The Mind Keepers (The Mind Readers) (10 page)

“I’m fine,” Lyndsey hissed
through clenched teeth, but we knew that was a lie. “You have to go. Leave me
behind, or we’ll all be caught.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Lewis said.

The sudden sound of shouting
drew our attention back to the compound. Those who had survived were regaining
consciousness. Lewis shoved his backpack into my hands, and that’s when I
noticed the grenade. “Go!”

Cameron helped Olivia while I guided
Lyndsey toward the fence. Lewis pulled the pin and chucked the grenade behind
us. Without pause, he scooped Lyndsey up into his arms. “Let’s get the hell out
of here.”

The explosion had us stumbling
forward, but we didn’t dare look back. Hell, we might have discovered Olivia,
but we hadn’t found Maddox, and Aunt Lyndsey was slowly bleeding to death.

Score one point for us.

Two for S.P.I.

Chapter 7

“Here,” Cameron said. “Pull in
here.”

Lewis eased the car into the
parking lot of a motel. We’d been driving north for an hour now, an hour in
which Aunt Lyndsey had been slowly bleeding to death in the back seat as
Cameron sat helplessly at her side. My aunt had hardly made a sound, barely
moved, just lay there growing paler, the blood and life fading from her body
with each mile we traveled.

Unable to stop myself from
looking, from caring, I glanced back. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing had
slowed to shallow pants that spoke of pain. Yet she looked calm, so damn calm
in the face of death. Cameron, on the other hand, sat wide-eyed and panicked beside
her, pressing a red-soaked T-shirt to her wound. I kept telling myself she
wouldn’t die, but she’d lost so much blood.
So
much
.

Still, it wasn’t the blood that
frightened me. No, I could feel her energy waning. I wondered if Cameron could
as well and that was why she looked so terrified. Or maybe her terror stemmed
from the fact that if Aunt Lyndsey died, I would carry the source completely.
The idea sure as heck scared me. I wasn’t ready, not yet, maybe not ever.

My gaze shifted to Olivia as
Lewis found a parking spot toward the back of the motel, far away from any
prying eyes that might be watching from the office. Olivia hadn’t said a word;
she’d merely pressed up into the corner, huddled as far away from Aunt Lyndsey
and Cameron as she could get. As if distance would keep the death and pain from
coming after her next.

Good God, we were pathetic. I
turned back around and slumped into the seat. The urge to save Maddox warred
with the need to save Aunt Lyndsey. My body buzzed with the need to do
something, anything. We were a wreck, how would we check into a motel without
being noticed? Lewis put the car in park. The place was a freaking dump. If the
bullet wound didn’t get her, Aunt Lyndsey would end up dying from a staph
infection. And Maddox...hell, Maddox might not even be in the country anymore.
Aunt Lyndsey needed a hospital, and we needed to find Maddox.
 

“We have to keep going,” I
demanded. “Between the three of us, we can drive all night.”

“No, we need to recoup,” Cameron
said. “Figure out what to do.”
Aunt Lyndsey
is in no shape to keep traveling. I’m worried about her,
Cameron’s voice
whispered through my mind.

She needs a hospital—

You know we can’t take her to a hospital,
Cameron interrupted.

She was right. I had to reluctantly
accept that for now—and maybe forever—Maddox was lost to me. Aunt Lyndsey came
first. “Okay, stop then.”

Lewis turned off the car. “You’re
sure?”

As if he would argue with
Cameron. If she wanted him to camp out here for the next month eating meals
from a vending machine, he would. Still, I nodded just to make him feel better.
I started to recommend calling on Sierra or Father Myron, when I felt Cameron’s
frantic energy from the back seat.

“Lewis, Nora,” she called out sharply.
“We need to do something and fast.”

I jumped out of the car and tore
open the back door. “Out!”

Olivia stumbled from her seat,
and I dove inside, taking her place. Lyndsey’s eyes had closed, her face so
pale she was almost transparent, while her lips…her lips had turned blue. She
was dying. I slapped the sides of her cold face. “Lyndsey? Aunt Lyndsey?”

“Her energy is fading,” Cameron
rushed out. “I can feel it. We’re losing her. What should we do?”

Lewis shoved open his door and
came around to Cameron’s side. “Heal her,” he said, pulling open her door. “Use
your energy, your powers, to heal her.”

Cameron’s startled gaze went to
me, as if expecting my help. I’d heard rumors before of people who could use
their energy to heal, but I’d never done it. “How?”

