The Boy Who Couldn’t Miss (Blind Spot #2) (Blind Spot Series) Read online

  Buchry’d dropped the ball he’d been holding, but folks started pointing at him anyway.

  Someone asked Hax if he’d thrown the balls. He started to deny it but Aldon said, “Hell yeah! He saved that woman!”

  The game was called because of the incident, but Wilson conceded in view of the fact that they were down twenty-one points with 2:34 to go and both teams had already put their scrubs in.

  The two teams together thronged to carry Buchry off the field as one big cheering mob.

  ***

  In the boisterous locker room, players and coaches thronged around congratulating Hax. When the crowd around Hax thinned a little he found himself face-to-face with Jurgens. Jurgens studied him for a moment, then stepped forward to give him a brotherly hug, “Amazing what you did out there, man. I’m planning to bail you out next week… but I’m afraid I won’t get the chance.”

  Hax almost said he was sorry, but caught himself in time and changed to, “Thanks man. Sometimes you just get hot, you know?” He tried to think of something else to say but stopped with that.

  Jurgens said, “I think that was a lot more than just a hot streak.”

  After Jurgens moved away, Hax’s eye caught on Elias, leaning up against a locker with his shirt off. Elias was staring at Hax. The guy’s ripped, Hax thought, wondering if Elias might attack him again. Elias leaned up off the locker and gave Hax a nod, “Awesome game, man.” He turned to go back to his locker, but then turned back, “Amazing what you did for that woman too.” He gave Hax a little salute and continued on.

  When Hax left the locker room, applause broke out and another crowd thronged around him. Shouts reflected excitement about the woman he’d saved and the game, though Hax took a lot more pride in the two throws that’d probably saved the woman’s life. To his astonishment people started asking him to sign autographs. A lot of girls he’d seen around the school pressed close to give him hugs. This worried him and he looked around for Hallie. She wasn’t in the crowd, but when he scanned farther away he saw her leaning up against the wall, apparently waiting patiently with another girl. Hax hoped Hallie wasn’t pissed, but turned his attention back to the crowd around him.

  When the crowd thinned, Hax made a few apologies and broke away, striding toward Hallie. She threw her arms around him and squeezed. “Hey, Hero,” she whispered hoarsely in his ear.

  Hax shrugged, “I’m not a hero. I just had an opportunity…”

  “Yeah, sure,” she laughed. “That’s what I hate about you. If you weren’t so conceited, you’d be perfect.”

  Hax looked over to see who’d been standing with Hallie, “Roni?! I didn’t know you were coming home this weekend!”

  “Hah! The way Dad’s been bragging about his son the football player? Of course I had to come home.” She lifted an eyebrow, “I thought he was exaggerating, turns out he really didn’t know the half of it.”

  Roni drove and the three of them went out for a hamburger before dropping Hallie off at her house. On the way to their house, Roni pulled off the road and turned to Hax. She said, “Before we get home in front of Mom and Dad, I’d like to talk to you about…” She paused uncertainly.

  “Go ahead…”

  “I might need your help again. There’s an organized crime family in Blayton that’s just as bad as the Castanos were here.” Roni glanced over at him, “They sell drugs, murder people, and hold sex slaves.”

  Hax grimaced, “How’d you… find out about them?”

  “My roommate. A guy slipped a roofie in her drink and tried to… you know.”

  “No, I don’t know. What’s a roofie?”

  “Um, they call it the date-rape drug. It dopes you so you’re nearly unconscious and kind of paralyzes you so you can’t resist. Then the asshole that gave it to you has sex with you. Worse, afterward you can’t remember.”

  “Oh…” Hax said as he considered the implications. “Kind of like you’re a temporary sex slave?”

  Roni nodded.

  Hax thought a moment longer then said, “So, somehow, you came to the amazing conclusion that criminals sell illegal drugs like that one?”

  “No, one of our friends wanted to put the people that sell roofies out of business. She got together a list of local dealers that sell roofies and we sent the list to the cops.”

