Frozen Minds: Forbidden Minds, #3

By R.A. Rock

United they stand. Divided they fall…

Keeping one step ahead of The Agency consumes every moment of Yumi, Chad, Gracie, and Shiv's lives. When they concoct a plan to fake their deaths and finally free themselves for good, there's only one problem: a bounty hunter who will stop at nothing to make them The Agency's slaves. 

To protect the others, Yumi breaks a promise with Chad and inadvertently shatters their abilities. Devastated and powerless, the four Protectors must find a way to re-establish their bond before The Agency wins once and for all…

Frozen Minds is the third book in Forbidden Minds, a series of sci-fi romance novels. If you like unquenchable chemistry, elaborate worlds, and superpowers, then you'll love R.A. Roque's compelling novel. 

Buy Frozen Minds to escape The Agency today! 

 

Forbidden Minds series order...
1. Forbidden Minds
2. Wild Minds
3. Frozen Minds
4. Secret Minds
5. Frantic Minds
6. Dangerous Minds

• Language: English
• Publisher: Windy Point Publishing Inc.
• Release date: Nov 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540104090

Book preview

He had to die.

I adjusted the setting on the tiny but deadly stun gun that looked like a little remote control, pointing it at the bounty hunter with precision. Shadows from the twin sunsets cut across his face. My fingers were starting to tingle from the wind that was blowing across the mountain. I had taken my gloves off earlier and left them somewhere, but my arm didn’t shake, not for a second.

He was the only thing standing between us and freedom. I felt strong, steady, and certain as I aimed the little red dot at his forehead.

It was his life or ours.

An easy choice for me.

Yumi, no! Don’t kill him!

Not so easy for the redheads.

Fucking do-gooders.

Chad, my almost-husband — long story — came into my line of sight, crunching quickly through the crusty snow and wearing that ridiculous old hat that I had knitted for him the year we were both twelve. Why he had brought it halfway across the galaxy was beyond me.

He was followed by Gracie, who had been the one screaming. She was covered in snow. Had she fallen? That was unlike her usually graceful self. Shiv wasn’t likely to be far behind, but I couldn’t see him as they slogged through the knee-deep snow as quickly as they could to where I stood holding the gun aimed at the bounty hunter’s head.

Chad didn’t say anything, but his blue eyes spoke more than I ever wanted to hear. I put up a mental shield, though there was no way to protect myself from him. He was the most powerful telepathic Receiver ever known. He had access and could listen in on any mind — especially mine.

I blocked him hard, even though I knew he wasn’t trying to send to me. I’m a mild Empath, though, and I could feel everything. His disappointment. His fear. His sadness. His inability to understand why I was doing this.

Why? Why? Why? His eyes seemed to scream at me.

I unblocked long enough to send quickly.

Don’t try to stop me, Chad. I have to do this.

He clutched his head from the force of my mental voice, which was slightly out of control.

Yumi.

And the sound of his spoken voice, deep and a little rough, cut right through my still-ridiculously soft female heart. No matter how much I worked out, I couldn’t seem to make that organ any stronger, especially when it came to him.

One of his silly red curls was hanging out of his hat and down over his forehead again. My hand ached to brush it off. I pushed the thought away and tried to focus on killing the man in front of me.

He was curled into the fetal position, completely helpless, in snow dotted crimson with his blood.

Killing used to be easy — though I had always killed in the heat of battle, never in cold blood. But still. I never used to feel anything, so if I needed to kill someone, I did. No feelings. No guilt. No nothing. Just someone dead who had needed to die.

Now, though — since I had fixed myself — now I had a million feelings flooding me as I tried to keep my mind focused.

Regret that I had to take this man’s life who was just doing his job, after all, and trying to make it like we all were.

Sorrow that this would probably drive the redheads away from me forever. Something told me that this was going way beyond even their capacity for forgiveness.

Fear that this guy would get the drop on me and shoot me instead. It happens. Even to trained people like me. And, frankly, I really didn’t feel like being shot.

And guilt. A lot of guilt. That maybe this was wrong. That maybe there was another way and I was too lazy to take it. That maybe they were right.

I hated feeling guilty.

The plastisteel — a metal-plastic combination — that the stun gun was made of was starting to freeze the skin of my hand. It was time to kill him.

You don’t have to do this, Yumi. This time it was Shiv speaking from the right, his deep voice like chocolate. I wish he had given me that advice before, because now it was too late to back down. I had to do it. It was the only way to make sure we all stayed safe. Why couldn’t the three of them see that? We can figure out another way.

"This way is for sure," I said, finding my voice finally.

Come on, that’s bullshit, Shiv said, crossing his arms in his customary I-don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass posture — disdain written all over his gorgeous face. We all looked at him — me without turning away from the bounty hunter. I only shifted my eyes.

Shiv was of Indian descent, with black hair and black eyes, a toned body, and light brown skin — most women swooned over him but they’d have to fight Gracie to get to him. She’s small but feisty — it’s probably the red hair.

