Mind Games

by Kiersten White

  I want to grab my arm, I know I need to slow the bleeding, but it will hurt so much more if I touch it. “Yes. Well, no. I was sent here to kill you. But I wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have. Obviously. Which is why we are both in this mess now.” I take a deep breath (it hurts, even breathing hurts, I wish I would pass out but I don’t have time to) and look straight up into his eyes. “I work for very, very bad people. And I am going to do whatever I can to keep you safe from them. I need you to help me keep you alive, okay?”

  He looks back to the alley and I can see in the lines of his body that he is still completely torn. Then his shoulders settle and angle toward me and I’ve won him, at least for now and now is where I do my best work.

  “Okay,” he says. “But you’ll have to answer some questions.”

  “Believe me, I have more than you do. We need a car.”

  “I have a car—”

  “You’re dead, remember? This means no car, no ATM, no using anything that can be traced back to you.” My head is spinning. I can’t hear my instincts if my head’s not clear. I’m already so scared that I don’t know how to listen to just myself. “The other guys. They have a car waiting. We can use that.”

  There are so many problems. There will be no body because Adam isn’t dead. But no! Cole in the alley! A whole new avenue is opening up to save me and Annie and Adam, too. North really was the right choice. Maybe my instincts aren’t totally broken.

  I pull out my phone with my good hand and lean heavily against the wall of the building we’re in front of.

  “Someone’s going to see us.” Adam looks around nervously. “You’re bleeding. A lot.” He stares at my arm, not blinking, like he’s entranced. Then he shakes his head, closes his eyes, and opens them. I can see in his face he’s made a decision, decided not to be freaked out. It’s not what most people would do right now. I kind of love him for it. “Let me take care of your arm.” He drops to a knee and pulls his backpack off his shoulder. “I have a kit in here.”

  “It has to look like something I could have done myself.”

  He nods and opens a compact first aid kit (why does he have that in his backpack? I should have one of those), pulls out scissors, and cuts away my sleeve above the wound. I don’t look. I hate blood.

  “I’m going to call someone. Be totally silent. He can’t hear you.” I push the 1 on my phone and it rings twice before James answers.

  “Fia, beautiful, are you done? Do you need me to arrange a flight home?” His voice is light and easy, but there are questions there. He’s worried about me; he didn’t want me to do this job in the first place. I want to read into it, but I can’t let myself.

  “Ambushed,” I say, gasping in pain at something Adam does. “I got shot.”

  “Where? How bad?” James tries to sound like he is all business, but I hear an undercurrent of genuine concern. Maybe I’m just pretending I do. I don’t know.

  “In the shoulder.” I grit my teeth, then swear loudly. Adam’s hands are steady and sure, and I wonder why he can be this calm over something a gun did when he was so terrified by the gun itself. “I’ll live. Three guys, don’t know who they were with. They weren’t ours.”

  “Of course they weren’t ours!”

  “You never know. I left all three down but alive.”

  “And the mark?” He asks this more carefully. He knows what this will do to me. He knows, but he still couldn’t stop his father from sending me.

  The mark is carefully applying tape and gauze to keep me from bleeding too much. The mark has gentle hands that are stained with blood now, though not in the same way mine will always be. The mark is a person, and he has beautiful eyes and he helps puppies and he trusts girls he really, really shouldn’t. The mark is breathing very deeply and evenly, deliberately. The mark is silently mouthing something to himself and I want to know what it is. I want to know what this boy who has to be scared out of his mind is mouthing to keep himself calm while he patches up my arm.

  “Dead. Body in an alley with the three guys. I’m guessing they’ll do cleanup duty since there’s a lot of their own blood there and they don’t want to get fingered.”

  “Can you get back?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  I almost hang up when he talks again. “Fia?”

  “What?”

  “I’m glad you’re okay. I’m sorry this happened.”

  I want to believe him. So much. “Sure you are.” I end the call. Adam puts the finishing touches on my bandage, then looks up into my face. “Congratulations,” I say, smiling weakly. “You’re officially dead.”

