Mind Blind Read Online Free

hate sharing a bedroom and I only ever touch another human being by choice if I’m trying to beat them in a fight.
    I sat at the very back of the room, my chair pushed hard into the corner, while my mum clicked information up onto the big screen, and my Uncle Malcolm talked us through the job.
    I watched the screen, but I also watched my cousins nodding keenly in front of me. I could sense their desire to impress the senior readers. All except Roy, who was worried about something (possibly the welfare of the target); his little brother Josh, who was nervous (probably because this was his first job outside Scotland); and Daniel, who was confident he didn’t have to impress anyone because his dad already thought he was wonderful.
    All this felt entirely normal. What felt weird was the information we weren’t getting.
    Uncle Malcolm gave us details about times, locations and escape routes, and handed out a pile of maps, but there were no details about the background of the job, nor the intended outcome. He showed us pictures of the target, but didn’t tell us why the client wanted the target grabbed.
    This lack of detail suggested it was a rush job. I’d guessed that already, when all the younger generation were summoned from Scotland at short notice.
    A team of senior readers had come south earlier in the month. Mum and most of my uncles and aunts had vanished in the middle of the night a fortnight ago, rushing down to the Surrey warehouse we use as a base for our regular London operations.
    They’d left all the teenagers behind, with only Aunt Rose and Uncle Greg in charge of training, which meant hours of martial arts with Aunt Rose and hours of getting in touch with our feelings with Uncle Greg. But we had plenty of time to skive off too, which meant lots of fishing and footballduring the day and lots of pizza and action films at night.
    None of us had had a full night’s sleep or eaten any fruit and veg for a couple of weeks.
    Now here we were, after an overnight drive down in three uncomfortably packed people carriers, about to take part in a grab that clearly hadn’t been fully thought through.
    But I couldn’t say that. I’m only a foot soldier. I don’t get to question the bosses’ decisions. I don’t even get to do the exciting stuff. I just hang about at the back, picking up any mess. No one trusts me to do more than that.
    Though the briefing was sketchy, it was clear why they needed the fourth generation of readers in London. We were the best team for this job.
    Because the job was to identify, follow and grab a teenage target as she came out of school. Half a dozen strange adults hanging about the school gates would have been suspicious, but half a dozen teenagers would blend in perfectly.
    So we were shown pictures of the target, and a map of her usual route to her flamenco class, with an ‘x’ at the spot where Daniel and Martha would grab her and put her in the van, as well as the locations of the back-up van and the senior readers’ cars, and the safest routes back to base.
    That was it.
    My mum stood up. “Come on. We need to be there before the bell goes.” We grabbed our equipment and left the briefing room, which was really just a large shed in the middle of the warehouse. All our bedrooms and offices are in boxy little portacabins scattered around the cold grey space.
    We climbed into two blue people carriers and two white vans parked near the shuttered front doors, and drove off.
    I was in the second people carrier. Laura sat in the front with my mum. Becky, Roy and Josh sat in the middle. I sat in the back, on my own, as usual, wearing my black leather jacket and gloves, as usual.
    It’s not a fashion statement. Leather gives me someprotection. Not against emotions, nothing can stop them getting through, but against the thoughts I read whenever I touch someone. Leather is much better than fabric. With another animal’s skin between me and the rest of the world, it isn’t quite so