Mindsiege (Mindspeak #2)(82)

I drew my head back, then pretended to beat it against the door several times before he stopped me. “Hey. Remember I said I had a surprise for you?”

“I don’t want any more surprises,” I said. I jerked my shoulder from his grasp. “I’m done with surprises. Especially from you.” I swallowed hard. “I just want to paralyze that evil woman that gave us life, destroy the server, and run far, far away from here where the IIA can’t find me.”

A tear ran down my cheek. I was definitely losing it. Jonas had stopped touching me. I didn’t know if he had backed away to let me have my moment of pity, or was he standing right behind me?

I didn’t care. I no longer cared about Jonas. I only cared about finding my way back to Jack. And saving my best friend from a fate that she never should have been a part of.

“Does your plan to run from the IIA include me?”

I whipped around at the sound of his voice. “Jack!” My knees buckled a little. He caught me. “You’re here.” I slipped my arms around his neck. He wrapped his strong arms around my waist in a hug, lifted my body, and carried it farther into the room.

“I’m here,” he whispered into my hair, his breath warm on my neck. “I’m sorry it took me so long. We had complications.” He kissed me lightly behind my ear.

I pulled back. “Why are you here? You shouldn’t be. She’s awful, Jack. She’ll kill you. She’ll kill me when she figures out I’d rather die than give her what she wants.”

“Shh.” He smoothed my hair. “I’m here. And we have a plan.”

“Thank goodness.” I noticed the room we were in for the first time. “Where are we?”

“Sandra’s apartment,” Jonas said, his voice quiet.

A growl rumbled in my chest. I glanced at him. “Isn’t that a little risky?”

“It was my idea.” Addison popped into view out of nowhere. “You know. Hide in plain sight.”

I jumped backwards. My hand flew to my chest. “Where did you come from?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Jonas said. “Addison is our little gen mod version of the invisible girl. She can vanish in the blink of an eye, and reappear whenever she wishes.”

My eyebrows jumped up. “Gen mod?”

“Genetically modified,” Jonas answered.

“And she’s discovered how to make herself invisible?” This was too much.

“Well…” Jonas tilted his head side to side. “It’s really about mind trickery. Similar to Dia and Bree. Where Dia and Bree can make people believe they’re seeing something or someone else, Addison can make a person see nothing at all. Her own invisibility cloak. It’s quite useful.” Jonas smiled.

I could feel my own eyes widen. “If she can do that, why didn’t she use that trick while at Wellington when Dia and Sandra kidnapped her?”

“Dia,” Jonas said.

I raised a brow, “Meaning?”

“Dia is very well aware of her surroundings, including the people around her,” Addison explained. “She has to be, in order to manipulate what a person sees or doesn’t see. And she can be sure to see things, including me, even when I try to disappear. She had no trouble finding me in my weakened state—so soon after I’d recovered from my brain injury.”

Jack brushed up against my back and circled his arms around me. His hands interlocked against my stomach. I laid mine on top of his. “Briana will most likely have the same powers as Dia,” he said. “She just hasn’t tapped into them completely yet.”

Addison went on. “The day you visited me for the first time, Dia was already manipulating what I was seeing. I told you I found Briana in the parking lot, only it wasn’t Briana. It was Dia. She was already throwing me off. I didn’t even see her coming. She was how Sandra escaped unnoticed.”

I squeezed Jack’s arms with my fingers, drawing his arms tighter around me. I had craved his touch, and now he was here.

Jonas eyed us from across the room. “I hate to break up this little reunion, but we have work to do if we want to get out of here. And I don’t want Sandra to find Lexi and me here. Together. She needs to trust me a little longer. If she turns on me, she’ll reprogram my tracker, and I won’t be able to control what they force me to make you do. I don’t ever want to be her puppet again.”

“Good point,” I said.

“Wait a minute,” Jack removed his arms from me, and moved to stand between me and Jonas. “What kinds of things would you be able to force her to do?”

Jonas stood up straighter. Shoulders back. “Anything. Unless—”

“Unless what?” Jack squeezed his hands at his side.

“Unless Lexi figures out how to block me. She was able to block Ty in the end.”

“Which is why Sandra terminated him,” I said with great sadness. Jack relaxed his protective stance and moved so that he wasn’t blocking me. “Which is also why I need to destroy the server, or remove every tracker.” I was convinced that if I could remove the trackers, that even Dia and Lin would be safe from Sandra’s wrath. That they wouldn’t follow her orders. They could come with us. “Where’s Georgia?”

“I don’t know.” Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re in touch, but she’s in hiding. She says she’ll help remove the tracker from Jonas, but that’s all she’s agreed to for now. She had quite a reaction after Addison.”