  He frowns, then unbuttons his black shirt and puts it around my shoulders so it covers up the bandage. He’s wearing just his thin white tee now. “Can we talk?”

  “Just as soon as we steal their car.” I stand, wobble slightly, which is humiliating because I do not wobble, then walk quickly in the direction Cole said the car was. Adam follows, a half step behind. There’s a car idling, a black sedan, with a driver. No one else. I wish I hadn’t been shot, because this would be much easier.

  I should go for stealth or something, anything, but I’m too tired. I walk straight up, reach down and open the driver’s door (should have locked it, that was phenomenally stupid of them), and am surprised to see a woman, midtwenties, behind the wheel. She has brown hair and brown eyes and a kind face that is frozen in shock.

  “You,” she says, like she knows me.

  I answer by grabbing the stun gun out of my purse and using it on her.

  “Pull her out,” I say. Adam doesn’t move, so I say it again. “Pull her out.”

  He does, gently setting her on the sidewalk. She isn’t unconscious, but she’s curled up against the pain and I almost feel sorry for her.

  “I should drive,” Adam says, looking at my arm.

  “You don’t know where to go.”

  “Do you?”

  “No, but my guess is always better than yours.” My guess is always better than anyone’s.

  He gets in and I do, too. The seat is leather and still warm. I pull out, calmly, driving exactly the speed limit as I head east—no more north for me, thank you very much—out of the city. We’re lucky. I flew here, but it’s only a five-hour drive back to Chicago.

  I look for OnStar, but I don’t see anything. And I don’t feel like the car will be traced. I don’t think they’ll call the police, either. I have a good feeling about this car.

  “Fia.” His voice is flat and I glance over to see him staring intently at me. I wish we were at a deli, eating and laughing and feeding Chloe. I miss Chloe. I wish she were my dog and I had an alcoholic father and I were the type of girl that Adam could date and rescue and fall in love with. I wish my left arm didn’t hurt so much I wanted to die, because it also means I can’t tap tap tap my leg, and without that fidget I don’t know how to stop the thoughts and feelings flooding through me.

  So much blood today.

  “What do you do?” I ask, scanning the road. “You’re just a student, right? I can’t figure out why they want you dead. Do you have important parents?”

  He leans back and rubs his forehead. “My dad is a dentist and my mom runs a day care.” He swears softly. “They’re going to think I’m dead, aren’t they?”

  “You can’t contact them.”

  “This will kill them.”

  “You’ll probably get listed as missing. They’ll have hope. And you aren’t really dead, which is the best part of their hope. It’ll be okay.” I want to reach over and take his hand. But I can’t.

  “How exactly do you define okay?”

  I laugh, my real laugh, or at least the only real laugh I have anymore. It is short and harsh and it scrapes my throat.

  He sighs. “I’m not a student. I’m a doctor.”

  “How old are you?” I shouldn’t be hurt that he lied about his age, but I am. And also bothered that I hadn’t been able to tell he
was lying. That’s bad.

  “I’m nineteen.” (Ha! I was right. He’s not a liar.) “I just did everything faster. I moved here to finish up a research project on tracking and diagnosing brain disorders through a combination of chemical analysis and MRI mapping.”

  I make a noncommittal noise. I have no idea what any of that means or why it makes him need to die. I need to focus on driving.

  I almost pass out on the freeway on-ramp.

  We pull over and I let Adam drive. I’ll figure out a place for him to hide in Chicago. I have to go home so they don’t suspect something is wrong. I don’t know the rest of what to do yet, but it consists of kidnapping Annie and then all of us running away together. (Stop thinking about it. No thinking.) Assuming they don’t already know what I am planning. I could be dead as soon as I get back. I hope Annie doesn’t see it, hasn’t seen it, won’t see it. I don’t want her to see it.

  But if they kill her first, I will kill as many of them as I possibly can before I go down.

  “Who are you?” Adam asks after a few minutes’ calm. I don’t usually like riding in the passenger seat, but today it feels nice. Adam gave me something from his first aid kit that has dulled the pain enough for me to handle it. It feels nice to be dulled. Dull, dull, dull. Usually I am sharp. Being sharp all the time is exhausting. I want to take all the rest of the pills from his case.

