Shocked, Diana froze. With the door shut, she felt claustrophobic. Again. Always. “Would you please open the door?”
Wes frowned. He heard a faint wobble in her low, husky voice. Further, he saw a spark of real fear in her eyes. “What I have to say is for your ears only, Ms. Wolf. It’s a security matter.”
“I don’t care what it is, Mr. McDonald. Open that door. Please.”
Ruffled, Wes got up and pulled the door open. He’d heard the unmistakable panic in her tone, and he wondered why it was there. As he turned to look at her, he saw that her skin had gone ashen beneath the gold. He frowned. Something else was going on—something he didn’t fully grasp. Digging in his back pocket, he pulled out his identification.
“I’m from Perseus, Ms. Wolf, and what I have to talk to you about can’t be overheard. That’s why I closed the door.”
Shaken, Diana scrutinized the professional-looking ID. “I don’t know you. I don’t know Perseus.”
“I realize that.” Wes tried to use a gentler tone of voice with her, seeing that she was truly shaken. “Look, if you’re claustrophobic or something, can we go outdoors and talk?”
An excellent compromise, Diana realized with relief. “Yes, let’s do that,” she suggested briskly and quickly came around the desk, handing him back the identification card and slipping out the door before he could even get to his feet. Walking fast, she headed for the information booth, where Kathy Black Bear was sitting.
“Kathy, I’m going to be outside, sitting on the bench near the entrance, talking with that man. It’ll take just a few minutes. If you need me, come and get me.” Diana didn’t want to leave with this dangerous-looking stranger without alerting someone—just in case.
Kathy looked up. “Sure, Diana.”
Diana sensed him approaching. It was such a powerful sensation that she felt the queasiness resume in her solar plexus. Large, powerful and dangerous. She gripped the counter for a moment, trying to steady her reeling emotions as her past was triggered again. Pressing one hand against her blouse over her heart, Diana took a deep, calming breath. Her imagination was in full flight, and she had to get it under control.
It was obvious that Wes McDonald didn’t like her and didn’t want to be here. That much Diana had picked up psychically. He hadn’t smiled when he’d introduced himself. He hadn’t even held out his hand to shake hers. Social obligations didn’t count with him, and that made her deeply suspicious of him.
Diana didn’t want him getting too close to her, so she turned.
“Follow me,” she ordered.
Wes followed this unusual woman at a respectful distance. It was obvious she didn’t trust him any further than she could throw him. Part of him was overjoyed by the knowledge. After all, if Ms. Wolf didn’t like him now, there was every chance of her turning down the assignment. But a more sensitive part of him, a part he rarely showed even to himself, lamented her response. He knew he wasn’t handsome in the conventional sense, but he wasn’t an ogre, either—and she was treating him as if he were. Further, as Wes followed her out into the warm October sunlight, he felt himself wishing he could somehow apologize for scaring the hell out of her.
Laughing at himself, he wondered what kind of magic Diana Wolf had woven around him. It had been a long time since he’d been genuinely interested in a woman, and to have her looking at him as if he were some kind of monster was a little tough to swallow.
The dew was still on the short, neatly cut grass as Wes followed her to a stone bench not far from the spreading arms of an oak tree now turned scarlet for autumn. He saw that she wore deerskin moccasins, prettily beaded and darkening from the wet grass. Her hands were clenched, he noted, frowning. Why was she so frightened of him?
Wes took a seat at one end of the long bench. She sat at the other end, staring darkly at him. Tension was apparent in every line of her body, and as he set his briefcase down beside him, he sighed.
“Look, I’m not going to bite you, okay?” The words came out sarcastically, and Wes flinched inwardly. He hadn’t meant it quite that way, but it hurt him to think she saw him as such a threat.
Diana gulped at his insight. His dark brown eyebrows were drawn straight across his narrowed eyes. His mouth never seemed to relent from its thinned control. Did he ever smile? Probably not. “The energy around you is scaring me,” she admitted.
