Closed Hearts (2 page)

I unnerved them.

The executives in shiny
nove
-fiber suits came next, their hard-soled shoes scraping the cobbled driveway as they jockeyed each other with fast-paced thoughts about supply-chain management. My dad followed in his trim black jacket, subtly angling himself between me and the bodyguards. I could easily jack the goons myself—I was more of a threat to them than the other way around—but my dad was extra protective these days.

The executives joined Mr. Trullite on the steps of the mansion, a twenty-thousand-square-foot behemoth with north and south wings, plus a west wing tucked behind the thick marble columns of the entrance. I mentally brushed over the usual assortment of cooks, maids and executive staff inside. A gardener I didn’t recognize worked the English garden in back near the pool, attending pansies that were already wilting in the early summer heat. My featherlight touch on his mind barrier popped up his name.
David.
As I pressed into his mind to find more, the gardener surprised me by reacting to my mental touch.

What the
…
?
How had I missed that he was a jacker? Were my skills getting
that
rusty? Maybe he was just a linker—a weak jacker who could only link thoughts, not control minds. Sometimes their mind barriers were really soft, like a reader’s. Then the gardener shoved me out of his head and mentally hunted for me, something no linker could do. I was outside the reach of most normal jackers, so his search netted him nothing but the staff inside the mansion. I could easily reach him, but he couldn’t reach me.

That was when he panicked and ran.

If he wasn’t a linker, maybe he was only a rook—a jacker who passed for a mindreader, usually so they could keep a normal job. But Mr. Trullite was paying me to find hidden jackers, no matter what their situation, even if they were relatively harmless rooks. I left Mr. Trullite’s side and sprinted down the south wing of the mansion, skirting the landscaping that heaped onto the tightly trimmed lawn. I needed to get closer. If I’d caught the gardener by surprise, rather than the other way around, I might have been able to knock him out. Now that he was on full alert, I could barely stay in his head, much less stop him from running off. Maybe my skills really had gotten weaker. Back in the camp, when I was mentally wrestling with jackers all the time, I had gotten stronger the more I used my abilities. But the last time I’d wrestled with another jacker was when that angry clan found me, and that was months ago.

I pushed as hard as I could into the gardener’s mind, going deeper and distracting him into stumbling. He landed knee-down in the grass. Fear stung his mind as an image flashed through his thoughts: a man in a dark, skin-hugging mask. A contractor from Jackertown. The kind that set up deals between mindreaders with lots of cash and jackers willing to do anything for it.

I sucked in a breath. David wasn’t a rook. He was a jackworker.

This was not good.

Picking up my pace, I linked a thought to my dad’s mind.
Dad—

His thoughts rushed a million miles an hour.
What are you doing?
What’s going on!
I should have linked in earlier, before I took off running. With my Impenetrable Mind, my dad couldn’t link his thoughts into my head, so communication was always a little one-sided.

The gardener who works in back. He’s on the run. South lawn.
I didn’t have to say he was a jacker. That was the only threat that would make either of us break a sweat.

Let me handle this!
My dad’s thoughts burned through my head.
I don’t want you chasing after some strange jacker. He could be anyone.

I slowed to let my dad catch up.
Yeah, well, Mr. Anyone is getting away.
I clung to David’s mind, but the farther he got, the more I struggled to keep him from shoving me out. He staggered out of the gardens and tore across the lawn.
And he’s from Jackertown.

My dad let loose a mental curse, the kind he never let my mom hear, and sprinted past. I caught up to him at the end of the south wing, ready to put on some speed. David was a hundred yards away, out of Dad’s range, and halfway across the expanse of lawn that pushed back the raw Illinois forest surrounding the estate. I’d still be able to track him in there, and maybe the thick underbrush would slow him down. Then again, maybe the masked contractor that hired him to jack Mr. Trullite would be waiting in the woods with a gun. I pulled out of David’s mind so I could sweep the forest to the full extent of my ability. No one was there, but Mr. Trullite’s estate was huge, extending beyond my quarter-mile reach. At least there was no one close by, and we’d have a heads-up before anyone could shoot us, even if they could get a line of sight through the trees.

Still, not really a situation I wanted to get into.

I quickly checked back on Mr. Trullite. He had ushered his spooked guests inside, assuring them that his granddaughter “Lucy” was a mindjacker—which thoroughly shocked them. Waves of fear pulsed through their minds and distracted them while Mr. Trullite tried not to think of my real name. He was more concerned about keeping my identity secret than his own safety.

I focused back on the jackworker, more determined than ever to stop him.

Near the edge of the neatly manicured lawn, David was about to disappear into the thickets. As I reached for his mind, my dad stopped cold, drew a gun out of a holster inside his jacket, and fired. Nearly a hundred yards away, the jacker went facedown in the grass. My breath caught, and I stumbled to a stop.
Did my dad just kill him?
Then I realized the gun barrel was too wide for a regular gun, and his shot had made a pop-whoosh sound.

I unlocked my legs and jogged up next to my dad. “Where’d you learn to be such a marksman with a dart gun?” My lungs fought for air between my words. I wanted to ask,
And when did you start carrying a weapon?

“Weapons training.” His face darkened, the way it did when I asked questions about his past, and he marched toward the fallen body of the jackworker. I pushed into David’s mind to make sure he was only unconscious, felled by the fast-acting sedative from the dart. The same sedative that the government had used in gas form to subdue jackers in the concentration camp. The orange anesthetic of the sedative overwhelmed David’s mind-scent and stung the back of my tongue, bringing back memories I didn’t want to revisit. I spent the walk out to his body trying to keep my mom’s cheese-sandwich lunch from coming back up.

My dad flipped the body over so we could see his face. “Do you know him?”

