by Cera Daniels
"A man tired of feeding the press one-night stands." If he could come clean on one thing now, he needed her to know the truth about his public persona, the "women".
She draped a hand over his leg that morphed the comforting warmth of the truck cab into a volcanic flow of heat as his libido vaulted to a higher gear. "This isn't one-night stand material?"
"I sincerely hope not." Sex with Amanda had only pulled him further under her spell. Her fingers clenched on his knee and Ryan turned into the condo parking lot. He slowed the truck. "Amanda, I—"
The radio interrupted with a squelch and an emergency alert peppered into the space between them.
"Relek City Police have moved the city-wide curfew up to nine P.M. Civilians and non-essential personnel are to be indoors and off the streets early tonight." The curl of a notebook page glanced off Ryan's ability as the reporter's voice continued. "No comment has been made as to whether this emergency policy has anything to do with the recently discovered body in the East Hook. Again, the curfew has been moved from eleven tonight to nine P.M . . . "
He cut off the radio along with the engine. They still had a couple of hours before the new policy kicked in, but the stillness of the woman beside him told Ryan she wasn't thinking about sex anymore.
Her forehead was scrunched in thought, but she'd re-entered detective mode, focused on the fresh kill.
"Ryan! Ry, where the fuck are you?"
Little brothers. When a polar ice cap to the groin just won't do.
He'd turned the comm off so his brothers couldn't interrupt nor hear the evening's festivities. He hadn't tapped it back on, so having one of Jay's rare curses blast into his eardrum could only mean one thing: Zach's "minor adjustments" to his new earpiece model included a manual override.
"This," Ryan said, making a conscious effort to pry his grinding teeth apart, "had better be good."
"It's Zach. He's—The ambulance is on its way to Saint Catherine's."
Ryan bolted upright so fast his knees hit the steering wheel. "What? What happened?"
"Seizure." Jay's voice shook. "He went down so fast, I . . . "
No. Not again.
Ryan's throat closed, words clinging like icicles on the roof of his mouth.
If he'd been at the office, he'd already be at Zach's side. Guilt hammered him from all directions at once. How could he have lowered his guard? How could he have thought to cut off for even a minute? The last time he'd stayed overnight at the condo both Jay and Zach had been pinned down in a gunfight on the other side of the city. Ryan had been too far away to help, too far away to protect them. This time, St. Catherine's was 25 miles from the condo and even at that it was too far for his conscience to ease.
Amanda moved her hand to his arm. "Ryan?"
"What's coming?" Jay's question tumbled through his mind. "What could hit him this hard?"
"I'm on my way. Don't let them give him morphine." He turned the key without a second thought. The manual override on his earpiece clicked off from Jay's end and when the truck's motor growled Ryan hit the gas. Slush and heavy snowfall churned under capable tires as the vehicle leapt backward, reversing at all-speed out of the lot.
Amanda's grip turned painful enough to be felt over the tightness in his chest. Dimly, he realized she was asking him a question.
"Zach had a seizure." He couldn't tell her about his brothers' abilities—or his own—but he could tell her that much. "Jay's going with him to the hospital."
She made a sound of alarm but she didn't ask him to slow down. He wasn't sure he could.
Zach's collapse proved he couldn't stray far from their centralized offices after hours. Though they often urged him to take a break, though they ragged him for taking too much on himself, Ryan's younger brothers relied on him to be available. Amanda, damn it, he wanted her like a junkie coming off his last hit, but his brothers were the only family he had left. Pursuing this new relationship couldn't sideline his other priorities.
Neither could it end with his office chair. Ryan grimaced at the now-thick snowfall. He couldn't be two places—no, three, thanks to Shiv—at once.
"I'll drop you at the rail. You'll be home in time for the curfew change." The words choked from his lips, a mangled growl of emotion.
"Or I could stick around."
He pushed the truck harder around the turns. Her offer would save time, but keeping her by his side tonight was out of the question. Cameras awaited at the hospital. In front of them, he couldn't be anything more or less than the man he'd cultivated for everyone else to see. Not even for Amanda.
"You've already got your alibi." It came out harsh, when the last thing he wanted was to push her away.