“Energy?” Wes lifted his eyes from the papers he’d pulled from his briefcase.
With a wave of her hand, Diana said, “Yes, everyone has energy around them. An electromagnetic aura. Your energy is overwhelming to me.”
“I scare you?”
Diana nodded and watched as his large, long hands, marked by numerous scars, brought a sheaf of papers together. “If you’d smile, it might help.”
“In my business,” he told her in a clipped tone, “smiles don’t get it.”
Rebuffed, Diana wondered why she was sitting here with this stranger. Curiosity more than anything else made her stay. “Just what is your business?” she demanded testily.
“I’m a mercenary, Ms. Wolf, and I work for an organization called Perseus.” He lifted his head and held her frightened brown gaze. “I’m on an assignment, and it concerns you.”
“Me?” The word came out strangled. Diana’s world upended for a moment. Wes McDonald was a mercenary. A man who fought battles for pay. Her first impression had been correct: he was a warrior—not a thief, as her silly imagination had suggested. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. Men with such violence around them scared her more deeply than anything else in her world. Knowing that about herself, she tried not to allow it to color her assessment of McDonald. He was here on an assignment—not to hurt her.
Clearing his throat, Wes said, “Look, everything I have to tell you is top secret. Do you understand that?”
“Does that mean I can’t tell anyone what I hear?”
“Yes. Once I tell you about the mission, regardless of whether you decide to come along with me and help, you’re to say nothing to anyone.”
Shaken, Diana stared at his rugged, unforgiving face. Despite the harshness, the glitter in his shadowed blue eyes, she sensed a deep sadness in Wes. Just knowing that took the edge off her fear. And the more she probed his intense gaze, the more she allowed her frightened senses to open up and feel that all-pervading sorrow he wore like a heavy, smothering coat.
“I—I see.”
Wes saw her blanch, but also felt her warmth. It wasn’t just the sun’s rays on his back. For an instant, he actually felt her warmth; then just as quickly, he pooh-poohed the sensation. The only things that could save his hide during danger were those he could hear, see, smell, taste or touch. Still, he thought, disgruntled, it was as if he’d actually felt her warmth move through him, like a soft hand briefly touching his closed, hardened heart. The feeling had been electric, freeing and, just as suddenly, frightening. Wes had made decisions long ago that would affect the rest of his life. He knew the pros and cons of such decisions and had made them with a clear head and a good dose of realism. But that didn’t mean he didn’t sometimes feel a certain sadness—and it was funny how keenly he felt it now. What was this woman? A witch? A magician capable of tapping his darkest secrets, the things he never wanted to think about again?
Violently rejecting the whole train of thought, Wes thrust a color photo of an older woman into her hands. “The woman is Ruth Horner. She works at Psi-Lab, an arm of the government devoted strictly to undertakings such as reading minds, astral travel and that sort of thing.”
Surprised, Diana carefully held the large color photo. Ruth Horner was about fifty, her ginger hair mixed with strands of silver. She had watery-looking green eyes, a thin, narrow face and an exhausted expression. Her hair was knotted in a chignon, and she wore a white lab coat over a nondescript beige dress. Everything about her looked bland, Diana thought. Her hands tingled, and she closed her eyes, waiting to receive impressions.
“This woman is so unhappy
,” she offered in a whisper. “My heart goes out to her.” She opened her eyes and felt tears. Embarrassed, she handed the photo back to Wes and wiped her eyes.
Stunned, Wes stared at her. Then he remembered that supposedly, Diana Wolf was a psychometrist—someone who could touch an object and tell him about the person who owned it. That was why Morgan had chosen her. Scowling deeply, he slipped the photo beneath the papers he had.
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do.” Diana pointed to the papers. “She’s very unhappy.”
“She shouldn’t be,” Wes growled. “The federal government has paid her very highly for her skills.”
