The Mind Keepers (The Mind Readers)

by Lori Brighton

  Maddox rubbed the back of his neck, a sure sign he was uncomfortable. “Maybe.”

  Confused, I concentrated but could sense nothing. That was the downside of my powers, they seemed to come and go as they pleased. My aunt reached out and jiggled the door handle. It was locked. Without waiting, she slammed her foot against the panel. It didn’t take much effort to break open the weathered door. The wood cracked, popping into large splinters and leaving behind a gaping hole. Maddox reached through and unlocked the door.

  “Henry?”

  The neighbor’s curtain fell back into place. Hell, I don’t even want to know what’s going on.

  Thank God for self-centered people not wanting to get involved. Maddox shoved open the door, and we moved into a small foyer crowded with stacks of boxes, yellowed with age and nicotine. He was a chain smoker. The scent of cigarettes permeated the air, heavy and suffocating. I resisted the urge to cough and instead reached out with my mind, searching for the guy.

  Who are they? A male thought whispered toward us.

  Surprised, I shifted on my feet, glancing toward what appeared to be a kitchen stacked with dirty dishes. Gross. This guy was a big-time hoarder. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few rats scurried by. Heck, they were probably lounging on the couch, watching TV.

  “He’s there,” my aunt whispered, nodding toward the kitchen.

  She started that way, and I had every intention of following when I felt the slightest pull toward the left. I paused, confused. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Almost as if…as if my body wanted me to turn that way. “Wait.”

  Maddox glanced back at me. “Are you okay?”

  “The living room.”

  My aunt turned. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I took in the stained couch, the tattered chair and mounds of boxes blocking half of the room from view. “Something—”

  “Duck!” Aunt Lyndsey shoved me aside with her energy. I fell into the wall, stumbling to the ground just as a man surged from behind a pile of boxes, a baseball bat in hand.

  “Shit.” Maddox threw himself forward, hitting the man. They fell to the ground with a thud that shook the entire house. Plaster crumbled from the ceiling, landing in a pile of white powder over my jeans and T-shirt.

  I jumped to my feet. “Maddox!”

  The idiot would get himself killed. He had no idea if the guy had a knife or gun. Frantic and more than annoyed, I raced into the living room. Maddox was atop the guy, holding him pinned helplessly to the ground. I didn’t think—I didn’t have time. Using my energy I pushed the both of them apart. Maddox hit the wall, while the other guy slid across the floor toward the stained couch.

  Aunt Lyndsey glanced at me, brow raised, smirk lifting the corners of her lips. “Wow, impressive.”

  Using the wall for support, Maddox managed to regain his feet. “Henry, you idiot.”

  Henry? This was Maddox’s friend? I glanced warily at the huge guy sprawled across the wooden floorboards. His hair was so matted it looked like he was growing dreadlocks, and his scruffy beard made him look twenty years older. But his eyes, those brown eyes showed his youth…and his anger.

  “Who the hell are you?” Aunt Lyndsey demanded.

  “Who are you?” He somehow managed to stumble to his huge feet, towering over us like some sort of mountain man from the 1800s. Judging by the amount of beer bottles and his bloodshot eyes, it was safe to assume he was at least half-drunk. “You’re in my damn house!”

  I could feel my aunt’s energy flare. She was more than annoyed.

  Maddox must have sensed it, too. He started toward his friend, placing himself between us. “Henry, calm down.”

  “I thought you were dead,” he huffed, settling his massive paws on the hips of his grungy jeans. No weapons that I could see, other than his size. But it was obvious he didn’t know how to fight or use his weight to his advantage.

  “Yeah, well, I was almost killed.”

  The man glanced at us. “Who the hell are they?”

  “They’re friends,” Maddox said, adjusting his injured arm in his sling. I didn’t miss the brief flash of pain that tightened his features and hoped he hadn’t injured it further.

  “And why the hell are you here?”

  “You know why.” Maddox actually settled on the couch. I knew he must have been hurting to sit on that stained piece of trash. “We’re here for the intelligence report.”

