Abduction (A Psychic Romance Novella Series)

by Ladd, Larissa

  One of the accounting managers, while talking about the mundane funding issue, had just a tiny qualm in the back of her mind, as Gabrielle listened in.

  I wonder if this is going to get leaked, too. Have they already been interviewed? Consultant, my ass.

  The woman was the first one to even think about the leaks in the context of the interview—and while Gabrielle could sense that the woman was aware of the information being given to the press, she was very careful not to know who specifically was doing it. But a mental image appeared in her mind—a file she had noticed, accessed on the weekend before the first of the leaks had hit the press. It had been opened by someone in the administration. Gabrielle had smilingly dismissed the accountant, and cut down her list; she was looking for someone in admin.

  Instead of interviewing each individual in turn, Gabrielle brought them into a room together, saying that she wanted to have a section meeting and find out how they felt collectively about the particular initiative that was her cover. It was a bit trickier to read minds this way—with so many to listen to, she could potentially miss a single, stray thought—but it also increased the possibility of uncovering whether multiple people were behind it, and who they were.

  Gabrielle let the interview with the department stretch out, sampling minds and letting the tension build among those who knew the most about the leaks naturally. Gradually, she noticed two employees were thinking about the leaks, feeling guilty and tense—and their feelings eventually won over their need for secrecy, even to themselves.

  She dismissed the group back to their jobs and went to the site director, stepping into his office without preamble. “Man and woman in administration,” she said, handing over the personnel list with their names highlighted. “Woman’s the one doing the actual leaking, man’s covering for her.” The director looked at the names, startled.

  “They have the highest security clearance in their department,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t thank you enough for this information. I’ll have to find evidence, question them, but knowing who to go after is a big help.” Gabrielle smiled.

  “In terms of evidence, check the logging history on the files that were leaked. Someone in accounting put me on the trail after remembering seeing the files accessed by someone in admin the weekend prior to the first leak hitting the media. You’d probably have more specific details at your disposal.” The director nodded thoughtfully.

  “Anyone else I should be concerned about, more generally?”

  Gabrielle considered the question. “No one’s an immediate threat, but you may want to have someone talk to Gladys in IT. She’s concerned about a security breach, but her higher ups keep telling her that it’s not important. From what I could get from her mind, it was pretty severe. She’s got a really bright mind, too—you should encourage her superiors to take her more seriously, in spite of all the pink she wears.”

  The Director chuckled and nodded. With that, Gabrielle left, reasoning that she had just enough time to scarf a snack before she had to get to her next client.

  The most interesting assignment of her day was to eat lunch with the boyfriend of a wealthy client, who was convinced that she was being cheated on. The lunch date she had set with the boyfriend, ostensibly a business lunch for her to offer him writing services, was almost a farce. The boyfriend knew that his girlfriend was suspicious, and suspected that Gabrielle was ‘bait.’ Gabrielle was treated to a mental litany of the reasons why he wouldn’t go for her, as well as the reassuring revelation that he was not, in fact, cheating on his wealthy girlfriend. He had quite legitimately been tired for the previous weeks because he was working long hours. But, it had been a lunch that she didn’t have to pay for, and it was nice to be able to give someone good news.

  After leaving the interview, Gabrielle contacted the girlfriend directly, making sure to leave in the opposite direction of the boyfriend, and left her a message confirming that her boyfriend was, in fact, perfectly faithful—along with the suggestion that the girlfriend invest in a couples’ retreat at a spa to rekindle the romance, or try learning massage.

  Gabrielle tried to exercise as much caution as possible as she went to her various appointments, but it was impossible for her to keep her mind “open” all day. She’d get far too much detritus if she did. She tried to keep her shields as light as she could, to be aware of her surroundings, and do a quick scan of the area whenever she parked.

  As the day wore on longer and longer, however, she was having trouble remembering the precaution, and it became much more important to keep her shields up. Even though she was making an effort to keep her body stoked with sufficient calories to keep her ability at peak, there were some loud minds at one of her assignments, and Gabrielle instinctively reinforced her shields. She had left them in place even as she left the building, having given the businessman the information that his register thief wasn’t the new employee, but instead was one of his most trusted cashiers—who resented the lack of a promotion, in spite of the fact that she had rejected the previous offers for not being good enough. Tensions had run high, and Gabrielle had been almost overwhelmed by the shrill, antagonistic mental tone of the woman she had discovered as the thief.

  Shaking her head as she left the shop, Gabrielle paused in her steps, halfway out to her car. She thought she had heard something. She looked around, and seeing nothing, realized that what she had heard wasn’t physical—it was mental. Someone nearby had seen her, noticed her, and the intent of the person had gotten the thought through her mental shields. Gabrielle tried to tell herself it was just someone leaving the store, maybe one of the employees. She started back towards her car, and felt the tingle again. Someone close by was very excited, and watching her intently. Why?

  Gabrielle cautiously let down her shields gradually, scanning the area for the mind in question. As she opened up her ability, she caught another flood of shrill mental screaming from the cashier inside the building and cringed, putting a damper on the thoughts she received from that direction. She focused down, looking around her mentally.

