Page 18

Joey

We were not fine.

Sitting in the passenger seat of Callum’s car, my hands gripping the upholstery so tight my knuckles were arguing with me, I hissed as he took another turn far too quickly. We’d barely made it two streets from the cinema when Callum looked in the rearview mirror and cursed under his breath. He planted his foot to the floor, increasing his speed to an obnoxious degree and forcing us back into our seats from the pressure.

“We’re being followed,” Callum muttered darkly before another stream of curses left his lips when a motorist laid on their horn at the reckless way he was driving.

“Yeah, I kinda picked up on that.” At this rate, I was going to be dead by the time the sun appeared again, but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about seeing that asshole again.

“ Mo lus na gréine, can you do me a favor and attach my phone to the dash holder, please?” Callum asked calmly, even as he narrowed his eyes at a light that had the audacity to turn yellow upon approach. He sped up and made it through the other side just as it turned red.

“Yup. Grabbing it. Please don’t kill us.”

He growled as he checked his mirrors and frowned at what he saw. “I’m not the one you need to be worried about.”

Right. That would be the fuckwit who was following us.

Three guesses as to who that could possibly be.

Bouncing in my seat as we went over a speed hump a bit too quickly, I somehow managed to click his phone into place before my shoulder thumped against the window as we took another corner too fast, my death-grip on the seat firmly back in place.

This surely wasn’t doing his suspension any good.

Callum swiped at his phone, and within seconds, the sound of ringing filled the car. It rang twice before a youngish male voice answered.

“Hey, Callum. What’s up?”

Callum breathed out a quick sigh of relief, his shoulders releasing some of their tension. “Hey, Kiddo. Sorry to be calling you so late, but can you please check to see if Marcy is still around? I need to ask her something.” His fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly before he turned another corner, tires squealing.

I closed my eyes to center myself before quickly realizing that was the worst idea in the known universe when I became dizzy. I swallowed hard when nausea quickly overtook the dizziness and opened my eyes. Seeing where I was going to die was much better, thank you very much.

“Yeah, no problem.” The sound of a door opening and closing, then heavy footsteps echoed through the speakers. “I think she should be. She hasn’t popped her head in to say goodnight yet.”

Another door opened before a muffled, “Marcy? You still here?” A female voice said something in response, and then, “Callum’s on the phone asking for you.”

“Thanks, Kiddo,” Callum said, relaxing even more. “Can you put me on speaker with her and hang around? I’ll need your help, too.”

“Yeah, sure. Hold on.”

Some scuffling carried on before the sound quality changed, and instead of just one voice talking to Callum, there were two.

“Callum. Do you have any idea what time you’re calling me?” the woman asked, but she didn’t sound irritable. More like how a sister ribbed their brother.

He grinned. “Knew I could count on you to still be at work, Marcy.” He paused, taking a deep breath, and letting it out quickly. “Need your help, but first, I gotta tell you that you’re on speaker right now. I’m not alone.”

An awkward silence filled the car as Callum kept his eyes on the side streets that we kept zooming past. Never having been someone who thrived in uncomfortable situations, I stumbled to fill the quiet and decided to introduce myself. “Uh, yeah. Hi. Nice to meet you? I’m—”

“My date for this evening,” Callum said, cutting me off, purposely not looking at the way I narrowed my eyes and frowned at him. I grumbled to myself, but apart from a quick upturn of his lips, he steadfastly continued to ignore me.

“Callum’s on a date?” the young guy asked aloud, sounding all sorts of astonished. The way his voice carried over the speaker, it was clear he wasn’t talking to us, but to this Marcy person. “Have we slipped into an alternate dimension or something?”

A shocked, agreeable, but very feminine grunt was the only response.

News of Callum on a date was unusual to these people? Irrationally, this filled me with all manner of delight that I would seriously need to contemplate later. If there was a later. As we flew through another set of traffic lights, my finger joints screaming at me about how I was holding myself steady, I began doubting that eventuality.

“Marcy, we’re in my car, and we’ve unfortunately picked up some rubbish that I can’t seem to get rid of. Can you direct me to the nearest dump site that’s open?” He flicked his eyes to a street sign as we barrelled past it. “I’m on Chesney, and I’ve just gone through the intersection at Ninth.”

The uncomfortable silence came back with a vengeance for a second, before Marcy’s voice lost the carefree nature of earlier and became distinctly business-like. “On it. Give me a second to check.”