  The man didn’t say a word, just stood there staring daggers at Maddox. If looks could kill…

  “Please tell me you still have the files,” Maddox said with a sigh.

  “I do.”

  Maddox stood. “Good.”

  “What is this information?” my aunt demanded.

  “You’ll see.”

  Annoyed with Maddox’s half-answers I started to demand the truth when I felt the slightest pressure to my mind. I slid my aunt a glance. But I knew it wasn’t coming from her, which meant…crap. My gaze jerked toward Henry. He was a freaking mind reader.

  You feel that? Aunt Lyndsey sent me the mental message.

  Yep, mind reader.

  My shock turned into anger. I should have realized Henry was a mind reader when we’d thought we heard him in the kitchen. He had the same powers of persuasion that Aunt Lyndsey and I had. Why hadn’t Maddox told us? “He’s a freaking mind reader?”

  “I am,” Henry said as he headed behind a stack of boxes, disappearing from view. “Maddox helped me escape years ago.”

  And I was back to being shocked. I looked at Maddox, this guy I supposedly knew. But I was finding I understood very little about him after all. What else had Maddox kept from me? Apparently, a lot.

  “But you’re more than just mind readers,” Henry muttered from behind his stack of boxes. “You two carry the source.”

  Startled, I glanced at my aunt. Her blue eyes narrowed. How the hell did Henry know that? And what, exactly, had Maddox led us into?

  “You can sense those who carry the source?” she asked, her voice deceptively mild.

  “He can sense the level of power each person contains. As you can imagine, it made him very desirable to S.P.I.” Maddox turned toward his friend. “Now, where is the information?”

  Henry sighed but moved across the room, pausing near a bookshelf. I wasn’t exactly surprised when he opened a book only to find it had been hollowed out. Seriously? The oldest and most clichéd trick? And Maddox had said the guy was a genius.

  He took out a flash drive and headed toward his computer. “You sure you want to do this?”

  Maddox nudged aside a box of what appeared to be magazines and paused near his friend. “Yes.”

  With another long, drawn-out sigh, he settled in the chair and booted up the computer. “How much do you want to show them?”

  “All of it.”

  “What, exactly, have you gathered?” my aunt asked as she moved closer.

  Henry slipped in the drive, and we waited as the file came up…flashes and flashes of numbers and letters.

  “What’s this?” I demanded.

  “Code.” He typed a few letters and suddenly the code changed, morphing into paragraph after paragraph of information…names and dates.

  “Jamie Laurent,” my aunt read over Henry’s shoulder. “Worked for S.P.I. until December of 2010. After Christmas he began to waver in loyalty. When S.P.I. realized he was thinking of leaving, they took him in custody and performed operations on his brain. He later died.”

  Startled, I moved closer.

  “Elizabeth Carroll. Did not take to operations. Died January 1, 2011.”

  They scrolled through the file. There were more. So many stories that it would take hours to read them all. Not only stories, but pictures of the people. So much information, I wasn’t sure what to look at first.

  “You’ve been keeping track of everyone all this time?” I said.

  Maddox glanced over his shoulder, his gaze meeting mine. All this ti
me, he’d been working against S.P.I. All this time, and he’d never told me.

  “The question is, what do we do with it?” Henry asked.

  Disconcerted, I spun around and headed across the foyer, and into the disgusting kitchen. He hadn’t told me. All this time I hadn’t trusted him, but I’d had good reason. What was his reason to trust this Henry person over me? I paused near the window, looking out onto garbage cans that littered the small space between this house and the next. All this time I’d wasted, hating him. All this time thinking he was someone he wasn’t.

  Maddox followed, I could sense him. “You okay?”

  No. Of course not. My hands fisted against the cold porcelain sink. I was barely aware of the stench of moldy dishes. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  Feeling oddly numb, I turned to face him. “Because you didn’t trust me.”

  “No.” The bruises along his jaw and under his left eye had turned yellow. He looked like he had gone through hell. And now, I realized, he had. For us, for me. “Because I didn’t want to put that pressure on you.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “What are you talking about?”

