"You have a tracker in your arm. I have to remove it before we leave this room, or you won't get past the security gates."
My body visibly deflated. She reached for my right arm. I rolled up my sleeve, held it out and gritted my teeth.
The pain came without warning—sharp, biting. The blade sliced into me, dug through me, and pulled out. Warm liquid flowed down my skin. A metallic plop followed.
Ana wrapped my arm. "You're a very brave girl. Are you okay?"
I moved my arm to test it. The muscle ached, but I would live. "Yes, let's go get Drake."
She hid the tracker, a thin metal piece, in a drawer and grabbed a clean scalpel for Drake.
When we got to his door, I paused. This was the moment. Our first meeting. Ana had been kind enough to get me a pair of khaki pants that fit and a blue sweater that brought out the blue in my eyes. My hair was pulled back in a braid. No makeup, but I hadn't worn any in so long that I didn't really think too much of it. Still, the butterflies in my stomach turned into raging bees.
What if the chemistry we had in our minds didn't translate to our bodies? What if he looked at me and ran away?
Ana, reading my mind, tugged me to the door with a motherly smile. My heart clenched at the thought that Lucy and Luke should have basked in that smile over the last eighteen years. The injustice of it all renewed my motivation.
She opened the door and Drake walked out—tall and muscular. His blond-highlighted hair lay casually messy, and his crystal blue eyes held me in a long stare. Ana cleared her throat, and we snapped out of it. Kind of.
He reached over and pulled me close, breathing in the scent of me as our bodies touched. I nearly cried right there in his arms, just being held, feeling him. But this wasn't the time. We sighed and let each other go.
He held his arm out to Ana, having heard our thoughts, and she carved the tracker out. He didn't flinch, just held my gaze and smiled, as if she hadn't jabbed a sharp object into his bicep.
Ana wrapped his arm, and led us through a maze of hallways and rooms. They knew Drake could control minds, which would explain why she led us to the door. Her alibi.
She gave us her car keys and the keys from the guard. 'In the trunk, there's a blue backpack with a small memory stick in the inside pocket. It also has money, clothes, and supplies for you both—medical supplies for you, Sam, a laptop computer, and a cell phone that's not traceable. You'll also need the guard keys to get out the back way, through the locked gates.'
Even though I wanted out of this hell, I couldn't stomach the thought of what we had to do next. They mustn't suspect her of anything.
Drake looked miserable. "I'm so sorry, Ana. Thank you so much."
Ana smiled. "Just do it, mijo. It's okay. I'm tougher than I look. Just make it believable."
He gently set her by the door, and punched her in the side of the head.
I cried out as she fell to the floor, feeling his fists as if I'd suffered the blow.
A voice from the stairs screamed at us. "What the hell are you doing down here? Stop right there."
The security guard aimed his gun at us. How had he gotten out? Were my powers so weakened by the four-way link that I couldn't hold this command?
Dr. Pana followed behind him. "You two are not going anywhere." Somehow, his calm, quiet voice was more terrorizing than if he'd been wild with rage.
Drake and I linked together, hijacked the guard's mind, and forced him to drop his gun. He screamed and grabbed his head. The doctor ran forward, grabbed the weapon, and aimed it at us with eyes full of rage.
I heard the gun explode in slow motion. Everything went silent, or really loud. I couldn't tell—like when water is so hot it feels cold for a moment. My ears rang. I went numb and fell to the ground. Blood covered me, and my arm stung.
Drake's mouth moved, but I couldn't hear what he said. Rage overtook him, and he turned to the doctor. He broke from my mind and unleashed all his power.
Dr. Pana brought the gun to his own head. Time slowed. The doctor's finger tugged against the trigger.
"Drake no! Don't do it! Don't become one of them." The words didn't reach my ears. Maybe I only spoke in my head. Nothing made sense. I couldn't move. Something pinned me down.
Drake looked to me, tears in his eyes.
