Mind Thief Read online

  “I know you can’t.” Quinn sat down next to Jones. “The same job that pushed us forward has also raised the stakes for us. And I’m sorry. If I’d known, I would never have gotten involved with him.” She paused. “He can’t dime you anyway. He saw you, but he doesn’t know who you are. I’ll take the fall if it comes to that.”

  Jones shook his head. “I don’t want that. I want you to nail that fucker to the wall. He let us go, and he can’t be stalkin’ you and messin’ with you now that he’s had a chance to stew about it all.”

  Quinn sighed. She stood up, took a t-shirt from the pile, and began folding it. She understood Jones’s anger, and his fears. They did have more to lose now. She’d finally reached Tier One and brought Jones along with her, and they’d finally started to enjoy the comfort and safety that came with the higher pay and better jobs. Jones and his family hadn’t moved out of White Sands yet—they wanted to choose a location that fit their needs, and Jeffrey’s.

  The one thing that had brought Quinn comfort was seeing that Noah wasn’t crooked, that he hadn’t been gaming her and was genuinely surprised to find out she was a mindjacker. So his most recent behavior was unsettling. Having an enemy was one thing, but an enemy with power, whose behavior you couldn’t predict, was quite another.

  But then again, should she be surprised that Noah hunted her down? After all, like Jones said, he’d had time to stew, to reflect on who Quinn was and what she’d done. To him, she was the enemy, one of the lawless cretins who’d partly crippled his father, and one he’d let go in a moment of weakness. Noah was someone who needed, more than anything, to win. And now, he no longer had a reason to let her get away with being the thing he hated most.

  So he would mess with her. And he would do so because he could.

  Jones stood up again, and they folded the rest of the laundry in silence. Finally, Jones turned to her.

  “You gotta nip this shit in the bud. One way or the other. If he finds you, if he apprehends you… we’re both done for and I can’t have that.”

  Quinn nodded. “I know.”

  Jones grasped the door handle, but hesitated. “You said you got leverage, an ace in the hole. Use it, girl.”

  He opened the door, and they emerged from the bedroom. Jones’s mother Christa sat on the couch with Jeffrey, watching the Demons game. Christa looked over, her face round and soft while being wary and hard at the same time, a combination Quinn often saw in Downtown women over forty. She smiled and came over to shake Quinn’s hand.

  “It was good to meet you, Quinn. Jones has said nice things about you.”

  Quinn smiled back, knowing that Jones wasn’t feeling any of those things at the moment. “You’ve raised one hell of a guy, ma’am,” she said, grasping her hand.

  “His father was one hell of a guy,” she replied. “But I guess you know all about losin’ a parent too young, don’t you?”

  Quinn nodded, but said nothing. She didn’t let herself think about her mother that often. She looked over at Jeffrey, who was basically a doppleganger for Jones, but without the tats or swagger.

  She waved. “Bye Jeffrey! It was great to meet you!”

  Jeffrey looked at her for a moment before looking down and away, bringing his fingers to his mouth to chew on his nails.

  “It takes a while before he feels comfortable around new people,” Christa added.

  “I understand. He’s a cutie, much cuter than his thuggish brother.” She poked Jones, who rolled his eyes.

  Christa snickered at that.

  Quinn waved goodbye, giving Jones a reassuring nod before she left and started making her way back home.

  She thought about her situation. The easiest thing to do was find another partner and release Jones from any liability that came with partnering with her. But then she would only transfer that liability to a new partner, and there was no guarantee Jones would get picked up by another Tier One jacker. Besides, she’d grown fond of Jones. More importantly, she trusted him.

  Instead, she would do what it took to keep Jones and his family safe. They hadn’t come this far to let some angry jacker cop take away their livelihood. She needed to make it clear to Noah that harassing her had consequences.

  And she already had an idea.

  Chapter 5

  Quinn looked around again, her eye on the nearby stairwell. That was her escape if a neighbor happened to emerge from an apartment or the elevator. She tinkered with the security system on the door, hoping it wouldn’t take her long to disable.

