by Rachel Caine
Instead Stefan said, “You might, but if you do, it won’t be because you didn’t give it your heart. Don’t count yourself out yet, Katie. I can’t think of anybody I’d want on my side more, if I were Teal or Lena.”
She found it hard to swallow, suddenly. She put the coffee cup down and without thinking it through, clasped his hand in hers. Warm, strong fingers that interlaced with hers as if born to do it.
They didn’t speak for a few seconds, and then Stefan said blandly, “Are you going to shoot me if I make a suggestion?”
“Depends on the suggestion.”
“First, you need food, and I’m not talking about—” he consulted the package in her other hand “—Sno Balls. What the hell are Sno Balls, anyway?”
She sighed. “Chocolate cake with cream filling, covered in marshmallow and coconut.”
“And they’re bright pink because…”
“Don’t ask.”
“Right.” He took the package from her as if it were an unexploded bomb and carefully set it aside. “I’m guessing that you’re one of those women who just burn it all off in metabolism. Let’s think about food that doesn’t come in pink.”
The diner didn’t look as if it was serving anything much healthier, but she didn’t argue. Instead, she met his eyes. “And two?”
“What?”
“You said, first…so there’s got to be a second part to the statement.”
His eyes widened, very slightly, and she could see he was debating something. Then he said, “You need sleep.”
Her shields came up, full strength. “Forget it.”
“Seriously, isn’t there some kind of regulation about how long an FBI agent gets to stay awake and behind the wheel? Because I’m guessing your day didn’t begin when you got off the plane in the airport.”
He hadn’t let go of her hand. She looked down at where their fingers intertwined, shook loose, and said, “Are you seriously propositioning me? You want to get a room while two girls are being driven off in a van by three men, one of whom probably has a conviction for rape? Because I thought better of you, Stefan.”
When he spoke again, his voice had cooled off, gone soft and distant. “I was going to suggest I drive while you sleep,” he said. “Or that we get separate rooms. Though hey, if you’re up for it—”
“Don’t be a bastard.”
“I wasn’t. You think I’m trying to delay you? Distract you? You think I’m working with the kidnappers, Katie?”
“No.” She didn’t, really. She’d seen too far into him, and there was nothing that wasn’t truthful on that score.
“Look at me.”
She did. He reached out to fit his palms around her face. It took her breath, froze her in place like some innocent virgin.
“Listen very carefully,” Stefan said, with a scary, quiet intensity. “I am not trying to get you in bed. I do have some sense of propriety, and even though I find you very, very attractive, I know that there are more important things at work today.”
If she thought she’d been intensely aware of him before, on a sexual level, she was now. Deeply. Her whole body hummed with it, and it was maddening, it was stupid, because he was right, there were more important things, and her body was betraying her principles in ways she’d never thought possible.
“I think I’m going to kiss you,” Stefan said with that same blind intensity. “If you’re going to shoot me, wait until I’m done, okay?”
His lips were warm and soft and full, and he tasted of coffee and sugar and cream. She licked at that taste, devoured it, craved it more. She was against him now, their bodies burning where they touched, and his hand slid around to cup the back of her head as his tongue touched her lips, stroked them open, explored.
As good a kisser as she knew she was, she was a novice compared to Stefan Blackman. Maybe he was a magician after all, not just an illusionist; he was transmuting her bones into light, making her glow from the inside out, and he hadn’t done anything except…kiss her.
Stefan pulled back, breathing fast, and she opened her eyes to stare at him. She felt drunk on the residual energy he’d left inside of her, and if that wasn’t magic…
“Wow,” he said faintly. “That…never happens.”
“What never happens?” Automatic question; she didn’t care and was too busy watching the mesmerizing damp movements of his lips. Then his tongue, as he licked her taste from them.
“That. That thing. That thing that just…happened.”
She knew what he meant, but sanity was starting to creep in again, and she grabbed it for a shield. “I don’t know what they call it in California, but in Missouri we call it assault.”