Tilting her head, Diana saw the mockery in his eyes and heard it in his voice. “Why don’t you just start at the beginning, Mr. McDonald? Why are you here? What do you want from me?”
He managed a grimace with one corner of his mouth. “Let me tell you something up-front, Ms. Wolf: if I had my way about this, I wouldn’t be here at all, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be talking to you.”
Stunned, Diana glared at him. “Under the circumstances, I’d guess you didn’t have a choice, Mr. McDonald. So let’s cut to the chase on this, shall we? You’re completely lacking in manners, and I’m not about to sit here and be insulted by you or anyone.”
Wes cursed softly to himself. When she stood up, her eyes blazing, her hands at her sides, he muttered, “I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with my boss, Morgan Trayhern. I didn’t want this assignment. It has nothing to do with you. All right?” He was genuinely sorry he’d hurt her feelings. Once again, Wes realized that his anger was being projected onto someone who hadn’t earned it. It was a terrible weakness he had, and he’d been working to change that particular habit for a long time.
When he lowered his voice, his tone genuine, Diana hesitated. She was ready to walk back to the museum and tell him to go on his way. But for an instant, she saw contrition in his eyes, saw the persistent gleam of fire in them diminish. In that moment she saw the man, not the warrior, and it was a breathtaking discovery. Even his customary clipped tone of voice had disappeared. She gripped the back of the bench to steady herself.
“All right, I accept your apology, Mr. McDonald. Get on with the reason why you’re here—whether you want to be or not.”
Wes opened his mouth to explain, seeing the hurt in her eyes, the soft set of her mouth with the corners drawn inward in response to the pain he’d launched at her. Life was such a bitch. Utterly a bitch. He knew he wasn’t the kind of person many people wanted to have around. Hell, he had a lot of rough edges, and he wasn’t worth sticking around for any length of time. That’s why his army career had fitted him so perfectly. He was a loner in a loner’s job. But now he had to take a partner. And he didn’t like it. A woman, at that. A soft, compassionate woman who’d mysteriously tugged feelings from his hardened heart that he thought had died long ago.
Lifting his hand, Wes rasped, “I know I’m a bastard. I’m hard on people. That’s about as close to an apology as you’re going to get from me.”
Diana relaxed slightly, her fingers loosening from their position on the granite bench. She could feel Wes wrestling with so many feelings, even see them in his eyes, if only for a split second. As a psychic, her forte was picking up on subtleties, and she was glad this once that she could ferret out such things, because they painted a less violent and aggressive picture of him.
“Fair enough,” she whispered, her voice softening in compromise. “Just tell me why you came here.”
Chapter Two
Wes put the papers aside. “Ruth Horner is a psychic,” he began, retrieving the information from his memory. “When she was ten years old, the Psi-Lab, a top-secret branch of the federal government, tested her.”
“What do you mean, ‘tested’?”
“They tested her for her psychic skills,” Wes said. “This lab’s whole reason for being was to develop a team of psychics to use in the Cold War and any other hot spot around the world. They used psychics to ferret out top-secret information. If they could get access without putting one of our spies in danger, they did it.”
Diana grimaced. “What a terrible use of psychic gifts.”
Wes shrugged. “If you believe in that sort of stuff.”
She felt rebuffed. “Obviously, you don’t.”
“Nope.” He pointed to his eyes. “I believe in my own five senses. Beyond that, nothing is real.”
The flat statement came out hard, uncompromising. Diana curbed her reaction—one of anger. “Okay, so poor Ruth Horner was tested when she was only ten. And they used her? At that age? I think that’s terrible.”
“It’s worse than you can imagine,” Wes said. “Ruth Horner’s skills were so high on their index that they brought her to Washington, D.C., and she worked in their lab facilities five days a week.”
“How awful! What did her parents say?”
“She didn’t have any. She was an orphan.”
“Oh, dear…”
Wes smarted beneath her softly spoken words and the glistening of tears in her sympathetic brown eyes. Tears! He felt rage. He felt as if he’d been slapped in the face. “Don’t get all teary eyed over her being an orphan. She survived.”