  Fortunately, there wasn’t much activity in the building. It was late on a weeknight in Corazon, the “heart” of El Diablo, so-named because the neighborhood was roughly in the center of the city, not because it was particularly warm or caring. Corazon was just another decent Midtown neighborhood, filled with Midtown apartment buildings that housed Midtown people.

  People like Sergeant Noah Martinez: jacker police, good lay, and, apparently, harasser of women he believed would cave to his fear-mongering tactics.

  Well, fuck him. She grew up Downtown, for crying out loud. She could handle him.

  Or so she told herself from the moment she came up with this crazy plan.

  Quinn fiddled with the security system for several more minutes, realizing how dependent she’d become on her tech partner for disabling the stubborn things. She wouldn’t need to break in at all if Noah hadn’t changed the damned entry code since she was last there.

  Yeah, she’d surreptitiously watched as Noah entered his code when he brought her home on those three nights. Just in case. Back then, she had no idea who she was dealing with. Neither did he.

  Suddenly, she heard voices, then the fatal click of a door handle. Quinn quickly darted around the corner and into the stairwell. It was hot and stifling inside, reminding her of her former home and its sweltering, stuffy hallways.

  After hearing the ding of the elevator, the voices disappeared. Quinn tiptoed out and resumed what she was doing. Finally, the security console lights went dark. She looked up and down the hallway one last time before she opened the door and entered Noah’s place, reengaging the security system before she closed the door quietly.

  It looked like she remembered. Neat, nice but unpretentious furniture, a single piece of art—a painting of a baseball glove with a ball inside—hanging next to a bookshelf. It smelled clean and masculine. Like Noah.

  She tiptoed around, making sure he wasn’t there. She’d staked the place out earlier and waited for him to leave, knowing he headed to work and wouldn’t return home until evening.

  Being there brought back a flood of vivid memories, every one of which she batted away like a persistent fly.

  She went to the bookshelf, expecting a collection of crime fiction or books on baseball lore. But instead she found a series of textbooks, the kind educated people kept, with titles like Essentials of Criminal Justice and Justice in Today’s World and The Politics of Water Rights. Quinn sighed. It was just one of many things she’d liked about Noah. Until she learned what kind of guy he really was.

  She sat down on Noah’s comfortable couch and planned her next steps.

  Under no circumstances would she let Noah terrorize her or threaten what she and Jones had spent most of their twenty-eight years working their asses off to achieve… merely because he liked to “win.” Yeah, he had dirt on her. He knew she was a mindjacker and had pretty much caught her and Jones redhanded that night after the debacle at the Linden home. That wasn’t good.

  But she had dirt on him, too. He let them go, for one thing, something she was sure his superiors wouldn’t enjoy hearing. Especially after finding out Noah had engaged in a romantic little affair with her. For which she had proof, including the butterfly art and the handwritten note, both covered in his fingerprints.

  Or, if that didn’t impress them, maybe the more recent art and note filled with threats would, showing that Noah wasn’t the justice-seeker he pretended to be. And even if EDPD’s Division of Mind Invasion was crooke
d and didn’t care about her procured evidence, she felt pretty confident the media would gobble it up, which meant taking down Noah’s entire department and its reputation with it.

  “Dumbass,” she muttered. “All you had to do was leave it alone. I was willing to. But no… you have to win.”

  All she had to do now was wait for Noah to come home from work, let her weapons and the element of surprise work in her favor, and kindly explain to Noah that threatening or otherwise bothering her in any way was not in his best interests.

  He would have little option but to agree. Pissed off at her or not, needing to win or not, Noah would make the choice that meant preserving his job and the reputation of his unit. That, she knew.

  As the evening wore on and the sun disappeared, Quinn sat there, growing more and more restless as the time she expected him home grew near, then passed. She’d prepared for this, knowing that someone like Noah wasn’t a homebody and wouldn’t spend an evening sitting around his apartment drinking beer and watching baseball. She’d wanted to be there in case he did, though. But as time wore on, past dinnertime and well into evening, she grew more and more antsy. Sitting around wasn’t her thing either.

