to snap.

I looked round the room. Alex was chewing his lip. Suki and Nate were bug-eyed, watching us from the floor, Alicia was glaring at Demos and so was my dad.

I wondered all of a sudden how Alicia felt – knowing that her boyfriend was on a mission to save his ex-girlfriend whom he possibly still loved. I cut the thought off before she could read it, but perhaps I wasn’t fast enough because she threw a dark look in my direction.

‘If you’d let me talk to Sara, we’d have a way onto the base,’ said Jack.

‘Jack, we can’t trust her. There’s too much at stake,’ Alex shot back.

Jack glowered at him and I noticed Suki edging backwards as if Jack was an unexploded bomb.

‘Alex is right,’ Demos said, crossing to the table. ‘Can we draw this particular line of approach to a close? Unless we’re one hundred per cent certain of Sara we don’t go near her.’

‘Maybe Suki or Alicia could try to read her mind,’ Nate offered.

‘They can’t get on the base,’ I countered. ‘And if Sara is one of them and if what Richard Stirling said is true, then she can probably block them anyway so there’d be no point.’

‘She might not be able to block Amber,’ Alicia said.

‘What? You want me to walk onto the base and just ask her if she doesn’t mind answering a few questions while I check her aura to see if she’s lying?’ Amber asked caustically.

‘Wait up,’ Alex interrupted. ‘Maybe it doesn’t matter whether we trust Sara or not. We can still use her.’

We all turned to look at him. ‘Think about it,’ he carried on, his voice low, making everyone lean towards him. ‘What if we made her think that we do trust her?’

I looked at Jack. He opened his mouth as if to say no, but then he seemed to change his mind. ‘Keep going,’ he said.

‘Either way, Sara would let us inside the building. She’d take us down to prisoner holding.’

There was a moment of chilled silence.

‘But if she is evil then they’ll set a trap. We’d walk straight into it,’ said Suki.

‘It’s not a trap if we have a way out of it,’ Alex grinned back at her.

Suki looked puzzled for a moment then her eyes widened as she heard his thoughts. ‘Oooh!’ She clapped her hands together in glee. ‘Double-cross! I like this plan. It’s cunning.’

What plan? I hadn’t heard any plan, just something that sounded like walking into a prison and bolting the door shut behind us. That wasn’t cunning. That was plain stupid.

‘Hang on, hang on!’ I burst out. ‘I don’t understand.’ Was I the only one who didn’t? ‘If Sara isn’t on our side,’ I said, flashing a nervous glance in Jack’s direction, ‘then they’ll be in there waiting for us.’

‘Yes,’ Alex nodded at me, still smiling, ‘but they’ll underestimate us. We’ll tell Sara that Demos and the others are in Washington and we’ll blow the lid there just before we go in so it tallies. The Unit will deploy at least three teams to the East Coast. But Demos and the others will be just behind us.’

‘Us?’ I asked.

‘You, me and Jack.’

‘No Lila,’ Jack interrupted, shaking his head. ‘Lila’s not coming anywhere near the base.’

Alex turned to him. ‘I don’t think we get to tell Lila what she can and can’t do.’

I beamed at him. Alex’s tone softened. ‘But at least this way we’re both with her,’ he told Jack.

‘And me. I’m going too.’

I looked over at my dad. He was clearing his throat.

‘Dad . . .’ Jack sighed.

‘Don’t argue with me, Jack,’ my dad said, standing up. ‘I’m not letting you and your sister go in there while I sit here twiddling my thumbs.’ Jack ground his teeth and looked away.

Then I processed. ‘The Unit will be inside waiting for us,’ I said again.

‘Yes. And they’ll lock us down in prisoner holding,’ Alex nodded, still smiling.

‘Yeah? And if they do that, how do we get out? Isn’t that the massive great flaw in this plan?’

‘They won’t lock down. You’re already acting like Sara can’t be trusted,’ Jack cut in.

‘We work from the worst-case scenario – that’s what we’re trained to do, Jack,’ Alex replied calmly. ‘If she is on our side then great, maybe we’ll breeze in and breeze out with your mum, but if she is involved then we need to plan for that.’

‘We can disable the lockdown. There might be a way from inside.’

For a moment I didn’t know who had spoken because Harvey was usually so quiet. He paused to exhale a smoke ring. We watched it float and hang, just like we were doing, on his words.

‘From inside it’ll be easy,’ he said almost nonchalantly. ‘And if you can convince her to disable the alarm system to let you walk inside with Lila and Jack, I might have a way of getting in.’

What? What was he talking about?

‘Harvey is a master thief,’ Suki whispered, hearing the question in my head.

Harvey gave her a sideways glance. ‘Not that masterful, Suki. I got caught, remember.’

My mind flashed back to what I’d read on Jack’s computer. Harvey had been in prison for bank robbery. And he’d also escaped. I stared at him. He was a bank robber. A fugitive bank robber. Well, we were all fugitives in a way. But still,
I
was associating with a bank robber! I glanced instinctively at my dad. He was staring at Harvey with barely disguised horror. He didn’t find it as exciting as me. But then again he hadn’t had the chance to get to know Harvey.

‘If you could get inside the building, would you be able to disable the alarm?’ Alex asked him.

