Evolution (13 page)

“Nope. I only have eyes for you,” I teased. I still thought guys would rather be Aiden so that they would never have to try to get a girl. All they would need to do was walk into a room and they would have all the girls swooning over them, like bees to honey.

I reached forward and turned the music up, then leant back to rest my head against the seat for the remainder of the trip home.

Before I knew it, we were pulling up in front of my house.

Mum’s car was parked in the garage. The garage door was still open, which meant that she didn’t plan on staying long. I hurried inside, hoping that I would be able to get information out of her. She knew more than what she was telling me. Trying to figure out why Aiden couldn’t pick up on what she was hiding was doing my head in.

“You know I can’t read her mind. I can only hear her thoughts.”

“Sorry.”
I threw Aiden an apologetic glance before walking in through the garage door.

I was expecting Mum to say something about us not being at school, but she almost seemed relieved to see me. “Hi, Mum.”

“Hi, honey.” She smiled warmly. “Come and sit down.” She patted the sofa seat beside her. I walked over and sat down next to her.

“Hey, Aiden,” she called as he came in through the garage door. She looked at him a little too intensely before returning her gaze to me.

I scrunched up my face. “Are you okay?” I asked her, before Aiden had a chance to respond to her.

She was acting really weird. The last couple of days she had been avoiding me like the plague, and now she was acting overly sweet.

“Of course I am, sweetie.” She brushed my hair behind my ear. She was definitely not okay, but I knew I had to pick my battles. Finding out what she knew about Chelsea was more important than figuring out what was with her strange moods the last few days.

“Listen, I’ve got to get going soon, but I wanted to talk to you about something first,” she said, her tone serious.

“Okay.” What had her so on edge?

She smiled. “Well, I was thinking that you should take the next… however long off from school.” Her tone was less serious this time.

I was too stunned to say anything. Was she seriously saying it was okay for me to ditch school in my final year? She was confusing the crap out of me.

“I mean, I’m sure you’re not concentrating too much at school anyway, what with Chelsea’s disappearance and all. So I don’t really see the point in you going back there until we’ve found her,” she explained.

“Are you serious?” I thought she must be joking around and was about to crack at me for skipping school.

“Yes, I’m serious, silly. You’ve been through too much this last week, and I think it’s best that you take some time out to recover from it all properly. I’ll send an email to the school this afternoon.

“Oh, and I was also thinking that you might want to stay at Aiden’s house for the next few days, as I’m probably not going to be around here much. And I would prefer if you had someone watching out for you. And don’t worry about Tyson, I promise I’ll feed him.” She turned to Aiden. “Is that okay if she stays with you?”

“Ahh, yeah of course.” He sat down on the armrest next to me. His facial expression was just as confused as mine, which didn’t give me much comfort. I mean, he was the one who was supposed to be able to know what people were thinking, yet he didn’t seem to have a clue either.

Before I could say anything more, Mum stood up. “Well, I’ve gotta get going now. I’ll call you soon.” She leant down and kissed the top of my head. “Take care of her for me,” she said to Aiden, walking away and leaving us gob-smacked.

I quickly turned around. “Mum?” I remembered my conversation with the detective.

“Yeah, darl?” She picked up her bag.

“I forgot to tell you. I had a phone call from the police this morning. They want me to come down to the station today for questioning.”

Mum nodded. “I thought you would get a call soon. It’s just routine questioning.” She was trying to ease any concern I might have about the impending interview.

“How about I meet you there at…,” she paused to look at her watch, “let’s say three. That should give you enough time to get your things together for your stay at Aiden’s, shouldn’t it?”

“Yep. Three’s good.”

She seemed a little too keen to get me out of the house. “Okay, see you then.” She fumbled with her Bluetooth to answer an incoming call. “Love yas,” she added before answering the call. “Hello, this is Nikki,” was all I heard before she was out the door again.

I snapped my head back to Aiden.

“Before you start asking me what’s with her, the answer is, I have no friggin’ idea,” he said, reading my thoughts. “Her thoughts were still all over the place. And the only thing she stayed with long enough that I could grasp it was that she wants me to stay with you at all times.” Aiden looked just as confused as I felt.

“Do you think she’s worried that whoever this psycho is might take me next?” That seemed like the only logical explanation.

He took a moment to think. “At first I thought that, but now I’m not so sure.” He pulled his eyebrows together as if he was trying to make sense of something. “You see, it’s a little strange that lately her thoughts have been so scattered that I can’t hear anything except her wanting me to protect you somehow.” He opened his mouth to say something, but decided against it.

“What are you not telling me?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head.

“Aiden?” I was starting to worry. Maybe Mum knew more about all of this than she was letting on. Maybe she knew that the kidnapper was coming for me next.

He moved off the armrest and sat down beside me. “Nah, it’s nothing like that,” he reassured me. “I was just thinking that it’s almost like she knows I can hear her thoughts, and she’s scattering them around so that I won’t know what she’s hiding.”

“How could she possibly know that?” It wasn’t as if Aiden went around flaunting his kind of creepy talent. And it wasn’t as if she’d somehow found out from me. She hadn’t even been around me long enough since I found out for her to have overheard us speaking.

“See, I told you it was nothing worth mentioning.” He brushed off his theory like it was completely impossible. Yet something about it still played on my mind.

I didn’t mention anything more on the subject, and neither did Aiden. We had a couple of hours to kill before I had to be at the police station, and I didn’t want to spend that time trying to work out my mother’s strange behaviour.