  He stepped closer, his warmth calling to me. “If you knew what I was really doing, you would have insisted on helping. You would have probably even stayed behind at the compound instead of escaping.”

  I flushed. Maybe he was right, but I wasn’t about to admit it. “I wouldn’t. Haven’t you heard? I’m a selfish witch.”

  He wrapped his uninjured arm around my waist and drew me up against his body. I wouldn’t give in. I wouldn’t. “You are the least selfish person I know. You always put others before you, even if you won’t admit it.” He reached up, brushing a lock of hair behind my ear and cupping the side of my face. “I didn’t expect it to take this long, and I sure as hell didn’t expect to be captured.”

  “Because of me. You were captured because of me.”

  He shook his head. “No. No more blame. I wanted you to leave the compound because I couldn’t work, not when I couldn’t stop worrying about you. And I knew if I didn’t get these bastards, then we could never have a life. And I’ve got everything, Nora. I have every one of their files.”

  But suddenly those files didn’t matter so much. I released a wry laugh. “A life? After the way I treated you, you still thought we could have a life?”

  “Hoped.” He leaned down and pressed his lips to mine in a soft, gentle kiss. “Yeah, I believed.”

  “So, what do we do with this information?”

  He shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

  He was giving me total control, handing over the reins. Bemused, I moved away from him, pacing the small kitchen. All of their files in our hands, total power, complete truth. But what the hell did we do with it? Did we use it to attack more compounds? Did we use it as collateral or bribery?

  Frustrated, I spun around to face him. “What can—”

  Run!

  I stiffened. Where the hell had that message come from? Cameron?

  Nora, S.P.I. is here! Run!

  Chapter 11

  “All the information is here,” Henry said. “With the click of a button, it’s out in the world.”

  “My God,” Aunt Lyndsey replied. “What the hell do you mean, it’s out there with one click?”

  I managed to avoid knocking over a pile of boxes as I maneuvered my way through the living room, frantic to get their attention. “Um, guys.”

  “I didn’t mean I’d push the button,” Henry muttered. “Just that—”

  “They’re here,” I rushed out, interrupting. “S.P.I. is here.”

  Startled, Henry glanced at me, his face pale and his eyes terrified through the scraggle of hair that fell around his face. Yeah, you could say he didn’t handle stress well. Aunt Lyndsey started toward the windows, peeking behind the dingy sheet.

  “How do you know?” Henry asked, his trembling fingers hovering over the keyboard. Hadn’t he said with one click the information would be sent out into the world?

  “Maybe you should step away from the computer.” I pushed at the back of his chair, wheeling him a few feet away. “Cameron sent a mental message.”

  “Hello?” someone called from the front stoop.

  Hide, Aunt Lyndsey said, moving behind a stack of boxes. I didn’t miss the pistol she pulled from her waistband. She wasn’t even going to bother using her powers; she was going to take them out the good, old-fashioned way. Use your energy to block Maddox in case they sense you.

  Concerned, I frowned. I’ve only made a force field with your help.

  You can do it on your own.

  Henry had gone white as snow, and we were going to have to rely on him to keep the S.P.I. agents occupied? Maddox wasn’t healthy enough to fight, so we had no choice. Frustrated, I grabbed Maddox’s hand and pulled him toward the back of the house. “We need to hide until we figure out how many there are.”

  “Or we could just fight.”

  I gave him a look of pure annoyance. We seriously didn’t need his ego getting in the way right now.

  “Fine, this way.” He moved in front of me, taking the lead down a small hall to a back room.

  The bedroom was as bad as the front of the house. A mattress lay on the floor, piles of clothes like a mountain range littered the area. “Closet.”