  Especially when she needed something to get her mind off that day’s training session with Remi, which was nearly as terrifying as the first. She’d been more aware of what was happening this time, but the attack on her fear centers was as real as before… and just as crippling.

  Maybe this was a mistake. Noah was powerful, and here she was breaking the law and trespassing on the property of someone who could easily take her all the way down for at least a decade. She was powerful too, but Noah had the city and the law on his side.

  She paced, wondering if she shouldn’t leave, shouldn’t go with a more conventional plan, like cornering him somewhere in the city, where he couldn’t do anything about it. Just as she began gathering her things, she heard the elevator ding. It sounded close, like it was on this floor. Then footsteps and the light swishing of fabric growing closer.

  When Quinn heard beeping as Noah entered the security code on his door, a rush of adrenaline ran through her. It was on.

  Quinn secured her brass knuckles on her left hand and her energy weapon in her right. She knew Noah would challenge her, would probably test her to see how serious she was about using it. Oh, she would use it alright. She knew just where to aim that thing, and how hard to press, to ensure the injuries were bad enough to temporarily hobble him.

  The door opened and she heard footsteps on the tile. Quinn raised her weapon and got ready to recite her greeting. A figure entered the apartment. Long, dark hair. Red dress.

  A woman.

  Quinn quickly ducked behind the chair before the woman could turn around and spot her. She heard the clicking of heels, followed closely by the louder, heavier sound of a man’s footsteps.

  “Oh, my goodness,” a feminine voice said in a flattering tone. “What a nice place.”

  “Thanks,” Noah said.

  Quinn muttered a silent curse as she heard the door close. She couldn’t do anything now. She couldn’t have some witness seeing her face, ruining her plans. Ruining her life.

  Fuck. She’d never considered that Noah would bring someone home. As if she were the only one he’d ever brought there.

  Quinn remained squatted down and perfectly still. Her legs burned from kneeling in the same spot, not wanting to budge even a millimeter, knowing that Noah would hear and the jig would be up.

  “Can I get you something?” Noah asked.

  There was no answer. Only the sound of two people embracing, breaths heavy and followed by the sound of more swishing clothing, the pop of buttons, the thuds that followed after shoes were kicked off.

  When the sounds began to fade, Quinn guessed they’d ventured into Noah’s bedroom. This was the one and only chance she would have of escaping her ill-considered plan and getting the fuck out of there. And she had to do it quietly.

  Quinn waited for the bedroom sounds to grow more energetic. It had to be now. She finally peeked her head around the chair and eyed the door. Crouched low, she made a beeline for it, opening it quickly and tiptoeing into the hallway. She pulled it closed with all the patience and finesse she could muster, then sprinted into the stairwell and barreled down the steps to the lobby.

  When she arrived, she peeked out the door again, in the tiny chance that Noah had pursued her and managed to arrive by elevator already. No sign of him.

  She exited the door and emerged into the hot night, and began to run.

  Chapter 6

  When Quinn stepped off the train in Westgate station, she made a face at the unique blend of body odor, garbage, and cannabis she was long-familiar with but had never grown used to, made even more pungent by the weak air conditioning the Downtown train stations were known for. The odor seemed more noticeable now, flooding her with reminders of everything she’d grown up with, and left behind.

  As she walked down the street in her sundress and sunshades, people stared at her and she suddenly felt out of place in her Midtown duds. She liked the new clothes, but more than that she liked that they made her look less like her old self, the one that Noah or some other enemy would immediately recognize.

  The glutted traffic, the smell of grilled meat, and the constant rattle of cheap AC units welcomed her back to the place where she’d grown up. To her surprise, it felt strangely comforting.

  Out of nowhere, a memory popped into her mind of Noah guessing where she’d grow up. Guessing correctly.

  Then a more recent memory surfaced: last night’s debacle at Noah’s, where she listened to Noah pleasure some other woman while she watched her carefully-considered plan evaporate before her eyes like a puddle of water on the desert floor. She groaned as a feeling of stupidity washed over her.

