The Locksmith
by Susan Kaye Quinn
Chapter One The mind is a puzzle, just waiting to be unlocked. Or re-locked, as the case may be.
The girl sitting in the chair in front of me is cute: long, shiny brown hair, little freckles that she’s probably outgrowing, and wide blue eyes that are staring straight into mine. Her name is Sarah, and she’s a mindjacker like me—well, not
exactly like me, but she would fit in at my high school just fine. She looks my age, maybe a junior, but she’s probably older. Marshall doesn’t like underage jackers in his Clan—says we get in too much trouble. He made an exception for me, but only because of what I can do. Sarah’s just a normal jacker, at least for the moment. She looks like the kind who’s sweet to everyone, has a pet cat named Meow-Meow, and knows how to hide really well in the regular mindreading population.
Too bad I have to hurt her.
“Come on, Zeph,” Marshall says to me. “Get on with it.” He’s looming behind her chair, intimidating her with his six-foot-two frame, as if being a powerful mindjacker in his own right and hauling her into the Clan’s decrepit warehouse at six in the morning isn’t enough reason to completely freak out the girl.
Sarah. Her name is Sarah.
I try to remember their names. It seems like the decent thing to do.
“You want this done fast, or do you want it done right?” I ask. It’s a rhetorical question, because there’s no speed or finesse involved in what I do. It’s either on or off, done or not-done. But Marshall is the leader of a Clan of thuggish and brutal mindjackers, not a rocket scientist, and besides, he doesn’t really understand what I do. I barely understand it myself. I just know I can lock Sarah’s mind tighter than the datafiles at the Pentagon. Which would be a great target for a jacker with an impenetrable mind, a
keeper like Sarah is about to become, but that isn’t actually going to be her mission. I don’t know the details of her real mission—it’s not my business to know.
I’m just the locksmith.
. . .