Closed Hearts (Book Two of the Mindjack Trilogy)

by Quinn, Susan Kaye

  When Molloy reached me, he took my shoulders in his massive hands. “Kira!” he said, breathless. “We’ve got to get to Raf quickly, lass. He’s probably dehydrated by now, or worse.”

  My hopes surged—Molloy thought Raf was alive! I nodded, overwhelmed by Molloy’s fervent need to save my boyfriend, the one he was responsible for holding hostage in the first place. I shouldn’t have been surprised—I’d had a taste of the intensity of what Julian could do. I had been completely convinced that I loved him: not simply believing it, or even feeling it in a swoony way, but urgently compelled to love him as if my existence depended on it.

  And that had only been through a mind-link. Molloy was getting the full dose of Julian’s ability.

  He released me and turned to my dad. “We don’t have any time to waste. Would this be your car, mate?”

  My dad blinked. I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking.

  “I think we should take Mr. Molloy where he wants to go,” said Julian. His voice was low and breathy. His eyes never left Molloy’s face, even though Molloy seemed oblivious to anything other than hustling us into the hydro car and babbling directions to the autopath. He finally jacked into the mindware interface, cursing at it to hurry.

  The ragged streets of downtown Chicago slipped by, and we veered past the south edge of Jackertown, still in the city, but getting closer to the suburbs. Julian sat next to Molloy in front, with my dad, Sasha, and me filling up the back seat. The stony expression on Julian’s face never wavered. When he’d handled Molloy before, back at the mages’ headquarters, he wasn’t so intense about it. Maybe Molloy was more resistant now? Or was his self-preservation instinct harder to handle than the protective instinct for his brother?

  Whatever it was, I vowed never to link into Julian’s mind again.

  Molloy babbled a nonstop stream of thoughts, like there was no longer a filter between his mind and his mouth. “There’s not any food there, lass, and I’m not too keen on the water either.” The rest of us sat in tense silence while he rambled. “Not that we needed as much. At least Raf didn’t, not while I kept him there. It was my home, Liam’s and mine actually, before Ma and Da were taken away and we were left on our own. We kept it though, even when the neighborhood was taken over by the demens. We were Molloy boys, and we could take care of ourselves. Proud of it, too! But then we realized there wasn’t much in the way of pickings in the city. The suburbs on the other hand, aye, there’s a fortune to be made there!”

  Molloy paused to take a breath. I hoped I wouldn’t have to hear his entire life story before we reached the house he had programmed into the autopath.

  “Liam, though, he didn’t last long in the greater New Metro,” Molloy said. “He was barely out of shorts, still working his changeling abilities, when the Feds took him. He’s been in that right monster’s clutches ever since. Kestrel!” He spat out his name like it was something foul. “If I get the chance, I’ll twist that demon’s neck with my bare hands.”

  I wished Molloy had done exactly that. I wasn’t sure if that made me a monster or not.

  “Aye, but Liam!” Molloy shouted as if he had suddenly remembered his brother. “He’s still in that cursed prison of Vellus’s! Who will look out for the boy when I’m not there?”

  That made me cringe. Liam would be defenseless in the Detention Center, but I couldn’t let myself care about that. Julian edged closer to Molloy, resting his arm on the back of Molloy’s seat.

  “Of course, he’s not going anywhere.” Molloy’s voice had lost its concern. “They’ll lock him up in their medical facility, given he’s not right of mind anymore. But Raf, the poor lad. He’s been wasting away in some dank basement without proper nourishment for the better part of a week! We’d best be getting there first, before the boy passes on. That would be a terrible shame, such a weak creature, not able to defend himself from jackers at all.”

  Julian must be working him pretty hard to conjure those thoughts from the depths of Molloy’s mind. He had turned Molloy’s instinct to protect his helpless brother Liam to a strong, artificial imperative to protect Raf, who he now saw as one of “his own.” Protecting his own had always been a powerful impulse in Molloy, which was probably why Julian chose it. Had it only been a week since Molloy left Raf? Was he really alive when Molloy left him? I couldn’t imagine Molloy lying about that, not while Julian was handling him.

  How long could Raf last, knocked out on the floor?