He heard a sharp intake of air. Cursing himself for being a jackass, Ryan zoomed through another intersection. Barking shot like quicksilver through his ability. Pain ricocheted around his skull. Then Amanda's touch, the truck, the road, the falling snow—everything disappeared.
The world took winter-muffled shape in Ryan’s ears. Quiet crinkling swirled around him, invisible snowflakes in his shadowed awareness. Iron gratings and hinges groaned in complaint, canvas awnings lifted on an unseen breeze, the slight ripplings of fabric snapping hard against his ability. City street. Outside. Cold, so cold. Ryan reached out into darkness. His gloveless fingertips encountered a clammy brick wall. Hadn’t he been driving?
"Spiritwalker." The German shepherd’s call struck him audibly, unlike the usual telepathic channels.
"Where am I? Romeo? Is that you?"
"Does anyone else call you that?" Disapproval was strident in the real, haunting tenor of Romeo’s voice.
Too bizarre. "You’re talking out loud."
"Our connection is stronger now, but I do not believe I am."
"Then you’re in my head. I’m not really with you." Like a bubble, the brick wall popped, no longer part of his reality.
Nothingness and ice bit deeper.
Footsteps crunching in snow, the slide of metal on denim. Rifles didn’t fit in the waistband of a pair of jeans. A handgun would. What the hell was this?
"We are linked." A huff of canine impatience. "You asked me who I found. This is important."
Amanda. His brothers. The pulsing, heavy sound of blood rushed to his ears and throbbed in the empty space.
Panic fought back the tide of ever-building cold. The cold wasn't real. None of this was. "Romeo, am I still in the truck?"
His spirit guide's slow, steady breathing filled a long, long pause. "Yes."
"You need to let me go, right now."
"There's more. You need to Listen."
A gunshot cracked through Ryan's nerves like fire. Listening. Nausea roiled in his stomach. "This is what you did to Amanda."
"She needed to Listen, too."
"No, Romeo." Romeo had stepped beyond their usual telepathic binds. He'd pulled Ryan's entire consciousness somewhere else. And when Romeo had somehow yanked Amanda under, she'd been standing.
Ryan had been driving.
"I cannot track him in the snow," Romeo said, but Ryan was done with Listening.
"Romeo, if I'm not conscious right now, then I just wrecked at about 60 miles an hour. Let me go."
The cold went solid. Ryan's heart poised on the edge of motion, his lungs emptied and stopped.
"This is . . . new." A hesitant, low admission. "Forgive me, Spiritwalker. I did not know."
The chill released and Ryan gasped for air.
The vision—Romeo's call to Listen—left him shaking and deafened. He blinked, trying to regain his bearings in reality. His detective had a death grip on his shoulders, Jay hollered in his ears, and the cab-light dimmed interior of the truck was . . . tilted.
He stared into blue so deep he could feel her concern to his bones.
"He's back," Amanda said. He read her lips more than he heard the words, Jay's shouting almost too much to bear.
His eyes tracked every inch of her that he could see, hunting for injuries. On the second
and third pass, Ryan reached for her with one hand and lifted the other sluggishly to his earpiece. "Jay, how's he doing?"
"Zach's—what about you?" The volume eased slightly, but Ryan could hear the fearful strain wending through his brother's voice. "You've been out for close to half an hour."
"How long?" Impossible. His trip to that cold place had been brief.
"Twenty minutes." Amanda was nodding, her face set in solemn lines. "You hit your head."
"I wrecked the truck." Romeo could have killed them both.
Her eyes shut. "You passed out and I couldn't get to the brake fast enough. I think we're stuck in an uncovered manhole."
"Tell me where you two are," Jay said. "Detective Werner couldn't get the doors open to check."
The formal name brought his eyebrows up. "You talked to Amanda?"
"He's using the truck." Amanda's hands pulled away from his shoulders and she gestured to the dashboard.
She crumpled a towel in one fist, speckled reddish-brown.
Blood. But hers, or his? Ryan reached for the towel, but as she crumpled it tighter, her words registered. The McLelas fleet of personal vehicles all had a comm built into the radio for emergencies. But his earpiece, his cell phone . . . "Why the truck?"
