by Rachel Caine
Katie excused herself to the bathroom, which Stefan thought looked like a continuation of the white theme. White tile, white shower curtain, white towels.
Well, he’d wanted a lack of distractions. This certainly qualified.
He sat down on the bed and took off his shoes, then settled back on the unbelievably soft feather pillow. Bliss. His exhausted body felt as if it were floating.
Stefan opened his eyes as he felt the blanket settling over him. Katie was bent over him, tucking him in, and they were close. Very close.
“You sure you want to do this?” she asked. “You’re tired, and so am I. Maybe you should just rest.”
“No. I want to do this, Katie. I need to do this.”
He reached up to move a lock of hair back from her face. She smiled, but it looked sad.
“We can’t, can we?” he asked. “Not now.”
She hesitated, clearly torn, and then shook her head. “I don’t think so, Stefan.”
He nodded and closed his eyes.
The featherlight pressure of her lips on his surprised and stirred him, and he lifted into the kiss and reached out to stroke his fingers up her arms, bury them in the warm silky mass of her hair. The kiss deepened, sweetened. She opened her mouth and slowly, dreamily caressed his lips with her tongue. He felt her weight sink down on the bed next to him, as if her legs didn’t want to support her, and that was good; it kept her from bolting away and ending this still, quiet, sunlit moment.
When she pulled back, he cleared his throat, trying to look as if that kind of kiss happened to him every day, trying not to betray exactly how compelling he’d found it. Only the fact that she’d spread a blanket over him was keeping him from instant confession on that score.
Katie brushed her fingertips across his forehead. Her eyes—gorgeous dark eyes, with hints of green shimmering in the depths—were wide and almost glowing, and the color in her face, the wet firmness of her lips…He knew when a woman was deeply aroused, and he was looking at one now.
So it was even more frustrating when she said, “Sixty minutes, remember? We’re looking for location and direction, and any other information you can pick up.”
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and closed his eyes. That was easier, not looking at her, though it only increased the frequency of the pictures flashing through his mind, most of which were speculation about how she would look when—to be honest, if—he managed to get her out of that suit and in bed.
She didn’t speak again, and she didn’t move. He forced his heart rate to slow, his breathing to regulate, and at long last put to use all those meditation techniques that his mother had insisted the entire family learn during her latest yoga craze. Someday, she’d told him, you’re going to need to know how to shut out distractions, Stefan.
Well, Mom was right, as always.
The room was well insulated; he heard nothing but the slow ticking of a clock, the regular whisper of Katie’s breathing. The silence pooled in the room, then filled him, flowing and lapping like water.
And then, with no transition, he was lying on the floor of a van, screaming into a gag.
Katie felt it happen; his whole body changed, relaxed in ways that it didn’t when awake. At first, she thought he’d simply drifted off to sleep, and despite the driving urgency that never left her now, she couldn’t really begrudge him that.
But he wasn’t asleep. His eyes opened, and they were empty and dark.
He was with Teal.
It took a long time—twenty minutes, by the clock on the side of the bed—but as long as he was gone, she stayed completely still and waited. He breathed, occasionally blinked, but it was just the body remembering a need, not the mind.
Finally, he jerked; his chest rose and fell in a gulping gasp, and he turned on his side, away from her. She heard distress in the uneven rhythm of his breathing, and put her hand on his back.
“Stefan?”
“Give me a minute,” he croaked, a parody of his usual velvet-soft voice. He was shaking all over, as if he’d been stranded in a freezer instead of lying in a comfortable bed, covered with a blanket. When she touched the back of her hand to his face, his skin felt ice cold. She bolted up, alarmed, and grabbed an extra blanket from the closet that she spread over him, then stripped off her jacket and the shoulder holster, kicked off her shoes, and crawled under the warm weight on the other side of the bed. She burrowed closer to his shivering body and pulled him in close.
