Hunter's Need

by Shiloh Walker

  “Ana!”

  She looked up and found Darlene standing in front of her desk. The other woman’s eyes were stark in her face and even through her shields, she could feel the buzz of anxiety coming off of Darlene. “Hey . . . I thought you’d already left for lunch.”

  Darlene rolled her eyes. “Ana, I swear, you’ve got tunnel vision when you’re working. I’ve been back for a couple of hours. It’s almost three.”

  Three? Ana glanced at her watched and winced. Damn. Two fifty-two. So much for getting home by three thirty. She sighed and leaned back, straightening up her desk automatically as she looked back at Darlene. “Everything okay?”

  “No, it’s not. Man, you’re not going to believe what I just heard.” Darlene gestured impatiently and said, “Come on.”

  Ana shook her head and focused on the mess of papers in front of her. Jumbled piles of receipts that she needed to straighten out, mileage logs that needed to be tallied. “Something’s come up and I’ve got to leave early.”

  “It’s about Paul.”

  Slowly, she lifted her gaze and looked at Darlene. “Paul . . . as in the homeless guy?”

  Darlene snorted. “Yeah, as in the homeless guy that I see you slipping money to once or twice a week. That Paul.”

  “What about him?”

  She made an impatient face and curled her fingers again. “Come on . . . it’s been on the news for the past fifteen minutes.”

  “Darlene.”

  “Fine, fine.” She rolled her eyes and pushed midnight dark hair back from her face. “He’s dead, sweetie.”

  “Dead . . . ” Ana felt the breath inside her lungs freeze, lock tight. “Dead?”

  Darlene nodded, her face troubled. “I saw something on the news this morning about how the police were investigating a possible double murder and they just confirmed it was him. It looks like he killed a girl . . . I saw her picture. She looked a lot like that girlfriend people said he killed back in the seventies. A lot like her.”

  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

  Ana took a deep breath and eased back from the chair, took a few seconds to make sure nothing she felt on the inside was reflected in her face, the way she walked, the way she spoke. In silence, she followed Darlene back to the break room.

  The TV was on, a bright red banner along the bottom declaring, Breaking News . . . Local man believed to have murdered girl, then self.

  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

  That wasn’t right. Ana didn’t know exactly why she was so certain, but she knew, as well as she knew her own name, she knew they were wrong. Paul wasn’t a killer. He couldn’t hurt anybody.

  But somebody had hurt him.

  Her gut went watery and she had to lock her knees just to stay upright. Next to her, Darlene stood with her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes locked on the TV screen. “Oh, man, girl . . . I told you that you shouldn’t be talking to him. Crazy. Man was crazy. I knew he was, but he seemed so harmless.”

  Ana bit back her instinctive reply and just remained silent, watching as the cameraman zoomed in on a small, ramshackle-looking house. Something about the sight of it made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

  “I haven’t seen the house before, but I know the area. It’s out a little past Potter’s Marsh, just off the old Seward Highway. The bodies were found a few hours after midnight. Somebody made an anonymous call.” Darlene swiped the back of her hand over her mouth and continued to stare, mesmerized, at the TV.

  Potter’s Marsh. Absently, she reached up and rubbed the tight muscles at the base of her neck. Inside, she flinched as Marie’s face flashed across the picture.

  “Back in 1973, Beasley was arrested on suspicion of killing his girlfriend, Marie Onalik. There was a lack of evidence to hold him, however, and he was released,” the reporter stated.

  Now the screen was spliced in two and on the other side, another female’s face. “While authorities haven’t confirmed it, our sources report that the family of missing teen, Candice Randall, has been contacted. Our sources also confi rm the family was seen entering the police department. Randall, an eighteen-year-old freshman who attends the University of Alaska, was reported missing by her roommate early Friday morning.”

  Blood roared in Ana’s ears and she reached out, grabbed the back of a nearby chair as her head started to spin. The resemblance between Candice and Marie was unmistakable.

  “What are they doing plastering her face on the TV if they don’t even know it’s her?” Darlene demanded. “God, can you imagine how sick her parents must be?”