“Thanks, Marcy. Kiddo, you still there?”

“Yup,” the younger guy eagerly replied, a little excitement peeking through the same seriousness that Marcy had given, which he was trying his best to emulate even from just a single word response. I could easily imagine him bouncing up and down in enthusiasm for whatever Callum was going to say next.

“I’m gonna need to do a deep clean when I get home, because this shit is turning out to be nasty as fuck.” Callum tapped his fingers against the steering wheel in agitation when he had to pull to a stop at a red light. “Can you get a home care bundle together for me to pick up on the way by later?”

“Sure thing, Callum!”

I grinned at the oh, so keen way he responded to Callum’s request. This kid gave off the biggest eager-to-please golden-retriever energy I’d ever come across. He was adorable.

The noise of fast typing filled the car, before Marcy announced, “Callum, I’ve found one for you, but it’s a bit of a hike. Nothing else is open at this time of night anywhere closer. I’ll text the directions to you now.”

“Thanks Marcy. Appreciate it. You too, Kiddo. I’ll call later to let you know when I need to pick that bundle up, okay?”

“Okay!”

Callum slightly slowed the car enough so he could reach forward and end the call and flick to his texts. Sure enough, a map with clear direction markers was waiting for him. “Joey, I need you to be my navigator while I try to shake this guy.” He turned the phone and its holder to face me, before refocusing on the road in front of us.

“Sure.” I looked at the screen, noted the address and flicked over to the maps app on his phone to enter the destination Marcy had sent him. I let out a deep breath of relief when the directions came back, and I noted they were relatively straightforward. “Uh, take the second left up here onto Nereda.” I pulled back to look at him whilst he followed my directions. “What was all that?”

He flicked his gaze to me momentarily, a single eyebrow rising in question. “What was what?”

Rolling my eyes, I sighed. “I thought there was a mole where you work. Why’d you call them for help? Also, cleaning package? What?”

Callum chuckled. “Okay, first, those two are about the only ones we can trust outside of George. Marcy has just come back from a lengthy, but well-deserved maternity leave, and Kiddo has only been with us for about a year. The mole has been active for quite a few years, which discounts Kiddo’s involvement, and the issues kept going even when Marcy was on maternity leave. Neither of them is the mole.” He made the turn I’d told him to, heading out of the suburban hell we’d been in and onto a wider thoroughfare.

“If we can trust them, why didn’t you want me to introduce myself?” I asked idly as I poked at the map on his phone.

Callum pressed his lips together and sighed, his eyes still firmly on the roads in front of us. “I don’t know if the lines have been tapped. I’d rather not chance it.”

“Hmm.” Nodding slowly as I once again filed all that info away to look at later, I glanced at the directions again. “Fifth right into Plover. Tell me about the cleaning package and why we need it tonight.”

“Kiddo is putting together a kit for me that will include a sweep I can use to detect anything out of the ordinary in my apartment, and a signal jammer. I don’t want to use the signal jammer until we have to, because it’ll affect my neighbors and their Wi-Fi, but it’ll come in handy when we need to talk.” He glanced my way, gauging how well I was following what he was saying. “Cleaning package is what we call the kit when the line isn’t secure.”

“Ah,” I said with another glance at the directions when Callum took the turn I’d mentioned. “Freeway entrance coming up. We’ll be on that for a while, by the looks of it.”

“Okay.”

Resisting the desire to turn around and look behind us, I asked, “Is he still behind us?”

“Yup,” came Callum’s short, but highly annoyed, response. “Hopefully, I can lose him on the freeway, though.”

Scratching at my scalp until my hair fell in my eyes, I hummed in thought. “I don’t get this, Callum. Why is he being so obvious in his tailing? Especially when he wants to meet me tomorrow. What we prepared only works if I don’t know about you or George, but the way this guy is acting, it’s like he believes I already know everything. Why not just tag your car with a tracker?”

Making the turn onto the freeway, Callum nibbled at his bottom lip in thought. “I don’t know, mo lus na gréine . Maybe he’s just playing with us.” He looked over and reached to take my hand in his. “Play tomorrow like we planned, but be prepared for him to change the rules on you. I’ll be close by and won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”

“I wish you had a wire I could wear,” I muttered.

“There’ll be one in the cleaning package, but you won’t be wearing it tomorrow.”

“What? Why not?”