His breath continued to fan warm across her neck, fast and unsteady, but he reached for her and held on like a drowning man in a flood.
“I’m here,” Katie murmured. “Stefan, I’m right here. You’re safe. Can you hear me?”
A convulsive nod of his head.
“Are they all right? The girls?”
Another nod, this one not quite as uncontrolled. Her presence, her warmth, was helping him reconnect.
“Has something happened to them?”
No nod this time. No reaction. She pulled back slightly and looked into his face, into his warm brown eyes.
“I can’t keep doing this,” he blurted, almost frantic. “Katie, I can’t, it’s too—it hurts now. I feel everything, everything—”
She felt a surge of true fear. “Stefan, did something happen to Teal?”
His throat worked as he swallowed, and then said, “She distracted one of them long enough for Lena to try to make a break for it at a stoplight. Didn’t work, they caught up with Lena before she was out of the van, but they used Tasers, Katie, they used Tasers on both of them. They’re just kids and they were—” His voice locked in his throat and she understood that words wouldn’t convey the depth of horror he was feeling now. He’d reached that place—everyone who worked with missing kids felt it. The place where the bottom dropped out of the world, where you realized just how cruel and horrifying people could become.
Most cops reached that bottom after witnessing the aftermath, but Stefan—Stefan was living it. Sharing it with the victims.
“I can’t do this,” he said again. “I could feel it, and I can’t—God, Katie, he was touching her.”
“Touching her?”
“One of them…The other one made him stop, but—” Stefan shook his head. “She’s just a kid!”
There was something sweet and sad about his innocence. Katie had been elbow deep in the swamp of filthy emotions and horrors for so long, she’d forgotten that people could still be shocked by it. She wanted to preserve that for him, that feeling that had radiated from him since the beginning that he was part of the world, and liked it.
“Shh,” she whispered and rubbed warmth back into his arms, his hands. “She’s smart, our girl. Right? Smart and strong. And obviously, they think Teal and Lena are valuable, too valuable to really hurt. That’ll keep them off of her. Greed is a pretty strong motivator. So’s fear. If the others stopped him, they’ll watch over Teal for us.”
“I should be watching over her,” Stefan said. “I want to. I pulled out, I had to, I couldn’t keep—I’m just—God, Katie, it’s—”
It was like being a captive, too, helpless to prevent whatever was coming. She understood that; she’d seen strong men reduced to shaking wrecks by it. For some men, witnessing violence done to someone they felt close to was worse than taking the punishment themselves.
Men like Stefan, who couldn’t close himself off, who cared enough to come when Teal called and stay committed despite all the odds and disbelief.
It was, Katie realized, bravery. Sheer courage. She just hadn’t seen it before because it was coming at her in a guise she hadn’t seen before, wrapped in charm and outrageous claims.
But Stefan Blackman was, quite simply, brave.
“Did you get anything we can use?” she asked, very gently. “Direction? Location?”
“I saw a name, I don’t know if it was a town or not—it was on a store. Calipatria.”
It didn’t ring any bells with her. “Anything else?”
; “They’re heading south right now. They left the interstate. Maybe they were getting boxed in by the Highway Patrol.”
South. So they might be heading for San Diego, or they could go south and turn back west to avoid pursuit, and hit Los Angeles, where they’d be almost impossible to find. Either one was dangerous.
“Calipatria,” she repeated. “You’re sure?”
“It’s the only thing I saw,” he said. “I’m sorry.” And then he pulled in a deep breath, closed his eyes and said, “I’ll do better next time. But I need some time.”
She knew, right then, that Stefan was the real thing. Not just a real psychic, but a real, living, courageous man, of the variety that she’d come across all too rarely in her travels. Someone who faced duty with commitment.
“Gypsy prince,” she murmured.
“What?”
She kissed him. It went on for a long, hot, delicious while, and then he pulled back with a gasp. “Katie, I don’t think this is a good idea if you don’t want…”
“I do want,” she said, and kissed him again.