  I scoured my brain, from that long-ago time when I took biology classes and dreamed of being a doctor. How long can a body live without water or food? Water had to be more important. And it must make a difference whether the person was awake or asleep, in the desert or locked in a damp basement. Maybe Raf was in the best possible state to survive: locked in a cool basement, unconscious.

  Why had Molloy left him like that? Maybe he meant to come back after he was done betraying us, but didn’t get the chance to trade Raf before he was picked up by Vellus’s goons. The police wouldn’t have caught him up in a random sweep—Molloy’s house was nowhere near Jackertown. Maybe Kestrel had betrayed Molloy after all, only he called the police to take care of it. Maybe that had saved Raf’s life.

  My heart tripped as the car slowed in front of a run-down one-story house. It was the two-hundred-year-old cracker-box style that happened to narrowly meet the range codes, but was too close to the city, so it sat in disrepair, taken over by the demens and their squatter’s rights.

  It was the perfect place to hide a body.

  A ghostly chill made my hands shake. Maybe Molloy had never planned to come back at all. I pushed my way out of the car before it had come to a complete stop.

  “Where?” I demanded of Molloy, but he was sprinting ahead of me.

  “Hurry, lass,” he said over his shoulder. “Before it’s too late.”

  The front door looked like a good push would knock it down, but instead Molloy swiped a passring that barely fit on his pinkie. When he shoved the door open, it came off one hinge, which momentarily stalled him. I slipped between Molloy and the doorframe, simultaneously reaching out with my mind. I found Raf in the basement, deep in the unconscious state of someone who had been jacked that way.

  But he was alive.

  “How do we get to the basement?” I screeched. Dashing through the tiny, dust-filled living room, I searched for a door that would lead down below.

  “Around the back.” Molloy pushed past me, leading the way through a chipped and musty kitchen. A door at the back led outside, but instead of going through, he turned to another one opposite it. Molloy’s giant frame barely fit in the tight hallway space between the doors, but he managed to pull the basement door open. I shoved past him and pounded down the steps. Molloy’s thudding footfalls followed behind me, along with more that must have been Julian and my dad and Sasha.

  Dust motes floated in the hazy light. The basement windows spotlighted an overturned recliner that bled stuffing onto the floor and a rotting blanket pooled next to it. In the middle of the room, Raf lay bent, like he had been struck and collapsed: his limbs were all at angles, and his curly dark hair obscured his face. It was the exact image that I had seen in Molloy’s mind, all that time ago in Kestrel’s office.

  I leaped down the last stair step and sprinted across the carpeted floor. My foot twisted as it crunched a toy hydro car hidden in the gloom, making me stumble the last three feet before reaching his side.

  Raf’s chest rose and fell, once, very slowly.

  I sank to my knees on the carpet next to Raf, barely able to think with the emotion flooding my body. My hands shook as I brushed back the curls that had fallen across his eyes. His face wasn’t peaceful, just blank, but there wasn’t any pain etched on it either. Even in the murky light of the basement, I could see he was pale and his lips were cracked with dehydration. He had been unconscious for over a week, so I didn’t know why I expected anything different. He must have been in this position all that time, and that couldn’t be a
good thing, all twisted up on the floor.

  I gently took hold of his shoulders and straightened his body out so that he was lying flat on the floor. His chest rose and fell again, but there was absolutely no other sign of life. Footsteps swished on the carpet behind me, but I ignored them. I reached very slowly into Raf’s mind. All conscious thoughts had been wiped clean, and Molloy had put him so far under that even his unconscious thoughts were still.

  If I hadn’t seen people in this state before, put them there myself, I might have panicked. But I knew I only had to wake him up. Slowly, gently, I sped up his heart and breathing just a tiny bit, to rouse him from the coma. I couldn’t help touching him, running my fingertips along his chilled cheek to reassure myself that he was really here, alive, breathing. His body shifted ever so slightly, and his head moved, seeking my touch again. I cradled his cheek in my hand.

  I could have jacked him harder, brought him around quicker, but I was afraid to go too fast after he had been unconscious so long. Raf’s mind climbed out of the deep fog that held it. Someone hovered over me, probably my dad, but he hung back. Raf moaned, a weak sound that made my breath catch, and his eyelids fluttered but didn’t open.