“Funny, I thought Missouri was the Show-Me State.”
“It’s not you-show-me-yours, I’ll-show-you-mine.” The sharp-edged attack was working, it was helping her clear the adrenaline out of her system and get her brain working again. “Fine. You’ve had your kiss. Try it again, and I’ll handcuff you so fast you’ll think you’ve died and gone to bondage heaven. Now back off.” She was desperate to get distance, too, and he must have seen that in her eyes; it wasn’t because she was really offended. She was afraid that if he stayed that close to her, she was going to reach out and devour that sweet, hot mouth and sink into the completely animal world of sensation.
And she couldn’t.
Stefan hesitated, then took a step back. A large one. And he picked up the fluorescent-pink Sno Balls from the counter, handed them over to her and walked away, toward the car.
Katie stood there, shaking, furious with him, even more furious with herself, and tried to control the blood pouring fast through her veins. She’d had plenty of practice at it, through firefights and face-offs with bad, dangerous men, and yet, somehow, this was more difficult.
She felt something squish in her right hand, and looked down to see that she’d destroyed the cupcake treats in their plastic package, reduced them to a fluorescent-pink misshapen mess leaking chocolate cake and cream filling.
Katie tossed them in the trash, picked up her coffee and followed Stefan.
Outside, the cold desert wind slapped some sense into her. Katie spotted Stefan ahead of her, heading purposefully for the car, and stretched her long legs into a jog to catch up.
She was still ten steps behind, or more, when she saw that there was someone in the shadows near the car. Stefan hadn’t seen him, clearly; he was walking with his head down, lost in his own world. It was possible the lurker was just a trucker out for a stroll, but few people felt comfortable standing in the shadows in a deserted early morning parking lot, waiting in stillness without so much as a lit cigarette or a cell phone to keep them company. Every nerve in her body switched to alert mode, and she increased her speed, dug in with her elbows and knees, and flew into Stefan, pushing him down to the ground just as a muzzle flash exploded in the shadows. The sound of the shot came an instant later as a hollow boom echoing off the trucks. Stefan landed hard; Katie rolled away from him and to one knee. She pulled her gun, thumbed the safety back and fired in one smooth, practiced motion.
And watched, for the second time in a day, a man drop dead at her hands.
Stefan squirmed next to her, panting and shaking. “What the hell—What happened?”
She kept her gun barrel on the unmoving shadow of their attacker and didn’t blink as she said, “Offhand, I think somebody thinks you’re helping us a little too effectively.”
The problems went deeper than that, of course. It wasn’t just that somebody had come gunning for Stefan, it was how they’d found him. How they knew to stake out her entirely anonymous, and recently acquired, sedan. Katie sat in the diner, thinking about all of those things, after the Highway Patrol had come and gone. They weren’t cleared to leave, of course. That would take extraordinary dispensation from Captain Menchaca, at the very least. And she imagined her own boss back in Missouri might have a word or two for her when she came back. This was an off-the-books assignment, and that mean
t she hadn’t really been supposed to do things like shoot bad guys.
But the bad guy had clearly been going to shoot Stefan, and she absolutely couldn’t allow that.
She couldn’t tell what Stefan was thinking, at this moment; his normal open expression was closed for business, his attention focused inside. Well, nearly getting killed twice in one day would do that. The tremor was back in his hands, too. He must have noticed it at the same time she did because he made a sound of disgust, stretched his fingers out and did some complicated limbering exercises that reminded her of piano studies, only without the piano.
“They know,” Stefan said. “Right? They have to know. Why else come after me?”
“Let’s not jump to that conclusion,” Katie replied. “We don’t know anything yet. Maybe it’s a random bad guy looking to rip off wallets.”
“He didn’t ask for my wallet.”
“Some of them find it easier just to take it off of your body later,” she said, which was perfectly true. “We’ll know more when his sheet comes back, and we know who we’re dealing with.”