  “I’m Fia. I told you.”

  “I saw you back in that alley. You were crazy. You took out three guys, and you’re this small girl. You look so nice and so pretty”—he blushes and I smile, oh he is adorable I wish, I wish, I am not nice—“and I don’t understand what you were—what you are—any of this.”

  He doesn’t understand. He can’t. “I have to do what they tell me to. I have no choices. As far as the alley, I happen to have very good instincts.” I yawn, pulling my legs up and resting my head against the seat. I am safe with Adam, for now.

  “Three big guys with weapons. That’s more than very good instincts.”

  “Okay,” I say, closing my eyelids because they are heavy, heavy, heavy. “I have perfect instincts. And my sister can see the future. And my boss’s secretary can read minds. And my ex-roommate can feel other people’s emotions.”

  “Please don’t lie to me.” He sounds sad. I don’t ever want to make him sad.

  I feel heavy and light at the same time and I just want to sleep. I’ll sleep. “Who said I was lying?” I mumble before letting go.

  Everything hurts. I can’t tap tap tap my fingers because something happened to my left arm and it is nothing but pain now, bright, swimming pain. I crack my eyes open and—

  Oh no. Oh no, oh no. I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill Adam. He’s sitting next to me, driving (I let him drive? Why did I let him drive?) and very much alive.

  Annie, please be okay. I’ll figure this out and I’ll save Annie and Adam can be safe, too, because now that I remember I didn’t kill him, I also remember that I’m glad I didn’t kill him. It was the right choice. I’m not sure how it’ll end up being the right choice, just like north getting me shot was the right choice, but I know it’s the right choice.

  I giggle. I can’t help it. My arm hurts so bad and I got shot and I’m riding toward James in a car with the boy I was supposed to kill but didn’t and my entire world is shot and I’m going to have to figure it out really fast or we’ll all be dead.

  “You’re awake,” Adam, says, looking over at me with surprise in his soft gray eyes.

  “You have pretty eyes. I’m glad you’re not dead.”

  “Uh, yeah, me too.”

  “I feel fuzzy.”

  He shifts uncomfortably, eyes on the road. “I might have overdosed you. Just a little. I needed to think.”

  Hmm. He drugged me. That’s interesting. I felt like I was safe with him. I still do. My instincts are totally cracked from years of misuse. Maybe I’m trying to kill myself? I’m not brave enough to try again in real life, but maybe my subconscious is braver than I am and it’s trying to do me in.

  Oh! Adam has long eyelashes. Long arms. Long legs. Long fingers. Everything about him is long. Eden would make a dirty joke. I giggle imagining it.

  Focus, focus, focus. “You drugged me.”

  “I almost pulled over at three different hospitals. You’re bleeding through the bandaging.”

  I look down at the black sleeve of his shirt; it’s wet. “Ruined your shirt. Sorry.” I giggle again. I haven’t giggled in years. Maybe I should let Adam overdose me more often. It’s nice.

  “I’ll get a new one.”

  “Why didn’t you pull over? Or call the cops?”

  He’s quiet for a while, knuckles tight on the steering wheel. “Because I’ve been trying to figure it out. I believe you—about the hit—I probably wouldn’t if those other guys hadn’t showed up, but it’s all too weird to be fake. Plus I, uh, looked through your purse. Another knife in the lining, along with a few thousand dollars. Four different IDs. Is that picture of you and Annie?”

  I sigh. “Yes.”

  “She’s the one they’ll hurt if you mess up.”

  “I already messed up. She’s the one they’ll hurt if I don’t fix this. Wait, how do you know her name?”

  “You talked. I mean, when you were out. I asked you questions, and you answered them.”

  I glare suspiciously at him. “You should know I lie all the time.” Most people lie with words; I lie with my whole body. I lie with my thoughts and my emotions; I lie with everything that makes me who I am. I’m the best liar in the whole entire world. I hope I lied to him, whatever he asked. “What did I say?”

  “Have you really killed three people?”

