The Doubted

by Shiloh Walker

  Confused, she stared at him.

  “You block out the voices you hear,” Joss said, clarifying. “How?”

  “A…um, a window,” she replied, glancing at Dev before looking back at Joss. This was all insane. How could she be standing here with him like this, talking about this as if it was…real?

  “You need something stronger.” His mouth went tight. “A window that you can open and close isn’t bad…if you’re run-of-the-mill, but Nyrene, you light up like neon. You’re not run-of-the-mill. Taige said you were in a wreck, right?”

  Numb, Nyrene nodded, trying to understand what he was getting at.

  “Chances are you’ve always had…we’ll call it good instincts. You know when to take an umbrella even on sunny days, for example, don’t you?”

  Mystified, she asked, “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “If the weatherman says no rain, and the sky is blue, why are you taking an umbrella?” He waited for a response. “And when you do, does it rain?”

  She held up her hands. “How should I know? I don’t count rainy days versus sunny days!”

  “But it’s happened.” He nodded, looking satisfied. “I’d bet you know when to get off the highway, and you find out after you got off there was a bad wreck a few miles up, right?”

  Nyrene swiped her hands down her pants. Okay, so maybe she could recall a few times when that had happened. Maybe. “That doesn’t mean anything,” she said, her voice shaking.

  “Not by itself.” Joss squeezed her hand again and she wondered why it didn’t feel odd to be standing there in a parking lot with a strange man while he squeezed her hand and asked her asinine questions. Or odder. “But if you pair it up with other things?” He leaned in then, voice intense. “You know what I think?”

  She swallowed, unable to speak.

  “You were always like this, but it was…quieter. You knew certain people were just…no good, didn’t you?”

  “No!” she fired back. “My ex-boyfriend was a two-timing son of a bitch— No, a three-timing son of a bitch. He’s married for crap’s sake! With kids!”

  “Being psychic doesn’t come with a guarantee,” he said, lips crooking up in a smile. “Some people are just harder for us to read. Especially somebody untrained. Can you honestly tell me that there was never anybody who you just knew you should stay away from?”

  Licking her lips, Nyrene thought back and she had to shake her head. “No.” There actually had been any number of people who had filled her with such…loathing, she’d steered far clear of them. Then, as a rush of understanding hit her, she flinched.

  “What is it?” Dev and Joss both asked at once.

  “I…” She licked her lips. “I used to call CPS. At my job. We had a couple of parents that I knew were hurting their kids, but we had no proof.”

  Heat flooded her cheeks and she looked away, clearing her throat before speaking. “I’d report them, but without any logical evidence…” Her voice trailed away as she thought about what she’d done.

  Finally, she cleared her throat. “I called on the one who bothered me the most, finally. I called and I lied and said I’d heard screaming—a little boy’s—coming from the house, begging for help. I lied and said I’d heard it several times.”

  “And…?” Joss asked.

  “We didn’t see him for almost a year, but he came back in…with foster parents. They were planning to adopt him.” Eyes burning, she looked at Joss for a long moment, then finally over at Dev. “His dad used to touch him. I’m not sorry for what I did. It saved him.”

  Dev gave a short nod, saying nothing.

  “So, you’ve always been like this,” Joss said again. “But this wreck…it broke something open inside you. A gate, or maybe a window.” He crooked a grin at her. “And now you’re wide open.”

  “What?”

  “You’re too strong, or your gift is. We’ll get into that later. For now, can I?” He squeezed her hand again.

  She went to ask what and then jerked back, feeling something nudge her…inside her head.

  He still held her hand and she tried to twist away at the alien sensation.

  “Let her go,” Dev said, his voice a growl.

  “Not yet.” Joss didn’t even look away from her. “I’m not hurting you, Nyrene. I won’t look at anything—”

  Dev went to grab him.

  Nyrene saw him moving—

  And then freezing. Midstep. His face went red, and to her horror, she could see his throat move—inward.