  She almost missed it. Gabrielle was about to put her shields back up, when she heard just the barest whisper. That’s her. Get her. She felt other minds nearby, but couldn’t think beyond the fact that someone had identified her, that they were about to attack. The best course of action, she knew, would be to get into her car and get away, maybe call the police—or someone she knew a bit higher up, who might be able to provide protection.

  She started towards her car, moving quickly but being careful not to run; if she ran, her assailants would know that she knew they were there. She hadn’t caught enough to know whether or not the other people were aware of the fact that she was a telepath. Hopefully, they had no idea.

  Gabrielle almost made it to her car when she heard the sound of heavy boots behind her—not just one person, but several. She wheeled around and saw a group of three men, all of them coming towards her, all of them wearing masks over their faces that obscured their identity—something sheer but blurring. They were all of a similar build—tall, bulky, muscular—and all in black. For just a moment, Gabrielle’s heart turned over in her chest. The adrenaline hit her system and she focused her telepathic ability on the three men, closing out all other thoughts. She had to know what they would do to be able to counter it.

  They were going to use a stun gun on her, she realized, to knock her out and carry her elsewhere—they wanted a quick grab. Gabrielle was going to make that as difficult as possible. She turned her attention to the leader, identified by the minds of the other two. She squared off in his direction, listening for his thoughts while trying to keep a tenuous hold on the other assailants to make sure they didn’t surprise her.

  She kicked and punched, putting her martial arts training to use. She didn’t have a weapon at her disposal, but as long as she avoided being hit by one of the stun devices, she could be okay. For a long time, it seemed like she barely evaded one of her assailants just in time f
or the other one to make another attempt on her. Wisely, they spread out to surround her, each of them staying just out of her reach once they realized that she was capable of defending herself.

  Have to bring her in…CHRIST she’s going to get us caught…Should have just used darts…We’re taking too long, someone will see…make a grab right—now!—shit!

  Gabrielle heard one of her assailants fall to the ground with a thud, and backed up in surprise. She hadn’t touched that one. She turned her head in the man’s direction and only barely caught the instinctive, victorious thought of one of her other assailants in the moment before he would have brought the stunner down on her. Barely dodging, she saw someone in the corner of her eye; not a figure all in black, but someone else.

  Gabrielle reached out to find out who the man was, and felt as if she had stubbed her toe. Shaking her head, she knocked the stunner out of her assailant’s hand and scrambled to grab it, turning it around on the man who had almost gotten her and giving him a dose of his own medicine. She remembered the third assailant then—and the man who had suddenly appeared. He could be another attacker, she thought in a panic, though he hadn’t attacked her yet. Just when she turned to her third opponent, she saw him falling from a height that didn’t seem plausible. There was a heavy thud, a groan, and the man was out, his mental voice subsiding to an almost indiscernible murmur.

  Gabrielle looked at the man who had showed up. He was taller than she, with dark hair and blue eyes, dressed in jeans and a striped t-shirt, with a hooded sweat shirt over it, unzipped. “Get in your car,” he said to her, his voice tense. “It won’t be safe for very long.”

  Gabrielle moved to get rid of the stunner she had appropriated and the man hissed. “Take it with you. You’ll need it.” He had a faint accent that Gabrielle couldn’t quite trace, and she instinctively reached out with her mind to try and read him.

  She gasped as her attempt to read the man was again met with a sensation like stubbing her toe—only in her mind. There was nothing there for her to read. It was like trying to see through a brick wall, or trying to listen to something with her ears plugged. She couldn’t read him at all.

  Gabrielle stood staring at him for a long moment, trying to understand how it could possibly be. She had met people who were difficult to read, but this was a different thing altogether; he had surprised her completely. The man smirked, seeming to know exactly what she was thinking, and Gabrielle had a moment of sympathy for people who didn’t have telepathy.

  “You’ve got a bunch of questions. Forget it for right now. Get in your car and go straight home. Cancel whatever other appointments you have for the day. They’re not safe.”

  Gabrielle heard the lock on her door click and looked down at her keys, knowing she hadn’t hit the door unlock button. Too confused and thrown by the experience she had just had to ask any more questions, she opened the driver’s side door and got in, turning the key in the ignition and driving away from the scene of her near-abduction.

  Chapter Three

  Gabrielle was pacing around her living room, trying to put together what had happened to her: the men attacking her, the stranger who had somehow helped her, and then told her to leave without giving her any hint of what was going on. It was just as well, she thought, that her apartment was shielded against the thoughts of others. It was just about the time of the afternoon when everyone started coming home, and her mind was chaotic enough as it was. She wondered if she should trust the man who had apparently helped her to save herself.

  Gabrielle’s mind jumped from one subject to another, barely lingering on a topic long enough to let her really think through any of the questions she had. Her hands were shaking, her body tingling and trembling from the adrenaline running in her veins. Who were those men who had tried to attack her? What did they want from her? Clearly they weren’t interested in killing her—they had wanted to stun her and take her away. Gabrielle’s mind ran in tight circles as she paced, trying to calm herself down.

