Lana attacked her meal for a while before she got back to her questions. “So how long have you been doing this kind of work, Gabriel?”
“Most of my adult life.” This was one question he could answer honestly. “I worked for someone else for a while. Started my own business about ten years ago.”
“That’s awfully young. You must be pretty good at it.”
He shrugged. He had talents he couldn’t tell her about and clients who paid him well to use them.
“In my experience the best PI’s are the ones who aren’t afraid to take the crazy cases, the cases likely to get them killed.” She looked at him for a long moment, assessing him. “Would that be you, Gabriel?”
The question was a little too close for comfort. He deflected it.
“Are we talking about this case?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Are we?”
“Not as long as you let me tag along with you.” He gave her what he hoped was a disarming grin.
“I wouldn’t count on that.”
“You have to admit I’ve been helpful.”
“So far,” she admitted. “But once my boss hears about this, I’m up shit creek.”
There was a pause, the two of them eating in silence, Lana’s forehead creased in thought. After a while she appeared to dismiss her concerns with a tiny sigh. She looked up at him again.
Whatever she might have said was lost as her cell phone trilled at her waist. She got up to take her call outside, ruining Gabriel’s chances of catching any of the conversation.
He signaled the waitress for the check and pulled his own phone out of a holster at his hip. No one questioned why he focused on it for minutes at a time; they assumed he was using its many capabilities to access data. But the device was largely unprogrammed, capable only of limited-range communications. For anything else he used his own brain’s wetwire cyber-enhancements and his exceptional psi skills. He’d found the phone useful when assigned to planets at Earth’s stage of development before. Staring into space while he accessed data had almost gotten him killed one too many times.
He checked his bank balance—the diamonds he’d arranged to sell through intermediaries in New York had brought enough to cover his expenses for as long as he needed to stay.
Gabriel smiled when he saw the “readouts” from the crime scene. His sensor implants had detected faint echoes of the electromagnetic signatures he’d been looking for. The traces had been broken, scattered, much too scant for his own senses to have detected them, even though he’d been scanning every second he’d been in the riverside grove. Still, the biosensors had picked them up; they were so obviously different from the others. He’d be able to identify Asia and Jack—and their unique psi signatures—whenever he got close enough now.
He checked his messages. There was one waiting from Sam.
“Package safely delivered. All involved say thanks. Bloodstalker confirmed within Sol system hunting our prize. Watch your back. See you in eight hours. Sam.”
Gabriel closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe. The Bloodstalker. Once his father’s ship, now his brothers’, Kinnian and Trevyn. Two of the deadliest, most inescapable trackers of a race of undercover warriors, men whose brutality and single-minded devotion to violence were legendary, even among those following a violent profession. Full-blooded Thranes with psi talents likely twice the strength of his, with a team and plenty of technology to back them up.
This simple kidnapping was now a game with multiple players. And as Gabriel well knew, his half-brothers played rough—and they played to win. The only question was, what was it about Asia that made her worth the game?
“Ray, have you ever experienced what Gabriel does?”
Ethan had taken more pain pills against the agony in his ribs and his leg and splitting skull. He had slept and showered and shaved. He had even forced himself to eat, and now sat over the remains of a simple meal with Rayna in his dining room, struggling to make sense of what had happened to him hours earlier.
She shook her head. “Never had the need. Why?”
“Have you ever heard . . .” He groped for the words he needed. “Is it possible that in opening myself up to him, I might have opened myself up to something else?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve never been sensitive to extra-sensory stimulation before, but today . . .” He stopped, recognizing how unstable he sounded.
Ray reached out to take his hand. “What is it, Ethan? You look better, but something’s on your mind, I can tell.” She looked him in the eye. “Are you worried about the drugs?”
He shook his head, a smile tugging at his mouth. “I may be crazy, but the drugs aren’t the cause. They aren’t known to cause hallucinations.”
“Hallucinations? What are you talking about?”
“What would you say if I told you I’d just had a conversation with Jack upstairs?” He said it, then sat looking at her, waiting for her reaction.
Her expression showed first alarm, then pity and at last a quickly-conjured neutrality. Ethan would have found it amusing, had the subject been anyone else but himself.
“Ethan, sweets—”
“I know what it sounds like, Rayna, believe me. I’m not sure I don’t agree with your first reaction.”
“Reaction?” She tried for an innocent expression. “What reaction?”
“You think the stress has driven me over the edge. That’s what I thought, too.” He stood up and moved in an awkward limp to the living room, his damaged knee making him slow. “It wasn’t like I heard him in the room. He was in my mind, I was clear on that. But his voice was so real, Ray, so present. He didn’t sound like my idea of Jack. He sounded like Jack. Do you know what I mean?”
Rayna shook her head. “Not really. What did he say?”
“Nothing much. He complained about riding in the van. He said Asia was sleeping, and he—” He took a deep breath, clamping down hard on the emotion that threatened to choke him. “He wanted to know when I was coming to get him.”
Rayna got up and put her hand on his arm. “Ethan, you want so much to know he’s okay. And I’m sure he is.”