  I leaned down close to his face, kissed his cheek, and whispered, “Raf, it’s me. I’m here. Wake up.”

  He moved toward the sound of my voice and our cheeks brushed. I tucked my hands under his heavy, near-unconscious body and pulled him slightly off the floor in a fierce hug. My lips were still near his ear. “Please, Raf, wake up.”

  He stirred in my arms and I reluctantly released him. When I pulled back, his eyes finally opened, deep brown and gorgeous and staring up at me. His mind was a swirl of confusion. He tried to swallow, his throat no doubt parched.

  My grin was a mile wide. “It’s okay,” I said, answering his unspoken thoughts. “It’s all right now, I’ve found you, everything’s going to be okay now.” I was babbling and I didn’t care. I ran my fingertips along his cheek again, but this time he frowned and pulled back.

  My hand froze.

  Raf pulled in a ragged breath, as if his lungs were catching up with the rest of his slowly waking body, then he grimaced and struggled to inch away from me. His eyes widened as he realized how weak he was.

  What… what happened to me? Who are you?

  His thoughts turned my insides into a solid chunk of ice.

  My dad handed me a paper cup of water over my shoulder. I fumbled for it, then held it out to Raf, but he just eyed it.

  It’s okay. It’s only water. You need it. My hand shook as I set the cup in front of him. He watched me carefully, then his eyes landed on the tangled lines of the tattoo on my wrist. Confusion still gripped his mind, but thirst drove him to reach for the cup. When he saw the same tattoo on his own wrist, he jerked back, dropping the cup and holding his wrist away from his body, like it no longer belonged to him.

  What have you done to me? He was awash in the blind terror of someone who has woken up in a basement with no memory and no strength to do anything about it. My mouth worked but there were no words. Raf didn’t know me. Didn’t remember me. Was afraid of me.

  The ice core inside me cracked and shattered into million pieces.

  What did Molloy do?

  I shut my eyes and dove into Raf’s mind, searching. There was no memory of running through Jackertown together. No memory of our last phone call. No recognition that I had finally come for him. I pushed deeper. Did he remember the diner? No. Did he remember all the times he kissed me, the times he touched me and told me he loved me? No. Nothing but giant blank spots where his memories of me had been. I tunneled deeper, before we were a mindreader and mindjacker, when we were just kids. There had to be something, somewhere. Some trace of me. What about the times we had played soccer together? What about junior high, when we passed notes in the hall? What about the time he stole my scribepad, only to return it with a lock code I spent a week guessing? No. I kept scouring, going farther into the folds of his mind where his earliest memories were locked away forever.

  It was gone, all of it. There was one tiny memory left, of when Raf and I met that first day in kindergarten. As far as Raf was concerned, that was the last time he had ever talked to me.

  Molloy had stolen Raf’s memories of me. He had stolen me.

  A giant hole punched through my chest, whistling the vacuum as it left an empty space where my heart should be. Air sucked out of my body and it grew still.

  I pulled out of Raf’s mind and blinked the tears until they ran down my face in a steady stream. He was afraid of me, even though Molloy was the one who had taken a mental scalpel to his memories, slicing and cutting me out of his life.

  I sprang to my feet and whirled around. Julian and Sasha had Molloy parked on the bottom step of the stairwell. Their gazes flitted back and forth between Raf and me. They might not understand, but Molloy knew exactly what he had done. I rushed at Molloy, but my dad’s hands caught me by the waist, gentle but firm.

  I struggled against his grip. “Give them back!” I yelled at Molloy, still a dozen feet away. “Give back his memories, you monster!”

  Molloy just shook his head and wrung his hands. He looked up from the floor. “I can’t, lassie.” His face was a picture of mourning, as if he actually cared. Julian stared hard at Molloy, shifting closer and placing a hand on Molloy’s shoulder. Molloy started to cry, large tears dripping off his chin. “I wish I could; there’s too much. Too many memories, too much time. I don’t know what possessed me, lass, but I took them all, with no way to remember them for putting back. I never thought I would have need of it, I… I…” Molloy looked like he couldn’t imagine why he would do such a thing.

