Trouble In Mind (Interstellar Rescue Series Book 2)

by Donna S. Frelick

  “Works for me.” Janet stalked off to redirect her crew.

  “There’s something else.” Gabriel started walking. “This way. Near the river.”

  Lana followed him away from the location of most of the action. “What the hell are we going to find way down here?” Except maybe a copperhead or two, she thought, as they began to encounter mucky, reedy swampland near the river. The fetid stench of decaying vegetation and a cloud of flies rose to meet them as they waded into the undergrowth. “Shit. If there’s anything in here, it’s in a foot of water. We’ll never find it.”

  “You’re right.” He stood for a moment, eyes closed, then splashed back out of the muck. He pointed a few steps downriver, to a drier piece of ground covered with low bushes.

  “Gabriel.” She refused to follow him this time. “If you would tell me what we’re looking for, I could help. Better yet, let’s get some people over here.”

  Lana was getting the sinking feeling that she’d taken this huge risk for nothing. She wasn’t on the best of terms with Ballard as it was, and if he caught wind of this . . .

  “Gabriel! What are you looking for?”

  “This!” He stooped to retrieve something with a length of dry pine branch. He turned and held it out to her in triumph. There, dangling on the end of the stick by the trigger guard, was what appeared to be a shiny new Sig Sauer semi-automatic.

  She stood staring at it, unable to come up with any explanation for its presence. “You want to tell me how this got here?”

  “I need an evidence bag.” Gabriel stood looking at her, still holding the weapon at the end of the stick.

  Lana swore and ran a few steps back toward the others. “Janet! You got a bag?”

  The TBI agent joined them, her eyebrows disappearing into her auburn bangs. She snapped open a plastic evidence bag and held it under the weapon, nodding to Lana. “Here, hold this.” She grasped the gun in one gloved hand, released the magazine neatly into the bag, ejected the last cartridge from the chamber and placed the gun inside the bag with its ammunition. Then she sealed the bag and pulled out a Sharpie to mark it.

  When she’d done her job, she finally thought to ask, “Where the fuck did you get that?”

  Lana indicated the patch of ground where Gabriel had found it.

  Janet’s eyebrows came together. “How the hell did the gun get way over here if they were fighting over there?”

  “Ethan wasn’t clear on that point.” Gabriel offered no further explanation.

  Lana’s voice rose a full octave. “Are you kidding me?”

  He shrugged. “It happened during the course of the fighting. That’s all I know.”

  “So, what, Ethan took the gun off the guy?” Lana knew her expression must have reflected her belief that Gabriel had lost his mind. “Then I guess he just threw it away? Sure, that makes perfect sense.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  Lana took a deep breath and turned to the TBI agent. “Janet, could we have a minute?”

  Janet gave them both a look and retreated.

  Lana turned on Gabriel with a flash of temper even she wasn’t expecting. “What the fuck are you trying to pull?”

  “Take it easy.” His hands went to her shoulders. “We got the gun, didn’t we?”

  Lana looked down at his hands, at the place where he was touching her, and she was suddenly flooded with a puzzling wave of emotion. Anger made up the most of it, and exasperation, and plain old confusion. The whirlpool sucked her down, and she forced herself back up, coming out of it sputtering and mad. She got herself under control by glaring at his hands until he let go.

  She found her voice. “How did the gun get there, Cruz? What did you see?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  Her voice was steel. “I already don’t believe you. Try another one.”

  Gabriel shook his head in defeat. “I don’t understand it myself.”

  The man looked like he was ready to offer an explanation, but he never got a chance to deliver it. Lana glanced over his shoulder and groaned. Another FBI vehicle had just parked beyond the barricade, and a familiar figure was unfolding from behind the driver’s side. Mark Jamisky waved at her and started in her direction.

  Lana held up a hand to Gabriel. “This isn’t over. It’s a long drive back to Nashville.”

  “Lana!” Mark huffed as he got closer. “You weren’t answering your cell. What’s up?”