  Even worse, a flash of jealousy hit her for a moment, before she remembered that this was the guy who’d decided to take this game to the next level.

  Don’t think about that. Think about Plan B, how the hell you’re going to get your hands on that wily coyote of a cop and make sure he stops harassing you.

  She turned the corner and waited at the intersection. Soon, a little black taxi arrived, and a vaguely familiar face glanced out the window at her. Instead of getting inside, she walked over to the driver’s side. He opened his window, looking annoyed.

  Quinn held out a wad of cash. He frowned and looked at it for a moment.

  “What’s the story, lady?” he said. “You said you was lookin’ for a ride.”

  “You gave me one once, from Midtown. I skipped out on you for the lot of it, and this is what I owe you, plus a little extra.”

  He stared at Quinn for a moment, chomping on his gum. Then his face changed, like he finally remembered driving her to Coyote after she’d spent the night in a Midtown alley after dropping a near-dead Jones at Midtown General. He took the wad, quickly thumbing through it to see how much was there. Quinn gave the car a couple of quick raps before she turned and left.

  A few blocks later, she arrived on a familiar street. Women with bright-colored hair and men with bright tattoos loitered around, eyeing her like she didn’t belong.

  “Midtown princess,” one quipped as she walked by.

  Quinn reined in any temptation to give them some Downtown attitude, unsure whether to feel contemptuous of their judgment or annoyed at being called a moniker she’d used in that same tone during her younger years. She didn’t know whether to feel disgust at their pettiness, or impressed that they showed pride in themselves the only way they knew how.

  When she arrived at an industrial-looking building, she pressed the buzzer for 112.

  “Yeah,” came the flat, gruff voice.

  “It’s Quinn.”

  At her dad’s place, the baseball game played on TV as Joe Hartley stood up from his favorite chair. He muted the sound as she handed him the bag—burritos from Chubby’s and a six-pack of Snakebite orange soda. When he looked in the bag, his f
rown turned into a slight smile.

  “I knew there was somethin’ I liked about you,” he said.

  He set the bag down on the counter and pulled out two sodas. They sat down to eat their burritos, and when her dad took his first swig of the premium soda, he paused for a moment, eyebrows raised. Quinn couldn’t help but smile.

  “How’s the illegal job?” her dad asked as he unwrapped his burrito.

  “Not bad. How’s dealing?”

  He shrugged. “Same old.”

  Quinn sighed. She was done lecturing her dad on the ills of dealing sand and other drugs, but it didn’t mean she had to like it.

  “How’s Midtown?” he said between bites, wiping a dribble of green chili from his stubbled chin. Quinn could hear the mild sarcasm in his tone.

  “Safe,” she said.

  “Quiet too, I imagine.”

  “Almost too quiet sometimes.”

  “Yeah. Them rare days we get a sprinkle of rain and there’s a game on… and it gets real quiet around here…” He shook his head. “I don’t like it. Ain’t natural.”

  Quinn nodded. She knew the feeling.

  “So who’s the fella?

  Quinn stopped chewing. “What fella?”

  “Ran into Daria the other day, comin’ to check on her mama. Said you got a fella.”

  Quinn had told Daria about Noah, just before she’d discovered he was a cop. “Not anymore.”

  Her dad eyed her. “Daria said you was talkin’ like you had somethin’ there.”

  “It all went to shit. Like it always does.” She took another big bite of her burrito, the taste of the gooey cheese and spicy chilis making her feel better.

  Her dad scoffed. “Ain’t that the fucken truth.” He paused for a moment, his burrito just sitting there. “He a cop or somethin’?”

  Quinn felt her face heat up. “What makes you think that?”

  He shrugged. “What else could it be? You ain’t had anyone worth mentioning since that troublemaker you were so tight with years ago. And I figure with you doin’ whatever it is you do, he’s gotta be a lawman for shit to go sideways, ‘cause you ain’t the type to make the same mistake twice.”