  Like some unseen hand had grabbed him. “Ease back, Sherlock,” Joss said, his voice grim. “I’m not going to hurt her, but she can’t function if she doesn’t get some sort of hold on this.”

  Dev’s eyes bulged as he clawed at his neck, leaving scratches that soon grew red with blood as he fought his way free.

  “What are you doing?” Nyrene demanded. To her shock, she’d fisted the man’s shirt in her hand—her free one—and she was shaking him.

  “Holding him off for a minute so he doesn’t beat my ass.” Joss’s eyes glowed. “I don’t have time to coddle you through this. Now are you going to let me…”

  She sucked in a breath when he nudged her head again, and that unseen touch was his. With a groan, she let him…although she didn’t know what she was allowing.

  In the next moment, Dev hit the floor, his breath sawing in and out. He was up on his feet a second later, but Nyrene held up a hand. “Don’t,” she whispered bleakly. She couldn’t understand why, but this was something she needed.

  “That’s it,” Joss murmured. “Now…pay attention. Feel what I’m doing.”

  She couldn’t do anything else. It was as if he was laying bricks in her mind.

  “A wall,” she whispered. “A wall, not a window.”

  “Exactly. You decide what comes through. But for now, you have to block out almost all of it, Nyrene. You practically glow in the dark.”

  Bit by bit, everything inside her mind seemed to…change.

  But it wasn’t just mentally. There were physical changes, too.

  She breathed easier.

  She felt lighter.

  When he finally withdrew that light mental touch, she swayed, then sagged.

  Dev caught her, wrapping one arm around her waist. She braced automatically for the onslaught of memories and images, but nothing was there.

  “I can’t feel anything from you,” she said wonderingly as she looked up at him.

  Dev’s confusion was clear on his face. But she didn’t explain. She was too confused, herself. Turning her head, she met Joss’s gaze. “How did you do that?”

  “It was more you than me,” he said, shrugging. “Once your mind realized what I was doing, it sort of took over. I was just guiding things. You needed better shielding. I just helped you figure it out.”

  His gaze flicked to Dev and he cocked a brow, tossing the man an arrogant grin. “Now, maybe the three of us can get out of here and talk shop?”

  * * * * *

  Joss’s version of getting out of there meant relocating to a popular chain steakhouse that served peanuts in the shell and had the warm, yeasty scent of bread drifting out the door.

  It had Nyrene’s stomach rumbling and she pressed a hand to her belly, hoping to quell the noise. It didn’t work. But then again, she and Dev had been a little too focused on staying alive the past few days to worrying much about eating.

  “This isn’t smart,” Dev said as they went through the doors. “There’s a BOLO out on me, and probably here, too, at this point.”

  “Oh, those are being dealt with,” Joss said, his voice unconcerned.

  “What?”

  But Dev’s question went unanswered as they passed through a busy crush of people in the waiting area and on into the bar where they found, miraculously, an empty booth.

  Joss took it, settling in the middle of one bench while waiting for them to take the other. Waylon Jennings wailed on the radio and Joss gestured to the room in
general. “It’s loud,” he said, leaning forward. Voice pitched so they had no trouble hearing it, but low enough Nyrene had no doubt that nobody else would hear him, he continued. “And it’s Friday. People here are enjoying a drink after the end of the week, getting ready to go home. Nobody is likely to be paying attention to you guys. Except maybe cops, and nobody is getting off shift any time soon. It’s the middle of the evening.” He tapped his watch, then looked up just as a woman stopped at the end of the booth.

  They placed orders for drinks and when the server came to Nyrene, she said, “Whiskey. Whatever you got, a double. Straight up.”

  Normally, she wasn’t a drinker, but she needed some damn alcohol right then.

  Joss gave her a sympathetic look. “It’s a lot to take in,” he said after the woman made her way back into the crowd.

  “Excuse me,”—Dev gave her an apologetic look—“but I need to know. What the hell did you mean by ‘it’s being taken care of’? BOLOs don’t just disappear because some FBI agent shows up.”