The doctor lowered his gun and… shot himself in the leg. His mouth opened wide in what I presumed was a scream, and he threw the weapon down the stairs.
I blocked the image of him from my mind. The guard still stood in the corner like a zombie, and Ana lay against me, pinning me to the floor.
I screamed then. A crimson gash covered her abdomen. I tried to move my arm and flinched. Blood covered my right shoulder. Two bullets–one in her, and one that just grazed me. She must have moved at the last minute, threw herself in front of me.
She'd saved my life.
This plan was supposed to be simple. How could this happen?
My hearing returned as I choked on my sobs. I held Ana and rocked her, stared at her, willing her to wake up. I waited for that movie moment when she would open her eyes and tell me it was okay, that it was best this way. When she would make me vow to help her children and all the other kids in this hellhole.
That moment never came.
I was robbed of those last words, that final connection.
"Sam, we have to go now. I'm sorry, love, but we don't have much time to get out of here. Are you okay? Is our baby okay?"
I stared at Drake, still in a daze, and nodded mutely as he moved Ana's body off of me. "We can't leave her here. That's not right."
"I know, but we have no choice. We're the only hope left to save her kids. She'd want us to go."
"No! I'm not going to leave her here. Her kids deserve to know where she's buried. She deserves some respect. I will not leave her in the hands of these monsters!"
"Please, Sam, listen to me. For the sake of our baby, we have to go. Please!"
"I can't. I just can't. The babies. Ana. I can't."
I sat on the floor, sobbing, clutching her body in my arms, unable to move, unable to think past the grief that ate away at my soul. She'd given everything for her kids, and for us. Her whole life had been a sacrifice for others. I had just reunited her to her children, gave my best friends their mom back. Now, because of me, they'd lost it all.
Sobs tore out of me. My body shook as my tears spilled onto her lifeless face.
'Sam, I am so sorry to do this, but I have to. Sam, you will get up and come with me to the car. You will move quickly.'
My mind emptied. Only a compulsion to do as the voice commanded remained. My body moved reflexively as an unknown arm helped me up and guided me out of the building. Distant alarms sounded, but the compulsion was all that mattered.
The doctor screamed at us and tried to follow on one leg, but one look from Drake and he fell back in fear.
Coward. I despised him. I despised them all. If I could burn the whole building down, I would. These thoughts rose up like bubbles from some buried mind, but I could do nothing but walk forward and get in the car.
Then I remembered the babies. What would happen to them? Ana had been the only one who loved them and gave them what they needed. We had destroyed so much tonight—so many lives, so much hope.
We found the blue Honda where Ana said it would be. Drake pulled the backpack out of the trunk, and we jumped in. He drove.
The compulsion disappeared, my mind cleared, and all the memories and feelings flooded back to me. I felt violated, mentally raped. Drake couldn't make eye contact with me, and I couldn't speak to him. My rage wouldn't allow it.
Practicality gradually took over, and I checked the bags, trying to focus. Good Ana, she'd left us a first aid kit. I disinfected my bullet wound and wrapped it awkwardly with gauze, also replacing the wrecked bandage Ana had put on me.
"Do you want some help with that? I can pull over and—"
"I can do it myself!"
"Sam, I'm sorry. So sorry. But you would have died
. Our baby would have died. I couldn't let you stay there!"
I screamed, "You could have used your physical strength! You could have carried me if you had to. You didn't need to use mind control on me. On me!"
"There was no time. You would have fought. You were injured. And you're pregnant! What would you have done in my situation? Huh? Would you have let me die so I wouldn't get mad at you? Would you have held that ethical line at the expense of my life?"
I refused to look at him or answer.
We drove in silence while I counted our cash. Drake looked over at the money. She'd left us several thousand dollars, at least.
He finally broke the silence. "We should dump this car and get something else. The plates are traceable."
