by Nikki Duncan
Corruption. She’d spent years fighting on the side of corruption.
She’d only woken up when she’d been temporarily reassigned to another handler to finish someone else’s mission. Shortly after beginning to work for Madame V, she’d found Lori’s notebook near the pond she’d enjoyed.
Lori Mullins, a Whitestone operative, had detailed her moves from the time she’d first met Channing and began suspecting foul play. After she’d met Trevor and had noticed an evolving pattern in Madame V’s approach, she’d tried to reach out for help.
Now, Channing was dead, Trevor was recovering with a few broken bones, Lori was missing, and H was being targeted.
And they may all be screwed if the case rested on the shoulders of a woman so messed up in the head she couldn’t be in the same room as her boss.
Ever since walking out of her home she’d been bombarded with impressions and feelings and emotions from others. The pain had pierced and prodded and pulverized her defenses.
She needed H’s help, but the sheer thought of contact with his power magnified her desire to find a dark, quiet cave and climb inside the thick walls.
H stepped out of the testing room and slammed into a wake of waspish worry. His barriers faltered momentarily before he got them back in place. Cautiously, he headed toward the waiting area, wishing he had a receptionist to deal with the latest onslaught of surprise visitors.
A blonde beauty with a flaming red streak of hair dominated the spacious waiting area. Class surrounded her and reached far deeper than her elegant slacks and silk blouse. Her gaze sought his with laser-point accuracy.
“Dr. H?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Kami Evans.” She moved forward with her hand extended. “My friend needs your help.”
He squeezed her hand politely and then released her. It wasn’t often people dropped in asking for help or handouts or looking for proof of alternate realities, and this woman seemed sane enough, but he gave her the same answer he gave everyone else. “I don’t believe I’m in the business of whatever it is you’re here for.”
“Then you better get into it.” She jutted her chin forward arrogantly and arched a refined brow. “I don’t know what you did to Ava, but she’s hurting. She says you’re the only one who can help her.”
“Ava?” His heart plummeted like a lead-filled balloon. Ava was in trouble. If something had happened to her after he’d left… “Where is she?”
He grabbed Kami’s elbow and turned her toward the doors. “Take me to her.”
“In a moment.” Kami gently extracted herself from his grip and stared up at him.
She didn’t speak.
She didn’t blink.
She studied him, scanning him with her eyes as if she’d be able to sense any malice. Maybe she had abilities, but he had his doubts. Regardless, Ava’s guard dog wasn’t budging until she’d satisfied herself in her pursuit of whatever she sought.
He couldn’t lower his shields to scan the area for Ava. Not with Kami standing close enough, alert enough, to notice the metamorphosis his eyes would make.
Seconds clanged like gongs.
His blood raced with the driving force of his heart. Ava was hurt and this woman was withholding.
Clang.
Unless she was part of a plan to keep him off Ava’s trail. He muted the conspiracy theorist in his head. It was possible. It wasn’t likely.
Clang.
Kami rubbed her lips together and narrowed her green gaze.
Kami.
Clang.
“You’re Channing’s Kami.” She was older than in the picture he’d glimpsed at Channing’s lab, but she hadn’t changed much. He should’ve put it together immediately.
She softened in the span of a breath. “Yes. I was his, just as Ava is mine. Can you help her?”
“I’ll do my best. Where is she?”
“In my car.” Kami turned toward the door, clearly deciding to trust him. “I’m not sure what’s happening to her.”
“Is her head bothering her? She took a hard hit yesterday.”
“That may be part of it.” She pointed to a white Lexus sports coupe. “But this feels…bigger.”
Internal alarms blared somewhere on his empathic plain. He shoved past Kami, rounded the hood of the car and pulled open the passenger door. Pale and weak, a battered shell of the woman he’d left a few hours earlier cowered in the leather seat. Her head lolled to the left, almost lifeless.
His heart and his shields quaked. He fell to his knees, embracing the bite of hot asphalt searing his skin and using it to brace himself. To be gentle.
“Shit.” Kami spoke from behind him. “She was doing better when I went inside. She was talking and looking stronger.”
“How long were you inside waiting for me?” He kept his gaze on Ava.
Her eyes fluttered open before falling closed, unable to exert the effort. He’d seen this sort of behavior before. Once. It ended in disaster. Both empaths involved had died.
With his back to Kami, he lowered his shields. In the haze of blue mist, fear and darkness and agony cascaded over him. The iced shards of vile hatred Janus specialized in knifed through H. The bastard was going to pay for what he was doing to Ava. Soon.
H activated his power and absorbed the negative energy pulsing around Ava into himself. The best he could hope to do was minimize her strain.
She moaned. Her eyes fluttered beneath her closed lids. He erected his shields and scooped Ava into his arms. She curled into his chest, wincing. He rose gently, so as not to jar her too badly.
“Do you know what’s wrong? Can you help her?”
He wanted only to get Ava inside, away from the dark emotions swirling around, threatening to break her mind. He would require refuge too very shortly. He took a moment to stop by Kami. Tears crept from Ava’s eyes. She burrowed deeper into him, likely in an attempt to escape the innocent fear and worry from her friend.