"I can't reach you on the comm," Jay said. "Mine ran out of juice and I'm not leaving him to get another one."
His explanation seemed reasonable enough, but Ryan's youngest brother was fanatical about keeping his earpiece charged. Even if it were true, Jay would've used Zach's. Something else was wrong. Ryan rubbed fiercely at one of his temples.
Why won't my ears stop ringing?
"Your cell isn't getting a signal," Amanda said. "When I couldn't get the doors open to find help, I thought your earpiece would get me through to your brothers, but Jay beat me to it."
"Security precaution." Ryan hated the way his voice cracked around the words.
"Handy," Amanda agreed. Gentle fingers touched his forehead. "No one's in the office who can track you and I was watching the road, not the signs. Can you remember how far we were from the condo? The street name?"
He frowned. He couldn't recall how far they'd come nor where they'd been headed—the hospital or the rail station. They could be anywhere along either route.
The towel in Amanda's hand came back spotted with fresh blood.
"Find out," Jay said. "You're a sitting duck out there, and Zach had another seizure. We need you here."
"Two?" Ryan asked, numb concern flooding his senses.
Sheer need to be by his brother's side spurred him into motion. Amanda kept a stabilizing grip on his arm as he fought to right himself despite the sharp angle of the driver's seat. His vision swam. The truck shimmied dangerously and he wavered, but Amanda slid an arm around his waist.
"We're both in one piece." Ryan said. The front and side window views were devoid of landmarks, dark, covered in snow. "I'll call you back to send for a tow once I get my bearings, and I'll be there soon."
"You okay?" Amanda asked when Jay ended the call and the in-cab speakers went silent.
"My brother's in the ER, my favorite truck took a beating, and I can't remember where we are." Ryan braced himself on the wheel, then unlatched and shoved at his door. Snow tumbled through the crack. "We're also being buried alive."
"Don't forget the nutcase out there gunning for you," she added, leaning to adjust the seat.
"And I'm bleeding." He felt his lips twitch despite his worry. "These dates of ours just get better and better."
"Memorable, though." She laughed, sliding up beside him and flattening her palms on the door with a determined set to her muscles. Her blue gaze tangled with his. "Makes me wonder what you've got planned for tomorrow."
"We could be in luck." He winked. "Lilah arranged our next one, not me."
"Ooh. Dinner with a serial killer in the wings. You're such a romantic."
"The band will be playing jazz." Pain accompanied a waggle of his eyebrows. From the look on her face, he wasn't as successful at hiding the wince as he hoped.
"I'm not convinced you won't pass out before we get around to dancing," Amanda said, those sassy lips begging for a kiss to prove her wrong.
He obliged.
Her breath fogged the window as she added, "Point taken. I'm still in if you are."
The pressure in his chest squeezed like a spring, then uncoiled. Amanda on his arm. Champagne. A twirling, seductive dance. Oh, and victory, helping the cops put the zealot behind bars. They levered the door open on three and Ryan fought nausea as he hauled himself into the cold night air. Rapidly piling snowfall chipped away at the hopeful images. Tomorrow had potential, but it also had hospitals, alibis, deception, and a clandestine syndicate meeting he dreaded more with each passing hour.
Ryan's lips still felt the imprint of Amanda's. As they parted, the tow truck driver paid for both discretion and the extra drive to her house, he stifled the urge to send Romeo as stand-in guardian. Right now, he couldn't trust himself not to let his anger bleed into the telepathic connection. He couldn't trust his spirit guide not to see the up-close-and-personal contact as an invitation to revisit Amanda's mind. She'd fall, and Ryan wouldn't be there to catch her.
He rubbed at his temples as he skirted the nurse's station. His ability had been strained by Listening. It was harder to focus, tough to walk a straight line, impossible to stabilize his ability at an average hearing level. Incessant, high-pitched whines of monitoring equipment and hospital room televisions, mechanical beeping from every direction—God, he hated hospitals. Frustrated, he cranked up the white noise patter in his earpiece and hoped no one called his name. His brothers could probably cut through the din using the comm, but in this state, he'd be lip-reading everyone else.
