Mindjacker Read online

  Even if she wanted to tell Noah the truth, she couldn’t. Agents could only reveal their occupation if they were married and certain documents were signed. Which meant she’d have to lie to Noah. But those who attempted relationships instead of settling for short-term companionship found that hiding the truth about their occupation often strained the relationship. And Quinn hated lying. She’d had enough of it from her dad, who’d lie that he was getting a job, that he’d gotten one, that he wasn’t drinking anymore. He would lie about things changing, and they never changed.

  Maybe it was time to end things with Noah. Do it now, before it got any more complicated.

  She checked her other message, but it wasn’t from Jones or Daria either. She rolled her eyes upon hearing her dad’s gravelly, flat voice.

  “Hey, kid. You gonna call me back, or what? You can’t stay mad forever.”

  Wanna bet?

  “Dealin’ sand is good money,” he went on. “Don’t blame me that these fucken thugs pay me for this shit. I gotta eat, too. And I don’t need judgment from you, when I know that whatever it is that pays your rent ain’t on the up and up…”

  She shook her head. It wasn’t the same, and she tried not to think about the fact that she hadn’t paid her rent yet…

  She deleted the message from her dad. She hated drug dealers, for a lot of reasons, one of which was it meant Downtownies preying on other Downtownies. Like they didn’t have enough problems. But what bugged her far more was that he’d been lying to her about it, pretending he still had his regular job. She thought he’d stopped lying when he laid off the booze years ago.

  Quinn sighed. She wished Jones would call, but knew that nagging him was a bad idea. What she needed right now was a plan, one that took all the new variables into account. Planning was something Quinn was good at, and it gave her a sense of control. She couldn’t control a lot of things in her life, but she could control almost every aspect of a job.

  She would get to work and wait for Jones to come around. He might bail like Daria did, but that wasn’t likely. Like Quinn, Jones had no other options.

  A few minutes later, showered and her wet hair cooling her, she sat down at her desk, her fan aggressively blowing the warm stale air in her place. She didn’t know what was worse, fresh hot air from opening the window, or the stale cooler air from keeping her window shut.

  The fact was, now they had to jack both Borelli and Linden. She decided that tackling Borelli first and getting him out of the way was the best plan. He wasn’t wealthy enough to afford mind invasion prevention training, so it would be a simple jack-and-go… except for the memory wipe.

  She shook her head. She dreaded that. Memory wipes were time consuming, they were dangerous, and they came with the stiffest of all jacker law penalties—twenty years minimum prison time. A wipe required patience and skill to locate and remove only the necessary memories, while preserving all others. Stories abounded in her circles about bad wipes from mind thieves, about those who lacked skill and wiped without concern for the consequences.

  Like what happened to Noah’s father.

  Mind thieves weren’t careful. If they wanted to wipe memories of a witness who’d seen them doing something illegal, they would take a shortcut and just wipe everything from that evening, which caused problems. At best, the witness would forget an important conversation he’d had with a family member. At worst, a key event got wiped, such as having a roast in the oven, a child in the car, or something else with dire consequences.

  It was the worst sort of mucking with a person’s mind. It was why all mind invasion was illegal and carried such stiff penalties, and Quinn understood that. But the moment Barney Landry developed his “mind reader” device, he’d created something that couldn’t be uncreated. And from her standpoint, she could either sit by and hope that the mind thieves didn’t take over, or join an organization that used the technology to preserve some type of order.

  The Protectorate only advised memory wipes in very specific situations and only for the most dire of reasons—usually to protect everyone involved in the job and the Protectorate itself, which meant protecting society. At the moment, Quinn had little faith in the Protectorate’s trustworthiness due to their leveraging their agents and treating them like they were disposable. But for as long as she’d been with the organization, they’d never veered from their code to protect people’s minds.

  Quinn would have to wipe Borelli’s memories of her and Jones approaching him before they jacked him, so he wouldn’t notify the police, Linden, or anyone else who might be involved in whatever dirty scheme they had going.

  Then, they’d go after Linden. Linden knew her face and seemed to like her. He hadn’t seen them outside his office door that night in their chef’s whites, but she couldn’t risk trying that gambit again. She needed a different approach, one that would get Linden back to that office. She would have to lure him back there, with a smile and some other incentive, something to intrigue him. She rolled her eyes. This was yet another scenario that Daria could’ve handled easily.

  Quinn continued working through all the ins and outs of the job, every detail and every possible thing that could go wrong.

  Then, her doorbell rang.

  Quinn froze. Who was at her door? No one visited her. If anyone wanted to see her, they called or messaged. Or found her at Hole.

  Her heart pounding in her chest, Quinn tiptoed to the door, just as another knock came. She looked out the peephole, finding someone unexpected standing outside.

  A kid, maybe fifteen, holding a box. A delivery boy.

  She opened the door.

  “Quinn?” he said.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Delivery for you.” He handed her the flat box, then leaned down to pick up something that made Quinn’s jaw drop.

  Flowers.

  Real ones.

