Coke and a glass filled with ice. She waited while Jamie drank. Then he put the glass down.
“Reading minds wasn’t the only thing we could do,” he said.
The Accident. Alicia remembered he had mentioned it when he began talking. She guessed that he was coming to it now.
“After Salt Lake, we were moved back to Nevada, to Carson City. We were fostered by a couple called Ed and Leanne. Ed worked in a local hospital. He did maintenance. Leanne didn’t do anything.
“We were still going to school at that time. We were ten years old. And we still didn’t fit in. We were flunking most of our classes. Anyway, there was a big kid at the school. His name was Ray Cavalli and he used to pick on us all the time. Everyone was scared of him because he threw his weight around and nobody would go to the teachers because they didn’t want to rat. Anyway, I got into a fight with Cavalli and he was really beating me; of course Scott knew what was happening as soon as it started and suddenly he was there. And he came between us and I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. He just looked straight at Cavalli and told him to get lost.
“And you know what happened? Cavalli stepped back like he was dazed and didn’t understand what was going on. Then he just sort of walked… stumbled… out of the school and kept going.
“It took the police two days to find him and he nearly died. He’d walked into the desert and he’d got lost. This was the summer and it can easily get into the hundreds out there and he had no water. When they found him, he had no idea where he was or how he’d got there. Anyway, that was about it. I heard he got better in the end and the family moved to another state. I never saw him again.”
“You think the two of you were responsible?”
“I know we were. You want to hear the rest of it?”
Alicia nodded. Jamie took another sip of Coke.
“Ed and Leanne weren’t too bad. We liked Carson City. We used to see bald eagles and hawks in the summer. It was OK. But trouble always followed us around. And this time it was my fault. There was this teacher, Mr Dempster, and he used to pick on us. Maybe Scott and me knew a bit too much about him. Maybe he guessed that somehow. Anyway, he was always putting us in detention and stuff like that and one day I decided to get my own back on him and I slashed the tyres on his car. He had this Beetle and he was so proud of it. It was a dumb thing to do but I took a knife to his tyres and the worst thing was… I got caught.
“I never thought the whole thing would get so out of hand, but the next thing I knew, I was under arrest and I had a probation officer. Suddenly I was in front of a judge – and the upshot of it was, what Ed had always been saying came true.”
“You were sent to jail?”
“I was sent to a juvenile hall – just for a couple of weeks. The judge said it would be a wake-up call. I ended up in a place just outside Reno. I was also told I’d have to work after school hours to pay back the cost of the tyres.”
He drank again. A cloud slid across the moon. It was like a knife, cutting it in half. Somewhere in the distance, an ambulance screamed its way along the boulevards.
“Juvie wasn’t too bad,” Jamie went on. “It was clean and the food was OK and I actually got on with the other kids. It was just boring, mainly. The worst thing was when I got home again. Scott was waiting for me; I thought he’d be pleased to see me – but he wasn’t. He was furious. He said what I’d done was stupid. He said things were bad for us already and I’d just made them worse.
“He was right. After I got back, things were never the same with Ed and Leanne. They were having problems anyway. They were always fighting… shouting at each other. But now they decided that Scott and me were just in the way and that they should never have taken us in to begin with. Ed had started drinking. Vodka, mainly. He’d get through half a bottle a night, easily. About a month after I got back, he had an argument with Scott and he hit him. That was the first time he ever did that. And the power was still working – the link between us – because I was the one who got the bruise even though I wasn’t even in the room at the time.
“At the same time, Derry – my case worker – got sick. She’d been looking out for us right from the start, but now she couldn’t work any more and all her files were farmed out. She wrote to us, but I never saw her again and I never saw anyone else either. They had overload. They couldn’t handle the number of cases they were already dealing with and they figured Scott and me were OK, so they just let us go. They probably think we’re still with Ed and Leanne even now. I don’t know.
“We weren’t OK. Ed’s temper was getting worse and worse. He lost his job and that was when he told us we were going to be moving on again. I remember it so well. Leanne was out, and we were alone with Ed. He’d been drinking again and, maybe just for the fun of it, he started taunting Scott. He said that he’d already spoken to Child and Family Services and the two of us were finally going to be separated. Scott was staying in Carson City. But I’d be in another state.
“I don’t know if he was lying or not. But he made it sound so real, like it was going to happen any time. He and Scott were yelling at each other and he was drinking, straight out of the bottle, and laughing at us. That was when it happened. Scott looked him in the eyes and I’ll never forget what he said. I can tell you the exact words. ‘Nobody’s going to separate us. You can go hang yourself.’”
Jamie fell silent.
“Oh my God!” Alicia whispered.
Jamie nodded. “That’s right. Ed got up and there was this weird look on his face. As if he’d been shocked… told something worse than anything he’d heard in his life. He just got up and walked out of the room and into the kitchen and then into the garage. We heard the door open and close. I thought about running after him but I was so fazed by what had happened, and you have to remember I was only eleven years old.
“Leanne was the one who found him when she came back. He’d gone into the garage. He’d climbed a stepladder. And he’d hanged himself with a cord tied to a metal bracket. Of course, nobody was surprised – what with the drinking and the arguments and losing his job and everything. He’d just had enough. That’s what they all said.
“Only Scott and me knew the truth. We spoke about it only once: Scott said it was an accident and that’s how we always thought about it afterwards. The Accident. Because Scott hadn’t known what he was saying. He hadn’t meant for anything to happen. It was just words.”
“It wasn’t Scott’s fault,” Alicia said. “Neither of you should blame yourselves.”
Jamie shrugged. “The next few weeks were a mess. There was the funeral, of course, and that was where we met Don and Marcie. She was Leanne’s sister. It turned out that Ed had been talking to Don and the two of them must have known more about us than we thought, because they were already planning to put us into some sort of show…”
“We moved in with Don and Marcie. They were living in a trailer park just outside Reno then. They took us out of school… Marcie said she’d home-school us from now on and after the business with the tyres the school wasn’t going to complain. But she never taught us anything. Don persuaded us to perform for him. He hurt me because he knew that was the only way to get at Scott and in the end we agreed. We worked out a half dozen tricks – but that was all we did. You remember the policeman at Marcie’s house?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“What I did to him… that was the first time I ever did it. Scott made me swear that I would never try it with anyone. He was scared for me. Because if I started doing that, who knows what would happen? What if I got angry with you and said something and the next thing I knew you were injured or dead? Don’t you see? I can kill you just by thinking! That’s my wonderful power. I can hurt you just with the blink of an eye.”
“But you won’t,” Alicia said. “I trust you, Jamie.”
“I won’t because I won’t let myself. And now you know why I reacted the way I did. Why I didn’t want to do what you asked and read that man’s mind. You think being a telepath means being able to reach into someone’s head like picking an ace out of a deck of cards. But it’s not like that. Even with Scott it isn’t, and he’s my brother. These men… if I go into one of their heads, I’ll see everything bad they’ve ever done. I’ll be part of it. The people they’ve killed. The kids they’ve hurt. Everything! It’ll be like diving into a sewer and I still might not find out what he’s done with Scott.”
“We’ll just have to find another way,” Alicia said.
“No.” Jamie shook his head miserably. “There is no other way. What else can we do?”
“Find Colton Banes. Follow him wherever he goes.”
“That could take weeks. We don’t have the time.” Jamie looked exhausted. He had never talked as much as