  I realized he’d been here before, as he headed directly toward a door that was hidden behind a pile of boxes. That wasn’t the worst of it. The closet was full of trash bags. Ignoring the stench, I squeezed myself inside. Maddox followed, closing the door behind him. Unable to take the scent of garbage and stale cigarettes, I pressed my face into his shoulder, breathing in his familiar scent and closed my eyes, concentrating. Where the hell was Cameron? Delving deeply into the energy that lay dormant, I brought my power field up around us. A current of energy tingled and shivered through my body. If they had a mind reader with them, hopefully they wouldn’t sense us.

  “You are Mr. Henry McDowell?” a voice rolled in through the living room.

  Definitely an S.P.I. agent. I swore they all had the same, dead monotone.

  “No,” Henry lied. “That’s my roommate. Guy’s out, but you can leave a message.”

  Oh God, he didn’t lie well at all. We were majorly screwed. At that point I was just waiting for Aunt Lyndsey to call the cry to arms.

  “What happened to your door?”

  I heard the chair shift, the legs scratching against the wooden floorboards as he probably stood. “Robbery.”

  “I see.”

  Yeah, I bet he did see…how badly Henry lied. I took my lower lip between my teeth, wondering how many agents were out there. I had to resist the urge to mentally call Aunt Lyndsey. Damn, I hated waiting. I’d rather be out there fighting than hiding in a closet. What the heck did she think the agents would do, anyway? Give up and walk away? Right, that would happen.

  “Can you sense Cameron and Lewis?” Maddox whispered, his breath warm and distracting across my face.

  I knew what he was thinking: he wanted to fight, too, and wondered if we’d have backup. Neither of us were used to sitting around and waiting. We had more in common than I wanted to admit. “No, no word.”

  “Is there something I can help you with?” Henry asked.

  I could tell by the quiver in his voice he wouldn’t last much longer. The guy was going to have a panic attack. We had to do something, anything, to help the poor idiot.

  “We work for the FBI,” the man lied. “We have reason to believe that Henry McDowell has been selling restricted information to other countries.”

  I bit back my laugh. Nice story, and I’m sure the media would eat it up if this attack was questioned. Too bad it wasn’t true. What was Aunt Lyndsey waiting for? They were obviously suspicious; at the least they knew Henry was lying. We had to react now. I shifted, reaching for the doorknob.

  Maddox wrapped a steel arm around my waist, pulling me closer. “Jus
t wait.”

  Wait for what? He apparently trusted his friend’s ability to handle S.P.I. better than I did.

  “Don’t know what that has to do with me,” Henry muttered.

  “Don’t you?”

  Crap.

  Maddox stiffened, his muscles growing taut under my touch. Finally he understood the direness of the situation. I tilted my head back, meeting his gaze. It was an unspoken question…can we attack now? He didn’t respond, but I could feel the quickening of his heart.

  “We have reason to believe you are Mr. Henry McDowell.”

  He released a wry laugh. “Is this a joke?” Silence. Apparently, they didn’t find it funny. “Don’t you think I’d know if I was this guy?”

  I cringed. Yikes, Henry really needed to work on his lying skills. That high-pitched squeal wasn’t helping his cause.

  “Mr. McDowell, we’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “They aren’t going to leave without him,” Maddox whispered in my ear.

  I knew what he was saying; it was time to act. Problem was, how many were there? I reached out with my mind, attempting to sense their energy. Nothing. They had chips in their brains. Yeah, I might be able to break through, but then they would obviously know we were here, and if I failed we’d be totally screwed.

  My hands fisted against Maddox’s chest. How many? I sent the thought to Cameron, hoping she heard. For a brief moment she didn’t respond, and my fear spiked. Had she been caught?

  Two inside, four outside.

  The relief I felt at the sound of her message almost did me in. Cameron was still alive. But just as quickly as my emotions kicked in, my rational mind took over. Two inside, four outside. We could do this. We’d fought more at those tracks, even at the farmhouse without Aunt Lyndsey’s help.

  Can you keep the four outside occupied while we take care of the two in here?

  We’ll try.

  “You’re staying in this back room,” I whispered to Maddox.

  “Bull.”

  Frustrated, I pounded my fists against his chest. “Listen to me, just once. I can’t worry about you while I’m fighting.”