Ethan accepted the comfort of her touch, but he wouldn’t accept her view of what had happened. “His voice faded after a moment, like he was tired. And my head was killing me trying to keep up the contact. If this had been just a figment of my imagination, I could have been a lot easier on myself.”
Rayna pulled back to consider him, her expression somber. “So . . . what? It’s your theory that you developed special powers after your session with Gabriel this morning?”
His shoulders lifted. “I don’t know. Maybe. We do know that Jack is resistant to programming, like Asia is. Maybe he’s the one with special powers.”
“Resistance is one thing. Psi talents are something else entirely. What Gabriel does is just not that common among humans.”
“What do you mean?” Suspicion put an edge to his voice.
Ray ignored it. “I mean he’s got a rare skill set. One you wouldn’t expect to pop up unannounced—either in Jack or in you.”
“And yet, if those skills were latent in either one of us,” Ethan insisted, “the kind of session I had with Gabriel this morning might have been enough to open new pathways for telepathic communication, especially between people in close relationships.”
“Then why wasn’t it Asia who contacted you?”
Ethan’s heart stopped. He had no answer for that question.
Rayna shook her head, sympathy in her eyes. “I’d like to believe you, honey, I really would. But you’re the psychiatrist. If any of your patients came to you with a story like this, would you believe them?”
Ethan turned away from her and stared out the window at the lowering sun. He knew what his answer would have to be if logic were applied to the question. Yet logic had let him down before. When Asia had first come to him, a rational woman with what seemed to be a delusional pattern of memories, he had been forced to
abandon logic for the dictates of his heart. He’d been rewarded for that decision over and over again, every time he’d looked at her, or touched her, or heard her whisper his name as he made love to her.
Logic told him Jack could not possibly have reached across miles of empty space to speak to him, but his heart told him it was so. And illogical or not, he believed what his heart told him.
Lana put away her cell phone and turned to see Gabriel coming through the door of the restaurant onto the covered porch. He caught sight of her and smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his coffee-colored eyes; he seemed preoccupied, his mind bent on solving a puzzle for which only he had all the pieces.
She stifled a sigh. Damn, the man was easy to look at; the darker his thoughts, the more attractive she seemed to find him. She shook her head and took the few steps required to close the distance between them.
“Got a phone call from Rick.” She was all business now. It just seemed easier. “Tip from the Amber Alert puts our vehicle at a rest stop in Arkansas at about 10:00 last night. The woman who saw them has details and lives just this side of Memphis.”
Gabriel brightened. “Close enough to speak to her in person.”
Lana strode across the parking lot to her car, knowing he would be right on her heels. She opened the car door and waited a second for the overheated interior to cool. She looked at him over the roof.
“I’m going to drop you off at the river. Someone there can give you a ride back to Nashville.”
“Like hell. You’re going to take me with you.” The grin he offered up with this prediction was devastating.
She dropped into the driver’s seat and started up the engine, setting the A/C on full blast. “You know I can’t do that. Interviewing a witness is Bureau business. It would be way over the line for you to be there.”
“Lana, you want all the details from this witness, don’t you? Not just, ‘Oh, I think it might have been a white van and three men,’ but the license plate, the scratch on the left front bumper, the way Asia and Jack are holding up. If this witness actually saw something, I’ll know it just by shaking her hand.”
“Christ, Gabriel, I can’t be a part of that.” Something close to horror seized her heart. “If we ask for her permission, the Bureau would have my badge by tomorrow morning. If we don’t ask . . .” He wouldn’t do that, would he? The thought of what he could do was frightening enough without wondering how those powers might be used in the absence of ethics or conscience.
Gabriel considered her. “Fair enough. You interview her your way. Then you leave the room. I’ll ask for her permission. If she gives it, I’ll go in and get what we need. That way you’re legally off the hook.”
“Are you kidding me?” Lana shook her head. Why am I even listening to him? “You’re not supposed to be with me, don’t you get it?”
There was anger in his voice now—and frustration. “Do you want to find Asia and Jack or not, Lana? We can work together on this, or we can waste time while the wolves pick up their scent.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
He huffed out a breath, but refused to explain. His face could have been carved in granite.
“Gabriel?”
His eyes, when he looked up to meet hers, had gone nearly black. “Just take me with you, Alana. You won’t regret it.”
They were approaching the turnoff for Harpeth Narrows. Lana knew she should make that turn. She should take this man with his troublesome talents and his disturbing good looks and drop him into someone else’s lap down at the river. She had no logical explanation for why she thought she could trust Gabriel Cruz. It was just her damnable intuition at work again—the same spooky sixth sense that gave her the best solve rate in the Nashville office, but lost her every partner she’d ever had. No one else wanted to trust her gut like she did.
Maybe that’s why despite everything she’d been taught, despite every rule in the book, in defiance of all good sense and responsible judgment, Lana passed right by the turnoff for Harpeth Narrows and kept driving west toward Memphis with a near-stranger in her government-issue vehicle. Some days you just have to listen to that little voice inside you, even when all you hear is crazy talk.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Beyond the Oort Cloud, Sol System
The ship materialized on the outer lip of jump node A10, one instant not-there, the next instant there, in the usual way of internodal space travel. A miracle to behold. And an even greater miracle to accomplish, for without it the sentient species of the galaxy might well be confined to tooling around their own little solar systems, pining for the glory of the stars.
