Genius Squad by Catherine Jinks Read Free Book Online Page A

patient, dear. I’ll talk to Thomas. I’ll have a word with him.’
    Cadel set his jaw. ‘When you do,’ he said, through his teeth, ‘you can tell him that if he comes into my room again, he’ll get himself electrocuted.’
    Hazel blinked.
    ‘Oh, now Cadel – ’ she began, looking worried.
    ‘I mean it! He’s twice as big as me! I have to defend myself somehow!’
    ‘There’s no question – you mustn’t – I’m going to talk to Miss Currey,’ Hazel stammered, much to Cadel’s surprise. He had been expecting another placid reminder that consensus was the best way of handling disputes. Hazel’s fearful expression was something he’d never seen before.
    It took him a moment to realise that she must have heard certain stories about him. From Fiona, perhaps? Fiona was familiar with some of his background. She may have warned Hazel Donkin that her new foster-son could be very, very dangerous if sufficiently provoked. And Hazel had believed her.
    The police were the same. They didn’t trust Cadel. They were afraid of his high IQ. (Not to mention his warped upbringing.) And the last thing Cadel wanted now was to ring any more alarm bells. Finally, after months of being as good as gold, he had begun to sense that Fiona, for one, no longer regarded him as a kind of human time bomb. He honestly believed that she liked him. And he didn’t want Hazel calling her with the news that he had threatened to electrocute his foster-brother.
    If that happened, he would find himself back at square one.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, swallowing his rage. ‘I wouldn’t really electrocute Thomas.’ And he put on his most innocent face, which seemed to reassure Hazel somewhat. She looked relieved. She even managed a smile. When she spoke, however, her voice was still shaky.
    ‘I’ll be reporting this to Thomas’s social worker,’ she said. ‘It’s a problem he’s going to have to work through. A problem we’ll all have to work through.’
    Lying in bed that night, Cadel wondered why he should have to work through Mace’s problems. He didn’t want anything to do with Mace’s problems – or Mace himself, for that matter – and was still seething at what had been done to his defenceless equipment. A brief inspection had told him that the damage would be almost impossible to rectify. What right did that hulking great moron have to bully him like this?
    In the old days, he could have dealt with Mace quite easily. Mace was no different from a lot of mean-spirited kids who had paid for their bad treatment of Cadel over the years. Not that they’d ever understood that they were being punished. Oh, no. Back in high school, when various bullies had received their just deserts, no one had understood that Cadel was ultimately responsible. He had disguised his involvement far too well. He had planned his many acts of revenge so carefully that there was never any obvious link between himself and each peculiar sequence of events that resulted in the downfall of yet another foe.
    Of course, Cadel had long ago rejected his murky past. Such petty, vindictive schemes were nothing to be proud of. All the same, he couldn’t help pondering the possible alternatives, should he ever decide to teach Mace a lesson. Plotting variables was so much easier when your target lived in the same house, followed the same schedule, and used the same bathroom . . .
    By the time he fell asleep, Cadel had devised a neat little scenario which, though it would hurt Mace cruelly, could not possibly be blamed on Cadel. A perfect crime, in other words. But when he woke up in the morning, he felt ashamed. He told himself that such thoughts were unworthy of Sonja – that they were part of Prosper’s poisonous legacy. And he got out of bed resolved to be more tolerant of his foster-brother’s quirks.
    Unfortunately, his good intentions came to nothing. After he’d been sneezed over, tripped up and trodden on, Cadel lost patience. None of these incidents