  He came close, aiming maybe for a hug or a peck on the cheek, but she sidestepped him. She muttered, “Working here, Mark,” and her expression held a warning. “This is Gabriel Cruz, he’s consulting on the case. Special Agent Mark Jamisky.”

  Gabriel and Mark shook hands, circling each other like two wary wolves. Lana caught the scent of testosterone on the air and tried not to roll her eyes.

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of you,” Mark repeated. “Dispatch told me you were down here.”

  “I’ve been a little busy.” She realized she’d been avoiding him since the staff meeting. She’d let his phone calls roll over to voice mail—had it really just been because she’d been working?

  “So, Janet’s team come up with anything?”

  “Mark, you know I can’t give you any details on this, unless you’re telling me you’ve been assigned to the case?”

  “Not yet, but that can always be arranged.” He grinned.

  Lana felt a sting of irritation. “I’ll let you know when I need your help.”

  Mark’s grin slid off his face. He turned to the taller man standing at Lana’s side. “So, Gabriel. What kind of consulting work do you do, exactly?”

  Lana shot him a glare, but Mark was making a point of ignoring her.

  “Oh, a little of this, a little of that.” Gabriel stood with his feet planted, his body relaxed, like a fighter’s. The curve of his lips showed he was enjoying this. Maybe too much.

  “Uh-huh. Like what? Detective work? Security? Babysitting?”

  “Mark.” Lana could tell what he was up to, and it was likely to go too far. Mark didn’t like to be cut out of the play, especially if some new number was called instead of his.

  “I do whatever my client pays me to do, as long as I agree it’s worth doing.” Tone still even, but the eyes were sharp. You could cut glass with the intelligence in those eyes.

  “What about this case, Gabe? Care to tell me why you’ve got your nose in a Federal kidnapping case?”

  What the hell? Lana stared at the man who she could usually depend on to have her back. This time he’d as good as put a knife in it.

  “I prefer Cruz. But it seems to me that would be the business of the agent in charge, wouldn’t you say, Mark?”

  Yes. Thank you. “Mark. With me. Now.” She took the agent’s arm and hauled him to one side, far enough to be polite, but not quite far enough to be completely out of earshot. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Me? I’m doing my job, Lana. What the hell are you doing? You bring this guy here to a crime scene; you let him interfere with an investigation. God knows what kind of information you’ve let slip. And who the fuck is he anyway?”

  “Hold on just a goddamn minute.” Her anger was at full boil now. “You think you can walk up in here, throwing your weight around, barking like a big dog. But you know what? I’m in charge of this case. I’m the one who decides who gets to look at the crime scene and who doesn’t. Gabriel led us to a key piece of evidence today. What are you doing here, besides giving me an ulcer?”

  “I’m here saving your ass, that’s what,” Mark shot back. “How are you going to explain all this shit to Ballard?”

  “That’s my business.” She looked brave, but the thought had been on her mind, too. She could only hope her boss would be happy enough with the results that he wouldn’t worry about the methods she used to get them. “And I’d thank you to stay the hell out of it, especially around the hired help.”

  “Well, don’t come crying to me when h
e wants to know what you’ve been up to with pretty boy over there.” Mark spiked a glare at Gabriel, then turned on his heel and stomped off to his car without another word. The car door slammed, and he kicked up a cloud of dust as he peeled out onto the paved road from the river access.

  Lana watched him go with a mixture of regret and relief. Somehow she’d known this was coming, and it had little to do with Gabriel. Mark’s only saving graces were his humor and the fact that he was good in bed. That had been enough for a while, but suddenly it just wasn’t. Lana sighed.

  “Are you all right?” Gabriel was at her side, close enough to touch her, but keeping a careful distance.

  She looked up into his face and saw a stream of emotions too quick to interpret run through his eyes. “I’m fine.” She surveyed the grove, saw that the TBI team was still working their systematic magic, quartering the area of the fight between Ethan and kidnappers. “Are we done here?”

  He nodded, starting back toward the car. “Lunch?”

  Her eyes came up to meet his, trying to read his intent. He looked . . . hungry. “On one condition.”