  Ana was only half aware of Darlene, though. She couldn’t seem to focus on anything but the two images on the screen. Candice Randall—two days missing. Two days.

  You are so completely useless. Ana stared dry-eyed at the TV, at the young woman’s face.

  Candice.

  Ana knew her face. She’d dreamed about that girl only days ago. Two days ago.

  A hand touched her arm and Ana, without thinking, grabbed it and squeezed, pressing down on the sensitive area between the thumb and forefinger. Darlene yelped and jerked. The sound of her friend’s voice had Ana relaxing her hold and she blushed bright red, watching as Darlene cradled her hand to her chest.

  “Geez, Ana. Jumpy much?”

  Wincing, she said, “I’m sorry, Darlene.” Rubbing her sweaty palms together, she took a few steps back. Distance. Shit. Needed some distance. “Yeah, I guess I’m pretty jumpy right now.”

  “No shit.” Darlene wiggled her fingers. Then, with a slow, reluctant smile, she met Ana’s gaze. “You need to show me how you did that. That was kind of cool.”

  Ana shrugged. “They’ve got tae kwon do at the Y. I think they offer it at the Alaska Club, too. That’s all it is. I took it in . . . college.” Not exactly a lie. She had taken college courses back at Excelsior.

  Licking her lips, she glanced at the TV once more. She needed to get out of here. As in now. She’d thought her focus was off a few minutes ago, but this was so much worse. “I think I’m going to check with Gary, see if he’ll let me head on home. I’m pretty much done and I can come in a little early tomorrow and finish up.”

  “Probably not a bad idea. You’re looking a little green around the gills.” Darlene reached up and rubbed Ana’s shoulder. “It’s okay, you know. You’re not hurt. But you know you need to be more careful. All that kung fu martial arts stuff doesn’t do much against a gun or a knife.”

  Hurt? Kung fu? Ana squinted at Darlene, unsure what she was getting at. When it finally dawned on her, she gave her friend a wan smile. If Darlene wanted to think that Ana was all shook up because she was imagining herself in the place of the slain girl pictured on TV, let her. Ana didn’t have the presence of mind just then to convince her friend otherwise, and nor the time. She needed to get out.

  Get away.

  FROM halfway up the steps, he caught the faint sound of a heartbeat. Duke could smell the lingering scent of her skin as he reached the landing. It was early—he hadn’t expected to find her home. Had thought he’d have an hour or two, at least, to cool down, get his head straight.

  Figure out another fucking explanation besides the one that had his gut all in a tangle. She wouldn’t be doing it— not with him here. She knew it was too fucking dangerous. Besides, he’d feel it, right? Or he should at least feel enough to realize something was off—

  You didn’t then. Back then, the only thing he could remember feeling was how much he wanted to feel Ana. Naked, open, begging for him.

  Damn it, he’d needed a few hours to think things through. “You’re not going to get it,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.

  Without another thought toward cooling down or thinking things through, he opened the door and just barely managed to keep from slamming it behind him. He closed it quietly and stood there, scanning the living room and kitchen area. Empty.

  Frustrated, he prowled through the small apartment, ears pricked as he listened.

  It was dam
n quiet, but she was here. He heard her heart beat—

  —coming from behind a closet door?

  For one moment, ugly fear surfaced. Crossing the living room, he jerked open the door. Heart slamming in his throat, he looked inside. Ana . . . and she was fine.

  Scrubbing a hand over his eyes, he took a second, forcing a breath past the knot in his throat. Then he crouched down in front of her. Her eyes were fixed, blank, staring straight ahead.

  Meditating? Biting back a curse, he settled in the hall on the floor, bracing his back against the wall and watching her.

  She didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Barely even seemed to breathe. If Duke hadn’t been around psychics back at the school, he’d be getting seriously freaked. As it was, he just barely had enough control to sit there quietly instead of trying to nudge her out of the trance state.

