"Let me go!"
Kait found herself kicking and screaming. Other shouts hurt her ears. All she could see was the venomous, twisted face in front of her.
Joyce Piper's sleek blond hair was plastered flat to her head with sweat and blood. Dried rivulets ran down her cheeks. Her aquamarine eyes were full of heated poison, and her lips were drawn back.
Oh, God, she wants to kill me; she really wants to kill me. I trusted her and she's crazy, she's as crazy as Mr. Zetes is—
Hands were pulling her away from Joyce, shoving her toward the back of the house. Rob's voice rose over the background shouting.
"Run, Kaitlyn! Go! Everybody run!"
Looking back, Kaitlyn had a brief glimpse of Rob and Gabriel grappling with Joyce, of Mr. Zetes coming toward them, his face suffused with fury. Then she was running, with Lewis and Anna jostling around her. She didn't realize she still had her duffel bag until she got to the back door and had to put it down to undo the locks.
She yanked the door open—and there was Mr. Zetes's chauffeur. Looking immovable as a mountain, blocking the way.
Get him!
Kaitlyn wasn't sure who shouted it, but she and Anna and Lewis were all moving at once. It was as if they suddenly had only one mind, divided into three bodies. Lewis put his head down and ran at the man's stomach; Kait swung her duffel bag at his face; Anna slammed a foot into his shin. He toppled over and they ran on, stampeding toward the green convertible in the driveway.
It was Joyce's car, the car they'd taken from Mr. Zetes's mansion to get back to the Institute. The keys were still inside.
"Get in the back," Kaitlyn told Lewis and Anna, throwing her duffel bag into the backseat. Rob! Gabriel! Get out here! Come on; we're ready for you!
She twisted the key in the ignition, yanked at the gearshift, and turned the wheel hard. She wasn't a very good driver—she hadn't had much practice back in Ohio—but now she sent gravel flying as she swung the convertible in a tight arc on the driveway.
"Headlights—" Lewis gasped. Kait reached down blindly and wrenched a dial. The blaze of light illuminated the chauffeur, who was on his feet again in front of them.
Kaitlyn headed right toward him.
She could hear yelling, but everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. The chauffeur's mouth was open. For endless seconds the car kept getting closer and closer to him, and then suddenly he was diving sideways. He got out of the way just as Rob and Gabriel burst through the back door.
Get in! Kait hit the brake, jolting the car. Rob and Gabriel scrambled in, climbing over Lewis and Anna. Kaitlyn didn't wait for them to untangle themselves; she put her foot on the accelerator and pressed—hard.
Go, she was thinking—or maybe it was somebody else thinking it, she couldn't tell. Go, go, go, go.
Tires squealed as she reached the street, turned, and sped away from the purple house that was the Zetes Institute for Psychic Research.
It was a great relief to be moving this fast. She overshot stop signs, shrieked around corners. She didn't know where she was going, just that she had to get as far away as possible.
"Kait." It was Rob's voice. Rob was in the front seat beside her, an armful of folders clutched to his chest. He put a hand on her arm. Kait.
Kaitlyn was breathing hard and shivering—a fine all-over tremor. She'd reached El Camino Real, the main street in San Carlos. She ran a red light.
Kait, ease up. We got away. It's all right. His fingers tightened on her arm, and he repeated, "It's all right."
Kaitlyn felt her breath come out more slowly. She was able to ease her grip on the steering wheel. "Are you guys okay?"
"Yeah," Rob said. "Gabriel knocked them out again. They're both lying unconscious in the lab." He turned to look into the backseat. "Nice going."
"Oh, glad you thought so," Gabriel said in a voice as cold as Rob's had been warm. But through the web, Kaitlyn could feel Gabriel's desperate tiredness.
She sensed a rush of concern from Rob and knew he felt it, too. "Look," he said, "you're wiped out. Do you want me to—"
No, Gabriel said flatly.
Kaitlyn's heart sank. Just an hour or so ago Gabriel had been willing to accept Rob's help—all their help. Back at the mansion he'd let Rob use his healing power, let him channel energy from the rest of them to save Gabriel's life. Gabriel had come to trust all of them, when he'd never trusted anyone before. They'd actually gotten through to him, broken down the walls. And now…
Gabriel was reverting again. Shutting them out, pretending he wasn't part of them. And there was nothing they could do about it.
Kaitlyn gave it a try anyway. Sometimes Gabriel seemed to… respect her more than the others, or at least he listened to her opinions more. "You've got to keep your strength up," she began lightly, trying to catch his eye in the rearview mirror.
He cut her off with a terse, Leave me alone.
Kait got an image of walls, high walls with nasty spikes sticking out of them. Gabriel trying to cover his vulnerability. She knew what he wouldn't verbalize, that he didn't want to be indebted to Rob ever again.
Anna's quiet voice broke into her thoughts. "Where are we going?"
"I don't know." It was a good question and Kait's heart started pounding again. "You guys, where can we go?"
She could sense consternation all around her. None of them except Lewis was familiar with the San Francisco area.
"Well—jeeez," Lewis said. "Okay, we don't want to go into the city, right? My parents live up in Pacific Heights, but—"
"But that's the first place Mr. Z will look," Rob said. "No, we agreed before, we can't go to our parents. We'll only get them in trouble, too."
"The truth is," Gabriel began, "we don't know where we're going—"
"It doesn't matter," Kaitlyn interrupted him. "It doesn't matter where we're going eventually. What we need to figure out is what to do now. It's two a.m. and it's dark and it's cold and Mr. Zetes is going to be after us…"
"You're right about that," Gabriel said. "And he'll have the police after us, too, when he wakes up from being knocked out. We're in a stolen car."
"Then we'd better get away from San Carlos fast," Lewis said, alarm sharpening his voice. "There's Highway 101, Kait. Get on it going north."