“She’s just come in to her empathic abilities. I need to get her inside.” Both of us.
H left Kami behind. On the way to the building, he dropped his shields again and invited Ava’s agony into himself. His legs weakened. A mind-to-mind connection would offer her the greatest ease. Most likely it had been his connection to heal her that had awakened her dormant ability. Another union of a similar magnitude would shove them both to the breaking point with no possible rescue.
Until she was stronger, he would do his damndest to help her. To keep her from experiencing the fatality of an unexpected power.
She needed to be sequestered. He needed to relieve the pressure collapsing in on her.
Then, he would teach her to shield herself, because a failure to learn would force her to live in seclusion. Or face a horrendous death.
She wasn’t heavy, but this damsel-in-distress bit was a habit he could do without. He liked her better when she was strong and fighting. Shifting her in his arms like he had the morning before, he coded in to the building.
He reached for the door. A blast of hatred swept over him with icy familiarity. Ava cried out and shrank deeper into herself.
Releasing his inhibitions, H dropped his remaining barriers, drew on experience to pull the darkness closing in on her into himself. He pulled in a long and steady breath, expanding his lungs as far as possible. Tighter than a snake coiled to strike, he turned toward the tree line hiding the source of negative energy and not sure he could do it, H expelled the vile froth, projecting it back onto Janus.
The air cleared of all but Ava’s agony.
Janus was a projecting empath to H’s absorbing ability. The projector made a vile predator and it scared H more than a little that he’d been able to project his emotions.
As soon as he’d seen to Ava’s safety he would hunt down the men responsible for this hell.
Chapter Eleven
H leaned against his office door and reached out to flip off the light switch. Sunlight shafted through the window blinds that didn’t mute t
he brightness near enough. The film over his vision lent the room a blue tint, but the laser glow kept it from being completely demolished in the dark. He was too weak to raise his barriers for more than a few minutes, so rather than battle himself, he stumbled to the window, yanked the chord to close the blinds and collapsed onto the couch.
His eyes drifted closed. His body sank into the cushions. His muscles released some of the toxic emotions he’d absorbed from Ava and Janus.
He’d worked on her for nearly two hours, with her regaining consciousness in short bursts. Even then she’d been in too much pain to focus beyond her confusion.
Dana, familiar with the empaths who’d died at Eston White, stopped arguing once she’d seen Ava and he assured her he wouldn’t link to Ava’s mind. Even if he’d been willing to risk her—himself—he wouldn’t make the connection with Dana in the room.
She didn’t know about the contacts. She couldn’t know, at least not until Janus and General Scott were no longer threats.
Not all of Eston White’s test subjects had the same abilities as he and Dana. Some were naturally or even engineered psychics. Some were human lie detectors. And not all of them had wanted his idea of freedom. If they took Dana and questioned her, they would know if she lied.
No. With a Whitestone operative clearly after them, she couldn’t know his secret.
Click. The snick of the door opening resounded through his head with the boisterous clarity of a church organ. He winced and squeezed his lids tight against the dim light slicing through the darkness from the now partially open door.
“Sorry to bother you.” Dana stuck her head in. She spoke sensitively and locked her emotions behind her inner walls. “Those FBI guys are here again.”
Damn it. He gathered the dregs of his energy, slipped his shields into place to deactivate the lenses and sat up.
“I can tell them to come back.”
“No.” Moving slowly, tolerating the stabbing beam of light in the doorway for the sake of adjusting his eyes, he went to his desk and flicked on the lamp he rarely used. The soft illumination sprang to life with a brush of the base and threatened to singe his retinas.
Dana shook her head. “I’m telling them to come back. You need to rest.”
“No. I called them.”
“Excuse me?”
“Bitch me out later.” He sank into the chair behind his desk, wanting desperately to give her her way. Turning them back now would raise more questions. “Right now, just let them in.”
“Fine.”
It always amazed him how much weight his sister could put on that one word. She didn’t pout, stomp her foot or talk back, but he knew she would skewer him later. He’d pushed the boundaries of lies more in the last two days than in the last two years combined. He didn’t like it.
“Dr. H.”
Agent Lawson hadn’t been loud or gregarious their first meeting, but he spoke more sedately as he stepped in ahead of Agent Burgess. Dana lingered in the hallway—watchful. In her role as guardian of the temporarily feeble empaths she’d have warned them to keep it quiet and make it fast. Even if they didn’t know the reasons for the warnings, they seemed to have gotten her message.
H met her gaze, shifting his toward the room where Ava was sleeping. She nodded, silently agreeing to check on their patient, and closed his door behind the agents.
“You said you had something for us.”
“Yes.” Fighting to keep his eyes open against the light, H waved to the chairs before his desk. He unlocked the middle drawer, pulled out some paper envelopes and tossed them on the desk. “I was shot at yesterday morning. The bullets are in there.”
“You could’ve turned this over to the locals.”
“After your visit, I had the impression you wouldn’t take as long to find answers.” He pushed the drawer closed and braced his elbows on the desk, more to support himself than anything else. Holding his shields in place was draining him. Fast.
