The Enlightened (Mind Dimensions #3)(49)

How did Mimir know Lucy was in trouble? He said he knew because I knew. But I didn’t know. Or did I? Did I have all the information necessary to suspect Kyle without realizing that I did?

As I think, things fall into place.

Like the fact that the Pusher is a Traditionalist—a fact everyone has mentioned, more than once. Whether part of the Orthodoxy conspiracy my grandparents mentioned or acting as a solo agent, everyone agrees that whoever was after me was likely a Traditionalist, because only a Traditionalist would see my parents’ union as a horrible crime against the old ways.

And what are Traditionalists like? According to what I was told, they are very... well, traditional... in their views.

And what is Kyle’s most defining quality? Why did we have so many arguments while I was growing up? Because he’s as traditional as can be.

This alone, however, doesn’t make Kyle guilty. Nothing in isolation does. I recall the strange phone call Kyle got while he was visiting me at the hospital the day I got shot in the head. After the call, he bailed on Lucy, whom he’d brought to see me.

Now it occurs to me that the call was probably from Jacob, who told Kyle about my heritage—the reason Jacob had the Russian mob make an attempt on my life that morning. After the call, on his way out, Kyle must’ve Pushed that nurse to try to kill me. Given how willing Kyle was to kill me once he learned the truth, I feel very lucky that my biological mom had Guided Lucy and Sara to go to Israel and pretend that Sara was artificially inseminated with me. I was so mad when I learned about that lie, but Sara pretending to be my biological mother probably saved my life. Thanks to that story, Kyle never suspected I might be anything but an ordinary kid. A kid he’d never tried Guiding, thanks to the taboo on touching children that Liz told me about.

As I think about it, I realize Kyle probably didn’t even know Margret was ever pregnant. In Lucy’s memories, he began to avoid Mark at some point, likely due to his relationship with Margret. Besides, Mark and Margret seemed to have hidden her pregnancy from most of the world, their OB-GYN being the unfortunate exception. It was that doctor’s records that must’ve given Jacob—Kyle’s Reader partner—that extra certainty that I was Mark’s son, though Jacob might well have tried to have me killed based solely on my resemblance to my dad. How stupid did Kyle feel, with a ‘hybrid abomination’ being under his nose this whole time? Since he’d seen me grow up, it probably never occurred to him to look for any kind of a resemblance to anyone.

Speaking of resemblance... Kyle also has the same facial features as most Guides. Facial features I also have. I never would’ve realized it without thinking of him in this context, but now, those subtle clues are obvious. This explains why, on some occasions, folks thought Kyle and I were blood relatives. Those people were misled, to a small degree, by these ethnic-like similarities between Guides.

Then a major realization hits me. The Russian mob. They’re the big clue once you know who the suspect is. Kyle has worked in Organized Crime for decades. That’s how he picked the scariest guys to use as his weapons. He has files on them. Taxpayers have been financing Kyle’s private assassin research for years.

And finally, my parents’ unsolvable murder leads back to Kyle, or to someone who was similarly close to my parents. I should’ve realized this sooner. According to Hillary, her sister Margret was a very powerful Guide. If a regular Joe Schmoe had tried to kill her, she would’ve made him kill himself instead—or reversed any Push that person had received.

The only way to kill her was to catch her off-guard, so the killer had to be someone neither of my parents would perceive as a threat. Someone who was close to them. Someone they loved like family. That was the only way someone could’ve shot Margret in the back in her own house—which leaves Lucy and Kyle at the top of the suspects list. And as it turns out, they were both responsible in a weird way. Coward that he is, Kyle decided to use Lucy to do his dirty work. He Pushed her to kill Margret first because she was the more dangerous of the two; she could’ve reversed Kyle’s compulsion in Lucy’s mind, so Kyle had Lucy use the element of surprise.

If I can come up with this many clues just off the top of my head, I understand how the combined intelligence of the fourteen people who made up Mimir figured out that Kyle was the threat. From there, it must’ve been a small leap to conclude that Lucy was in trouble. Mimir knew Lucy was investigating Mira’s parents’ murder—the murder that was ordered by Jacob, Kyle’s ally. The murder Kyle manipulated the rest of his department into dismissing as mob-on-mob violence.

Mimir saw the danger the way I should have, but failed to.

As I chew the tasteless sandwich the nurse brought, I realize that if Lucy had died, I never would’ve forgiven myself for not figuring all this out sooner, for being the one who, thanks to his big mouth, put her in danger in the first place.

My phone rings.

“I’m downstairs,” Bert says.

“Meet me in Room 3 in Intensive Care,” I say. “Say you’re here to visit my mom.”

He arrives after I finish my food.

“How is she?” he asks right away. “What happened?”

“Let’s step out into the hallway,” I say, and as soon as we’re away from any prying ears, I tell him everything.

“Shit,” Bert says. “I’ve never liked that uncle of yours, but I’m still flabbergasted. To just up and try to kill you as soon as he learned you’re half-Reader, half-Guide? What about all the years he’s known you?”