  He smiled, shaking his head. “I can’t explain how that gun got there, Lana.”

  She blew out a breath. “Well, there’s at least one explanation for its being there,” she muttered. “But I damn sure don’t like it.”

  Gabriel stopped walking and stared at her. “No.”

  “Yes. Ethan could have planted that gun. Though why the dumbass threw it way over there is beyond me.”

  “Alana, you know Ethan had nothing to do with this.”

  The FBI agent lifted her arms in frustration. “Actually, Gabriel, no, I don’t know that. I don’t know that at all. It’s pretty rare when strangers kidnap someone in this country, and this case has all the signs of the more usual circumstance. Somebody owes somebody else money or drugs or blood. Just because I haven’t figured out yet what Ethan owes and who he owes it to doesn’t mean he doesn’t fit the profile.”

  “You’re wrong about him.” His whole body was taut with conviction. “There is a reason these men want Asia, but it has nothing to do with money or drugs.”

  She stared at him, eyes narrowing. “What, then?”

  He appeared to think, then shook his head. “I don’t know. I only know what I saw in Ethan’s mind this morning. He’s not involved with this. You can believe me.”

  “And what about the gun? Tell me what you saw.”

  “I could show you.”

  She stopped, gaping at him. “What?”

  “I could show you what Ethan showed me.”

  She started walking again, double-time. “And be privy to everything in his head—and yours—like you were this morning? No, thank you!”

  He grabbed her arm, and there was a swift jolt of electricity through the point of contact. She gasped and pulled away from him, her skin tingling with warmth where his hand had been. She stared, and found him staring back in a shock as obvious as hers.

  “Sorry . . . I, uh, didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  “What? You didn’t mean to grab me? Or you didn’t mean to electrocute me?”

  “Both. Either.” He exhaled. “I mean that’s never happened before. I’m usually able to control . . . contact.”

  She shook her head once to clear it of the confusion that threatened to swamp her. “And you expect me to let you do the mindmeld thing? Forget it.”

  “A mindmeld sounds both dramatic and permanent.” He looked at her as they reached the car. “This is neither. I can control this. And it won’t be like this morning. Ethan couldn’t filter what I saw because I was in his mind. I’ll be letting you into my mind, and I’ll just let you see this one thing. I won’t be in your mind at all. I promise.”

  She snorted. “Like I’m supposed to trust you?”

  He took her by the shoulders and looked down into her eyes. She felt rooted to the spot.

  “You can trust me in this, Alana.”

  She noted the careful choice of words—“you can trust me in this”—as if there were some rules he saw fit to break, some conventions he felt free to flaunt. As if he had a foundation of ethics all his own, a structure of right and wrong upon which his entire life was built and from which he did not depart. Evidently anything having to do with his mind reading fell within that structure.

  Too bad the rules aren’t posted somewhere on the outside of the building for everyone to read, she thought.

  Lana knew she should say no. For chrissakes, she had known this man fewer than twenty-four hours, she knew nothing about him, and now he was asking to swap brains with her. But her curiosity got the better of her. How many times had she wanted to get inside someone’s head—a perp in the interrogation room, a witness at the scene, a victim so much in shock she couldn’t get past the blood to remember anything about the man who’d killed her loved one? Gabriel was offering her that chance, if she could believe he was for real.

  “Okay,” she heard herself say. “But not here. On the way back.”

  Gabriel smiled, the corners of his mouth lifting just enough to show he was pleased. How was it that when he smiled like that he looked so sad—and made her want to kiss him until she couldn’t draw breath?

  CHAPTER SIX

  His room was dark, quiet, a sanctuary of lonely peace in the crowded battle zone his home had become. But when Ethan emerged from a cocoon of drug-induced sleep and his eyes opened onto that comforting space, he was not comforted. God! it hurt to be in this place—in their room—without her. He breathed deep and smelled her sweet scent of desert spice and honey. His eyes roved from the bed to the dresser, from the closet to the bathroom, and everywhere he saw her ghost, smiling at him, watching him with love in her eyes, inviting him with a lift of her eyebrow or the parting of her lips.

