‘Sure it is, Sky.’

How did he know my name? ‘No, it’s real y not.’ I broke into a run.

‘Hey, don’t you want the money?’ he cal ed, chasing after me.

I reached the corner but the traffic was going so fast I couldn’t risk crossing without causing an accident. My moment’s hesitation al owed him to catch up. He moved in and I felt something dig into my ribs.

‘Then let me explain things more clearly, cupcake.

You’re going to get in the car with me now without drawing attention to yourself.’

I took a breath to scream, pul ing away from his hand.

‘Do that and I’l shoot.’ He jabbed what I now realized was a gun in my side.

A black SUV with darkened windows screeched to a halt alongside.

‘Get in.’

It happened so quickly, so smoothly, I didn’t have a chance to formulate a plan of escape. He pushed me into the back seat, forcing my head down as he closed the door. The car accelerated away.

Zed! I screamed in my mind.

‘She’s using telepathy,’ said the man in the front seat, sitting next to the driver. In his late twenties, he had short red hair and a mass of freckles.

Sky? What’s wrong? Zed replied instantly.

‘That’s good. Let him know we’ve got you, darlin’.

Tel him to come get you.’ The passenger in the front had a strong Irish accent.

Immediately I shut off my link to Zed. They were using me to draw the Benedicts out.

‘She’s blocked him out,’ said the red-haired man.

The thug in the back seat pul ed me up by the scruff of the neck. I got a brief glimpse of my mum waiting outside the store, pul ing out her mobile. The one in my back pocket rang.

‘Is that him now?’ the thug asked. ‘Go on, answer it.’

He might not let me speak if I said it was my mother. I slid it from my ski suit but he grabbed it off me and pressed connect.

‘We’ve got her. You know what we want. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, two Benedicts for the two of ours.’ He cut the cal then chucked the phone out of the window. ‘Who needs telepathy? That should do it.’

‘It wasn’t them—it … it was my mum.’ I was beginning to shake. The few dul moments of shock were passing into bone-deep fear.

‘Same difference.’ He shrugged. ‘Let her tel the Benedicts.’

I could hear the buzz of voices trying to reach me

—not just Zed but the rest of the family too.

I couldn’t stop myself answering. Help me!

Please!

But then the noise deadened and faded out to nothing.

‘I let her get one heart wrenching plea through.’

The red-haired man rubbed his forehead. ‘But those Benedicts are battering away at the shield. Let’s get wel away from here.’

So he was the savant.

‘That’s harsh, O’Hal oran. You let them hear the little girl’s final words and then stopped?’ The thug was laughing.

‘Yeah, I think it was a nice touch myself. Brings tears to the old eyes, don’t it?’ He turned round to wink at me. ‘Don’t fret, my darlin’, they’l come for you. The Benedicts won’t let one of their own down.’

I curled up into a bal , hugging my knees, putting as much distance as I could between me and the men. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on finding a way through the shield.

‘Stop it!’ snapped O’Hal oran.

My eyes flew open. He was glaring at me in the mirror. I’d managed to affect him with my attempts but I was too clueless about savant stuff to know how to exploit it.

‘I’l tel Gator to knock you out if you try that again,’

O’Hal oran warned.

‘What she do?’ ponytailed Gator asked.

O’Hal oran rubbed his temples again. My assault and that of the Benedicts on his shield was getting to him.

‘We have here a baby savant. I’ve no idea why she don’t know what to do with her powers but she has some locked up inside her. She’s a telepath.’

The thug looked unsettled now. ‘What else she do?’

O’Hal oran dismissed me with a shrug. ‘Nothing, as far as I know. Don’t worry, she won’t harm you.’

Gator was scared of savants? That made two of us. But it was worth knowing—not that I could do anything with it at the moment. O’Hal oran was right: I was a baby in savant terms. If I was going to help myself out of this mess, I had to grow up very quickly.

* * *

We had been driving for over an hour. I’d passed through abject terror and now felt a sense of deadening hopelessness. We were much too far from Wrickenridge for anyone to catch up with us. ‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked.

Gator seemed surprised to hear me speak. I had the impression that I was just a means to an end—

getting the Benedicts—and no one in the car real y considered me as a person.

‘Shal I tel her?’ he asked O’Hal oran.

The savant nodded. He’d been silent, his battle on an invisible front as the Benedicts desperately tried to break his shield.

‘Wel , cupcake, we’re taking you to see the boss.’

Gator took a pack of chewing gum out of his breast pocket and offered me a strip. I shook my head.

‘Who’s your boss?’

‘You’l find out soon enough.’

‘Where is he?’

‘At the other end of that plane ride.’ He gestured towards an aircraft waiting on the tarmac of a little provincial airfield.

‘We’re flying?’

‘We sure ain’t walking to Vegas.’

We drew up alongside the jet. Gator pul ed me out of the car and bundled me up the short flight of steps.

As soon as the SUV was clear, the plane took off immediately, heading south.

My room was on the top floor of a half-finished skyscraper hotel on the street in Las Vegas known as the Strip. I knew my location because no one made any attempt to stop me looking out of the ceiling to floor window. Lights from the casinos bled into

the

sky—neon

palm

trees,

pyramids,

rol ercoaster rides, al glittering with zany promise.

Beyond this thin layer of madness, past the twinkle of the suburbs, was the desert, dark and somehow sane. I leant my forehead against the cold glass, trying to calm the whirl of emotions beating away inside me. My head was on spin cycle.

After a long flight, we had put down at an airfield and I’d been bundled into another black car, this one a limo. My hopes of getting away from Gator and O’Hal oran at the other end were dashed when we entered an underground car park and I was transferred into the hotel in a private lift. Whisked up to the penthouse, I’d then been left in my room and told to go to bed. My part was over for the moment, O’Hal oran had explained, and he advised me to get some rest.

Rest? I kicked the white leather armchair stationed by the window. Five star accommodation didn’t make this any less of a prison. They could take their flat screen TV, Jacuzzi bath, and four-poster bed and stick it … wel , I had some creative suggestions as to where.

As no bodily harm had been done to me, I was less worried for the moment about my own fate. Most tormenting was the knowledge that Zed and my parents would be going through hel . I had to get a message through to them that I was al right. I’d already tried the phone—no surprise that it had no dial tone. The door was locked and I couldn’t attract attention at this height from any living creature but the birds. That left telepathy. Zed had never answered my question as to whether he could talk to his brothers in Denver but he had managed to contact me over the couple of miles between his home and mine. Was it possible to communicate with him over the hundreds between Colorado and Nevada? I wasn’t even sure exactly how far apart we were.

I rubbed my head, remembering the ache I’d got just sustaining that ‘local’ telepathic cal . And there was O’Hal oran to consider. Would he bother keeping the shield up now we were out of range? He knew I had few powers as a savant so probably didn’t expect me to try anything so ambitious, but if he was playing safe and detected my clumsy attempts, he’d be furious and might punish me.