Mind Control: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 2) by Jane Killick Read Free Book Online Page B

over and cast their orangey glow across the road and across the grass. The sun had taken what little warmth it had given the day and brought the night chill to the air. Michael shivered and realised, for the second time that day, he shouldn’t have left his coat in the police station.
    He could have gone back in for a jumper or something, but the cool breeze on his face was actually refreshing. He started walking, with no particular plan of where he was going, and ended up in the car park.
    ~
    HODGES WAS STILL there, giving his car one last check over for the night, and wiping the back windscreen with a chamois leather. He stopped, mid-wipe, as he heard Michael’s approaching footsteps. He had taken off his tie and undone the top button of his shirt, which somehow made him look more human. He always wore a suit and tie to drive Michael around, like it was some kind of uniform, a barrier between him and the rest of the world that meant he did not have to show everyone his real self.
    “Shouldn’t you be inside?” said Hodges.
    “Yes,” said Michael.
    “Had a row with someone?”
    “They’re watching the trial.”
    “Ah,” said Hodges, as if he understood. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Michael could have looked inside his mind to check, but it was nicer to believe the man knew him enough so he didn’t have to explain himself.
    Hodges gave up wiping the back window of the black Audi A4, folded up his chamois leather and popped it in a pocket on the inside of the passenger door. He pushed the door closed again, pulled a set of keys from his pocket and pressed a button on the fob. The car responded with a bleep and a yellow flash of all four indicators. Michael’s body shuddered at the suddenness of it.
    Hodges smiled a sympathetic smile at him. “I had a friend who witnessed a bomb explode once,” said Hodges. “For a week afterwards, he couldn’t stand any kind of loud noise. There was one time, someone accidently dropped a glass and smashed it – we found him several minutes later hiding under the table.”
    “It’s not the explosion,” said Michael. “It’s the—”
    “The trial, yes you said.” Hodges pressed the button on the car keys in his hand again, and the car responded like before, with four simultaneous clicks as the locks of each door released. Michael shuddered again. His heart was racing.
    Hodges opened the nearest rear door. “Sit down,” he said.
    “I’m fine,” said Michael.
    “Sit.”
    There was something in Hodges’s tone that suggested it was not open to debate. Michael sat with his bum on the edge of the back seat and his legs dangling out of the doorway. “Was that in Iraq?”
    “Yes,” said Hodges.
    “Must have been awful.”
    “Some of it was,” he admitted. “But I was a soldier, I wanted to see action.”
    Michael thought about it for a moment. It seemed wrong, to him, that someone’s job should be going to war. “Did you ever see a suicide bomber?”
    Hodges folded his arms and leant back against the body of the car. The dim glow radiating from the street lights highlighted the lines of his face, etched by experience. “I saw the aftermath once,” he said. “A young man had gone into a marketplace with explosives strapped to his body and set them off. He killed more than a dozen people who had simply gone out that morning to buy vegetables. Mindless.”
    “Why do they do it?” asked Michael.
    “Isn’t that more your territory?” said Hodges. “Figuring out what’s going on in people’s minds?”
    “I’d still be interested in hearing what you think.”
    Hodges took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “They think their life has no meaning, they can’t see themselves having any sort of future, they can’t see themselves getting ahead in life through education or work or bringing up a family. Then someone comes along who tells them that their life can have meaning in death. So they choose death, and they don’t care who they take with