“No.” He was only a year or two older than me. Were the contractors in Jackertown using kids for jackwork now?

My dad’s clear blue eyes met mine. “Did he get a good look at you? Did he recognize you when you were in his head?”

His words made my stomach twist even more than the orange-flavored sedative. “I’m not sure.”

We had never discussed what would happen if we actually found a hidden jacker during our mindguard duties. Only the government was equipped to keep jackers contained for any length of time. And I’d rather cut off my own arm than hand another jacker over to them.

The security goons crunched the dry grass as they trotted up. They would be defenseless against this guy once he woke up.
You’re not going to give him to these bozos, are you?

No. We’re letting him go.

I hiked up my eyebrows.

We’ll erase him first,
my dad elaborated.
Then take him up to Wisconsin.

I cringed. If we erased his memories and dumped him in Wisconsin, the Jackertown contractor might not find him, or be able to take his lost money out in blood. On the other hand, if we let the jackworker keep his memories, the contractor might piece together who I was and my cover would be blown. And that wouldn’t be safe for any of us, including Mr. Trullite. No, erasing him was the best option.

My dad knelt in the grass as he plunged into David’s sedative-filled mind. The smooth features of the jackworker’s face twitched. He was just a kid, too young for this kind of business.

But he should have known better than to do jackwork in the first place.

I twisted to look through the rear window of the limo. My dad was staring after me, feet planted wide.
Go straight home
, had been his explicit instructions.

The protesters at the gate shook their fists as the limo approached. I jacked them to look away, and their fists fell slack at their sides. The demens guy was still passed out, so I reluctantly reached into his head to wake him up.

As the limo glided past the protesters, I drummed my fingers on the bamboo tray next to me. I couldn’t imagine my dad letting me work security for Mr. Trullite anymore, not when there was a chance I had been found out. Even with the jackworker’s memories erased, the contractor would know something had gone wrong. Next time, he would send a stronger jacker or come investigate himself.

I just hoped I wouldn’t get my dad fired. Mr. Trullite made it clear from the beginning that we were a package deal—he wanted
me
, the girl who stared down FBI agents to rescue a bunch of changeling jacker kids. Any other mindguard work my dad could get would be more danger for less money. Most jackworkers carried guns, not garden tools.

When my dad quit his job with the Navy (because of me), it left a stone weighing in my stomach. A lot of jackers rooked as readers so they could keep working, but my dad’s jacker skills from his years in the Navy didn’t translate well to the mindreading world—except in security. Even my Mom, who
was
a mindreader, couldn’t get work because she might give us away. She had stayed home all those years, keeping my dad’s jacker secret, and now that it was out in the open (because of me), she still had to lie (also because of me).

Things were so messed up.

I leaned forward to rub my temples and the limo seat shifted with me. If my dad lost his job with Mr. Trullite, we’d end up in the slums or Jackertown, along with the other out-of-work mindjackers. That was no place for my mom. Or Xander, the changeling I’d rescued and who lived with us now. Or me, for that matter—the jackers that attacked us in Gurnee weren’t the only ones unhappy that I had forced them out of hiding.

Our rental house was small, but at least it met the range codes and my mom didn’t have to hear the neighbors’ thoughts in her dreams. It was up to my dad and me to keep our family safely in the suburbs and away from jackers, which was why I didn’t tell him that I had no intention of going straight home. I would stop off at our house to change clothes, but I was scheduled for a shift at the Dutch Apple diner, which my dad didn’t know about and I wasn’t telling him.

My shift wasn’t until later, but coming in early would earn me a few extra unos. If my dad lost his job, we would need every uno to hold us over. Plus I had been secretly saving money, in case my brother Seamus lost his West Point scholarship. As a mindreader, life was mesh for him at school—I wanted it to stay that way.

The limo eased to a stop in front of our rental complex in Libertyville, a battalion of skinny four-story houses covered in weathered gray-blue paint and lined up like soldiers in a mile-long parade. They each had the minimum thirty feet of separation, but my dad’s garage shared a wall with the neighbors, and the sound traveled pretty well, even if the mindwaves didn’t. At least we were near the street and had a lawn, instead of being buried deep inside the housing rat maze.

The driver waited while I dashed inside to swap my dress pants for a t-shirt and shorts. I managed to sneak past my mom so she couldn’t waylay me with questions about why I was home so early, but thirteen-year-old Xander stopped me on the way out. He was wearing one of my brother Seamus’s shirts, which was two sizes too big, and his hair stuck up in the back.

I linked into his head, so Mom wouldn’t hear us.
What’s up, kiddo?

Where are you going?

Xander was mesh about the need to keep certain things secret, so I usually told him the truth.
Rooking as a waitress at the diner.

Can I come?
he asked.
I’ll rook as a customer!
My dad didn’t like us leaving the house, but sometimes Xander and I snuck out at night, just so we wouldn’t go demens being cooped up all the time. We could easily rook as readers—it was the possibility of stumbling on a jacker that had my dad worried. I had changed my looks, but Xander still had the same fresh changeling face that cycled twenty-four seven on the tru-casts for weeks. My dad would freak if he found out about the Dutch Apple, but it would be worse if I took Xander.

Not this time, sport. Be mesh and cover for me, okay?
If Mom asks, say I went for a run.

Xander’s face fell, but he let me skitter out of the house without any more protest.

The limo driver dropped me off behind the diner, next to the dumpsters and the hydro recharge station. I scurried past the back office, where Mrs. Weissmann was bent over a scribepad, her wild wisps of gray hair pulled back off her face. She was madly entering the latest receipts for her tiny business, watching every uno. I whizzed through the kitchen door and automatically reached out to link into every mind in the kitchen and the dining room beyond. A wave of awareness passed through their minds, nothing strong enough to draw their attention, just enough for me to pass as a reader.