Mind Blind Read Online Free Page B

the school and the crowd started to push across the road towards us. I was struggling to breathe through the overwhelming weight of their advancing feelings.
    I hate crowds. I don’t enjoy being close to my family, but at least their feelings are familiar. This was like being attacked by an army of strangers. All these new emotions battering up against me, swirling around in my head, pushing me backwards…
    “You ok?” asked Josh.
    I was clinging onto the lamppost, hugging it.
    Then my mum’s voice in my ear, alerted by Josh’s question. “Are you ok, son? Can you cope, do you need me to take you home?”
    This was so humiliating. Everyone was hearing this.
    “I’m fine, I can cope.”
    I loosened my grip on the lamppost. I let the wall and the lamppost support me. I let the waves of people’s feelings tear into me and over me, and I did cope. But only just.
    I concentrated on looking for the target. Lots of the girls walking down the steps looked similar to the girl in the photos, so I was looking at bags too, assuming that however fashion-conscious a girl was, she probably only had one schoolbag.
    But I kept being knocked off-balance by the increasing number of kids swarming out of the school, radiating more feelings straight at me.
    At least most of the emotions assaulting me were positive. Relief at getting out of school. Pleasure at seeing friends. Excitement about the free hours ahead. There were ripples of sadness from lonely kids and spikes of aggression from boys squaring up to each other. But it was mostly happy feelings slamming into me. That was probably better than an angry crowd or a grieving one.
    Then I saw her. So did Josh. He lifted his hand to point at her.
    I kicked him. I prefer to kick than hit. With strong boots and thick soles, fewer thoughts get through.
    So I kicked his hand down and muttered, “Don’t point, you idiot.”
    Then I said more formally, “Team 4, target spotted.”
    Because there she was. In the blue coat she’d been wearing in two of the surveillance pictures. With the same stripy schoolbag on her shoulder. Walking down the steps, laughing with a friend.
    The target.
    “Are you sure?” asked Malcolm.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Confirmed,” said Josh.
    “Team 2 confirms sighting,” said Becky.
    “Then do your job,” said Malcolm.
    So we did.
    Becky and Laura waited until the target got to the bottom step and turned left, then they wandered casually after her.
    “Team 2 following,” I said quietly. I checked further down the road and saw Roy glance round at the target.
    “Team 3 keeping ahead,” Roy said, then he and Sam started walking down the road, kicking an empty can between them.
    “Target is following expected route,” I said. “Team 3 ahead and Team 2 behind. I’m not sensing suspicion or fear from the target. She’s calm and happy.”
    She was happy. She was chatting to her friend, on her way home from school.
    I nodded to Josh and said, “Team 4 heading for the alley.”
    “Good move, son. Well done,” said my mum, carefully not using any names.
    Malcolm snorted. “He’s not doing anything special, he’s just following my plan.”
    I grinned. My mum was a senior and very loyal member of the family firm, but every time she praised me, it seriously annoyed Malcolm. Her encouragement and Malcolm’s irritation gave me the energy to jump off the wall.
    As the overwhelming crowd of kids began to thin out, Josh and I turned the opposite way from the other teams.
    We were going to sprint right round a large residential block to the other end of the alley our target used as a short cut to her dance studio. However, we didn’t want any witnesses saying, “Oh yes I saw a couple of lads running like they’d robbed a bank,” so Josh held his jacket loosely in his left hand and I whirled round, grabbed it from him and ran off.
    “Hey! Give that back!” And he chased me.
    So people just saw a couple of kids fooling around.
    As we sprinted round one