Callum shrugged, swiftly changing lanes once, then again after he passed a semi-trailer. “He’s already used a signal jammer on you once. If you go in wired, it won’t work because of his jammer, and if he finds it on you, there’ll be immediate consequences that George and I won’t be able to protect you from. Better for you not to wear it in the first place.”

Brilliant. I huffed out a sigh and decided it was probably best to talk about something else. “I’m assuming Kiddo is not his actual name…”

Callum barked out a laugh. “No. No, it’s not.” A delighted look came over his face, his eyes sparkling with joy. “From what I’m told, his name is Michael, but we all call him Kiddo, because he’s sixteen, and his last name is Kidman. I’ve never heard him be called anything else.”

My eyes widened, although I couldn’t say I was surprised. He had sounded awfully young over the phone. “And he works with you?”

He bobbled his head from side to side and squinched his mouth to the side, not sure how to answer. “Yes, and no. He lives at HQ, so he’s usually around. I’m pretty sure he’ll join us once he’s finished his schooling, though.”

Cocking my head to the side, I asked in curiosity, “He lives at HQ?”

He nodded before his eyes turned sad. “Yeah. The story goes that the team went on a mission about a year ago, and it went pear-shaped. It was supposed to be a quick recon on a cult, but even though they’d been told that the compound would be empty for some celebratory religious thing, there were people there they weren’t expecting to see. Children as well as adults. Things got messy and most of the adults were killed.”

“Shit, Callum…”

“Kiddo was the one who corralled the young kids away from the fighting and locked them in a classroom. Apparently, he refused to open the door after the fighting finished until they sent Orchestra in.”

I blinked. “I’m sorry. What?”

He chuckled, changing lanes again. “Orchestra is our regional director. Most of us don’t know her as anything other than her operational call sign.” He glanced at me and grinned proudly. “She was impressed by Kiddo’s quick actions and highly cautious nature. He saved over fifty children that day, from infants right up to pre-teens. A lot of them stayed overnight at HQ until they were moved on to other places, but Kiddo wouldn’t leave until they were all sorted, which took a few weeks. By the time everyone had been placed, the team had basically adopted him and fully supported him when he asked to stay on with us. Orchestra eventually agreed to his request based on how well he handled the entire situation.” He shrugged like what he was saying meant nothing, but I could tell that it was all a front. He really liked Kiddo. “He’s been there ever since. I’ve only known him for six weeks, but he’s already like a kid brother to me. I suspect everyone else on the team feels the same way that I do.”

Wow. I was really curious to meet this Kiddo now. “Take the next exit onto Parkview, then go straight. How many are you in your team?”

“Including George and myself, there’s thirteen,” Callum said plainly as he swerved off the freeway at the last second, earning himself a few angry horns and rude gestures. “If I include Kiddo, there’s fourteen. Seven of us are powered; seven are non-powered, or normies. It’s a good mix.” He chanced a peek in his rearview mirror. “That might have done it. I don’t think anyone followed us off the freeway, but let’s follow Marcy’s directions to the letter to make sure.”

“Thank fuck.” As the tension in my shoulders drained away and my fingers slowly released their death grip on my seat, I did some quick mental calculations. Removing Callum and George from the team was easily done, leaving twelve possible moles. Eliminating Kiddo was a pretty sure bet considering his youth, which left eleven. I wasn’t sold on discounting Marcy just yet, but Callum was, which brought the number down to ten. It wasn’t a huge suspect pool, but if the team was tight knit, like I suspected it would be, no wonder it’d been difficult to pin down the culprit. Especially if the mole was powered like George or Callum.

Which begged the question, “What sort of powers does everyone have? Take the next right onto Hilldale.”

Without answering my question, Callum cocked his head at the upcoming sign. “Marcy sent us to an old, abandoned quarry? Huh. Makes sense, I guess.”

“How so?” I let him get sidetracked, but I was adamant I’d get the answers I was looking for by the time the night was through. The better prepared I was for tomorrow, the better it’d go. I hoped.

He took the turn much slower than expected. “Sound travels easily in quarries. If we park the car in a hidden spot, we’ll be able to hear if anyone approaches.”

Curious, I peered through the windshield. The gravel road ahead of us was lined on the left by large rocks and seemed to slowly sweep in that direction. There were tightly packed trees on the right-hand side of us, while on the left-hand side, there was nothing other than those rocks and inky darkness. We had no choice but to keep moving forward.