  Chapter 22

  Quinn closed the door and set down the package, examining the flowers closely, her face flushed with surprise. They were delphiniums, deep blue-purple and tall and glorious, in a square glass vase. They were gorgeous.

  And one of her favorites.

  She searched for a card or any indication of who’d sent them, finding none. She had her suspicions, but how could Noah have known? Then she remembered. In one of the semi-arid areas at the botanic gardens, she’d stared at the tall flowers. Apparently, he’d noticed. Like he seemed to notice everything.

  Quinn picked up the package and opened it, finding a picture frame inside. She turned it over—it was a print, an artist’s rendition of a Blue Banner butterfly. She gaped at it, at how beautiful it was. Now she was pretty sure who’d sent it.

  Her eyes surveyed her tiny abode, wondering where to put her gifts. She decided to keep the flowers at her desk, and the art on her bedside table. When she went to throw away the packaging, she found the note, handwritten on a plain piece of white card stock, the writing printed by hand in black pen, angular and distinctly masculine.

  Quinn,

  I had a great time the other night. Seeing your face at the gardens, and how much you enjoyed it, was worth ten times the price of admission.

  Here’s the thing…

  I can’t stop thinking about you.

  I know. You probably didn’t expect that. I didn’t either, to be honest. There’s a lot we still need to talk about. There’s stuff I need to tell you, and I get the feeling you have stuff to tell me. Let’s meet for a quiet dinner Friday and have a face-to-face.

  I hope you’re not put off by me writing, rather than just telling you the truth to your face, which is how I normally do things. But… I guess I’m out on a limb here, and if you aren’t feeling it, I’d rather not see your beautiful face when you tell me that.

  Hope to hear from you soon,

  Noah

  Feeling her legs go a little wobbly, Quinn sat down on her bed. She read the note again. Then twice more.

  Her heart pounded, half out of excitement and half out of fe
ar. Noah had feelings for her. And now that he’d declared them, she realized she felt the same way. Part of her didn’t believe it, felt like it was some trick. Why would a guy like Noah want her for anything but fun? She’d willingly engaged in that fun because he was smart and he made her feel safe. But she never thought he’d develop real feelings.

  Or that she would.

  Quinn sat there, her stomach in knots, wishing she could talk to Daria. Daria would talk sense into her. Was she crazy to even consider this?

  And how did he know where she lived? True, a clever techie could find out… was that what Noah did? Was he a hacker or an information dealer? No, he was too physical, too social to be one of those guys. He’d probably used a finder service, where a customer could send a gift to someone without knowing their address, as long as the sender had a name and a general location, was willing to reveal his identity and pay for the service.

  She should say no, tell Noah she cared and was grateful for everything, but that she couldn’t do relationships. She had to. There was too much at stake. And he’d given her an easy out.

  She stared at her phone, willing herself to message him. But she couldn’t do it.

  Instead, she got back to work. If they were going to get this job done, she needed to know what Linden was up to. And she knew one good way to find out.

  When Quinn walked outside, she was amazed at how comfortable it felt. Apparently a “cold front” had rolled in, causing the temperature to plummet to a pleasant 102. Which was a good thing; the news had reported a record number of heatstroke cases that summer.

  She braved the garbage-sweat-cannabis stench of the subway station, weaving her way through the crowd to catch the train. She got off in Midtown, heading toward the business district, the streets teeming with suited women and men going from air-conditioned buildings to air-conditioned taxis and vice versa, minimizing their exposure to the midday sun.

  In a hat and long pants, Quinn began to feel warm. She walked as close to the buildings as she could, so the automatic doors would open and let a blast of AC cool her momentarily. Between that and the cooler temperature, the day felt so comfortable that Quinn got lost in thought. So much so that when one set of automatic doors opened, she plowed right into a man in a pinstriped suit, clearly just as preoccupied as she was.

  “Excuse me,” he said gruffly, glancing at her. Then he did a double take, and Quinn froze.

  He wasn’t just a man in a pinstripe suit. He was Pinstripes, the guy from the Stilwell job on the subway, who’d hoped to wake up her target. He recognized her face. Quinn kept walking, pretending like nothing happened while her heart hammered in her chest.

  Stilwell had lost his job and any stake he had in the company, and possibly more depending on how ruthless the client was. By now, he knew he’d been mindjacked. Which meant Pinstripes knew, too.

  But that was weeks ago, and she’d worn a wig and different clothes on that job. The few times she’d run into a former target, they rarely recognized her. However, once in a great while, someone who was especially good with faces would eye her suspiciously, and she would quickly find her way out of the situation.

  Quinn turned the corner, looking behind her a couple of times. Pinstripes didn’t follow her.

  Note to self: avoid the 6400 block of Sonora Avenue from now on.

  Finally, Quinn arrived at the corporate offices of Paragon Group, Linden’s restaurant parent company. She set her phone to do what needed doing.

  “Can I help you?” said a wispy blonde at the front desk, sipping a glass of ice water with a slice of lemon in it.

  “I’m lost,” Quinn said, suddenly aware of her own dry throat. “Do you know where Porter Investments is?”

