Double-Cross (17 page)

The guard raised his eyebrows.

‘You boys wanna talk to Diamond?’ he said. ‘Well, isn’t that handy . . . cos he
really
wants to talk to you.’

19: Diamond

If the ground-floor corridor had been gloomy, the stairs to the basement were barely visible beneath my feet. The stone steps got darker and darker as we descended. I felt my way along the wall – it was made of bare brick: rough and cold.

I shivered as we reached a black door. Light glimmered underneath it and round the sides. Beside me, Cal trembled.

I’d considered using my telekinesis, but in this darkness I couldn’t be sure of getting rid of both the guns trained on us before the men holding them fired.

One of our guards rapped on the door three times and a gruff voice barked at us to enter. As the door swung open, I strained to see past the bright light inside. The room we were ushered into was some kind of office – all black and chrome furniture with splashes of purple in the wall hangings and cushions. A naked light bulb hung low from the centre of the ceiling, the only – incongruously – bleak element in the room.

One guard had stayed outside. The other stood beside me as I peered past the brightness of that central light bulb, searching for the person who’d called to us to enter. He was sitting in a chrome-backed armchair in the far corner of the room. I recognised him straight away: Diamond.

He stood up and walked towards us. He was shorter than I was expecting – only a few centimetres or so taller than me and Cal – and dressed in an open-necked shirt similar to the one in the picture McMurdo had shown us. His hair was neatly gelled and he wore a heavy gold chain round his neck. A diamond earring glittered in his right ear.

He narrowed his sharp eyes as he took us both in.

‘So McMurdo sent you.’ His accent was strongly Australian. ‘D’you have my money?’

‘No, sir,’ Cal blurted out.

I shot him a look, trying to communicate that he needed to shut up and let me do the talking, but Cal’s eyes were fixed on Diamond’s face.

Diamond nodded at our guard, who pressed his gun against Cal’s temple. I gulped. Diamond turned to me.

‘Let’s cut to the chase,’ he said, a tight sound to his voice. ‘Tell me why you’re here or your mate gets it.’

I thought fast. Now my telekinesis had come back and we were in a brightly lit room, it should be perfectly possible for me to disarm the guard with the gun, knock out Diamond
and get
Cal and me past the other henchman who was still outside the room.

I focused my attention on the guard’s gun and twisted my hand. The weapon teleported easily out of the man’s hand, clattering to the floor.

As the guard, a shocked expression on his face, took a step towards it, I lifted him a fraction off his feet so that he tripped and fell.

Open-mouthed, Diamond stared at him.

I grabbed Cal’s arm. ‘Run!’ I yelled.

In seconds we were through the door. Arm outstretched, I teleported the man standing guard in the corridor up in the air. With a wave of my hand, I flung him against the wall. He slumped down. I ran past, Cal at my heels.

‘There!’ Cal pointed at the fire door at the end of the corridor. It was only a few metres away. We could reach it. We
would
reach it. Just another three seconds.

Two.

One.

Telekinetic energy flowed out of me towards the door . . . the bar pressed down . . . I reached out with my hands to push it open.

And then a shot fired behind me and Cal slumped to the ground.

I spun around. Cal lay crumpled on the floor beside me. I blinked. His eyes were shut. I couldn’t see any blood. I looked up. Diamond was staring at me, his arm outstretched, a gun in his hand.

‘Your mate just fainted,’ Diamond snarled. ‘I was aiming at the wall.’

I followed his gaze to a bullet hole in the wall by Cal’s head. Sunlight from the open door sent a ray of yellow across the dark corridor, highlighting the dent in the plaster.

Two men – clearly more bodyguards – raced up the corridor behind Diamond and the sunburnt guard. Diamond waved them back and they stopped. Each one carried a gun.

Trying to force away my rising panic, I weighed the situation up in my mind. I could teleport Cal, then turn and run outside, using telekinesis to slam the fire door shut. But I doubted very much if I’d be able to move fast enough to dodge all the weapons behind me.

I could get rid of the guns telekinetically, of course, but only one at a time. And even if I could take Diamond and the new guards by surprise, that would still leave the sunburnt guard I’d disarmed earlier. I knew from experience that once people had had their weapons torn out of their hands through telekinesis, they tended to hold on much tighter to them afterwards, even if they didn’t understand exactly what had happened.

Diamond cocked his gun and levelled it at my face as the sunburnt guard – a wary look on his face – walked right round me and pulled the fire door shut. I was right; he was gripping his gun so hard his knuckles were white.

‘How did you take my gun earlier?’ he demanded.

‘Quiet,’ Diamond ordered ‘I’m asking the questions. And the first answer I want is about McMurdo.’

My legs shook. With the fire doors shut, the corridor was dark; light from the room we’d just run from sent spooky shadows along the wall. Diamond’s earring glinted in the gloom.

‘Talk,’ he ordered. ‘Why did McMurdo send you here if it wasn’t to pay me?’

My panic rose further, whirling in my throat and up, inside my head. I couldn’t think of a lie that would work. I couldn’t think of anything to say except the truth.

‘McMurdo sent us here to kill you,’ I stammered. ‘To get you alone and kill you.’

Diamond let out his breath as a low whistle. Then, to my surprise, he smiled.

‘Kill me how exactly?’ he said. ‘Neither of you are armed. You’re both kids.’

‘What about what happened in the office, boss?’ the guard protested. ‘The gun I was holding . . . I think this boy somehow ripped it out of my hand.’

‘Or you dropped it,’ Diamond said with a sneer.