  “Nah, that has nothing to do with me. There’s a bigger fish than me pulling strings and I imagine he’s putting some weight behind it.” Joss gave a thin smile. “It probably has something to do with the fact that your department is dirtier than a couple of contenders after a bout of mud wrestling.”

  Dev arched his brows then, leaning back as he studied Joss appraisingly. “They’ve caught federal interest.”

  “They have now.” Joss gave him a shark’s smile. “They fucked with me and that caught my interest. I did some digging around. An awful lot of cops die in your neck of the woods, do you know that? And the murder rate in your little city…it’s kind of crazy.”

  “I’m aware,” Dev bit off.

  The words sounded jagged and rusty to Nyrene’s ears.

  “I’ve sent a report to the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation, but who the fuck knows how long it will be before they get to me?” Now Dev just sounded frustrated. “And good cops keep dying. Decent people die when they end up stumbling into something they shouldn’t.”

  His eyes flickered and she knew he was thinking of Meredith and her fiancé.

  “I suspect the LBI will find your file much sooner than you think. They’re getting a call from Taige,” Joss said softly.

  From the corner of her eye, Nyrene could see the way Dev’s mouth tightened, but then, to her surprise, he gave a short, stiff nod. “From what I hear, she makes a phone call and people jump to attention,” Dev said softly.

  “That’s because when she makes a call, she has solid-gold information.” Joss shrugged. “I’m a cop, too, Deverall. I like closing cases just as much as you do. Once some agent at the LBI takes a look at this, realizes cops are getting killed, innocent citizens dying…? You’ll be the next one to get a phone call. Don’t be surprised if you end up getting a job offer to get you out of that armpit of a town, either. LBI’s always looking for good cops.”

  There was another lull in the conversation as the server reappeared, distributing a round of drinks and asking if they needed any food. Joss answered for them all with a polite, “Can we just flag you down when we need you?”

  Once they were alone again, he leaned back over the table. “In the meantime, the good mayor of Clary is getting a call from my boss. He’s going to be told that we’re aware that some…odd information is being passed around about an informant of ours, one Benjamin Deverall. We’d be mighty upset if anything happened to one of ours, you know.” His eyes caught and held Dev’s. “The BOLO is going to be dropped, probably within the hour. If not, I’ll be in touch so you know to keep watching your backs on that front.”

  “The men after me aren’t going to stop just because the mayor got goosed by the FBI. For all I know, the mayor is in it up to his neck.”

  “He’s not.” Joss shook his head. “Before the head man in charge got on the phone with him, one of our empaths spoke with the mayor. He’s a self-serving bastard, but he’s not dirty. Also, your captain has her suspicions about what’s going on in the department. She’s safe to talk to.”

  Safe to talk to.

  Bewildered, Dev looked at the man sitting across from him. He didn’t know what to make of any of this. He knew all about trusting his gut, which was where he was going to file what Nyrene could do—she just had seriously sharp instincts and he was going to make himself be okay with that.

  But now he had a man he didn’t know from Adam telling him something that his gut had suspected for a long time, but to his knowledge, Joss Crawford didn’t know the lieutenant. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “How do you know any of this shit?”

  “We’re the FBI,” Joss said soberly. “We know everything.”

  But the joke fell flat. Not just for him, he realized, but for Nyrene.

  “How do they know about me?” she asked, her voice urgent. “I don’t understand any of this. How did Taige know about me? How was anybody from this so-called Psychic Portal able to track me? Because I…what? You say I glow in the dark? And because of that, they sent you here? Why? Why do I matter to the FBI?”

  Joss studied them both, irritation stamped on his features. He blew out a breath and finally he reached for his phone. “I need you two to cooperate with me if I want anything accomplished, and I want several things accomplished. One, I want your laptop, Nyrene. You’re our first solid lead on the Portal in a while and we need that lead. Two…” His eyes flicked to Dev and he shrugged. “Dirty cops piss me off.” He tapped something out on the phone, then put it face down on the table. “But I’m not going to get much cooperation if I don’t garner some trust.”