Callum slowed the car even further when we came up to an intersection. “An added bonus is that it’s one of the darkest places you can go at night. Light carries further than in suburbia.” He crawled to the left, following the void rather than the trees, and keeping a steady distance from the rocks that guarded the drop, no doubt on the other side of them.

I chanced a look behind us and saw no lights. “I can’t see anyone trailing us.”

“Good,” Callum said, pleased. “Also, it’s almost impossible to travel in a quarry at night without lights.” He smirked at me before immediately refocusing on the gravel road ahead that was now sloping slightly down. “If you try it, chances are high that you’ll go over the side.” He pointed his chin to the darkness to our left. “And if you do that, there’s no way you can survive the fall.”

Swallowing hard at the thought of accidentally making a wrong turn, I asked nervously, “Can we park soon, please?”

“Yup. Just gotta find a suitable spot.”

We went past a few more junctions, where roads seemed to appear out of nowhere, until we made a slow, sweeping U-turn and saw what I assumed would have been a giant parking lot from sometime in the past. We hadn’t made any other major turns, but as we’d been driving for a while, we were probably on the other side of the quarry to where we’d entered.

“This’ll do.” Callum stopped somewhere in the middle of the parking lot and, while he was fiddling with the overhead dash light, he turned off the engine and the headlights.

Darkness immediately enveloped us.

I heard him flick a switch and then the sound of a door opening.

“Come on, mo lus na gréine . We need to get away from the car.”

Okay. I could do this. I couldn’t see anything, but I could do this. Fumbling with my door, I eventually found the handle and pushed it open. A frigid blast of air hit me full force, making me shiver. “Um, Callum, do we have any blankets or something? It’s fucking freezing.”

“Yeah,” he said, somewhere to my left. “Hold on.” Another car door opened, before more scrambling, then the door shutting again. “Got some. Shut your door and place your hands on the side of the car. I’ll come to you.”

“Okay.” I followed his instructions and waited. A sudden urge to play Marco Polo reared its head, but I refrained. Barely.

The crunching sound of sneakers on gravel crept closer until I felt Callum’s hand touch my torso. “Found you,” he murmured. His hand slowly slid up my chest, fingertips toying with the sweater I was wearing, before he reached the neckline. Icy fingers wrapped around the back of my neck, drawing me into him. Soon enough, he’d pressed his body up against mine from shoulder to thigh.

“Hi,” I said softly, my eyes finally equalizing enough with the darkness to the point where I could see him. The moon was almost full and there were light clouds in the sky, which meant there should be enough reflected light to naturally see where I was going. My eyes just needed more time to adjust.

Callum had one blanket thrown over his shoulder and another in his hands, using it to wrap me in. He tugged it closed, his hands bunching it around my neck and shoulders and making sure I had it secure before he grabbed his own blanket and threw it around his shoulders. “Come on, mo lus na gréine . Let’s find a place to sit and chat for a little while.”

Gripping the blanket around myself, I looked at the tightly packed gravel we’d found ourselves on. Wherever we ended up, it wasn’t going to be comfortable.

I followed Callum and eventually we came across a few picnic tables, and a… “Wait. Is that a barbecue?”

He chuckled. “Looks like it. Maybe they turned this into a park? It’d explain why there was no closed gate at the entrance.”

“Huh.”

“This’ll do.” Callum settled on one of the slatted seats, his back to the tabletop so he could look towards where I assumed the entrance was. After he’d made sure that his blanket was where it needed to be, he looked up at the sky, smiled, and patted the spot next to him. “ Mo lus na gréine , lay your head on my lap and look up. The view is incredible.”

Looking up to see what he meant, my breath caught in my throat with a gasp. A thick cluster of twinkling stars loomed above us, so much clearer than anything I’d ever seen before. The masses of stars immediately above us and trailing to the horizon gave me a clear picture of our own galaxy, leaving me breathless at the thought of how insignificant we truly were in the universe.

It was humbling and terrifying in equal measure.

Tearing my eyes away from the magnificent view above us, I took his advice and lay down on the seat, my head placed carefully in Callum’s lap. I wiggled my blanket into place, then relaxed when Callum began running his fingers through my hair. Apart from a few owls hooting in the distant trees, it was so silent. There was no electricity nearby, so even the constant hum of household appliances that most of us were used to hearing in the background was gone.

“Earlier, you asked about everyone’s powers,” Callum said lowly so as not to scare me, but I still twitched at the sudden sound of his voice in the otherwise silent quarry. “It might be easier if I tell you a story first. A story I was told when I was young.”