He moaned, deep in his throat, and almost devoured her in his breathtaking response. His hands were wandering, but she didn’t care; they trailed liquid fire where they ventured down her back, across her ribs, stroking flat across her fluttering stomach. Still not venturing into any territory that could be considered taboo. Even here, even now, it was nothing they couldn’t have done standing up in public.
He was still in control, she realized. He was still letting her give him a signal, tell him this far and no farther, and that blew her mind in a big way.
If he wanted a signal…
She unbuttoned his shirt, running fingertips down the exposed skin beneath. He was still cool to the touch, but warming fast now. When she reached the waistband of his pants, she yanked the tail of the shirt out and finished unfastening the buttons, spread it wide to run her hands greedily up his flat stomach, up to the hard planes of his chest. He had chest hair, not a forest of it, but a satisfying amount that caressed her fingers as she explored his contours.
When she looked up into his eyes, they were huge, simmering with fire. “Careful,” he said. Just that, nothing more; she knew exactly what he meant. Be careful what you’re asking for, Katie Rush. Be sure what you want before we start this.
She was sure.
She’d never been more sure in her life.
She unbuttoned the first two fastenings on her shirt and guided his hand to the rest of the task. The cool bite of air on her skin made her tremble, and the heat of his touch gliding down the valley between her breasts and hooking fingers in the front of her bra…That made her shiver outright. She sat up to let the shirt slide off, folded it, and set it on the nightstand next to the jacket she’d discarded, with the gun concealed beneath.
He watched her with eyes so hungry it was as if he’d been starving for years.
“Come here,” he said, and she settled into the warm circle of his arms for another damp, silken, urgent kiss. His fingers worked the clasp of her bra and eased it away from her body, leaving her naked from the waist up and pressed against his body as close as the clothing they’d both lost. It felt…perfect. She felt him heating beneath her touch, coming back to himself, coming back to the world, and although she wasn’t doing this for therapy, it seemed to be helping him that way, too.
His smile, when he pulled back this time, was wicked and wholly his own.
“Thirty-two minutes,” he said. She blinked. “You said we had sixty minutes. We’re down to thirty-two. I just thought you should know before we pass the waistband of no return. Also, I have condoms, but they’re in a suitcase in the car.”
She laughed, and that felt good, felt healing. Heat pulsed through her like sunlight.
“Lucky you,” she said. “I have some in my purse.” Which was hanging over the back of the single wooden chair. Stefan reached out and snagged it, and she retrieved three foil packets from an interior pocket.
Stefan raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, relax,” she said. “They sell them in three-packs. No pressure.”
He cleared his throat. “And I think we’re down to thirty minutes.”
“Then you’d better get a move on,” she said and rolled over on her back, smiling. She wasn’t one for displaying herself, especially not on the first time, but he made her feel…safe. Protected. Clothed in something invisible and yet utterly modest.
For answer, Stefan bent over and ran his tongue down between her breasts in a long, wet caress that spiraled up to the right, then the left, and left her breathless and whimpering. She felt a tug at her waistband, and then the soft rasp of the zipper, and then cool air on her legs as he pulled her pants away.
Nothing left but the panties now. She was grateful that she’d worn good ones.
But Stefan had stopped, and the look on his face—“What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
He spread a hand over her rib cage, and she looked down. Beneath the spread of his fingers, her skin was livid red, brown, black, blue, green…a rainbow of bruising. “My God,” he said. “What happened?”
“I told you before. There was a firefight.”
His head came up, quickly. “You were shot?”
“No, my bulletproof vest was shot. I got a couple of bruises.”
“Katie, that’s not a couple of bruises!” He looked, and sounded, appalled. “Did you go to the hospital?”
“I’ve had worse.”
“That’s not an answer!” He pressed slightly, and she winced. “Are you sure those aren’t broken?”
