Free Mindbenders by Ted Krever Page A

denying anything she said. Not even trying.
    “Renn—all the stories we heard! And now here you are, not even powerful enough to get whatever Dave left in this one’s head.” Fine’s voice was ringing, commanding, hypnotic. It had been that way, I realized, for several minutes.
     “I came in good faith,” Renn said after a long moment. “If I had bad intent, I could have dumped them on the front lawn and left them for you to deal with, couldn’t I?”
    “Why didn’t you?” Fine asked.
    “I don’t know,” Renn muttered, looking around the room as though he was lost. “It would have been pretty easy.” Then he stopped, staring at me. “Because I had to know ,” he said all at once, his voice gaining strength, gaining its usual power back. “Dave was murdered. I have to know why. And whoever did it has to pay.”
    “Right,” I said immediately. “That’s right.” It’s why I’d come, despite all my doubts about him, about everyone around me, despite all the fucked-up things that had happened. We were going to rally the old team, whoever they were, and go after the bad guys, whoever they were. It was as though the sun had just popped through the clouds, as though my head had suddenly cleared.
    I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting you ,” Fine continued. She looked older all of a sudden, her put-together coming slightly apart. “If you’d come from the North, we’d have foreseen…but, no matter.”
    Suddenly it seemed like Max’s head had cleared too. He leapt from his chair to the window. I saw nothing going on outside, but he was ramrod straight with that miles-away expression I’d seen in the car. I knew all at once that, whatever had grabbed his attention, it wasn’t miles away.
    “The great Max Renn,” Fine narrated, “not even powerful enough to see what was right in front of his nose.”
    Max jumped from the window and grabbed my arm. “They’re coming!” he called. “We have to go!”
    “Too late,” Fine clucked.
    “ Now !” Renn yelled, hurtling toward the back door. I turned—Tauber stood next to Fine, an apologetic look on his face but not moving.
    “You don’t have to go,” Fine told me pointedly. “You’re not wanted for anything. We can get that unwanted information out of your head.”
    I wavered for a moment—all those feelings I’d had a moment earlier flashed through my head. She had every reason to feel good about herself . So organized. So put-together. I could see her lying rumpled and naked on those nice thousand-threadcount sheets—boy, I saw that real clear all of a sudden. What unwanted information? Get it out of my head how ?
    Fine’s face was a look of triumph and that tipped the balance for me. Every time I’d ever seen triumph on somebody’s face, it always seemed to involve marching toward the machine guns.
    I ran for the back of the house. Max threw the door open and we bounced across the short lawn and into the woods, just ahead of the sound of cars screeching to a halt, doors slamming, voices shouting and footsteps coming up fast behind us.
     
     
    ~~~~
     

Five
     
    We plunged into the thick brush, the boots pounding out the back door and tearing through Fine’s yard, trampling all the neat greenery while voices barked orders from every direction. Max was running really hard—I was puffing just trying to keep up with him. I’d spent a year in the Everglades, where even tree branches get lazy. But the undergrowth was so thick here under the trees that it was dim as dusk at nine in the morning. In such a place, a couple yards might be enough for us to get away.
    The footsteps behind were so close, I didn’t even dare look back at first. But we started to pull away and I realized that, as Max—Renn—approached bushes and trees, they were actually bending out of his way, like he was projecting some invisible shell ahead of him—and whipped back with a vengeance once we passed, which really helped gain us some space. I heard angry voices