It turned out we were in the United States. Montana. I didn't know why this surprised me so much. With all the laws about human trafficking and human rights, I just figured stuff like this wouldn't happen here. Many of our clients were Americans, but we had clients all over the world.
This revelation depressed me. For some reason, they'd told us our country of origin, and we got to keep that information to ourselves. I'd clung to it, proud to be American. Now, the thought that I'd been enslaved in my own country, and that no one knew about it, made me sick.
We drove in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, in the middle of Big Sky Country. We cruised the long, winding country roads, the only sign of life an occasional road sign. Fortunately, Ana also left us a GPS. We set it for California.
"When and where should we do this?" I did not want to speak to him, but logistics had to be handled.
"As soon as possible. First we should swap the plates with another car. That will buy us time until I can get us to a car lot."
"Fine."
It took us a while to pass anything resembling civilization, but we finally found a parking lot full of cars outside a truck stop. I stayed in the car while Drake made the switch. My first night of freedom and I was already an outlaw. Great.
We kept driving.
I dozed on and off, in pain and sickened by what had happened. Ana's dead face flashed every time I closed my eyes. We drove through Montana and Idaho and into California that first night, stopping for gas and food as infrequently as possible. I stayed in the car, not wanting to alarm anyone with my bloody clothes.
Ten hours of driving exhausted us both. We pulled into a small motel off the highway somewhere in California. I wasn't even sure where we were; everything looked the same after so many hours on the road. Drake checked us in with cash from the bag.
As soon as we were in the room, I threw my clothes into a trash bag and jumped into the shower, scrubbing until my skin turned red and raw. I couldn't wash away the memories, but at least I could wash away the blood.
Drake took a shower after me. When he came out wearing the sweats and t-shirt Ana had left him, I sat on the double bed in my own sweats and t-shirt and looked through the backpack. The bandaging on my arm slipped. I couldn't get it to stay.
He came over and rewrapped it. We didn't speak. I couldn't even look him in the eyes.
We each had clothes to sleep in, undergarments for a few days, and one pair of pants with a few different shirts and sweaters.
I booted up the MacBook and found the memory stick, while he counted the cash.
"Sam, this is $20,000. How could she even have this much money?"
"They probably paid her, right? I mean, they thought they controlled her with her kids, so why wouldn't they pay her? Or maybe she found a way to steal from them. Even better."
I shut up, remembering that I wasn't speaking to him.
It was a lot of money, but without jobs, or IDs, or anything, it wouldn't last long. Still, my eyes filled with tears. Ana had given us so much, and paid for it with her life. And we'd left her there to rot.
The baby kicked, and Drake noticed me holding my stomach.
He sat next to me and swallowed hard. "Can I feel her?"
I nodded and put his hand over the bump, and she gave another good, strong kick.
He smiled and looked in my eyes. "We got out. We saved her. And we will make it through this. Together. I'm so sorry about what I did, Sam. I swear I'll never do that to you again, but I couldn't let you die!"
Tears rolled off my cheek and onto my shirt. He wiped one away with his finger. I was furious with him, but why? If I could use these powers for what I considered the greater good, why couldn't he? He probably did save our lives. We had to get out of there, and he was right: I would have done the same thing to him if it meant saving him and our baby.
Part of me wanted to stay angry, the part that feared the loss of control, but I was too tired to keep fighting with the only person in the world on my side. I put my head on his shoulder and sighed as he wrapped his arms around me.
"Don't ever do it again," I said into his t-shirt.
"I won't, I swear." He held my eyes with his. His breath touched my face, smelled like the mint of his toothpaste.
In that moment, as if sensing my desperate need, or maybe reflecting his own, he leaned into me. Our lips brushed together, gently at first, soft and tender. A flame of passion ignited, and his tongue split my lips. The taste of his mouth, my fingers digging into his back, his hand sliding into my hair as he pulled me closer—with the ebb and flow of this newfound passion, I rested in his arms. He traced a line of kisses on my cheek. I wished we could stay like that forever.