The discovery and mapping of the nodes, which formed short connecting “jumps” between otherwise widely-separated areas of space, had been the singular lasting contribution of the long-departed Tularian Empire. A more aggressive species used against them the information the Tularians had so painstakingly acquired, jumping into the heart of their empire in force to destroy them.
Trevyn Dar, staring at the viewscreen at the evidence of their genius, had always thought the story of the Tularians a sad and telling episode in the history of the galaxy. They had given sentient-kind so much, and had received such poor thanks in return. Of course, his brother would have said it was no more than they deserved for paying so little attention to their own security.
“Confirm arrival at jump terminus, Commander. Stealth shielding engaged, per your orders.” The lieutenant at the helm was newly assigned, a Ninoctin, not a Thrane, and her mental protections were almost non-existent. He could read her nervousness clearly, almost as clearly as her attraction to him and her struggle to control it. Trevyn stifled a sigh. He had spoken to Kinnian about hiring crew members without the psi talents of their people, but his brother had laughed him off. Kinnian liked being able to read others easily, especially women, and for the same reasons Trevyn found it uncomfortable.
“Very good, Lieutenant. Set course for the third planet. Three-quarters ID.”
“Aye, sir. Setting course. Three-quarters ion drive.” A heartbeat later she looked up from her instruments. “Commander. We failed to navigate the jump according to MEA calculations, sir. We’re well outside parameters.”
Trevyn turned to see the numbers himself. The nodes had funnel-like openings; they allowed for some variation in the approach a ship took in hitting them. But too much deviation from the Most Efficient Approach and a ship could be thrown off course at the outlet or torn to pieces in transit. Shalssit! They were so far off they were lucky they’d arrived at all.
His helm had kept her voice low, but every soul on the bridge had heard her. And every pair of eyes was now on the navigator who had made the near-fatal error. That navigator was glaring at the lieutenant with undisguised rage. Trevyn heard him curse the helm officer under his breath as his commander approached the nav station.
“You have something to say, Navigator?” He stood over the man and used his height to intimidate. “Perhaps you’d like to explain how we nearly missed such an easy jump?”
“I gave that bitch the proper calculations.” The man was sweating under his heavy beard. “Can I help it if she didn’t enter them correctly?”
Trevyn turned his head, but his gaze never left the navigator’s face. “Is that true, helm?”
“No, sir! The log shows what he gave me and what I entered. They are the same.”
He looked at her now. “But they are incorrect. Am I to understand that you only detected this error when you began to calculate your course for Earth?”
“Aye, sir.” To her credit, the Ninoctin’s voice did not tremble. She met his gaze without flinching. “I should have double-checked the navigator’s calculations before we entered jump.”
“Yes, you should have.” Still, Trevyn found it easy to be lenient with her. “Except for meals, you will confine yourself to quarters during your off-duty shifts for the remainder of this assignment.”
The woman accepted her punishment with nothing
but a movement of her pretty throat to show she had swallowed hard. “Yes, Commander.”
The navigator, on the other hand, deserved much harsher punishment, more so since he was watching now with a self-satisfied smirk. “You find this amusing?”
The man’s expression turned sullen. “No, sir.”
“No, and you won’t like this, either. You’re relieved and sentenced to fourteen ship cycles in the brig.” He glanced toward the brute clad in body armor stationed near the bridge exit. “Security, get him off my bridge.”
The navigator leapt to his feet. “The fuck you say! You give that cunt a slap on the wrist yet you send me to the box for a half-moon for a cursed math error? Your brother would never allow—”
Trevyn ended it by backhanding the man across the mouth. The navigator staggered back into his console, his knees buckling, blood spurting from his split lips. He stared at his commander with eyes wide, saying nothing. Trevyn gestured for Security and the huge officer scraped the navigator off the control panel to put him in restraints.
“My brother would never allow insubordination on the bridge of his ship. And neither will I. Thirty cycles now, and the only reason you’re not dead is that I don’t have another navigator.”
He waved a hand at his security officer. “Get him out of here.” Then he turned to his helm. “Estimated time of arrival at the third planet, by local equivalent?”
“Approximately four hours, thirty-six minutes, Commander.”
Steady. Trevyn admired her poise. “I’ll report to the Captain, then I’ll be in my cabin. You have the conn.”
“Yes, sir.” He noted her emotions: a flush of surprise. Relief that she would no longer have to deal with his presence. Fear when he mentioned Kinnian.
Trevyn took the short flight of stairs and the passageway down to the captain’s quarters. He knocked on the metal of his brother’s cabin hatch and opened it when he heard Kinnian’s gruff voice answer.
“Four-and-a-half hours to target, my lord.” He closed the hatch behind him.
Trouble In Mind (Interstellar Rescue Series Book 2) Page 9