‘Not if it’s already going off,’ Harvey said wryly. ‘Tell me more about the system and I’ll tell you what’s possible.’

‘OK,’ Alex said. ‘The alarm system triggers if it picks up changes to the electromagnetic field within a five-metre radius of the building. So, if anyone uses a power near it, it sends out a pulse wave that takes out anyone with a power and it locks down the building so no one inside can get out. No one outside can get in either. The system is set up so it can only fire one shot every minute and only in bursts of ten seconds because of the damage it can do to the computer systems. But for the same reason no one is allowed to carry one of those weapons inside the building. They will be carrying guns, though.’

‘OK,’ said Harvey. ‘Get me whatever information you have on the systems the Unit uses. I’ll need to do some research.’

‘Getting in and getting out is one thing, but how do we destroy the labs?’ Alicia asked. ‘I’m not leaving there without destroying every last piece of information they have about us. And all their damned research.’ She shot a venomous look at my dad.

There were murmurs of agreement from the others.

‘What about Lila?’

What about me?
I looked at Key.

‘What about Lila?’ he said again. ‘That thing she can do with the water – is it in any way helpful?’

‘What thing she can do with water?’ Alex asked. Everyone was staring at me now.

‘Nothing. I can’t do anything with water,’ I burst out.

‘She can move it.’

Key was making it sound like I was Moses or something.

‘I can’t – not really!’ I spluttered.

Alex had stood up and crossed to me. He stopped and knelt down so we were level.

‘Show me,’ he said, taking my hand and pulling me up. He led me to the table and set a glass of water down in front of me.

‘No pressure or anything,’ I muttered, shifting my gaze away from my silent audience to the glass. ‘I’m not very good at this.’

I focused on the glass and the water inside shot upwards like a geyser. Only the ceiling stopped its trajectory. Alex hopped back out of its downward path.

‘Told you,’ I said, shrugging.

Everyone was now staring at the pool of water on the carpet. There was a look of astonishment on most of their faces. I waited for some other reaction, but none was forthcoming.

Demos was the first one to speak. ‘What about fire?’ he asked, a glint in his eye. ‘Can you do the same with fire?’

I flopped down on the bed, staring up at the circle of damp on the ceiling. Alex lay down next to me and a wave of energy travelled through my body. If Amber had been in the room, I was sure she would have been seeing rainbows. I instantly rolled against him and felt his arm come round me.

‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ I mumbled into his shoulder.

‘You can do it, I know you can,’ Alex whispered back. ‘You’re the most stubborn person I know. You never give up on anything. You just need to practise.’

‘No,’ I said, pressing myself tighter against him.

‘Lila, we’re talking about destroying an entire building. I think you need to practise,’ he said, trying to pry me away from his chest.

‘On what?’ There weren’t exactly any spare buildings around that I could try blowing up.

‘We’ll start with candles.’

Why I had to be tasked with destroying a building on a Marine base I had no idea. Surely a rocket launcher would be more reliable, but apparently C-4 explosive and rocket launchers were hard to come by. ‘You know, I’m not sure Demos’s idea is such a good one. I think we really should go back to the drawing board.’

Alex sat up. ‘We don’t have time, Lila. We need to move tomorrow. And he’s right. We talked all along about bringing down the whole of Stirling Enterprises. We need to destroy all their research and all their data. That way we know they can’t come after you.’

‘And him?’ I asked, meaning Richard Stirling. ‘Will he be inside the building?’

‘No. We’re not going to hurt anyone,’ Alex said with a warning tone.

I raised an eyebrow at him.

‘Unless we absolutely have to,’ he conceded. ‘The press will hurt him enough. We’re not him, Lila; no matter what he’s done or what you want to do to him we let the courts decide what happens to him.’

‘The courts will prosecute him for a crime he hasn’t even committed. What about what he did to Thomas? What about what he’s done to my mum? To all of us? He doesn’t deserve to live.’

Alex put his hand on my wrist. ‘That’s not your call to make. And if the truth of what the Unit and Stirling Enterprises were actually doing ever became public knowledge, what do you think would happen then? You don’t think there are other men out there like Richard Stirling – other people who might try to do the same?’

‘And if we keep him alive, you don’t think that’s dangerous too?’

‘Lila,’ Alex said gently, ‘you’re not a killer.’

‘But you are,’ I said, the words flying out of my mouth before I could stop them.

Alex flinched as if I’d slapped him.

‘I mean . . . I mean only that you’re a trained soldier.’

‘Look, Lila,’ Alex said and I caught the slight tremor in his voice, ‘I have to live with what I did in Joshua Tree for the rest of my life. But I don’t regret it. I was protecting you. And I would do the same again if I had to.’ He stopped, seeing the stricken look on my face, and lay back down again, pulling me close. ‘Hey, it’s all going to be OK,’ he murmured.

My breathing stopped as his lips found mine. They were warm and perfect and a million miles better than Jonas’s had felt. I felt Alex’s arms pulling me tighter until I was almost lying on top of him. His breathing was getting faster, his hands running up my spine, tangling in my hair while my fingers were grasping at his T-shirt even as my mind was one step ahead and lifting it up so I could run my hands over the hard planes of his stomach.