Stefan looked up at her. “How did you know?”
“I saw him.”
“But you knew. I heard you start running, you reacted so fast—that’s the second time today I’ve seen you do that, Katie. Precognition.”
“It’s nothing but observation and reaction,” she said, shrugging. “Maybe it looks like magic at a distance. You should know, a lot of things do.”
She surprised a smile from him, and for answer, he reached over, took the fork from the place setting on her right, and held it up for her inspection.
She frowned, puzzled.
Stefan drove the fork smoothly through the back of his left hand.
She let out a cry and reached out to grab him, coming half out of her chair, but he wasn’t yelling in pain, and now he was showing her the fork, pristine and blood-free. And then his hand, unmarked. He turned it to show her both sides.
Katie sank back into the worn bench seat. “How?”
“Human perception is a flawed instrument. We learn to work the edges of it. Often, what the brain sees is really interpretation, filling in the holes with assumptions because it takes time to process the full picture. Street magic takes advantage of that with quick and dirty illusions, some improvised with surroundings.” He put the fork back in its place. “But no amount of street magic could have gotten me there in time to save your life, and I’m fast. Very fast. What does that make you?”
“Someone who saved your life. Twice today. You could be more grateful.”
He smiled. She wasn’t building up an immunity to it, despite close and intense exposure. “Oh, believe me,” he said. “I’m grateful. It’s just that I’m naturally curious.”
“Or naturally unlucky.”
“Not until I bumped into you.” An almost comical look of horror crossed his face. “Not that I meant—you—meeting you was not unlucky—”
“I get your point.” She sighed and took a bite of the salad she’d ordered. It was plain diner food, iceberg lettuce, slightly mealy tomatoes, fat-free Russian dressing. She contemplated wistfully the squashed Sno Balls she’d thrown in the trash. “You’re sure nobody’s out to kill you? Nobody, say, you taught a lesson to with the whole psychic investment scam?”
He didn’t debate the word scam, as she’d thought he would. “I don’t think so. They’re mostly broke, and some are in jail, but none of them could have known I’d be here, with you.” He poked around at his broiled chicken, but didn’t eat. “But a lot of cops knew. FBI, too. Right?”
She didn’t confirm or deny that; for one thing, it was obvious, and for another, she didn’t want to go down that road unless she had to do it. She’d already acknowledged it silently, that someone in law enforcement could have sold her out, maybe even someone standing around at that last crime scene, and that possibility deeply angered her. This case kept growing roots, and the deeper they went, the more poisonous they were.
“Are you all right with this?” Stefan asked. “I mean, twice in one day—”
She went still and focused on him. “How did you know about the first shooting?”
“I—”
“I wasn’t anywhere near Los Angeles or Phoenix. It hasn’t been in the news reports.”
“But—”
“And don’t give me any crap about psychic abilities, Stefan. You said yourself you mostly get emotions and impressions, not current events!”
He leaned forward and captured her hands on either side of her plate, a liberty she resisted, then allowed because too much struggling would have coated them both with flying food.
“Katie,” he said in a soft, level voice, “I was talking about the explosion. I didn’t know you’d had another shooting today.” He let go of her. “What happened?”
She reviewed the conversation at lightning speed in her head, and realized that she’d been guilty of an assumptive leap—something she’d warned him to avoid. Of course he’d been talking about the explosion. It had only been her own preconceptions that had made his reference seem sinister.
“There was a bad situation,” she said after a long second. “Back home. We’d spent three days tracking the kidnappers. It came to a confrontation and I had to shoot a man.”
“But it was necessary.”
“He exchanged fire with federal agents, he was a kidnapping bastard who tortured a thirteen-year-old boy for information, and he was about to kill his hostage. What do you think?” Evangelista had been right, she thought; she hadn’t processed all of the rage and pain and fear from this morning—yesterday morning—before she’d hopped the plane to take on this crisis. It was starting to snarl her up. That, and the accumulated heavy drag of exhaustion. One day without sleep she could manage—it was the price of being good at her job—but she’d barely catnapped for the last forty-eight hours, and hadn’t exactly been rested before that. Her body might be tougher and stronger than average, but her brain was tiring.