“You seemed to know something about whatever danger you think I’m in.” He nudged the envelope closer to them. “Here’s your next clue.”
“Why wait until today to call us?”
“I’ve been…busy.”
“You all right?” Agent Burgess leaned forward, eyes narrowed and alert. “You don’t look well.”
It was the first time the agent had said anything and while his question was innocent enough, he portrayed distrust. He expected evasions.
“I get these migraines every now and then. I’ll be fine.”
“Migraines?”
“Yes.” The mother bitch of migraines in this case. “In the event you missed the sign on the door, we specialize in empathic studies. Dealing with the intricacies of the human brain gets complicated.”
“So, are you an emapth?”
“You catch criminals.” H leaned forward. His head felt light and floaty in an almost detached sort of way he might not mind without the lances of pain searing his brain.
“Yes.”
“Are you one?”
Agent Burgess smiled and dipped his head—a silent touché. “Fair enough.” He picked up the envelopes and stood. “We promised your assistant to keep it short.”
“Thank you.”
“We’ll need a full report.”
“Not today.”
They stood. Not sure his legs would support him and unwilling to do a face plant in front of the Feds, H remained seated. Agent Lawson adjusted his jacket while Burgess held the envelopes in a manner to avoid smudging any prints.
“Was anyone else involved in the shooting?” Agent Lawson asked.
“Yes.” Both agents flinched back before stopping themselves. “A woman auditing my study.”
“Could we speak with her?” Lawson pulled a notebook out.
“I will ask her to contact you.” They were testing him, fully expecting him to hedge on the answer or omit the truth. Why did they doubt him? Because experience told them to doubt everyone, or because they’d formed an unfavorable opinion of him?
“We’d appreciate that.” They took a couple steps toward the door.
Agent Burgess turned back. “Do you have any enemies, Dr. H?”
“You’re looking for a man I know as Janus.” He was stepping onto a rickety limb to tell them what he knew, but with Ava in pain he didn’t have time to face the fight alone. “I knew him when I was a boy.”
He hadn’t just known Janus. He’d suffered numerous torments from the man.
“Can you tell me anything else?”
“He’s good at disguises and if you catch him you could tie him to some child abductions.” Mine and my sister’s for starters.
“How do you know this man?” Lawson asked.
H’s pain barraged his shields, trembling them. “It’s not important right now. Janus implies a threat and sets his target’s nerves on edge. Like approaching a young girl outside of school and trying to lure her into his car, or shooting more with the intent to scare than harm.” He quickly told the agents about Janus’s tactics, his words slurring more the longer he fought his body.
Agent Burgess jotted notes.
“After allowing a short breather—enough time for his victims to almost convince themselves it was nothing—he strikes from a new direction. Often in a less blatant manner.” Like posing as a school substitute in his class or attacking Ava mentally. Even without empathic abilities Janus’s ability would cause her moods to shift unexplainably.
“His final move,” H continued, “if he still follows his patterns, will be to come in the form of a distraction.”
In the case of their abduction, Janus filed an anonymous report that their father was abusing them. He’d used his power to project such raw hatred onto the responding cops they’d refused to hear the truth.
With their father in prison and their mother struggling to free him, he and Dana had been vulnerable. Their mom had taken them to the precinct to keep them close, but Janus and another man had walked them right out the front d
oors.
That attack had been two days after Janus had posed as a sub. Following his methodology, H had just under two days to get himself back to full power, brace Ava for the abilities she was coming into and nail down the specifics of her involvement with Whitestone.
Agents Lawson and Burgess nodded their acceptance and moved again toward the door. Whether they believed him or not didn’t matter. His shields were quivering. A blue haze was edging into his vision.
They needed to go. “I’ll be in touch if I think of anything more.”
As if on cue, Dana knocked once and opened the door. “If you gentlemen are ready to leave, I will show you out.”
Agent Lawson flashed a friendly smile that did nothing to minimize his jaded edge. “I think we’re finished for now.”
They were finished, but neither agent moved to leave. Unspoken questions weighed in their minds, darkening the air with a swirling vortex of anticipation and concern. Whatever they were waiting for, they would be disappointed.
“Dr. H, you’re clear.” Dana held her hand aloft, indicating the exit. “Gentlemen, time’s up.”
“Thank you, Dana. Let me know when I’m needed.”
She nodded as the agents walked into the hallway. The moment the door closed, his shields collapsed. The lingering concern, and oddly enough fear, left behind by the agents seeped into him.
He dropped his head to the desk and slid his hand toward the lamp to turn it off. The couch would be more comfortable, but he didn’t have the strength to get there.
Fear. It seemed like an out-of-place emotion for the Feds, especially since it hadn’t been for him or Dana. They’d each internalized it, but both men emanated a shared concern that more logically would have been his or Ava’s given how they had been the targets. So who were the agents worried about?
It didn’t make sense for Ava to be targeted by Janus if she was one of them. Still, he couldn’t ignore what he’d overheard that afternoon from the study participant. If Ava was part of Eston White, if she was playing an elaborate game with him, he wouldn’t hesitate to protect himself and Dana.