Ryan stopped outside the door to Zach's suite. Closing his eyes, he could almost see the audible threads of sound, each wavelength like a sliver-thin battering ram. Above, below, behind, left, right. Front. He tugged, seeking beyond the heavy wood and glass barrier.
Slow, even breathing.
Sleep was a rare enough occurrence he hesitated to open the door.
In the dim bath of light from his entry, both of his brothers looked unearthly pale, Zach under white sheets, hooked to blinking lights and intermittent, damnedable beeping things, and Jay curled on his side on a too-short chairbed. The door closed and darkness swept around him even as the ambient hallway noise fell away. Ryan tried again to drop the extra white noise from his headset, winced, and put the filters up. His power spiraled beyond them, stretching further into the room on its own. What the hell had Romeo done to his ears?
A flash of silver, Jay's supernatural eyesight homing in on him in the dark.
"Worried about you," Jay said.
An understatement. Zach's extreme response to impending danger would have made their youngest brother assume the worst of Ryan's silence. He made another adjustment to his hearing, careful to loosen his grip on his ability only enough to focus on Jay's voice.
"Worrying is my job," Ryan said. "Mind if I cut on the light?"
"'S fine." Jay shifted, and the telltale glimpse of silver began to fade. "To your right. Dimmer switch."
He fumbled until his fingers found the dial and turned it slowly. After a moment, Jay gave him a thumbs-up and he spun it the rest of the way. Turning the lights on full-bore without warning crippled Jay the same way yanking out Ryan's earpiece laid him flat. He swung a chair from the table to Zach's bedside and dropped into it. Ryan was disappointed to see the shade of gray pounded into his brother's skin hadn't brightened, the deep, dusky shade mimicking the snow clouds outside.
Zach didn't stir. No quips, no guarded smile, all evidence of his usual, fiery spirit drained from his features.
What Ryan wouldn't do to protect them. A useless sentiment, but he wished it anyway as he stared down at the hospital bed. Not for the first time, he wished for some way to help Zach manage his talent, like the earpiece usually helped control his hearing. Instea
d, Zach's ability was killing him slowly, Jay's faith in humanity was wearing a path to oblivion, and Ryan couldn't function without fighting his own head.
They understood; he was grateful he wasn't alone. He hated himself for that gratitude.
"Tell me what happened, Jay."
"Amanda got him thinking. We double-checked and some of the invitees don't have high-end security teams. He sent some of our guys out to cover them, told our personnel to stay at the office if they could. Lilah, too."
"Good thing, with the new curfew. What does this have to do with his seizure?"
"I'd finished the last call on the list and he'd returned to tracking the lines about the murders, looking for more bodies. He made a grab for his pain meds and collapsed. He stopped breathing." The stricken expression on Jay's face ramped up Ryan's guilt. "I tried to keep him from hurting himself, but he took some cuts and bruises anyway."
I should have been there.
Ryan clenched his fists. How could he fix something that threatened to rip his brother up from the inside-out?
"The timing of this, I thought, hoped . . . " Jay rubbed the back of his neck. "There's got to be a trigger for his pain. There has to be. Something he heard, saw—"
He shook his head. "None of our abilities are simple."
"This was different," Jay said. "I know it was. He went down right after they announced the other body. Right before your accident."
"Stop." Ryan pointed to his forehead. "Tiny scratch. Nothing worth a seizure."
"Does that mean something bigger is coming?" Jay's voice came out roughened with concern. "What is this zealot capable of?"
"He's a killer," Zach put in from the bed. "That about sums it up, genius."
Ryan's lips twitched. "Hey, Z. I know you hate fancy shindigs, but you could have just told us you didn't want to polish your shoes. Saved yourself the ambulance bill."
No smile, the look in his eyes bleak.
He spotted a can of ginger ale on the rolling tray and shoved it into Zach's hand. "Tell me what's going on in that thick skull of yours."
"I was flipping through channels on the bugs we planted around town. Typical syndicate traffic." The can crinkled. "Drak was flying around my head and then the little guy just dropped."