  Hax stared at her, “You didn’t think about what almost happened to you when you were trying to tell people about the Castanos?”

  “We did it anonymously. What do you think I am? Some kind of idiot?”

  “Well…” he trailed off, grinning.

  She hit him on the shoulder. Not gently either.

  “No, no, not an idiot,” Hax said, shrinking away as if terrified. He got a serious look, “Hey, Mom doesn’t want you to know this, but…” he paused as if considering.

  “But what?”

  “Some guy named Romano’s taken over the Castanos’ turf.”

  For a second Roni’s expression stayed the same, then horror spread over her face, “What?!”

  “A guy named Romano’s…”

  “I heard what you said! How do you know this?!”

  “People have been talking about it. Besides, Romano’s men’ve been coming around the store, charging for protection, just like Castano’s guys used to.”

  “And why doesn’t Mom want me to know?!” Roni asked angrily.

  “Hey settle down. She doesn’t want you going after him for fear…”

  “Romano’s running the mob in Blayton. Well, he’s the guy who’s selling drugs to the dealers anyway. And he seems to have the cops under his thumb too. I think he’s running the whole thing.”

  “You think it’s the same guy… the one that’s running things down here?”

  “Of course…” she trailed off, looking unsure. “Well, I assume so, Blayton’s not that far away. If it’s not the same guy, they’re probably related… don’t you think?”

  Hax gave an unhappy nod. “You’re not planning to try to take these guys on by yourself, the way you did the Castanos, are you?”

  “Well, no. Or, I hope not. I sent a video to a bunch of people at FBI headquarters. Maybe they’ll take him down.”

  “Video of what?”

  “Of Romano and two of his guys murdering a husband and wife, and holding a young girl.”

  Hax drew back, “How’d you get that video?!”

  “I was following up the trail of drug dealers, trying to figure out who was selling the roofies. It led me to Romano’s place… while he was doing it.”

  “You were there?!”

  “Hax, how else would you think I got a video?” Then, apparently in reaction to the expression on Hax’s face, “I was invisible. Don’t get freaked out.”

  “Don’t get freaked out?! You’re supposed to have me with you for backup!”

  “Hax, I didn’t know I was going to need backup. And, it turns out I didn’t.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Roni described being in a locked room with the mobsters while they killed some people and then were about to rape a young girl. She kept pausing to gather her thoughts. At first Hax thought she was having difficulty remembering stuff that was traumatic. However, he soon realized she was trying to make it seem less horrific and downplay the danger she’d been in, even while she was knocking out—or perhaps killing—mob enforcers by hitting them on their heads with the lid of a toilet tank!

  Hax slowly shook his head. “You’ve got to have me with you when you do this kind of stuff!”

  Roni looked off into the distance. “I know. I kind of got surprised by this situation. But I did really wish you were there. Next time I hope you will be?”

  Hax nodded. Then, “What next time?” he asked slowly.

  She gave him a look as if she thought he was slow, “If the FBI doesn’t stop him… we can’t just let him keep doing this stuff!”

  Hax thought for a moment. “I guess you’re right,” he said with a sigh.

  Roni brightened, “
Hey, it turns out I can make you invisible too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It should have been obvious. If I can make a bicycle or car invisible, I should have been able to make a person invisible too, right?”

  “You can make a car invisible!?”

  “Yeah. Well, I’m pretty sure I can anyway. I haven’t had anyone I could ask so they could tell me if they could see it. We should try some of these things out, huh?”

  “Yeah. We’d better get home though. Mom and Dad are going to be wondering what’s going on.”

  “Okay,” Roni said, pulling back onto the road.

  When they got home they couldn’t find a parking space so she had to park a few blocks away. When they got out of the car, she said, “Can you see the car now?”

  Hax turned and an astonished look appeared on his face. “No! Well… wait.” He looked at Roni, “It’s big and the blurry spot where I can’t actually see the stuff behind it… it’s a lot more noticeable. I think people’ll think something’s wrong if they get much time.”

