Minders

by Michele Jaffe

  Curtis seemed surprised and not entirely pleased. “What are you doing here?”

  Sadie had the gun halfway out of its holster when Catrina batted her hand away.

  “Cleaning up your mess,” Catrina said, and with one neat motion got Sadie by the back of her neck and began shoving her toward the edge of the roof.

  She talked as she did it, squeezing Sadie’s throat for emphasis. “‘Trust me,’ you said, ‘I can control her. She likes me, she’ll do what we want. If he has the money, she’ll tell us. Think of it as protection, a way to guard our assets.’” Catrina was quoting Curtis, Sadie realized. The conversation she’d overheard had been about her, putting her into Ford’s mind. She was the protection.

  Sadie was pushing back against Catrina, making their progress erratic, but they were unquestionably moving closer to the edge of the floor.

  “It worked,” Curtis protested behind them. “We learned he knew more than we wanted him to. We learned he was a liability and had to be eliminated.”

  Catrina twisted Sadie’s arm behind her back painfully. They were now a foot from the edge of the roof. “You said there was no chance the Committee would send her back, that as soon as she was gone we could kill him. But you didn’t get sent home, did you?” Catrina asked, jerking Sadie’s arm up and making her yelp. “So it was left to me to figure out how to fix it. Just like today.”

  Sadie remembered being in the same building on her school trip. Remembered the wind. Remembered Pete shouting to her, “Hey, babe, come check this out,” and how he grabbed her and pulled her behind a column and started kissing her. How she’d kept her eyes open, staring at the space beyond the empty windows and thinking how easy it would be to just…

  Let…

  Go.

  Not anymore. Now she wanted to fight. “If you kill me, it will all come out,” Sadie said as she struggled against Catrina’s strength.

  “What will come out?” Catrina said, pressing forward, using Sadie’s arm as a lever. Her tone, her actions were chillingly deliberate.

  They were less than a foot from the end of the floor. “The texts. From Curtis to you, ordering you to switch me in and out of his mind.” Catrina’s pressure let up slightly. “And the one you sent about how you couldn’t find Subject Nine and you were initiating emergency removal protocols.” Sadie nodded her head behind her to Curtis’s phone, which had fallen to the ground. “I forwarded them. If you kill me, someone will find them.”

  “You idiot,” Catrina hissed at Curtis. She jerked Sadie’s arm up higher and pushed her right to the perimeter. “But it doesn’t matter. No one will believe it. You’ll be the girl who committed suicide. Too crazy to take seriously.”

  The toes of Sadie’s shoes had air beneath them. Do not panic, she told herself as her heart began to pound and her throat closed. You’re not going to jump. You have to fight. Spots danced in front of her eyes and her knees rattled. “Bye-bye,” Catrina said.

  And pulling Sadie with her, collapsed backward to the floor.

  Sadie rolled off her and staggered sideways, gasping for breath. She stared at Catrina, who was lying on her back with one foot dangling off the building’s edge and something bright orange sticking out of her neck.

  Curtis stood next to her. “I told you Miranda was a good shot,” he said, as Miranda Roque, sporting an elegant cream pantsuit and a shotgun under her arm, appeared from behind one of the columns.

  Miranda looked at him sadly. “Go wait in the car.”

  “But Moth—”

  “Go,” she said harshly, and just like that, he went.

  “Thank you,” Sadie said.

  Miranda smiled. “I couldn’t let her kill the only person in five years to get into the subconscious.” She gestured with the gun. “Would you mind checking her pulse? Don’t want a murder on my hands.”

  “Another,” Sadie couldn’t keep from saying.

  Miranda rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes.”

  Sadie bent. “It feels slow but strong.”

  Miranda’s gaze rested on Catrina fondly. “I used the kind for antelopes, not cheetahs. She’s more prey than wild cat, I think, despite her nickname.” She looked up. “Interesting about names, isn’t it? We don’t realize how they define us. Your subject, for example. Ford Winter. Did you notice how many of his memories and emotions, especially the important ones, involved ice and snow?”