  Gabrielle wracked her brain, sitting down heavily on the couch and trying to think of who might want her out of the way. She didn’t have any particularly vindictive exes.

  Gabrielle’s stomach was rumbling and she stood up quickly, moving into the kitchen and looking for something to eat. Maybe if she filled her stomach, she would be able to think. Looking in the fridge, she also saw a half-consumed bottle of wine. She certainly needed a drink after what had happened to her.

  She took the bottle of wine out, grabbing a pint of strawberries to eat with it. Foregoing the glass, Gabrielle pulled the cork and took a swig from the bottle. Someone tried to abduct me, she thought, shaking her head and rinsing the strawberries off. Someone wanted me out of the way. And someone… saved me? Helped me save myself?

  It didn’t make sense. She had never met the mysterious man who had shown up at the scene of the attempted kidnapping. He had seemed to know who she was and who was after her—and that was information that she needed to know.

  Gabrielle had contacted the last few clients that she was supposed to work with for the day, and had made excuses as she drove home, all of her senses in overdrive. She was surprised to find herself pulling safely into her parking spot, and had been so cautious that she had opened her mind fully, discarding all of her shields and listening for any indication of anyone lying in wait for a second attempt to capture her. As soon as she figured things out and established her safety once more, she would have some ruffled feathers to smooth.

  She sat on the couch, eating strawberries and drinking wine, trying to think of who could be after her. Thinking of irate clients led her to remember something that seemed important to the current circumstances. There had been a potential client, someone who Gabrielle had discovered was a drug kingpin. He had wanted to retain her services as a telepath to check his sellers periodically and make sure that none of them were skimming money.

  It was too much of a liability—particularly since he sold heroin. He was convinced that some of his dealers were using, or offering discounts to friends, or possibly taking more than what was due to them as his sellers. When Gabrielle had touched the man’s mind, already having decided against the proposal, she had found a bleak, almost barren mental landscape, full of cruelty and determined avarice and ambition. He had been entertaining rather unpleasant thoughts about her as a countercurrent to his thoughts about what he would do to any of his dealers that were cheating him.

  Gabrielle had turned him down as diplomatically as she could, sticking with business-oriented reasons for her refusal instead of screaming out at him that he was a horrible, awful person that she wouldn’t get within ten feet of—which was what she had wanted to say. Instead, she had said that if she got involved with a drug syndicate, she would be losing out on her other contracts, some of which were with the government—and even if she didn’t lose them, it would put a strain on her working relationships, and there was a good chance that she would be compelled to provide information on his operations. “As long as I don’t meet with you again,” she had concluded, “they’ll likely leave me alone. But if I come back, someone in the BATF will link me with your operation, and then very unpleasant questions will come up.”

  The man had been outwardly polite, and he at least had had the grace to try and suppress some of the darker, angrier feelings that were bubbling up in his mind. But deep in the back of his mind, Gabrielle had known he was seething from her refusal. He had been trying to think of ways to convince her, of something he could do or say to change her mind. She had made the decision to leave quickly, before he could think of a course of action. She had forgotten about it quickly, reasoning that drug kingpins needed to have the ability to move on fairly quickly from minor disappointments. But what if he had thought about it more, and decided that she knew too much? A captive telepath would be an attractive thing for a powerful drug overlord, Gabrielle reasoned.

  She ate the last of the strawberries and drained the remainder of the wine from the bottle
before it had a chance to get warm. If it was the drug kingpin, she thought, she could just turn him in. She had contacts at the FBI. They could send BATF agents after the guy in a matter of days.

  But it could be someone else, Gabrielle allowed. Who was that guy? How had he known about the situation? And would she ever get a chance to ask him in person? Until he had spoken to her, she would have just thought he was a bystander, maybe a particularly helpful one. And what had he done to the attacker?

  Gabrielle thought back to the adrenaline-fueled moment. She had caught sight of the stranger in the corner of her eye, and she could remember seeing him standing there as the last attacker had hit the ground from a considerable height. Had he actually helped at all? How could he have thrown the man up so high in the air? From what Gabrielle could recall, the stranger hadn’t been particularly buff. And the fact that she had tried to read him—and failed—and that his mind was impenetrable, worried her even more. She had become so used to knowing what the people around her were thinking that it was surprising not to be able to hear his thoughts.

  Instinctively, she distrusted him. Anyone whose intentions she couldn’t read would have gotten her distrust anyway—but to show up like that, and to speak as if he knew who she was, and for her not to be able to reach into his mind and find out how or why? This was a new experience for her.

  The attack must have been what the call had been about the afternoon before. Someone had been trying to warn her. But who?

  Gabrielle noticed that the room had grown dark in all the time she had devoted to trying to work through the sequence of events, to figure out what was happening. The stranger had told her to go home, that it was dangerous for her to be out and about; but he hadn’t shown up, or even called her to give her any more information than that. She had a business to run, she had clients to take care of.