  Twenty minutes passed. Thirty. She was sweating now, and her heart beat faster, and her breathing became more and more labored. At forty-five minutes, the sweat beading on her brow started to roll down her face, into her eyes, rolling off her nose and chin to drip onto her shirt or the floor beneath her. Duke waited, his hands opening and closing into fists, his skin tight and itchy.

  He almost left.

  That was what he should do.

  He needed to get out into the streets and prowl around—

  No. No, he didn’t, because there was nothing to find. There was no killer to find, because he’d taken his own life. No job for him to do. Nothing to keep him here—not a damn fucking thing he could do. But he could have.

  Could have, and that was the bitch.

  He could have done something to help that girl, help her before some bastard suffered a psychotic episode and targeted the girl. He should have done something, should have known—

  Lost in his own thoughts, he didn’t see the gradual change take place on Ana’s face. Didn’t see her eyes lighten from near black to violet, didn’t see the return of color to her cheeks, or the way her body sagged as she came drifting back to awareness.

  It wasn’t until he heard her take a deep, harsh breath that he realized she was coming out of it. He drew up a knee, braced his elbow on it and stared at her.

  She reached up and passed a hand over her damp hair. Grimacing, she reached for the towel at her side. As she mopped the sweat from her brow and neck, she frowned at him. “Hi. How long have you been there?”

  “Close to an hour. How long have you been in there?” he asked, gesturing toward the closet. “And why the closet?”

  “It’s quieter. Darker.” She shrugged. “I focus better when I’ve got nothing around to distract me.”

  He nodded and lowered his eyes, studying the carpet. The helpless anger in his gut seethed, an ugly, nasty poison. Driving him insane. A girl dead, because he hadn’t felt the call to act. Try as he might, he could only figure out one plausible explanation.

  He hated to let himself think it. Hated that he was sitting there, staring at her and wondering.

  But it was the only thing that made sense.

  “Are you blocking things, Ana?”

  She didn’t look startled. That was the first thing he noticed. Just resigned.

  The second thing he noticed was that all of a sudden, she was afraid. Very afraid. Although the calm expression on her face didn’t waver, he could feel her fear. It hung in the air around her like a summer storm, thick and choking. It made him edgy and it showed in his voice as he demanded, “Are you?”

  She shot him a look. Pushing slowly to her feet, she rested a hand on the doorjamb of the closet and frowned. “Why?”

  Duke came to his feet as well and closed the distance between them. Leaning in, he whispered into her ear, “Because a girl died last night and I didn’t know a damn thing about it until this morning.”

  “People die all the time. You don’t feel every death,” she said, her voice wooden.

  “But I would have felt this one . . . and I think you know it. I should have felt this one. She was raped. Beaten. Tortured. The kind of thing that draws my kind in like moths to flame. I should have sensed it, sensed her and helped her before it was too late. But I didn’t. Why didn’t I feel anything, Ana?”

  She brushed by him, keeping a careful distance between them. Out in the hallway, she glanced at him over her shoulder. “I don’t know.”

  “Is it you?”

  She stopped, staring straight ahead. When she didn’t answer, he circled around and stopped in front of her, watching her. She’d changed clothes at some point in the day, unless of course she’d worn those skimpy shorts and a thin tank over braless breasts to work. The tank was damp now, clinging to her sweat-slicked flesh, outlining hard, tight nipples.

  His mouth was watering but he wouldn’t let himself reach and touch. Right now, he didn’t trust himself. He needed to hear her say it, needed her to tell him he was wrong.

  You going to believe her? some bitter inner voice demanded.

  Duke didn’t know. But he needed the answer.

  “Ana . . . is it you? You blocking things out again?” he whispered again, skimming his fingers along her shoulder.

  “No.” She shivered and brought her arms up, crossing them over her chest. From the corner of her eye, she watched him and he could see nerves and fear jumping in that gaze.

  “You sure?”

  A terse nod.

  He smirked and said, “You don’t look too sure. You look kind of nervous. Guilty. Worried. If you aren’t doing anything, why are you feeling nervous, guilty or worried? If nothing’s wrong, how come you’re hiding in a closet in the middle of the day?”