  Tap tap tap I need to tap tap tap I need to get out of this car. I can’t breathe. “Why didn’t you stop at a hospital?”

  “I know why I’m in the middle of this.”

  Why is he still talking to me? He should be scared, he should get away from me. “Oh?”

  “My research. What I’ve been working on. I told you it was with MRI and tracking chemicals in the body to examine brain disorders, right? What I didn’t tell you is there’s a very specific focus. I’m mapping the brain functions of people who claim to have psychic abilities. It started as a focus inspired by this crazy aunt on my mom’s side, more to disprove it than anything else, but, well, there were patterns. Specific areas of the brain more active than others, certain chemical markers present. Only in women. So I was going to expand it—start gathering information on huge segments of the population to see if I could find the same patterns in women who don’t claim to be psychic.”

  I close my eyes, rest my head against the window. If they had that information, if they could access medical records and find women without depending on sketchy news reports or rumors or the muddled visions of their Seers, they could find all of them. No one would be safe.

  “They shouldn’t want to kill you,” I whisper. “You’re their dream come true.” And now I know I have to keep him hidden no matter what, because if Keane knew, if Keane got him…

  “I’d really like to look at your brain,” Adam says.

  I snort. “That has got to be the weirdest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  “I mean, in an MRI. I’d like to run some tests. On you and on Annie, if I can, if she’s really psychic like you say she is. What is it you can do, again? I wasn’t clear on it.” He runs a hand through his hair, and I see why it has that messy look. “I’m not really clear on any of this, honestly. I was still viewing it as a specific set of mental disorders that we could actually see in a scan. But if it’s all true…”

  “It’s all true. Promise. And there’s nothing special about my brain. If you scanned it, you’d probably see a swirling black mass.” I close my eyes and imagine my brain. It’d be dark, all of it, black and red with bright shining spots you’d want to cling to, but all they’d do is illuminate things I never want to see again. My brain scan would give him nightmares.

  “B
ut you said you had perfect instincts.”

  “I’m nobody. I’m collateral damage with a lot of training.” Chicago looms up ahead of us, old buildings and new buildings and cars and trees and lake, and I am so tired and my arm hurts so much and I have to go home and somehow keep my thoughts and emotions safely hidden.

  No problem.

  “As soon as we get into the city, pull over and get out. You can take the cash in my purse. Let me see your wallet and your phone.”

  He pulls them out of his pocket and I check his phone. He hasn’t called or texted anyone. Good boy. I open the window and fling them both out as far as I can.

  “Hey!”

  “Hey nothing. Keeping you alive, remember? And if you want to stay that way, you have to do exactly what I tell you with zero deviation. Find the cheapest hotel you can. I don’t want to know where or which one. Set up an email account—chloethedog@freemail.com, password north1—and email yourself. I’ll check it and we’ll set up a meeting. I don’t know when I’ll respond, but I will. I can’t plan things too far in advance or the Seers watching me will pick up on it. If they haven’t already.”

  “Do you do this often?” he asks, his brow furrowed.

  “Only for you. Don’t screw it up. Don’t forget you’re dead. I’m risking everything here. Do you understand that?”

  He pulls over; we’re in an outlying neighborhood, the buildings old brick, the trees not quite blooming and budding yet. It’s windy. And cold.

  Turning all the way toward me, he nods. His face is open and innocent, and I know he couldn’t lie if he tried. “You saved my life, Fia. Or spared it. Whichever. I’m not going to do anything that would risk yours.”

  I smile tightly. “I’m glad you stopped to pet the dog.” Then I get out. The wind hits me and makes my arm hurt even more as we get out and pass around the front of the car. I peel off the shirt and hand it to him with an apologetic shrug. I can’t show up in it. I don’t look down at my arm (the blood, I hate the blood, at least it’s mine this time).

  “So, I’ll talk to you soon, then?”

  “If I’m not dead,” I answer brightly, then, on impulse, which is how I live my life, I go on my tiptoes and kiss him on the cheek. It feels…nice. Really nice. I wish I could keep that emotion, treasure it up inside, try to figure out what it means to me. But it’s not a safe emotion to bring home.