Bullshit? I said.

Bullshit. You know Gracie and I can rig a mind wipe that no one will ever be able to undo or figure out what we wiped. I don’t understand why you feel it’s so important to kill him, he said, looking at me like he really was trying to dissect my mind with his dizzying intellect.

Shiv’s as smart as he is handsome, and that’s saying something. He has a double major in physics and engineering and enough knowledge between his ears to give normal people a serious headache.

I’ve told you guys over and over. He knows about us. Unless he’s dead, there’s a chance that The Agency could find out what we did to cover our tracks. Finders could extract the information from his mind. And they could come and find us. We’ll be running for the rest of our lives. This solution is final. If he’s dead, The Agency won’t be able to get any info from him.

"Yumi. Jesus. What’s with you? We’re not talking about a… a… computer chip containing information or something like that. We’re talking about a person," Gracie said in consternation, her long red curls tossing as she shook her head. Her skin was pale with the cold, but her cheeks were pink, whether from anger or the biting wind I didn’t know.

Yeah, I said, unable to believe that they couldn’t see things from my point of view. A person who was about to turn us over to an organization who wants to split us up forever and doesn’t mind if they accidentally kill us in the process? Remember?

Chad and Gracie looked at me with compassion, which I hated more than their censure. Shiv only studied me as if he was trying to logically come up with an argument that I couldn’t refute.

The bounty hunter seemed more and more agitated as this conversation continued, glancing back and forth between the four of us and the gun. I could hear his labored breathing, as he got more and more distraught. This worried me more than anything, and I steeled myself to do the job.

Just do it, I told myself. One press of the button, and it will be over. There will be nothing to argue about anymore.

Before, he would have been dead the moment I picked up the gun. But instead, I was still working myself up to it. Stupid. This was stupid.

I looked at Chad in the deepening dusk and swallowed hard as my heart started pounding. If I did this, he might never be able to forgive me. He would know that I was nothing more than an assassin and that I was willing to throw away everything we had in order to be right. Or that’s what he would think, anyway. He maybe wouldn’t see that I was only doing it to protect him. I felt tears coming to my eyes but blinked them away.

Next my gaze rested on Gracie, the closest thing I had to a sister. The personification of kindness, goodness, and fucking perfection, if I was being honest.

Then I glanced at Shiv. The fourth in our Circle. We had never been close, but he cared about me. And he was trying to help, misguided though it was. I would miss his ludicrously intelligent and good-looking ass, too.

A light snow had begun to fall as the first of the two suns touched the horizon, and the wind was driving it into my face with enough force to make it sting. I was starting to lose feeling in my toes. But I didn’t care. This would be over soon.

Suddenly, I felt weary. I couldn’t fight them anymore. They wanted to leave him alive, fine. I wouldn’t stand in their way. I let my hand holding the gun drop slightly to the side, and that was enough for the bounty hunter.

He noticed the second the red dot was on the snow next to him and no longer on his forehead and launched. I should have known. It was exactly what I would have done.

He lunged at me, grabbing the hand with the gun and twisting it up behind my back, holding me facing away from him and into the sunsets. The glare from the suns off the snow blinded me. I stomped his toes and drove my elbow back into his guts, making him release his breath with an oof.

He only twisted harder, making pain shoot up my arm and into my shoulder and neck. I brought my free hand up, smashing the back of my hand and my knuckles into his face as hard as I could. He gave a groan as his nose broke, and he let go of me, blood pouring down his face.

I spun around, doing a leg sweep and using my momentum to knock him to the ground. A second later, I had the stun gun pressed against his temple. Even on the sleep setting it would kill him at this close range — and I had it set on lethal.

The bastard.

He had to die.

Yumi, no, please, Chad’s desperate face swam into view in front of me, and for a second I hesitated, then I remembered that I was doing this for him, for all of us, so we could finally be free of The Agency forever.

I had to do it.

Even if it meant that I would lose them all.

Keeping them safe was more important than what they thought of me. I had failed them before, and I wouldn’t do it again.

I looked away from Chad and back at the bounty hunter that wanted to ruin our lives. Hardening my heart against his eyes full of fear, I pressed the button, turning his brain instantly to mush.

And at the moment I pulled the trigger, I felt the block I had been holding against Chad blow up in my head — or that’s what it felt like — as the pain shattered my mind with its intensity. I groaned and blacked out for a second.

When my vision came back, I looked up, blinking, and the desolate, hopeless expression on Chad’s face destroyed me completely.

He didn’t understand.

He would never forgive me.

And in that instant, I knew I couldn’t face him or any of them, knowing what I would see in their eyes.

Disappointment.

That I wasn’t and could never be the woman that they wanted me to be.

And judgment.

They all knew so much better than me what should be done.

I couldn’t stand it.

Jumping to my feet, I took one last look around at the three people I loved most in the universe. Then I pivoted and ran, my head still pounding and throbbing from whatever had just happened.