“There was a man at the compound
when I worked for S.P.I.,” Cameron said. “He was able to reattach his own
finger when it was shot off.”

I looked down at Lyndsey. I didn’t
need to be a doctor to know she wouldn’t last more than a few minutes. “We
can’t make her heal herself, she’s almost dead!”

Lewis knelt by the side of the
car, his gaze direct and determined. “You two can heal her.”

I shook my head, slightly
horrified. They expected too much. Hell, just a few hours ago they’d wanted to
leave me behind because my new powers were a liability. “I can’t.”

“Maybe.” Cameron took her lower
lip between her teeth and met my gaze. The shimmering hope there made me uneasy
and slightly ill. I wanted to stumble from the car and say, nope, sorry, maybe
next time. If she was looking for help, she better look to Olivia or Lewis. I
hadn’t a clue what to do, and I was new to this thrumming, impossible source.

Without waiting for my agreement,
or maybe sensing my reluctance, Cameron pressed her trembling hands to Aunt
Lyndsey’s chest, right above the wound. Blood flowed up between her pale
fingers with each beat of our aunt’s heart. The entire world seemed to slow.
Olivia and Lewis faded, the noise from the nearby highway disappeared. I could
hear nothing, see nothing but Cameron and Lyndsey surrounded by pure, golden
light. Energy. Awesome, pulsing energy. Just like that, any unease fled. I
could practically feel the vibration of the entire universe, and with that
vibration came power. Complete and unending power.

Add your energy
, Cameron’s voice whispered through my mind.
Help me.

Startled, I looked up, meeting
her gaze. “I…I can’t.”

“Try it.”

Still, I hesitated. I was afraid
I wouldn’t be able to control my powers and I’d kill her. Worse, I was afraid
that it was all a mistake, that I wasn’t a carrier and she’d die anyway. Still,
what choice did I have but to try? With Cameron’s stare unnerving and insistent,
I gave in and pressed my hand atop hers. Almost immediately I felt the energy
flare to life within the pit of my belly, as if it had been waiting all along
to be set free. It thrummed, it sang as it left my body in a heated wave and
soaked through Cameron’s hands, into Aunt Lyndsey’s chest. My eyes closed; I
didn’t need to look, I knew it was working.

I wasn’t sure how long we sat
there with our energy pouring into her, but just as suddenly as it had started,
it stopped. The world came back sharply into focus. Cameron pulled her hands
away, her fingers red with Aunt Lyndsey’s blood. Slowly, I moved back. I felt
as if I’d just woken from a dream, a really deep, really odd dream. Swallowing
hard, I forced my gaze to focus on Lyndsey. Maybe it was my imagination, but
her cheeks looked like they had some color, her breathing calmer.

“Aunt Lyndsey,” Cameron
whispered.

The eyes behind her lids
flickered as if she heard us and was trying to dredge up enough power to lift
her lashes.

“Aunt Lyndsey,” Cameron said, a
bit more insistent this time.

Our aunt’s eyes slowly opened,
her gaze hazy but alert. I didn’t dare breathe as I waited. Who the hell knew
what that much energy would do to a person, even a person carrying the source. But
just like that her gaze cleared.

“Are you okay?” Cameron asked.

She looked to Cameron first, then
me, as if trying to figure out what had just happened. “Yes.” Her hand went to
her chest, the material still sodden with her own blood. “You healed me.”

She looked as stunned as I felt.
I couldn’t manage to respond, but Cameron nodded, giving her a grin as if she’d
had no doubt. Hell, my body might have been buzzing, but my rational mind denied
what had just happened. I stretched my fingers, trying to ease the sudden
tightness of my skin. I’d just brought my aunt back from the brink of death. It
was too much, too freaking much. Disconcerted, I stumbled from the car, my own
breathing harsh and shallow.

It was real. Every moment that
passed gave me further proof that what my aunt had said was real: I was a
freaking carrier of the source.

“Nora?” Lewis headed around the
front of the car toward me. “Nora,” his voice snapped through the haze in my
mind. “Go to the office, get two rooms. Pay cash.”

I nodded and numbly took the money
from him. “Thanks.”