  She glanced at the car, then said, “Probably a lot less of a problem when the car’s moving. Your mind would be able to fill in what’s there as soon as the car moves past it.” She reached for the handle, “Let me drive away and see if that’s true.”

  “No! We need to get in before Mom starts freaking out. Besides, we need to know how it works in the daytime, not at night.”

  “Okay,” Roni said, clearly disappointed.

  When they opened the door, their mother looked up suspiciously, “We got home from the game a long time ago! Where’ve you two been?”

  Hax felt his insides tighten, but Roni went on the offensive. She narrowed her eyes and said, “Hax tells me you’ve been trying to keep me from finding out about the Romanos!”

  Hax felt appalled that Roni’d told their mother something he felt like he’d expressed to her in confidence. His mother’s eyes shot to him. Angrily, she said, “You told her?!”

  Hax didn’t have to answer. Eyes flashing, Roni fired another salvo, “I’ve already had my own encounter with the Romanos Mom! They run everything in Blayton too. Keeping me in the dark did not do me any favors.”

  Tansey’s eyes widened. “What happened?!” she said, appalled.

  “Some guy gave my roommate a roofie. We were trying to figure out where the roofies were coming from…”

  Tansey interrupted, “What’s a roofie?”

  Roni sat down and went into her explanation of the date-rape drug and how she’d followed a dealer to a distributor, and the distributor to Romano himself. Then, holding her mother’s eyes, she told her about the Tillmans’ murder and the young girl Romano was holding in the room when he murdered the couple. Hax knew that—in view of the family’s history—a drug which temporarily enslaved people as well as the fact Romano’d been holding a young girl were both guaranteed to sicken his mother. Haltingly, she said, “People like that don’t deserve to live… But, I hope you don’t think you can do anything about it yourself?”

  Roni just stared at her mother for a moment, then said, “So, you think I should just leave that girl there with those monsters and hope that someday, someone sets her free?”

  Looking even more distressed, Tansey said, “No! Report it to the FBI or something. Like you did the Castanos and their protection racket.”

  Roni narrowed her eyes, then said, “Did that. But, I also bashed those two goons on their heads and got that girl out of there and back to her family.”

  “Oh!” Tansey said, raising her hands to her cheeks. She closed her eyes, apparently trying to come to grips with these events. Opening them, she said, “I won’t argue that the girl didn’t need to be saved, or that those guys didn’t deserve what they got… But, you’re my little girl. I can’t bear to think of you going into harm’s way! Even… when it’s in such a good cause. I still think you should’ve let the authorities handle it.”

  Roni leaned across the table and took her mother’s hands, “I understand, Mom, but the authorities don’t seem to be acting. Certainly not fast enough for that young girl, or for other girls who might be assaulted using roofies. You’ve got to keep in mind that I can do things no one else can and that I can do them more safely than almost anyone else. Personally, I think I have a… a duty, to do what I can.”

  Suddenly Ravinder came thundering down the stairs, “Is my boy the quarterback home, and no one even told me?!” He crossed the room in several strides and threw his arms around Hax. He didn’t notice Roni, or the tears tracking down his wife’s cheeks. “I knew you could do it! That was amazing! Up and down the field you marched them and no one could come close to stopping you!”

  Hax patted his father on the back, absently noting that his father was now quite a few inches shorter than he was. Did he see the incident with the woman? Or, in my father’s mind, was saving her life less important than that game?

  Chapter 8

  Early Saturday morning, Roni dragged Hax out to do some experiments. She was certainly able to make the car invisible, and when it started to move as she drove it away, it immediately became impossible to even find the blind spot where details were unclear. She’d told him she was going to drive around the block to see if she was invisible while she was approaching, as well as while she was driving away. When he thought she’d had enough time to get down to the corner, he started to turn away, but out of the corner of his eye he thought he got a glimpse of her car as it turned right.

  Uncertainly, he watched that direction for another minute, then turned to look in the opposite direction, waiting for her approach from the corner behind him. He was still waiting when he heard her voice, “So, could you see me at all?”