  “They were linked to specific events,” Sadie pointed out.

  “There’s a reason they resonated for him.”

  “That’s—” A shiver swept over Sadie. “How did you know? And that I’d seen his subconscious? Have you been in his mind?”

  “Always like to do a quick walk-through after a cleaning to make sure it looks okay. I’m afraid we had to remove all traces of you. Not just the past two days; we did a complete detailing to make sure there wasn’t any foreign matter inside. Emergency protocol.”

  Sadie had been ready for that, knew they would have wiped Ford’s mind of her, but it still gave her a sharp pang of sadness. Nothing remained of what they’d shared, what he’d said or maybe felt when he was with her. She was gone from his life, irrevocably and completely, forever. “I expected that.”

  “I figured,” Miranda said drily. “Don’t blame me. You knew the rules.”

  “I did. But by those same rules, you know I have to report the murder I saw. And I have proof it was Curtis.”

  “That’s why I’m here. I thought maybe we could come to an understanding.”

  More gaps were filling in Sadie’s mind. “That’s why you went against the Committee and sent me back. To protect Curtis. You didn’t want me to report what I saw—just the opposite. You knew I’d never turn him in if I thought I was turning Ford in. Somehow you knew how I felt about Ford before I did.”

  “It came off you in waves. You’re lucky. Not many people experience that.”

  Sadie didn’t feel lucky. “Curtis was one of the Perfect Garden orphans, wasn’t he?”

  “‘Thing of darkness I acknowledge mine,’” Miranda quoted. “He and Plum were. Babies, the last two. When the state closed down the Perfect Garden they didn’t even count to see if they had gotten everyone. And I was the one endangering children?” Her eyes had sparks in them. “They were such a delight. So curious and determined.”

  “You implanted both of them with chips.” Which was why Willy hadn’t been able to find Ford when he spent the night at Plum’s, Sadie realized.

  “Of course,” Miranda said. “How could I do it to someone else’s child if I wouldn’t do it to my own? And it seemed only fair to have a Subject running Mind Corps.”

  Sadie thought of how many of her friends’ parents made exceptions for their own children without blinking. Sadie admired Miranda’s code, even if she couldn’t agree with its substance. Keeping her eyes on Miranda’s still handy gun, Sadie said, “You mentioned a deal.”

  “Simple. You don’t hurt what I love, and I won’t hurt what you love.”

  “Meaning I don’t turn Curtis in, and you leave Ford and the Winters alone forever?” Sadie considered it. Thought about Miranda’s version of justice, about how she was willing to go to any length to shield Curtis. “Substitute ‘protect’ for ‘not hurt’ and you’ll have a deal,” Sadie said. “You protect what I love, and I protect what you love.”

  That earned her a flash of a smile. “Sadie, short for Sophia,” Miranda said. “The goddess of wisdom. Your parents named you well.”

  “Now what happens? To Curtis?”

  “He’ll take a vacation abroad. And of course all the killing and whatnot will stop. I never thought he was capable of—” She swallowed hard, and Sadie thought she was genuinely upset. “Mind Corps is still valuable. I’m not giving up on that.”

  Sadie nodded. Pushed herself off the pillar and said, “Well, goodbye.”

  Miranda tilted her head to one side. “For now. I have a feeling we’ll be working together in the future, Ames.”

  Sadie shook her head.
“I can’t imagine the circumstances.”

  “It’s never a bad thing to have a good shot on your side.”

  Sadie made her way to the freight elevator and paused before getting on. “How did you know where to find me?”

  Miranda laughed. “You don’t think Subjects are the only ones who can be tracked, do you? Someone’s got to mind the Minders.”

  EPILOGUE

  FIRST SATURDAY OF AUGUST

  She went.

  She knew it was futile, but she went anyway. The first year it was a sunny, picture-perfect day, the water on the lake sparkling, endless double rows of footsteps in the sand as couples roamed up and down the beach. She thought at one point she saw him but was wrong, and she’d gone home aching, swearing not to try again.