At my feet, Cal stirred. He let out a soft groan. Heart pounding, I stared back at Diamond.

‘You’re not going to take
my
gun,’ he said. ‘Or pull the trigger.’

‘Actually, I am.’ Not stopping to think, I teleported the gun out of his hand and balanced it in the air, turning it to face Diamond’s head. He froze. The other guards started.

‘Do it,’ Cal whispered at my feet. ‘Take the shot.’

I concentrated on the gun. I knew I only had seconds before the guards rushed me or before Diamond ordered them to shoot me. Just a few precious moments when everyone was too startled to move or speak.

I focused my attention on the trigger. The gun was already cocked. I’d seen how revolvers like this worked. I just had to pull the trigger back using telekinesis and the gun would fire into Diamond’s temple.

Take the shot.

Take the shot.

The next second seemed to last an eternity and then I faced what I’d known all along.

I couldn’t kill him. Certainly not like this, in cold blood.

It wasn’t in me.

I let the gun fall to the ground.

As I looked down, someone hit me on the back of the head. The last thing I saw before I fell to the floor were Cal’s trainers, rushing up to meet me.

20: Russian Roulette

My head hurt where the guard had hit me and my arm, bent beneath my body, was numb from where I’d been lying on it.

The floor under me was cold and hard. I groaned and opened my eyes. Cal’s face filled my field of vision, his grey eyes peering anxiously down at me.

‘Nico?’ His face was very pale. ‘Are you all right?’

I sat up, rubbing my head. ‘I think so.’ I looked around. We were inside some sort of concrete cellar. A row of barrels stood against one wall, some dusty bottles in a rack opposite. There was no window.

The recent events in the corridor and my inability to shoot Diamond suddenly rushed into my head. ‘How long have I been out?’ I asked.

‘Only about ten minutes,’ Cal said. He nodded towards the door. ‘There are two guards out there, both armed and . . . and . . .’ He hesitated.

‘What?’ I said.

‘I told Diamond about the Medusa gene,’ Cal blurted out. ‘I’m sorry, but he kept pushing and pushing me about how you’d done that thing with his gun . . . you know, just holding it in mid-air. I felt so weird after fainting before and when he asked about me I . . . I showed him how I can move off the ground.’ He sighed. ‘I just wanted to pick you up and fly out of here, but there weren’t any exits and everywhere I looked there was some guy with a gun and—’

‘Don’t sweat it,’ I said. ‘In case you didn’t notice, I couldn’t pull the trigger on Diamond so I’m not exactly finding a way out of this myself.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t shoot him,’ Cal said firmly. ‘Things like that change who you are . . .’

He looked down at the dusty concrete floor. I got the strong sense there was something he wasn’t telling me.

‘What’s up?’ I said.

Cal shook his head. A beat passed, but he said nothing.

‘Okay, well, we have to get out of here,’ I said, scrambling to my feet. A wave of nausea swelled inside me as I stood up. I clutched the back of my head again and leaned back against the wall.

‘Are you all right?’

I nodded, looking around the room. I could easily teleport one of the barrels. Perhaps if I positioned it by the door, I could hurl it against the first guard who came in here . . . give us a chance to get away . . .

‘Ed contacted me while you were unconscious,’ Cal said. ‘I told him where we were. He and Ketty are back at Dad’s. Sounds like they’ve all been going insane worrying about us . . .’ He paused. ‘Trouble is, they don’t know exactly where Dylan is yet – and they can’t risk calling the police until they know she’s safe. They’re on their way now, but Dad says it will take over an hour to get here by car. Diamond could come for us at any minute.’

‘Right.’ I teleported one of the barrels across the room and positioned it beside the door. ‘I can use this to attack them,’ I said. ‘We’ll make a run for it when they get here.’

Cal nodded. We stood in silence for a few moments. I thought back to my earlier suspicions about Cal and Avery being in league with McMurdo. They seemed ludicrous now.

‘I guess Avery’s, like, quite a cool dad, isn’t he?’ I said.

Cal shrugged. ‘He’s okay. Strict, though . . .’ He paused. ‘What about your . . . the guy you mentioned. Fred, is it?’

‘Fergus?’ I said. ‘Well, Fergus is my stepdad. I don’t know my real dad.’ My thoughts went back to the DNA test results I’d heard Avery talking about on the phone. McMurdo hadn’t given any indication there was any possibility that he knew about the test, let alone that I could be his son.

Cal’s face reddened. ‘You do know your real dad actually,’ he said.

I stared at him. ‘What d’you mean?’

A long pause. Cal met my eyes.

‘It’s Avery,’ he said. ‘He’s your real dad.’

‘
What?
’ My head spun.

There was another long pause, then Cal sighed.

‘When Avery started hacking into the files about the four of you in England, one of the things he checked out was your birth dates. I guess he realised that he could be your dad then. I overheard him talking about doing a DNA test off some drink you would have when you arrived, so I knew before I came to meet you that he suspected you were his son.’

So Avery
had
tested my DNA from the saliva on my lemonade glass. Well, that explained why Cal had been so hostile right from the start: Avery was his father and I could understand why he might not want to share him with a complete stranger.

I stood, letting the news sink in. Avery Jones was my dad.
That s
why he’d used the phrase:
Nico doesn’t suspect a thing.
He’d been talking about my parentage, not some kind of double-cross deal with Rod McMurdo.

Before I could process this any further, the door banged open. Three of Diamond’s men appeared, each one holding two guns, arms outstretched.

I glanced at the barrel I’d been planning on teleporting at them. Too late. I’d missed my chance. Now there were too many of them for me to deal with in one go.