Read an Excerpt:
After only three
weeks of dating, Jolene and Colton had fallen into a routine: dinner (both) and
drinks (him), binge-watching various flavors of CSI at his downtown Boston
condo (him), and a few hours of surreptitiously delving into Colton's memories
(her). Jolene's practice run as a spy in the field was going well.
The late August
night was cool enough for Colton to crack open the sliding glass door to the
balcony to let the night air clear his lingering cigarette smoke. Jolene kicked
off the stiletto heels and inwardly sighed. After some complex maneuvering, she
managed to tuck her aching toes under her too-bright skirt.
The next part of
the evening promised to be worth the discomfort of a thong up her ass crack to
avoid panty lines.
Without asking
Jolene what she would like, Colton switched on the obscenely large TV and
pulled up Hulu, lounging like a czar on his pristine white couch, which was a
stupid color for anyone but particularly ludicrous for a smoker who drank too
much and worked with dangerous people.
In another life,
he would have been regal with golden hair, long limbs, straight nose, and a
boyish, charming smile. But this wasn’t another life.
As a midlevel
lackey in the Red Flames criminal organization, he was not proper boyfriend
material, even if he made enough cash to buy a downtown place on a high floor
and have it professionally, if foolishly, decorated all in white.
Jolene wiggled
her toes into the plush cushion and ignored the stale-smoke smell mixed with
Colton’s spicy cologne. Any moment, Colton would slip into a CSI coma, and she
would slip into his memories.
“This looks like
a good one,” she said. What she always said, because why mess with what worked?
“Yeah,” Colton
agreed, as he always did. He lit a cigarette and “politely” blew the smoke
toward the balcony doors, tapping the ash into an antique crystal ashtray on
the glass coffee table already holding three butts.
The first week,
she'd been terrified he'd somehow feel her inside his mind, though she'd never
had that happen before or heard of anyone sensing the process. Not that Jolene
still had contacts in the memory-surgeon community, small as it was, but that
sort of revelation would put memory surgery back in the 24/7 news cycle, like
when they’d first been legitimized. Semi-legitimized.
This first
assignment was nothing more than an exploration of what she could do on a real
mission. Since Colton was a gangster and she had no close backup, fear nibbled,
but confidence had outpaced her worry.
Jolene rested
her head on his shoulder, slipped her arm through his, and slid her hand down
his button-down shirt to rest on his hand. As soon as skin-to-skin contact was
made, she mentally reached out to him. Colton's mind rose up inside her own. To
boost her concentration, Jolene closed her eyes.
Within the
blackness, bubbles sharpened. The different shapes and colors bobbed and slid
around one another. In her mind's eye, she moved into the middle, staring at
them as if in an aquarium. The memories never touched her, but she could reach
out and sink into any of them. If she did, she experienced the memory in its
entirety, exactly as Colton had lived through the event at the time. If she
wanted, she could remove memories, but that was a level of violation she
resisted unless absolutely necessary. Besides, if she took something, she had
to keep it, and she didn't want to keep anything of Colton's.
Jolene already
had an entire dossier in her head of all things Colton. She’d cataloged his
fears: multilegged insects like millipedes terrified him, as did his brother
when his eyes went icy, and his jaw shifted to the right.
Shame occupied
its own section: bed-wetting for a month when he was twelve. The time he'd
slapped his girlfriend after she'd gotten pregnant and decided she didn't want
it. Red Flames passing him over for job after job.
Still, inside,
people were infinite, and she had more to learn. She avoided the pink bubbles,
as they were filled with his worst memories, and her reactions to living them
were difficult to hide. Reds gave her the best intel so far. Angers,
suspicions, smackdowns.
Truthfully, she
should have wrapped up the mission a week ago since she wasn’t finding anything
new. But playing spy and the unfettered access to Colton's recollections had
been too enlightening to quit quite yet. Her skills had grown, and she didn’t
feel guilty about messing in his brain because of his criminal history. She was
three weeks into her two- to three-week mission, so she needed to skip out
soon.
Jolene decided
to make a game to test her memory-reading skills. She had recently learned how
to peek and not immediately experience a memory. It allowed her to see more
since she didn’t need any emotional recovery time, and she processed what she
encountered more quickly.
Tonight, she
wanted to test how many memories she could scan during commercial breaks, since
Colton was too cheap to pay for the commercial-free version of Hulu. She’d hop
through his memories like jumping into puddles.
Commercial.
A mahogany
memory: his brother, Walther, stood over him, watching over his shoulder as
Colton did algebra homework. Whenever Colton squirmed in his chair, Walther
flicked his ear. It didn’t hurt much, but Colton’s face burned every time, and
his muscles shook with the stress of not moving to avoid Walther’s attention.
“Knock it off,” he grumbled, earning another sting. Colton tensed—
A
buttercup-colored memory: “Mama, Mama, Mama,” Colton said, running around his
mama as she walked in the park. If he ran fast enough, he would fly, his head
already lightening. He stumbled and giggled, his mama laughing. Something shiny
glinted in the sun. What was it? His mama scooped him into her arms before he
grabbed it. She smelled of flowers and oranges.
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