That was deadly.
Her cell phone rang before Stefan could think of any reply; she answered as he chewed an apparently unwanted bite of chicken and peas. “Rush.” She listened carefully, then thanked the officer on the other end and hung up. “The shooter was one Paul Gallatin, local loser out of Prescott. He’s been up on assault and murder a couple of times, but what he’s mostly known for is drug dealing. He’s associated with Timmons Kent—also known as Sheila Prichard’s father.”
“The one whose apartment blew up. Prichard , I mean. Not her father.”
“It was designed to blow up cops who came looking for her. She wasn’t there. Obviously, Timmons Kent is looking out for his daughter, and that means he’s looking straight at us.” The likelihood of a cop selling them out was pegging near one hundred percent, she thought. Kent had always had resources inside of law enforcement. But still, dispatching a hired gun to take out an FBI agent and a psychic—that was extreme.
She wondered why he’d bother. Did he really believe in psychics?
“I think I can find them,” Stefan said. He had a faraway look in his eyes, but not the blankness that had so far indicated a vision. “I got the impression last time that Teal was actually trying to reach me—that somehow she knows I’m there. I don’t know how much she can hear me. I can’t hear clearly at all, although visuals come through fine.”
“What about thoughts? Can you tell what she’s thinking?”
Stefan shook his head. “Just emotions. They’re strong, but it’s not enough to really give any clues. But if I can create a strong link to her, without distractions, maybe I can keep it open long enough to give you a good fix on them. They can’t be that far from here, can they?”
“They could be into Los Angeles, for all I know,” she said. “We’re not going to catch them this way. We have to get ahead of them, and for that, we don’t just need location, we need direction and speed. Do you think you could get all that? From a link with her?”
He l
ooked thoughtful. “Maybe. I could try, anyway, but like I said, I need a place without distractions.”
“Would the car do?”
“Not really. Road noise, vibration—” He shrugged. “What about a room? If I can’t do it in an hour, we can get in the car and keep trying.”
“A room,” she said.
“It’s a motel. They do rent rooms here. Probably not the Hilton, but…”
“We don’t have time.” But they did, she realized. The police were still a little bit wary of her story, and it was the middle of the night, and she wasn’t likely to be driving out of their immediate supervision any time in the next sixty minutes.
Stefan frowned. “You said yourself that we need to get ahead of them, and we need information. So we have time for it. Or I do, anyway. If you want to take off and send someone to get me…”
“No,” she said. “No, I’ll stay.”
Something in his shoulders loosened, and she realized that he’d been tense.
“Good,” he said. “I think…I think you can help.”
Chapter 9
S tefan just wanted to sleep. His eyes felt grainy, his muscles tight and aching with the tension and exhaustion of the day. But he couldn’t sleep, not if Katie was staying awake. But at least he’d bargained for a bed to lie down on, and if sleep came, well…it came.
Not that you don’t want other things.
Oh, he did. It had been unwise, kissing her like that, but he’d wanted it, and he could resist anything except, well, temptation. And she’d been wonderfully receptive in ways that he’d never felt before, despite a pretty broad range of experience.
Something between them had resonated like a struck bell. He felt it tolling now, as he watched Katie book the room and take the clumsy orange triangular key holder. They were in number four.
“Not a word,” she warned him, and pushed past him to lead the way down the hall. He closed his mouth and followed, exchanging a look with the woman at the counter. She winked at him. He winked back purely out of habit.
The hallway, like the rest of the truck stop, was clean and worn. The door opened on a Spartan room, with a plain white queen-size bed, a dark green blanket folded neatly at the foot. Two fluffed pillows. A small desk, a TV in the corner, a phone, a couple of lamps. No decor to speak of.