He was giving me a reprieve. He
understood that I was overwhelmed; he had been too a year ago when Cameron and
I had showed up with stories of memories he didn’t remember. I clutched the wad
of cash in my fist and moved down the sidewalk. I had basically brought my aunt
back to life. I glanced back, needing to make sure. She still sat in the car
with Cameron. Lewis was beside them, Olivia just standing there off to the side,
alone. It was too late for her. She might be alive, but when you were tortured
it killed a part of you that could never be brought back to life. If only I’d carried
the source when I’d been on that boat and Mom had drowned. If only…

I turned a corner and spotted
the office ahead. The afternoon was eerily quiet. The only sound was the far
away rumble of cars on the highway and the occasional chirp of a bird. We were
safe here…I hoped. We just needed to make it into a room.

Suddenly, I stumbled, my head
swimming. “Hell no.”

Saving Aunt Lyndsey had been too
much. Off balance, I pressed my hand to the rough stucco siding of the
building, waiting for my body to return to me. Everything was a dizzying whirl
of color and sound. I tried to move forward again, but my legs felt leaden. Slowly,
I sank against the wall. Although the sun was bright and hot, the fluorescent
lights above had been left on and the bulbs buzzed like a swarm of cicadas swarming
me.

Cameron,
I sent out the mental call but wasn’t sure if the message traveled.
My legs folded, my body no longer my own. Vaguely I was aware of my knees hitting
the hard ground, a thud that vibrated throughout my entire body. I fell back,
my head slamming against the cement. The sun above spun, the clouds in turmoil.
Too bright. I closed my eyes. The world around me faded, the sounds
disappearing into silence. For a moment I just hung there…suspended in
nothingness, savoring the feel.

“Nora,” someone whispered near
my left ear.

The sound of his voice brought
with a change in scenery. The ground was no longer hard, but soft. The parking
lot no longer smelled like garbage and car fumes but sweet earth and clean air.
I sighed, lifting my lashes. Fluffy white clouds floated on a brilliant blue
sky. Definitely not in Kansas anymore. I slid my gaze right. Wavering wild
flowers of purple and pink. Small yellow and white butterflies flittering from
bloom to bloom.
 

“Nora, are you okay?” A warm
hand brushed the side of my face.
 

Slowly, I turned my head. Maddox
lay beside me, his gaze piercing, worried. My chest grew tight, my anxiety
fleeing. Even if it was a mirage, I savored the sight of him, and in that brief
moment nothing else mattered. “Where are we?”

“The field.”

He didn’t need to explain further,
I understood. Between the football stadium and the college was a field where
he’d taken me on our third date. After dinner we’d walked through the wildflowers,
and he’d laid out a blanket. I thought he was merely trying to get in my pants,
but after we’d lain side by side for an hour and he hadn’t made a move, I’d
been more than surprised. Instead, we’d watched the falling stars and talked
about what we’d wanted out of life. The day had been perfect. It was also the
moment when I’d realized he was no longer just a means to an end; I couldn’t deny
my feelings for him any longer.
 
 
 

“Do you remember what you said
to me here that last night we were together?” he asked, his breath warm across
my cheek. God, he felt so real, it was hard to remember that it was just his
energy. I couldn’t help myself and rolled onto my side toward him.

“You said you merely wanted to
be free. Free from worry, free from your past and your parents’ pasts. You said
you just wanted a normal family, a normal life.”

“Yeah,” I released a harsh
laugh. “Pretty stupid.”

“Not really.” He reached out,
slipping his hand in mine. I stiffened at his touch. I still wasn’t used to
being vulnerable, and holding hands with Maddox was opening up a can of worms I
wasn’t quite ready for. “You think we could have had that? A normal life?”

I jerked my hand away. “No.
People like us don’t get normal.”

I turned my head, studying the
college, but the buildings were hazy, no students visible. Brushing off my
unease, I returned my attention to Maddox. I’d learned long ago that when you
started to believe, when hope flared, that’s when fate bitch-slapped you hard.

I shoved my hands into the
ground and sat up. “I was born this way, Maddox. There’s nothing I can do about
it. But you… Why did you stay with them? You could’ve escaped. You could’ve had
a life.”

Slowly, he sat up. He was pale,
dark crescents under his eyes. In fact, if anything, he looked worse than
before. Despite trying to prevent the emotions from taking over, my worry grew.

“You still don’t get it, do
you?” He was serious, so freaking serious.

Although it was warm, I felt
cold. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to keep going with this line of conversation.

“I stayed for you.”

I surged to my feet, attempting
to put distance between me and his words. “Right.”

He stumbled upright, and grabbed
my arm, forcing me to remain by his side. “I stayed to protect you. I stayed
because I wanted to help you.”