  She went the next year too. There was a freak rainstorm, and seeing she was the only person on the beach, she’d taken off all her clothes and lay down in the sand just to see how it made her feel. She wished he’d been there. She wondered what he was doing and if he ever dreamed of the tree house.

  The year after, back from her first year as a psych major in college, Decca made her come to a performance of a new play she was starring in instead. The play was in an open-air theater, and when Sadie arrived she’d almost fainted. It was Bucky’s theater, still overgrown and lovely, but restored enough to be usable.

  Sadie’s vision felt like it was vibrating between past and present—that’s where Ford and Bucky had stood, that’s the catwalk they ran over, there’s Ford with a group of people and a pregnant woman, that’s the—

  Her eye moved back. It was him. With his arm around a pretty dark-haired woman who was definitely having a baby. Good for him, Sadie told herself, looking for a place to hide.

  Mason loped over to the group, grabbed the woman, and kissed her in a way that made it clear she was his and no one else’s. Good for Mason, Sadie thought, good for everyone, my god, it’s him.

  He looked 200 percent better than even her best imagination had painted him, the same but a little more lived in, more rugged. His smile hadn’t changed, though, the capacity to be mischievous or boyish, a dimple that could tease you coming and going.

  “Are you going to say hello?”

  Sadie turned to see a girl with impish blue eyes and blond chin-length hair. “Lulu?”

  “Mostly Louisa now,” she said with a smile that started bold but ended shy. “So? Are you?”

  Sadie shook her head, her lips pressed together. “No. I don’t—”

  “He dreams about you,” Lulu said.

  Sadie swallowed a lump. “How do you know?”

  “You’ll have to talk to him and find out,” Lulu said, wiggling her eyebrows.

  “I really don’t think it would be—”

  “Lulu, are you handing out programs or picking pock—” His eyes met hers, and it was like there was no one else there, no one else in the world.

  Sadie couldn’t find any words. She couldn’t breathe. Neither of them spoke, just stared at each other.

  “Did you design this?” Sadie asked finally, seeing the picture of him on the back of the programs Lulu was holding.

  “A friend of mine did,” he said, still staring at her. “I just restored it.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Her eyes didn’t leave his.

  “Breathtaking,” he said.

  Lulu said, “Please meet, because I want to invite Sadie to my birthday party. Sadie, this is Ford, my brother. Ford, this is Sadie.”

  “Sadie,” he repeated, savoring it. He glanced at Lulu. “How do you two know each other?”

  “We met a few years ago,” Lulu told him. “She helped a friend of mine.”

  “Will you come to Lulu’s birthday party?” he said. “It’s going to be about a hundred fourteen-year-olds and me.”

  “Mom’s in Paris on a painting course,” Lulu explained. “With her boyfriend.”

  Sadie blinked back tears. “I’d love to.”

  “We’re having it at our house on Ladyvine Street,” Ford put in. “It has a tree house—”

  “—with a rocking horse head on the wall,” Sadie said.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I owe enormous thanks to all my friends and family for being so understanding when I disappear for weeks at a time in writer’s jail, surfacing only to gulp coffee and snarl. Super special thank you’s go to Meg Cabot, Benjamin Egnatz, Sigmund Freud, Susan Ginsburg, Peter Jaffe, Rebecca Kilman, Jaques Lacan, Nespresso, pizza, Laura Rosenbury, Santa, Ben Schrank, Georges Seurat, Carlyle Stewart, and Jennifer Sturman; without your support and guidance, I would have long gone out of my mind.

  Susan Ginsburg’s mixture of wisdom, kindness, intelligence, and generosity continues to dazzle, inspire, and fill me with wonder. She is a marvel. I don’t know how I got lucky enough to have her as my agent, but I am grateful in a hundred ways every single day.

  Rebecca Kilman and Ben Schrank, my braintrust at Razorbill, went above, beyond, through, and around the call of duty for this book. What’s good in it is theirs; the flaws are mine.