“Stefan. They’re not broken. They don’t even hurt that much. It’s just bruises. I’ll live.”
He gave her a look, then bestowed a light kiss in the dark center of the area, where it ached the most. “I think we should wait,” he said. “That can’t be comfortable for you—”
For answer, she grabbed him, threw him flat on the bed and straddled him. And smiled.
“Trust me,” she said. “I’m tougher than I look.”
“Oh,” he said faintly. “Well, I’m not, so please warn me before you—But you can keep on doing that, I’m not going to be complaining….” His eyes drifted half-closed, looking up at her as she leaned forward, her weight moving in slow circles against him. “Katie—” he made her name a caress “—twenty-seven minutes.”
She couldn’t quite remember how his pants ended up on the floor—magic, probably—but she remembered, vividly, peeling down the fabric of his shorts, remembered the full, powerful burn of undisguised need in his eyes, remembered…
…oh, everything. Every nerve firing hot, every square inch of skin caressed, every damp kiss and silken slide of body on body. He fitted with her perfectly, and if he was using some mad psychic ability to read her emotions and tailor his lovemaking, she was entirely in favor, because it was utterly, completely mind-blowing.
She was lying spent and sweating on his chest, still trembling with aftershocks and idly tracing his lips with her fingertips, when Stefan murmured, “We’re twenty-two minutes into overtime.”
“Overtime?” she said. “I haven’t even started the second quarter of play.”
“Oh.” And then, faintly, he said, “Glad you bought the three-pack.”
The phone call came an hour later, when they were dozing in each other’s arms, temporarily sated. Katie rolled up and out of bed, grabbed the phone and listened tensely.
“No progress,” she said over her shoulder to Stefan. “Thank you, Captain. Listen, does the name Calipatria mean anything to you? Is it a town?”
“Yeah,” Captain Menchaca said. “Out by the Salton Sea and the gunnery range, you know? Off Highway 111 on the California side. Why? You got a lead?”
“Yes,” she said. “Get on the phone with the California Highway Patrol and ask them to focus their search with the hub at Calipatria, radiating west on 111 and 78. Check the side roads. Any other freeways they can intersect with from there?”
“If they’re going south, they could go up to Los Angeles or down to San Diego. Either way.”
“We don’t know which they’ll take,” she said. “Cover the whole stretch, if possible. Thanks. I’m on my way.”
She hung up and headed for the bathroom. She looked back, blinked, and saw that Stefan was sitting up in bed, watching her.
“Well?” she asked. “Are you showering with me?”
He scrambled out from the tangle of sheets to follow.
They didn’t speak until they were in the car; for some reason, Katie felt a kind of serenity between the two of them that had been missing before. An acceptance. Words seemed a little…superfluous just now. They were together. She didn’t know how long it would last, but it was hers, and a single spark of brilliance in a day that had grown increasingly dark.
Stefan faded away as she drove, keeping his connection with Teal open, though for shorter periods. Caution or prudence, Katie wasn’t sure which, but she hadn’t asked him to do it—he’d simply assumed she would want him to. That was a genuine gift to her. If it had a personal cost, he kept her unaware of it, though she thought his face grew paler over time, and he seemed less able to come back to her quickly. That can’t be good for him, she thought. The human brain wasn’t meant to do that.
They were about half an hour outside of Calipatria when her misgivings proved true. Stefan had quietly faded out, leaving an empty, breathing shell, and returned with the same gasping urgency that she’d seen in the hotel room, and earlier, at the apartment complex. Something wrong. Something badly wrong.
She reached out with her right hand and touched his shoulder, then the beard-rough texture of his cheek. “Stefan? You all right?” He didn’t answer her, but he grabbed her hand in his and held it tight, very tight. His eyes were open, staring straight ahead, and as she stole fast glimpses at him from the dark road they were traveling, he seemed out of it, still.
“Stefan?” she asked again. “Can you hear me?”