Diana felt a huge surge of anger slam into her and she winced. She saw the fury in Wes’s eyes and stood openmouthed. Why had he taken such offense? Her mind whirled with questions about this unpredictable man.
“Horner was cared for by foster parents who approved her work for our government. Her education was excellent. She was tutored through high school and went on to get a degree in biochemistry.” He deliberately looked at the papers instead of at Diana Wolf, whose compassionate expression only made him feel angrier. “She eventually became a supervisor at the lab and responsible for a lot of new psychic tools being employed in our country’s defense.” Wes glanced up. “I don’t know exactly what she did psychically. But I was told she was very powerful. One of the best.”
Swallowing her tears, Diana came and sat down on the edge of the bench. The anger had left Wes’s face and voice, but she was still shaken by the suddenness with which he’d turned on her. Why couldn’t he feel sympathy for Ruth Horner? What was the matter with him? Maybe he was so hard-bitten he hated tears, or at the very least, disdained them. Typical Neanderthal male, she thought, her own anger rising. How dare he. Her tears, her feelings, were genuine, and he had no right to deliver verbal assaults.
Diana had to remind herself she’d never been around a mercenary—had no idea what one might be like. Her ex-husband had been in the army, so she’d had a taste of the military, all right. A very bad taste that had left her bitter. Ruth’s story haunted her, though, so she put her own feelings aside.
“Tell me more about Ruth.”
“There’s nothing more to tell—except this: she married at the age of thirty and divorced at thirty-seven. Recently, she went on a two-week vacation to Sedona, Arizona. The lab had her hotel room number in case they needed her for an emergency. When they had one and called her, she was gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, disappeared.”
“As in kidnapped?”
“We don’t know.” Wes heard himself say “we.” It was a term he’d used often in Delta Force, where everything was approached as a team. Now he was automatically including this woman—who hadn’t even agreed to accept the mission! Disgruntled at his slip, he muttered, “That’s why they want you on this assignment. They need a psychometrist, someone who can pick up her whereabouts. The police have already checked the room and pursued the usual routes of investigation. They’ve found nothing. We were hoping you could give us something—anything—to go on.”
She nodded. “I see. And you don’t believe in this method of investigation?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t believe people can have psychic gifts?”
“That’s right.”
Again, Diana felt herself up against that brutal interi
or wall of his. It was a defense, and she knew there were always reasons for that. Despite the anger and fear he aroused in her, she felt strangely drawn to understand the man behind the violent job. But instinctively, she realized he’d be the last person to open up and confide anything to her.
“What are your responsibilities in all of this?” she asked briskly.
“I’m basically a big guard dog, that’s all. I’ll interface with the local police and any other federal authorities, as necessary.”
“Meaning this is dangerous?”
“No, it’s a low-risk mission. The Psi-Lab suspects Ruth’s been kidnapped. They used their own people to try and find her, but they had no success. They’ve already contacted other governmental agencies to start looking for her, through local as well as federal intervention. All they want from you is for you to pick up any vibrations—to try to get a feel for what might have happened.”
She heard the derision, the disbelief in his voice that she might actually be capable of such a thing. She sighed. It would not be enjoyable working with this man.
“Perseus is offering you a large sum of money for your services,” Wes admitted. He took a check from his briefcase and handed it to her.
Diana slowly held out her hand and took the crisp check. Ten thousand dollars! She gulped. To her, it was a tremendous amount of money—money that could be used to help her mother, who was always destitute because she gave everything away to those less fortunate than herself.
“This—this is a lot of money….”
Wes saw her wrestling with surprise and shock over the amount. “I guess they think you’re pretty good.” Damn! He’d insulted her again. Where was all this anger coming from? And why was he focusing it on her? Angry with himself, he glanced up to see how much damage he’d done with that comment.
Seeing Is Believing Page 2