And as I scrambled up the snowy mountain, my feet scrabbling for purchase on the icy rocks, I knew that I would live to seriously regret this moment and the choices I had made. I would be sorry. I would long to see them and talk to them again. I knew this on some level.

But right now… with all the guilt and regret filling me… I never wanted to see any of them ever again.

As Gracie, Shiv, and I caught up to Yumi and the bounty hunter, we formed a half circle around them, breathing hard from running through the deep snow uphill.

Yumi, no! Don’t kill him! Gracie screamed, her voice echoing back at us from the stark cliffs of the mountain.

I took in the whole situation, and my guts twisted. Yumi was going to kill him. I could see it in her eyes.

Where was the woman I loved? Why was she doing this? She knew there were other ways. Why was she so desperately trying to kill this man, who was probably only doing this as a job?

Then her mental voice flashed in my mind for a second, way too loud. I put my hands to my head it hurt so bad.

Don’t try to stop me. I have to do this.

Yumi, I said, my voice coming out more hoarse than I had intended. She looked stricken at the sound, but unsurprisingly this only made her more resolute.

Why was she doing this? Why? Why?

I glanced down at the man who was lying in the snow, his eyes afraid — he would do well to be. Yumi wasn’t to be trifled with. I wondered again why she felt so obsessively that she had to kill him. We were nothing more than a paycheck to him. It wasn’t personal.

He had probably seen the bulletin that we were wanted by The Agency on the Grid (that was what we called what had once been known as the internet). The Agency pays handsomely for anyone who returns one Wild Mind, never mind four. He put two and two together and figured out that four rogue Protectors would be both easy to catch and extremely profitable — the perfect marks. He had been slightly off on the easy to catch part, but whatever.

God damn me for being such a deep Empath.

Why did I have to understand every single person and all their motivations so thoroughly? And speaking of being an Empath, I knew I had better put up a shield before this guy’s feelings of fear and terror overwhelmed me and melted me into a puddle in the snow. Putting up a shield to block his feelings was as easy as breathing, and I did it effortlessly, noticing in the process that Yumi was blocking me.

I didn’t know why she would do such a thing. If I wanted to hear her thoughts, I could. No one could stop me from hearing their thoughts if I wanted to.

Besides, there was the soul bond between Yumi and me that made the telepathy we used almost unnecessary. I could hear and feel echoes of her thoughts and feelings through the soul bond almost constantly, though I had learned to ignore them, as had she.

We’re so close.

Not alike.

No, we’re nothing alike. But it’s as though our differences draw us closer than what’s the same about us. She is the sun to my sunrise, the spark to my flame, the very oxygen of my existence. She is as necessary to me as my own heart. I am nothing without her.

And yet I found myself wondering who was this woman that I had almost-married. When I saw her like this with murder in her eyes, I didn’t even recognize her.

Was this the person I had fallen in love with? Had I really yoked myself to this seeming stranger? How could the woman I love have morphed into someone so unrecognizable?

All of this flashed through my mind in an instant as Shiv and Gracie began trying to talk her out of it yet again. I remained silent, sure that nothing would change her mind at that point. After they spoke for a minute or so, it seemed, though, that she was weakening. I saw the moment the gun dropped away a little bit. That wasn’t an accident. Yumi doesn’t make mistakes.

But the bounty hunter saw it too, and he was on her like the weasel he was. I watched them fighting, waiting for a chance to jump in and knowing I wouldn’t get it.

One thing that Yumi doesn’t need is a man to defend her. And as her man, sometimes that pisses me off.

I huffed out my breath as she got him easily to the ground, the gun at his temple again. I had known she wouldn’t need backup, but it irked me nonetheless. Then I realized that she was about to kill him, and I dropped to my knees on the other side of the man.

Yumi, no, please. I knew I was begging, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. Yes, I was begging for her to spare this man’s life, but it was more than that.

I was begging for her to trust us, to trust me; for her to choose life instead of death; for her to choose us instead of the loneliness that had followed her her whole life. I was begging for her to give all of this new life she had made for herself a chance, to not give it up so soon.

She looked away from me and without another hesitation, pulled the trigger.

A bolt of pure agony blasted through my mind. I felt as though I was the one she had shot. There was a pain in my head so excruciating that I almost couldn’t breathe.

After a moment, I came back to consciousness and realized what had happened. She had killed him.

And she had killed us in the process.

Because I knew that’s what this was. She had been so sure that her good fortune wouldn’t last, that something would come between her and what she had always wanted — and, look at that, something had.

What I wasn’t sure she realized was that she herself was the one who had destroyed all she held dear.

And that’s what upset me the most. That’s what I didn’t know if I could ever forgive. That’s what was breaking my heart. That she put so little value in what we had that she would create this nonsense to drive us apart — unconsciously, of course — but it still hurt.

She was so afraid of being happy that she would rather destroy our relationship so that she could stay in her little cocoon of safety and comfort.

It wasn’t me, or even she, that had killed that man and our relationship — because make no mistake, the connection between us felt