  But I knew. He had done it to hurt me in the worst way possible. He had shredded full of holes the thing I treasured most in the world. The thing that I would rush into a burning building to save. The thing that made Raf the only person to see me for who I really was: the pure goodness of his heart. Molloy stole it. Destroyed it.

  “Julian.” My voice was a whimper. “Please. Please make him put it back.”

  Julian’s face had already turned two shades darker. His stare would bore a hole into Molloy’s head if it were any stronger. Molloy concentrated on Raf behind me, trying. Tears were a steady stream dripping off his face. Then he just sobbed, his internal agony reduced to mumbled words. “That’s all. All I have. All I can do. The one or two, I’ve put them back. Bits. Pieces. I don’t know how, I can’t do it, I can’t, I can’t…” He collapsed against the railing of the stairwell. Julian gasped and braced himself against the wall. He slowly looked up at me, his face a torment of words he wasn’t saying.

  But I already knew. Molloy couldn’t resist Julian. If he could fix it, he would have. It was truly gone, all the memories of me. Gone except for the fragments Molloy could remember from a week ago or whenever he tore apart my boyfriend’s mind.

  Molloy’s sobs were the only sound in the room.

  I wanted to scream, but the anger was trapped inside me, boiling red and raw. Molloy couldn’t steal Raf from me; I wouldn’t allow it. I would give Raf back all of his memories, everything that Molloy had taken from him. From us.

  I stumbled back to Raf and knelt near him, plunging into his mind. He cringed away from me, so I closed my eyes. I couldn’t replace memories that I hadn’t taken in the first place, but maybe I could recreate them, play them like a sim. Rebuild from scratch the life we had, growing up together. I squeezed my eyes tighter, concentrating, trying to remember. The time I kissed him on the couch in the mages’ headquarters was vivid in my mind, so I replayed it, recreating every touch, every emotion. But those memories were mine, not Raf’s. What would it have felt like, from Raf’s perspective? But that quickly got tangled up in my own memories.

  An ocean of grief washed over me, threatening to drag me down under the waves.

  I fought through the undertow of fear that it wouldn’t work. I replayed the time in the car when he held my hand and told
me everything would be okay. I sped ahead to when he kissed me in my bedroom after teasing me about throwing away the stuffed animals he had won. He had loved me then. It was real. I knew it. I had felt it. I had linked into his mind and his every small thought and feeling was open to me. What were his exact thoughts? If only I could remember his exact thoughts! I could replay them again, and he would remember how much he loved me.

  Hands landed on my shoulders, and I snapped open my eyes. Raf lay writhing on the floor, the pain of my intrusions torturing his face. I gasped and yanked out of his mind.

  What have I done?

  My lungs fought for breath and my arms reached for Raf, but the hands on my shoulders were like iron, holding me in place. Keeping me from him. My father’s voice wafted over me, but his words were a million miles away.

  “Don’t, Kira,” he said. “You can’t do any more. I’m sorry.”

  The pain drained from Raf’s face, but when he opened his eyes, they were wild with fear, and he tried to move his weakened body away from me. Every urge in me cried out to make him come back to me. But whatever thoughts I forced into Raf’s mind, they wouldn’t be his memories, they would be mine.

  What Molloy had stolen couldn’t be fixed.

  The hole in my chest tore wider. I shook off my father’s hands and struggled up from the floor. It took every ounce of will that I had to turn away from Raf. Molloy leaned against the wall, his large body heaving with sobs. I didn’t dare move closer. My legs were shaking so badly, I didn’t think they would hold me up.

  I threw the full force of my rage at Molloy, diving deep into his mind, searching for the place that controlled his heart rate and the stuttered breathing that went with his sobs. He pushed back against my invasion of his mind. Julian’s handling of him to fix Raf didn’t go so far as to allow me to kill him without resistance. In a short moment, he had flung me out again, but it didn’t matter. I had already decided that was too good a fate for him.

  Instead, I met Sasha’s stare, hoping he would understand what I wanted. Hoping he would be willing to do it, no matter what he thought of me. He gave me an appraising look, then turned to Julian.