Snuggling into Aiden’s arms, we settled in to watch some reruns of
Seinfeld
. The last few days had almost made my mind explode, and I wanted nothing more than to stop thinking and have a few laughs.

Chapter 13

With my bags packed with enough clothes to last me for another week or so, I locked the front door to my house. Tyson was sulking at the side gate, so I asked Aiden to put my bags in the car whilst I gave him another pat goodbye. Aiden was only too happy to oblige.

I knelt down on my knees and slipped my hand through the small opening in the fence, and Tyson greeted my hand with slobbery kisses. I felt guilty for leaving him behind, but Mum had assured me that she would take care of him. I had to trust that there was reason enough for her to want me to stay away from the house, even if she wasn’t willing to tell me what that reason was. She had been so evasive the last few days, but sooner or later, I was going to find out what she was hiding.

At that moment, though, I had other things to think about. I had to be at the police station in twenty minutes, and who knew what they might ask me.

Mum had said they would only be doing their routine questioning, but I knew that somewhere along the line, I would have to lie to them. And I was pretty sure obstructing an investigation was a criminal offence. Yet how could I tell them the truth about my visions? I couldn’t. And that meant I had to be on guard, ready to lie whenever necessary, but without bringing any suspicion to my involvement. The last thing we needed was for some hot-shot police officer with a hunch following us around.

“Come on. We better go if we’re going to make it there on time.”
Aiden’s voice rang through my mind.

I turned around to see that he was already in the driver’s seat with the engine running, waiting for me to hop in. I turned back to Tyson and gave him one more rub around his ear before getting up.

When I turned around, I caught Mrs. Carson peeping through her side window. My eyes grew wide. If Chelsea had been kidnapped in front of my house like in my vision, my neighbour, with her obsessive snooping, had more than likely witnessed the crime.

As soon as Mrs. Carson realised that I had spotted her, she quickly pulled the curtains in front of her, disappearing from sight.

My head whirled with possibilities. What if Mrs. Carson had seen the attacker before? What if he had been watching Chelsea for some time? What if she knew what he looked like?

Hope and anger flooded my body as I raced next door to face Mrs. Carson. I knocked on her front door, but she didn’t answer. “I know you’re in there!” I pounded on the door. I hoped to God that my hunch was right; at the same time, I would be mad as hell if I was right, because that would mean that the old bat knew all along who had taken Chelsea and wasn’t planning to tell anyone.

“What’s your plan?”
Aiden asked, pulling me back and stopping me from bashing down her door.

“She knows something.”
I ignored Aiden’s question.
“And one way or another, I’m going to get it from her.”
I tried to break free from his arms so I could try to bust down her door, but he only held on tighter.

“You don’t need to bash down her door… Just give me a sec… and I’ll be able to… get her to come out,”
Aiden said between my struggles to get free.

I stopped my struggle to break free from his arms.
“You could have told me that before.”

Aiden rolled his eyes.
“If you weren’t always so quick to rush into things, maybe I could have.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just hurry up and make her come out already.”

He let out a sigh. “Yes, your majesty,” he said out loud.

It was my turn to let out a sigh. Maybe I was a little too quick to jump into things without thinking it through. I didn’t have any more time to think about my actions, though, because the front door was opening.

“Well, hello, dear,” Mrs. Carson sang in her overly pleasant voice.

“Ah…” As she was standing in front of me, I realised why Aiden had asked what my plan was. I mean, it wasn’t as if she was going to volunteer the truth.

Thankfully, Aiden stepped in. “Hi, Mrs. Carson. Jade will be staying over my house for a little while.” Mrs. Carson didn’t hide her disapproval of such ‘shenanigans.’ She
tisked
, shaking her head. Before she could lecture us on how children our age would never have done that in her day (and believe me, I’ve had my fair share of lectures from her over the last year), Aiden continued. “You know, with the two abductions over the past few days, Jade’s mum thought it might be best for her to stay somewhere where there were people around her all the time.”

“Oh. Yes, I have heard about that. Such poor girls. In my day—”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but we have to be down at the police station in a few minutes.”

“Oh?” She obviously hoped Aiden would elaborate, but of course he didn’t. I was sure that he wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible, and I was glad that he was doing the questioning. I don’t think I would have been as charming as him.

“As I was saying, Jade will be away for a while, and we were wondering if you would be able to keep an eye on the house and the dog. Jade’s a little worried that her mum may not feed the big fella all the time. You know, with the odd hours she keeps.”

I gave a slight smile, nodding in agreement.

“Oh, of course I’ll keep an eye on things,” Mrs. Carson said. “And don’t worry about that dog of yours either. I’ll slip him some leftovers from dinner.”

“That would be a huge relief,” I said, finally managing to enter the conversation.

“Okay. Thanks for that, but we better get going. We don’t want to leave the detectives waiting.” Aiden turned to leave, leaving me wondering what the hell happened to us finding out if she knew anything. I expected him to turn back, yet he kept walking to the car. I mean, it wasn’t as if he was able to read minds like his parents could. And it wasn’t as if he asked Mrs. Carson anything that may have got her thinking of the attacker. But then again, what would I know? I couldn’t hear anyone’s thoughts. Maybe she’d thought about it as soon as she’d opened the door.

Aiden was almost at the car when I decided I’d better catch up. “Thanks again.” I put on a fake smile for Mrs. Carson before running back to his BMW.

“What’s the go?” I asked, sitting down in the passenger seat. “Did she give it up as soon as she saw us?”

“Nope.” He turned the ignition and put on his seatbelt before pulling onto the road. “When I told her about you staying at mine because of the abductions, her mind went straight to the morning she saw Chelsea taken.”