  “One floor up, at the end of the hall,” the blonde said.

  “Thank you.”

  Quinn pressed the elevator button, intentionally pushing the wrong one. She was buying herself time, collecting and storing all the information she needed on Paragon’s network. When her phone indicated that she’d gotten it, she got on the elevator, rode it up to the next floor, and then rode it back down and left.

  Back at home, Quinn opened up a command line and began the process of hacking her way into Paragon. There had to be something there, something that could help her understand Linden’s endgame.

  But she found nothing. Nothing at all.

  She glanced at her flowers. She turned on the AC despite the cool day, knowing that a cooler home meant the blooms would last a little longer. She turned to look at the butterfly art, the colors so vivid, a perfect rendition of the real thing. It was time to do what she’d dreaded all day.

  She grabbed her phone, hesitating again. Then she began typing.

  I LOVED the art. I loved the flowers. And I loved the note.

  She hesitated again.

  Look forward to Friday night.

  Quinn closed her eyes for a moment, wondering if she was the biggest idiot in the world. When her phone beeped, she grabbed it. But it wasn’t Noah. It was Jones.

  Let’s get this motherfucker done.

  Chapter 23

  When Quinn’s phone rang on Friday afternoon, she grabbed it, hoping it wasn’t Noah looking to cancel because something came up at work. Not tonight. Not after she’d spent days considering what she would say to him, imagining what he would say to her, worrying about how she could be honest without violating her agreements, how she could be truthful without telling the whole truth.

  But it wasn’t Noah. It was Daria.

  “Dar,” she said, smiling.

  “Hey, girl,” Daria said.

  “It’s so good to hear your voice.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve been so uncommunicative. I just… I had a lot to think about. I still do, which means I can’t talk long.”

  Quinn bit her lip as her relief began to fade.

  “You there?” Daria said.

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “I just… I need to stay away from you and from that life for a while. And I know things must be hard for you right now, because if you’d made Tier One you would’ve told me. I feel bad for abandoning you and I wanted to call so you wouldn’t worry.”

  Quinn stood perfectly still in her apartment, staring out the window at the brick wall across the way. “I’m glad you called.”

  “How is everything?”

  “It’s good,” Quinn said, trying to sound confident, not sure if she was doing it for Daria or for herself. “Just grindin’ as usual,” she added, knowing Daria would appreciate the Downtown term. “What have you been up to?”

  “Research. On jobs. And thinking about my future.”

  “Great. Anything promising?”

  “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  Quinn nodded, not sure what else to say. She started to pace.

  “Is everything else okay, Quinn?”

  Her gaze returned to her art, her stomach roiling at the thought of talking to Noah that night. “Yes. Of course.”

  “Liar.”

  “Why am I a liar?”

  “I can hear you pacing like you always do when something’s bothering you.”

  Quinn laughed a little. “I met someone, Dar. Someone out of my league. And…” she trailed off.

  “And it’s complicated because of what you do.”

  “Yeah. He’s into something too, though. And he wants to have the Talk. Tonight.”

  “Shit. No wonder you sound so weird. Do you love him?”

  Love him? “I… I don’t know. It’s stupid, right? It’s stupid and I should cancel.”

  “No,” Daria said sternly. “Don’t you dare—”

  “There are only four ways this can go down, Daria: we’re both in, we’re both out, he’s out, or I’m out. And if one’s out, that means the other is too, which means we only have a one-in-four chance of moving forward.”

  Daria laughed. “Quinn, that is the dumbest application of probability I have ever heard. You aren’t two dice, you’re two people who work in covert o
ccupations and like each other enough to have the Talk. You have good taste—well, at least you do now—which means there’s no way this guy has a job you couldn’t deal with. Which means you’ll both agree that you can’t talk about your work. And that rules out two more of those categories, giving you a three-out-of-four chance. Which is why you’re terrified, because you know the odds are good, and that things could get complicated and you could get hurt again.”

  Quinn stopped, amazed at Daria’s wisdom. “This is why I love you, Dar.” But another thought occurred to her, and she started to pace again. “What if… after what happened with Wyatt…”

  “That was a long time ago. And Wyatt was Wyatt. He was never gonna change. Just go. Talk. Then decide.”

  “I will. Thanks, Dar.”

  “You’re welcome. I’ll call you sometime, I promise.”

  Quinn nodded. And before she could respond, Daria hung up.

  Just as Quinn went back to work, her phone rang again. She grabbed it, knowing it was Daria adding just one more thought, something she used to do often.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey, beautiful.”

  Quinn froze. “Noah. Hey. How are you?”

  He let out a sigh. “Bad news.”

  “Work?”

  “Yeah. It’s… I’ll explain later. I’m sorry, Quinn. I really want to see you.”

  She shifted her gaze to the flowers, a mixture of disappointment and relief hitting her all at once. “Me too.”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  Quinn hesitated. She and Jones had already met, talked, and planned. Tomorrow night was game time. “I… can’t. I’ve got plans.”

  “How about Sunday morning? Ten o’clock? I’ll make you those pancakes I promised.”