  Suddenly, she and her car were both there beside him on the street. She’d rolled down the passenger side window to talk to him. “Um, no, but I think I got a glimpse of you as you turned the far corner.” He shrugged, “If you’re really using some kind of mental telepathy or hypnotism to keep people from seeing you, maybe you can’t do it beyond a certain distance?”

  Her eyes widened a little, “Oh, I hadn’t considered that possibility.”

  “Maybe you should drive straight away for a couple of blocks so I can see when you become visible. Or, if you don’t become visible, maybe it was something to do with the direction I was looking. I’d started to turn away and kind of saw you out of the side of my vision. Maybe you can only hide in the middle of people’s vision?”

  “Okay, I’ll drive straight away down the street…” It wasn’t until a moment or two later that he realized she, the car, and the sound of its idling engine had all disappeared. Hax stood, looking down the street and wondering where she was. Suddenly, he realized he was seeing her gray car, still driving away from him in the next block. It hadn’t “appeared,” he’d just kind of “noticed it” driving away. Several blocks further down the street, he saw her make a U-turn and start back towards him. Carefully watching and thinking about it, he still had a hard time discerning the moment when she and the car disappeared.

  Then she was parked in front of him again. “Well?” she asked.

  “I’ve been paying more attention to when you disappear and reappear, but it’s… as if those events are hard to detect.” He shrugged, “I guess that’s the way it’s been working all along. I remember those times you made yourself disappear while we were sitting at the table to eat. I never noticed you disappearing, just, after a while, I realized you were gone.”

  “Yeah, I’ve pretty much figured out that something like that happens because people never seem to exclaim about it when I disappear. But,” she grinned at him, getting out of the car, “what about the main question? Could you see me and the car when we got far enough away?”

  “Oh, yeah. Somewhere down toward the end of the block there, you reappeared.”

  “Somewhere?” She gave him a frustrated look, “How far away was it?”

  Hax rolled his eyes, “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I
t’s hard to tell when you come and go. I noticed you again just beyond the corner, but…” He shook his head, “When I saw you, I felt like you’d always been there; even though I knew that couldn’t be true.”

  Roni chewed her lip as she thought about this. “What about that girl down there?” she said, pointing down the street.

  “What girl?” Hax said, looking that direction. There was a guy walking away from them, about a block and a half away. “There’s a guy down there, but if you’re thinking he’s a girl, your eyesight’s going bad.”

  Roni smirked, “He’s got a girl with him. You just aren’t seeing her.”

  Uncertainly, Hax said, “But shouldn’t I be seeing her? She’s more than a block away?”

  “I think that’s more proof that this works the way I think it does. It’s not how far you are from her; it’s how far you are from me. Since I’m standing next to you, I should be able to keep you from seeing her no matter how far away she is.”

  “Oh.” Hax looked at Roni, “yeah, I guess that sounds right.”

  She said, “Keep watching the guy so we can be sure. If she appears, my whole theory’s blown out of the water.”

  The guy turned into a store about 3 ½ blocks away, but the girl never became visible, suggesting Roni was right. Hax said, “Any more experiments you want to run?”

  Roni shook her head, “No, but if the FBI doesn’t do something about Romano pretty soon…” She trailed off as if she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say.

  “You’re thinking we should go after him?”

  “Yeah, well… no. I think I should go after him, but…”

  “But,” Hax said, “it sure would be nice to have some backup, right?”

  “Yeah,” Roni sighed, looking worried, “these guys are scary.”

  “I’ve got your back,” Hax said reassuringly. It seemed to help as her stressed look seemed to dissipate. “What’s the plan?”

  Roni closed her eyes and tilted her face up toward the sun for a moment, apparently thinking. “First, we give the FBI a little time to do their thing, like Mom wants. If nothing seems to happen by next week sometime, I’ll give you a call. I’ll just ask if you’re free some night that week, because I don’t think we want any detailed plans going out over the phone system in case someone really can track that kind of stuff. If I ask if you’re free on Tuesday night, I’ll really be asking about Monday—always the night before the one I ask about.”