I jerked away from him, furious.
Angry that he was choosing to tell me the truth now, of all times. Angrier
still that I believed him. “Why should I trust you?”

“Because I knew.” He stepped
closer to me, blocking out the sun so that he was merely a large,
broad-shouldered shadow. “I knew where you were every moment of your life after
you left me. I knew, and I made damn well sure to hide your location from them.
I couldn’t leave because I realized the only way to protect you was by staying
with them.”

I shook my head. He was saying
he’d given up his life for me, but the only people I knew that selfless were Cameron
and Lewis. Let’s face it, their love wasn’t normal, it didn’t happen every day.
“I don’t believe you.”

I couldn’t believe him. If I let
my guard down and he betrayed me, I knew without a doubt I would never trust a
living soul again. It would destroy me. “I’m leaving.”

I started past him, although
where I was going I hadn’t a clue. His gaze narrowed, anger flashing in those
steel eyes as he reached out and latched onto my arm. “I knew when you left
Ohio and moved to Missouri. I knew when you left Missouri and moved to
Savannah. I knew. I stayed so that I would be one step ahead of them, so that I
could manipulate the facts and they wouldn’t find you.”

His words stunned me. Oh God,
was he serious? I jerked away from his touch. “You should’ve told me!”

He latched onto my wrists, pulling
me up close. “If I had told you, you would never have run. I had to make you
hate me.”

I tried to pull away, but even
ill, he was still too strong. “Well, you succeeded, you stupid ass!”

“No,” he whispered, pulling me
close. “Not really, did I?”

No. He hadn’t because I knew, he
knew—hell, everyone probably knew—that I still loved him. I sank into his body,
telling myself I would allow only a few minutes to savor his touch.

“Nora.” He slid his fingers
under my chin and tilted my head back. “I’ve always loved you.”

I wanted to push him away, but I
couldn’t seem to move. When he lowered his head, and his lips met mine, I let
him kiss me. I let him because I wanted it as much as he, maybe more. The years
might have gone by, but my attraction for him hadn’t changed…he still kissed
better than any man I knew. His arms slid around my waist, pulling me close to
his hard body. I was losing control, falling into that hazy zone of pleasure.
But I wouldn’t lose my mind. This wasn’t real, not really. Maddox was out there
somewhere being tortured. I might never find him.

I pushed at his chest, tearing
my mouth from his. “I can’t. We can’t stay here. I have to find you.”

“No,” he whispered, cupping the
sides of my face. “Don’t. Go live your life.”

“What life? You know as well as
I there is nothing for me but secrecy and running. Yeah, I’ve done terrible
things.” I shook my head. “But I can’t leave you. I might have hated you at
times, but I won’t give up. We will find you. Olivia will help—”

“Olivia?” He frowned, his hands
dropping to my shoulders in a tight grip.
 

I nodded. “She’s another mind
reader, actually lived in Maine with Aaron when you were there as a prisoner.
We found her and—”

“No, Nora. She’s working for
them.”

I pulled away, stumbling back
and releasing a wry laugh. “She was beaten.” I turned away from him, I couldn’t
concentrate when he was looking at me like that, and I needed to concentrate.
“She was attacked right there along with us. She can’t be one of them…”

I spun around, but Maddox was
gone. For a moment I merely stood there, stunned, hoping, praying, he was
merely hiding. As if he’d pop up out of the wildflowers and say “Surprise!”

But no. I could sense it in the
energy surrounding me. He was gone. “Maddox?”

“You alright, lady?” someone
asked, the voice coming from everywhere all at once.

Confused, I turned around,
searching for the voice, but the world around me was melting like a water color
left in the rain. The flowers…gone. The sky…gone. I stood for the briefest
moment within nothingness. Suddenly the world gave way and I was floating,
floating, sinking, the reality around me becoming solid once more. The ground
beneath me hardened, my body heavy. The scent of motor oil and garbage invaded
my nose, making me gag. I coughed, blinking my eyes wide and staring into the
harsh sunlight.

“Lady?” Someone shifted closer,
hovering over me.

The memory of my visit with
Maddox came rushing back. Oh God, she was lying. Olivia was lying. I shoved my
hands into the sidewalk and jumped to my feet, although I knew my body would
protest the sudden movement.
 

“Lady?” The concerned man
started to reach for me.

I ignored the buzz of my body,
the throbbing of my head from where it had hit the sidewalk. “I’m fine. Thanks.
I’m fine.”