  “I wasn’t hiding,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “I was in there working on my shields and I needed someplace dark and quiet. A closet is about the best I’m going to get for dark and quiet.”

  “Why in the middle of the day?”

  “Because it couldn’t wait.” She turned away from him and sighed, reaching up to link her hands behind her neck. She twisted her head one way, then the other, working out the kinks that came from sitting too still for too long. “I woke up this morning feeling like something was off, but I couldn’t explain what. Still can’t. My shields feel weird, but they aren’t broken. It’s like they’ve been dented, but if I was doing a broadcast block all over the place, my shields wouldn’t be viable at all.”

  “If you’ve got a weak spot, that can be a problem. You can’t be sure you’re not bleeding through.”

  Ana gave him a withering look. “I know how psychic shielding works, Duke. Better than you. It’s not the kind of weak spot that would let me go around broadcasting a block. Besides, I can feel it when I’m doing it, or at least I sense it trying to come to life in me and it hasn’t happened.”

  “At all. You haven’t done any blocking. At all.”

  The doubt in his words stung. She’d be damned if she let him see, though. Mentally, she squared her shoulders.

  “No. I haven’t.”

  That much, she was confident of. Despite her knee-jerk instinct earlier, wondering if she had been slipping, Ana knew better. Her chameleon trick wasn’t the most active power, but it was the one she had the best control over—she was either blocking, or not. There was no in-between. It was too unpredictable, too much potential to cause harm—controlling it was her only option.

  Duke continued to study her, his eyes hooded and grim. He’d pulled his dark, golden blond hair back into a queue at his nape, leaving the stark, masculine lines of his face unframed. His mouth was a harsh, unsmiling line.

  Hard to believe this was the same guy that had cuddled up against her last night, kissing the scars on her back and holding her close as she slept. Instinctively, she withdrew. The cold, angry man in front of her was the man she’d dealt with in the years before she left Excelsior. It was no less than what she’d expected when he’d shown up here in Anchorage, but this wasn’t who’d she spent the past two days with.

  It hurt. Like a punch right square in the gut, it hurt. But it onl
y got worse when he sighed and reached up, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Something’s not right, Ana.”

  “I’m quite certain that’s what I told you when I called Excelsior,” she said icily.

  He frowned. “That’s not what I was meant. Yeah, I realize something’s going on up here, but what I wasn’t expecting was a big, gaping void. Even before the Council recruited me, I could feel disturbances—with a big disturbance last night, I should have felt it, and I didn’t. That’s not right.”

  Some of the tension spiking the air around him eased, but when he reached out to touch her, she deliberately took one slow step backward. She needed that distance just then.

  His lashes flickered and a muscle jerked in his jaw.

  Keeping her voice flat, she said, “I need a shower.”

  Actually, what she really needed was to get her head examined.

  Without waiting another second, she brushed past him and locked herself in the bathroom. She hadn’t seen this coming, and while she was surprised as hell that neither of them had sensed any sort of upheaval last night—especially Duke—what really caught her by surprise was the fact that he seemed to think she had somehow interfered.

  What did you expect?

  The guy that had been waiting for her two days ago, hard, cool and distrustful—that man she would have expected this from. But from the man who’d held her through the night, it came as more of a surprise.

  He’s the same man. You slept with him—that doesn’t change anything.

  Logically, she knew that. It just . . . well, it felt like things had changed.

  Standing in front of the mirror, she stared at her reflection as she reached up for the band that held her hair. She tugged it loose and dropped it on the countertop, watching as her pale blonde hair floated down to her shoulders. Her scalp was still wet with sweat, her damp clothes clinging to her body.

  She was cold. Cold all the way to the bone, but it had nothing to do with the sweat drying on her flesh. Cold and humiliated, sick with it.

  She’d slept with him, even knowing it was a mistake, she’d slept with him. She’d told herself she hadn’t expected anything from it, other than pleasure, other than finally having something she’d been wanting, needing, craving for years.