Hit Squad Read Free Page A

another vision for most of the past two hours, but I was too stressed now. Nothing was coming.
    ‘Great,’ Dylan said sarcastically.
    ‘I’m not staying behind,’ Cal said stubbornly.
    Nico sighed. ‘Come on, man, you’re exhaust—’
    ‘No, I’m coming with.’
    For a second, Nico and Cal glared at each other. Then Nico shook his head. ‘All right, but we don’t want too many people wandering about, drawing attention to ourselves, so Dylan,
you’ll have to stay here with Ed.’
    ‘Fine with me,’ Dylan yawned, settling herself against a tree.
    Nico checked his watch. ‘Ed, give us ten minutes, then contact me with remote telepathy. Okay?’
    Ed agreed and Nico, Cal and I set off. The night air was freezing cold. Our thin jackets – which were all we’d needed in sunny Sydney – only offered limited warmth. We walked
single file, the only sound the crunching of the frosted grass under our feet. In a few minutes we reached the church I’d seen in my vision. An unevenly laid road led off on the right. I was
sure it was the one from my vision. The large green door had to be along here somewhere. My confidence soared.
    ‘Down there,’ I said.
    We headed over. My breath was coming fast and shallow, a white mist around my head. We reached the top of the road. The whole town felt completely deserted.
    ‘Which door is it?’ Cal whispered.
    I looked up and down the street. It wasn’t a long road and all the doors were painted a dull brown. I’d been wrong. The door from my vision wasn’t here after all.
    ‘It’s not the right street,’ I whispered.
    Nico rolled his eyes. I didn’t say anything to his face, but inside I was feeling annoyed. Why did he have to act so superior? Didn’t he understand my Medusa ability wasn’t a
precise or controllable gift?
    I opened my mouth to protest that we just needed to retrace our steps and try another street, when heavy footsteps sounded behind us.
    I spun around. Two men – burly and unsmiling – were just a few metres behind us. They stopped as we stopped. One of them barked something at the other in a foreign language.
    ‘Looks like we’ve chosen the wrong hood to make a mistake in,’ Cal hissed.
    Nico smiled at the men. He raised his hands. ‘Hi,’ he said.
    The two men looked at each other. One, the taller of the two, gave a menacing, gap-toothed grin.
    And then he drew a knife.

3: The Patrol
    The man held the knife out towards us.
    ‘Stop,’ he said with a strong eastern European accent.
    ‘Oh man, they want to rob us,’ Nico groaned.
    I stared at the knife, my heart beating fast. Why couldn’t I have seen this in my vision earlier? Then we could have avoided it.
    Cal looked at me, his eyebrows raised. He edged closer and I realised he was trying to suggest we made a run for it . . . that he could fly us into the air and we could get away.
    It made sense, but Nico was already ahead of us, arms outstretched. At first I thought he was trying to snatch the man’s knife using telekinesis, then I realised his hands were open in a
gesture of surrender – he was trying to talk to the two men. I gulped. Nico obviously felt more confident than I did right now.
    Both men looked mean: the one with the knife was short and balding, with stubble over his chin; the other was taller and thinner, with a broken nose that gave his face a squashed look.
    ‘We don’t have any money with us,’ Nico said. ‘We’re just here trying to find out about some strange things that have been happening.’
    Knife Man narrowed his eyes.
    ‘What strange things?’ he said suspiciously.
    My heart skipped a beat. The man was still clutching his knife. Was he holding it too tightly for Nico to teleport it away if he needed to?
    ‘Weird stuff,’ Nico said. ‘There was a car that moved without a driver. Some tools that spun in the air.’
    The two men stared at him blankly. Knife Man turned to Broken Nose with raised eyebrows. ‘ These sound crazy things.’
    Broken