  He couldn’t bear to think about where she was, what could be happening to her—or to Jack—while he lay helpless here. Every muscle ached to defend the wife and son he was supposed to protect. Instead, he was bound with heavy chains of guilt and left in this prison where there was only the endless waiting. The horrible speculation. The feeling of futility, knowing there was not a fucking thing he could do to help.

  An old and familiar demon raised its filthy head in Ethan’s belly. His knee and ribs were on fire, aching with fierce reality in this second hour past the time when he could have taken another dose of Vicodin, even according to the conservative instructions on the bottle. His friend and fellow therapist Dan Parker had known about that demon, the threat of dependency born of a horrible accident in what had once seemed like a previous life. Dan had taken it into consideration when writing the prescription, but even so, Ethan hadn’t wanted to feed his old craving that often. So the pain had grown instead, until it was like a living thing that clawed at him almost badly enough to make him think of something other than Jack and Asia. Ethan considered taking another dose of the pills, trying for another few hours of sleep.

  He clambered to his feet, favoring his swollen knee. He staggered to the bathroom and shook out two of the white caplets into his hand. And as he stared at his battered image in the mirror, he heard Jack’s voice.

  --Dad. Please don’t be dead.

  Ethan gasped and his hands began to shake; he lost the pills he was holding down the sink. Tears started in his eyes, threatening to spill over onto his cheeks. His son’s voice was so clear, so present in his mind, that it was almost as if the boy was in the room with him. He closed his eyes and drew a ragged breath against the pain.

  --Please, Dad. You can’t be dead. It’s not fair.

  “Oh, God, Jack.” His knees buckled, and he grabbed at the counter to keep from slipping to the floor in a boneless heap. Jesus, this was bad. He’d expected depression, extreme anger, antisocial behavior, withdrawal, even a return to his addictive tendencies. But a full psychotic break? And if auditory hallucinations were the first sign, what was next? God knows the reality of Asia’s kidnapping sounded enough like a paranoid fantasy to have
him committed in any normal universe.

  --Dad? I can hear you! Where are you?

  There was a pause, as if Jack was waiting, listening. Ethan’s wild gaze scanned the bathroom, searching for an anchor for his sanity. His mind careened from one thought to another, unable to focus.

  --Dad? Are you still there? Can you hear me?

  He didn’t know what else to do. He answered the voice in his head. Jack?

  --Dad! You can hear me! Mom’s sleeping. I got lonely.

  --Where are you, son?

  --In a van. We’ve been riding in it since those men took us. Forever ago.

  Ethan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The sound that came out of him was something of both. Yeah, it does seem like forever ago, doesn’t it? Logic warred with hope in his heart. This couldn’t be real. He had to be creating this as a way of dealing with his grief. And yet, Jack’s voice seemed so close, so warm, so alive. He ignored the growing pressure in his head and continued.

  --Are you and Mom okay? They haven’t hurt you, have they?

  --No, we’re okay. They stopped and let us go to the bathroom. They gave us some sandwiches. But the man said we wouldn’t be stopping again for a long time. And I listened in their minds, and now I’m scared.

  Ethan’s heart stopped beating. What do you mean, son? You listened?

  -- Like we’re doing now.

  --Oh. And you could hear them . . . thinking? Ethan recognized he was at a crucial point in his fantasy. Either he’d created a wonderfully artful way to explain how this could be happening, or his son had powers of the mind none of them had ever suspected.

  --Uh-huh. Dad. I’m tired of riding in the van. When are you coming to get us?

  Ethan’s gut clenched. He struggled to direct his thoughts so he communicated none of his fear. Soon, buddy. Just as soon as we can. The FBI is looking for that van right now and you know they always get the bad guys, right?

  --I guess so.

  --Do you know where you are?

  --No. We can’t see out.

  --Can you ask Mom?

  A pause. Mom says a gas station. Jack’s voice was fading, as if he was growing tired.