Free Vacant by Alex Hughes

identifying backup. They try to run us through high stress so we don’t freeze up. Guess it worked this time.”
    Part of that last statement was a lie, or she was hiding something, but I couldn’t tell what, or even if it meant anything. Sometimes being a telepath was frustrating.
    She looked back up at the clock on the wall.
    â€œGo ahead and call the hospital,” I said, responding to her thought without meaning to.
    A frisson of fear ran up her spine, but she controlled it. Crap, another normal spooked by a telepath. I took an extra moment to examine that fear up close, to make sure she wasn’t going to go out of her way to hurt me to stop the fear.
    No, she wasn’t one of those.
    I let her go as she got up to make the call. I, in the meantime, had other priorities.

CHAPTER 6
    I entered an old room, ancient floorboards covered with a large rectangular rug in bright colors, an antique small bed topped with a cheerful bedspread with a pattern of cartoon boats. A boy sat in the middle of the rug, on the floor, watching a bright blue toy boat float like an anti-grav car,
whirring
around and around a path at eye level.
    He moved his hand, adjusting one of the floating yellow guide markers, and the boat’s path adjusted too, a cheerful
beep
sounding with the change.
    I cleared my throat and the boy turned, too quickly, like he was on edge. He backed up, his knee pulling a cord from the wall. The boat fell, all at once, along with the floating markers, hitting the floor on top of a red-and-green mat with a
crunch.
“Stupid boat.” He backed up a little farther and yelled, “Mom! Somebody’s here!”
    â€œI’m Adam,” I said as gently as possible. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” I stayed by the door, giving him space until his mom arrived. More likely, the FBI agents, but I wasn’t going to be picky either way.
    Tommy was ten years old, just under five feet tall, blond and tan, with a round face and deep brown eyes that seemed to catch everything. His khakis and blue polo shirt might have been a school uniform, might not, but both were wrinkled, the shirt with a small stain near the collar.
    Behind me, Special Agent Loyola came down the hallway, a female presence not far behind. The judge, most likely.
    I turned. “Response time is a little slow,” I said to Loyola.
    He took the comment personally. “Perimeter is sealed off. A mouse couldn’t get in or out without either us or the sheriff’s department knowing about it.” He stuck his head in the room as I moved to give a bit more room. “You okay, kid?”
    â€œYeah, I guess,” I heard from the room. Not exactly happy, but he’d had a big day.
    I nodded to the woman, who was wearing some kind of dark pantsuit with a wide collar and more than her share of expensive jewelry. Her dark-blond hair was noticeably fixed, sprayed down into an almost helmetlike rigidity. She was examining me critically.
    I kept my hands where everyone could see them. “I’m the new telepath,” I said. “Introducing myself as requested. I’ll need a good view of your son’s mind so I can stop any threats before they get through in Mindspace. It’ll take about ten minutes.”
    She looked at me critically, the full weight of countless hours dealing with criminals riding on her now. She didn’t seem comfortable.
    I opened up a little in Mindspace. As suspected, she didn’t like a grown man wanting to get up close with her son right now, no matter how good the reason. This would have been easier with the female telepath Jarrod usually worked with, just for her comfort level, but the fact was, I was all we had. Media frenzy aside, being male did not make you inherently dangerous to children; there were far more trustworthy, good people out there of both genders than there were criminals of either. But you couldn’t exactly tell that to a woman whose son