  The phone buzzed almost immediately.

  “So I’m going to attempt to garner some trust.” He picked up the phone. But he didn’t look at it immediately. “But I’ll tell you this now—if you fuck me over or do anything to upset the person you might be getting ready to meet? You’re going to be dealing not just with me, you’ll deal with somebody a lot scarier.” He looked down at the phone and his mouth tightened. “She said yes. Come on, we need to pay and get out of here before she changes her mind.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dev asked.

  But Joss didn’t answer. He was fishing bills out of his wallet. After a cursory glance at the table—Tallying up the tab, Dev thought—he tossed down a few bills, then added another ten. “Come on,” he said again, sounding impatient.

  “I’d like to know where first.” Dev stayed stubbornly where he was.

  “I think I know,” Nyrene said weakly.

  Dev looked over at her and saw she’d fisted a hand by her head.

  “Keep that wall up, Nyrene,” Joss said, his voice hard.

  “I am. This…it’s just there.” She held up a hand, as if grasping for an explanation in thin air. She looked at Dev, then back at Joss. “You’re taking us to meet Taige, aren’t you?”

  Joss’s mouth tightened.

  “Taige,” she whispered. “And her daughter.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  She was…delicate.

  That was the only word that accurately described the slim, petite girl waiting next to the tall woman Nyrene immediately pegged as Taige Morgan. And there was nothing delicate about Taige.

  Everything about the woman hailed as the Psychic of the South screamed confidence and quiet, determined capability. Nyrene had the idea that someone could hand her the drawn-out plans to bring about WWIII and she’d just nod and go about thwarting them all without breaking a sweat.

  Oddly enough, although she was clearly still a teenager, the girl next to Taige carried herself with the same confidence, the same strength.

  And Nyrene saw it—these two weren’t mother and daughter by blood—but they were in every other way.

  Taige was mixed-race, like Nyrene herself. It was there in the pale gold of her skin, the pale gray of her eyes and the crazy curls she’d pulled back from her face in a series of braids.

  Jillian, on the other hand, was petite and fair. Her
hair was curly, too, but the curls were loose and soft, framing her face in a series of ringlets. Her mouth looked like a cupid’s bow, pink and perfect and completely naked of lipstick. Her eyes were big and dark, an inky shade of blue that made Nyrene think of midnight as she approached.

  The top of her head came up to Nyrene’s chin but she held the older woman’s gaze steadily, her slender shoulders ramrod straight, her gaze appraising.

  Abruptly, her mother’s lips curled up and Taige looked away, her gaze drifting down to her daughter’s. “Stop that, baby.”

  Jillian Morgan hadn’t done a thing.

  But she shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me,” Taige said, nudging her.

  Jillian’s gaze flitted to Nyrene and she sighed. “Fine. I’m sorry.” Then she pursed her lips and added, “But I’m not delicate.”

  Joss covered a laugh with a cough as Nyrene’s steps stumbled to a halt. “Maybe I should have mentioned something. Jillian can read minds. Any mind—whether it’s shielded or not. The gift is sort of spiking out of control right now, too, so she can’t always control it.”

  “Maybe you should try harder,” Nyrene snapped immediately, and instinctively, doubling the wall that Joss had built inside her mind.

  Jillian opened her mouth to reply, then she stopped, face scrunching up. “How did you do that?” she demanded.

  “Do what?” Nyrene crossed her arms over her chest, feeling oddly naked.

  “You…” Jillian waved a hand at Nyrene’s head. “You just knocked me out of your head. Nobody can do that.”

  While Nyrene struggled to answer, Taige refocused her gaze on Nyrene. After a few short moments, a smile spread across her face. “Oh, honey…I think I’m going to like you.”

  “Mom!”

  * * * * *

  “As long as you keep yourself locked up tight like you are now, you don’t need to worry about people from the Portal finding you.” Taige looked at Nyrene and shook her head. “If Jillian can’t pick up on you, it’s like you don’t even exist.”