The Thought Pushers (Mind Dimensions #2)(25)
“Okay, now tell me what really happened,” Lucy says as soon as Sara gets out of earshot.
My mom the detective. She’s the reason I can usually lie so well. As a kid, I had to take my lying game to stellar levels in order to fool Lucy. I’m usually very smooth at it, but that’s when I’m not worried about head wounds and don’t have secret societies I have to keep quiet about.
“I didn’t want to worry Sara,” I say. “So I simplified things a bit, that’s all.”
“I gathered as much.” A slight smile appears on Lucy’s face. “Spill it.”
“The short version is that some Russian mobsters want my friends dead. Before you ask, I truly have little idea as to why. Suffice it to say, these same people might’ve murdered their family first.”
“What are your friends’ names?” Lucy says calmly. She’s acting as though I tell her about attempted assassinations all the time.
I give her Mira and Eugene’s last name and everything I can recall about their parents.
“I’ll look into it,” she says, writing something in a small notebook.
She can actually find out quite a bit. She still knows people in the organized crime division, including my uncle Kyle, who’s probably on his way up here as we speak. But it’s doubtful she’ll be able to help much. The Pusher who’s behind all this, according to my new friends, would be beyond a regular detective’s capabilities.
“Just information, Mom. Please don’t go after anyone,” I say and finally get a full smile out of her.
“You sound like your mother,” she says. “You don’t need to worry. I’m in the white collar division for a reason.”
“Someone reported a gunshot wound?” an unfamiliar male voice says, and Lucy and I look up to see a stocky policeman approaching. Great. The staff at this hospital can’t be bothered to get me my X-ray results, but they managed to file a report about my wound.
“It’s all right, Officer,” Lucy says, pulling out her badge and showing it to him. “I’m already on it.”
The policeman immediately turns around and departs, muttering something under his breath about incompetent Coney Island nurses, and I suppress a chuckle. There are certainly benefits to having a detective for a mom.
“There you are.” My uncle Kyle enters the room at that moment. “How’s the injured soldier?”
Uncle Kyle is not my biological uncle, obviously. He’s not even my adoptive uncle. He’s Lucy’s coworker. However, he’s played the role of my uncle since I was little, and I’m used to thinking of him as such.
“Hi Kyle,” I say, sitting up so I can shake his hand. It’s our thing. We don’t hug—we shake hands.
“Kyle, I’m glad you’re here. I want to check on this doctor situation,” Lucy says. “Please stay with him.”
“Of course,” Kyle says. “Give them hell.”
And Lucy joins the doctor hunt, which I would find comical if it weren’t for the fact that Mira is involved in it, too. Having Lucy there is literally bringing out the big guns—though I doubt she’ll draw her weapon on the medical staff. At least not unless they really piss her off.
“I heard there is a girl involved in this shooting,” Kyle says, winking at me. If there’s one thing I always liked about Kyle, it’s his lack of smotheringness. He doesn’t ask me how I got shot. He probably isn’t all that worried about me. And there is something refreshing about that.
This attitude of his has served me well over the years. There are tons of fun, albeit unsafe, things a boy wants to do but needs adult backing to actually do. For example, Kyle is the reason I know how to hold a gun. It’s the result of a secret trip we took to a shooting range. To this day, my moms still think we went to the New York Aquarium and would probably still retroactively give Kyle a beating for taking me to a shooting range instead.
“Yes, there is a girl. If you stick around, you might meet her.” For some reason, I’m hoping that he does. Since when do I care what Kyle thinks?
“I’ll try,” he says, smiling.
“I have something here that you might be interested in,” I say, reaching for the Gameboys.
When I was little, Kyle was my go-to video game partner. For all his faults, I’m thankful for the hours he spent playing Mortal Kombat with me. Ripping his head off, literally—well, the head of his character at least, via the Fatality move in that game—is one of my favorite childhood memories.
“I haven’t seen these before,” he says. “Is there a way to make it less blurry?”
Kyle and his lack of technology know-how. I’m forced to teach him how to turn off the game’s built-in glasses-free 3D effect. That’s what he calls blurriness. It’s a sacrilege to not see this game in 3D, but I’m not about to get into a verbal fight with him. A virtual game fight will have to suffice. Once the 3D is off, he chooses his character—Donkey Kong, who happens to be a tie-wearing giant gorilla. I myself go for the cartoony variation of Link, my usual princess-saving character.
As he did when I was a kid, Kyle plays cheap. He chooses a move that works and repeats it over and over. In this case, it creates the rather funny effect of a dancing gorilla.
As I’m about to execute a cunning plan of attack, Kyle’s phone rings.