The Escape Read Online Free

and inexperience might not have allowed him Keene’s restraint.
    “Oh, look,” squealed the woman with the pointed nose, motioning to her companions. “It’s Patrick Mann.” She took a few steps toward us. “Do you remember me? I’m Sophie Brinker, Finley’s mother. You and she were so close in college.”
    Patrick’s hand dropped from my shoulder, but I had already used his touch to help pound a tiny hole in his barrier and wriggle inside. If he wasn’t a sensing Unbounded, he wouldn’t know I was there as long as I didn’t insert any thoughts or try to communicate mentally. I wouldn’t be able to sift through his memories as I could if he were unconscious, but I should be able to get a sense of what his purpose was in confronting us.
    “Mann?” Keene mouthed at me.
    Patrick Mann, the vice president’s son to be exact, and given his Unbounded condition, his father had every right to worry about him. I knew from the data that he was thirty-six, which put him at Keene’s age, but he looked at least five years younger—and aging at only two years for every hundred, like most Unbounded, he’d still look the same at his parents’ funerals. If he continued on in politics like his father, and became the president of the United States, he wouldn’t be the first Unbounded to do so, as Kennedy had also been one of us, but Patrick’s possible connection with the Emporium might mean that a mortal would never again hold the position.
    Now that I was inside his mind, I could see Patrick was lying. He hadn’t recognized us. Someone had pointed us out to him, a man who’d seen us arrive, a sensing Unbounded posted to watch for Renegades. Whoever it was had used his ability to mask his presence because I hadn’t sighted him.
    “Finley. Of course,” Patrick murmured. Mentally, he dismissed the woman and her comment. His concern was us; she didn’t matter at all.
    This was worse than our intel had hinted. We’d thought maybe Vice President Mann had been offered a deal in exchange for advanced medical care by an Emporium healer after his son’s near fatal skydiving episode a few months earlier. We hadn’t considered the possibility of the son being an Emporium agent himself. That fact only spelled trouble for the entire nation, and eventually the world.
    Yet Keene didn’t recognize him from his years at the Emporium, so what did that mean? Perhaps not much. Keene’s father was a member of the Emporium Triad, their ruling body, but even while he’d served them, Keene’s mortality would have prevented him from being privy to their most important secrets.
    “Oh, yes, I recognize you now from your pictures.” I extended my hand to Patrick Mann. “Nice to meet you in person.” I waited several heartbeats before adding with a glance at the reddened finger marks now quickly fading from the skin of my shoulder, “I think.”
    Jumbled thoughts came from the sand stream of his mind. Surprise and wariness. Worry that he’d made a mistake in challenging us without Emporium backup, especially given our known prowess in combat. While he could expect the aid of the Secret Service agents, we might not choose to go with him peacefully. Two agents plus the half dozen others close to the camera weren’t nearly enough to subdue us unless they opened fire, and that would start a stampede of guests and negative publicity they didn’t need.
    These images were followed by more scrambled emotions I couldn’t separate. Then finally a clear thought: They don’t seem to know about me or the plan so they aren’t here to eliminate dear old Dad. I’ll let the others deal with them. The thought disappeared before it ran to its conclusion, the jumbled sand stream taking over again. Multiple images careened past me, but none of them seemed related or worth examining.
    I needed to know more. What was it Patrick thought we didn’t know? That he was Unbounded? But how would that relate to a possible assassination attempt on his