The computer beeped, reminding us we had work to do. I reluctantly pulled away from him.
The files contained some compelling stuff—addresses, pictures, secret documents. Everything we'd need to expose Rent-A-Kid.
Drake grabbed the cell phone and made a call. "Brad, this is Drake. Call me back at this number. It's urgent. I'm in trouble." He hung up.
Money and clothes covered our bed. I thought of Ana and…. Oh God, I have to tell Lucy and Luke.
I didn't want to, not tonight. Not after everything. I could barely keep my eyes open. My head split in half.
But we had to.
Drake agreed, and we made the link.
And I had the worst conversation of my life.
Chapter 13
I thought my tears had gone for good, but that night I cried myself to sleep again. This time, my tears fell on the strong shoulders of a man I was in love with. He held me all night, avoiding my injured shoulder. Words were still too much for us after all the shock, but the contact kept me from falling apart.
Lucy and Luke had been shocked and saddened by their mother's loss. They'd lost more than just a person they'd only talked to once. They'd lost an idea, a dream of how life might be. They also feared for their future, understandably so. I had to get them out, and protect my baby. I didn't know how, but I would find a way.
The next morning I had to pry my puffy eyes open—the result of a night of crying. We dressed, packed up, and hit the road early, still worried about being followed, or reported, or killed. Minor things.
I took the medicine Ana had left me, and told my baby to be good and stay put for awhile longer.
We drove and drove and drove, at last finding a used car lot. We ditched Ana's car and bought the cheapest vehicle that looked like it could go the distance. It didn't help that Drake had no ID. It did help that this guy didn't want to report everything to Uncle Sam. They shook on a deal, and we left with our new ride.
We aimed to get to California by that night, and head straight to his friend's house.
Drake said, "This guy bailed me out of some stuff when I fell into the wrong crowd in high school. He's a few years older than me, and I guess saw something in me that was worth caring about. I owe him a lot."
"What do you think he'll say about all this?"
"Honestly, I don't know. He's always looked for the next greatest story, but really has been stuck at the newspaper equivalent of middle management. He gets some local stuff, but nothing hard-hitting. He wants to make his mark, but so far he's just barely making
rent."
"Maybe this will be the big break he needs."
"If anyone listens. I have a feeling it won't be that easy to bring down this organization."
Yeah, a group like this didn't cave just because some kids showed up with a memory stick and a story. Still, someone had to listen, to see the pieces that didn't add up and want to investigate further.
If his friend couldn't get someone to listen, we wouldn't give up. I had sketches, stories, and no identity. That proved something, didn't it? I didn't just make myself disappear. Someone, somewhere, would have to believe us.
Drake squeezed my hand. I turned on the radio and shuffled through the many Christian and country music stations, settling on a Dixie Chicks song. I sang along and tried to forget about my life for a while.
Drake glanced at me. "You have a beautiful voice."
"Thank you." I hesitated. "Drake, I know what I want to name our baby." The thought had been percolating in the back of my mind since the night before, but I wasn't ready to speak about it. Until now.
"I'm pretty sure I don't need to read your mind to know what it is."
"Ana." We said her name together. As a prayer. An offering. A promise.
"Sam, I want you to know… I love you. I know I didn't say it last night, but I do. I always will."
"I love you too."
Right on cue, Lonestar's Amazed came on.
"I WANNA SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE… WITH YOU BY MY SIDE… FOREVER AND EVER…."
I sang, he listened, and we went to meet our future together.
THE END
###
Dedication
To Dmytry Karpov, brilliant writer, love of my life, greatest father to our kids. To Patti Larsen, amazing paranormal author and beta reader. To Jan Rippingale, best friend, Anam Cara and so much more. To all my family and friends who have supported my writing all these years. And to the team at Evolved Publishing and my editor, Lane Diamond, for making this book even better than it was.
About the Author
Forbidden Mind (Forbidden #1) Page 9