Special Gifts

by Anne Stuart

  Well, that was one game she wasn’t going to play. “Don’t bait me, Colonel Oliver. You know as well as I do that I saw the panel truck in a vision. A psychic dream. Now, why don’t you go ahead and laugh?”

  “I’m not in the mood.”

  “Good. Because neither am I. I help out the Denver police and Phil because I want to. I don’t owe them anything, and I certainly don’t owe you anything. I want you out of here, and I want you out now.”

  He didn’t move, visibly unimpressed by her sudden show of anger. “If you are telling the truth,” he said, “then you do owe me something. You owe your country something. You owe us your help.”

  There was one thing Elizabeth couldn’t fight, and that was when someone asked, even demanded, her help. The only thing that made living with her gift bearable was using it to help people. There was no way she could say no, even though she despised Sam Oliver for his contempt and distrust, even though she saw right through his sudden flag-waving. She opened her mouth to tell him to leave, then shut it again. She couldn’t.

  Phil leaned across the table and patted her knee. He knew her well enough to know she had no defenses against what Sam Oliver had just done to her. She wondered if he felt any guilt at standing by and allowing it to happen. Looking into his weary eyes, she knew that he did. And for his sake she lifted her head and managed a smile she was far from feeling.

  “Okay, Colonel Oliver,” she said. “You painted me into a corner. It’s damned if I do and damned if I don’t, right? If I come up with answers they’re suspect. If I don’t come up with answers I’m a cowardly traitor. What is it you want from me?”

  Bad way to put it, she chastised herself. The sudden narrowing of his eyes sent a brief, unbelievable message, one that came and went so quickly that she refused to accept it. Men like Sam Oliver didn’t want women like Elizabeth Hardy.

  “I want to find the place where you saw the panel truck,” he said without a moment’s pause, and she knew she must have imagined that sudden moment of heat. “I want you to show us where the blood and the shoe were.” He listed the details of her hard-won vision with callous unconcern, and she clenched her hands, ignoring the sting from the coffee burns.

  “I don’t know . . .” she began.

  “But you can find it, can’t you, Elizabeth?” He pushed her, his voice a silky menace. “Someone with your . . . talents should have no trouble pinpointing the place. We already figured it had to be somewhere in the mountains, and not too far away. Now it’s up to you to lead us to the spot.”

  “Aren’t you afraid I’ll have some of my fellow terrorists waiting to ambush you?” she shot back.

  “How did you know we were talking about terrorists, Elizabeth?” Sam said gently. “No one said anything about terrorists.”

  “Sam,” Grayson interrupted. “Stop badgering her. No one can make you believe her or not, but you don’t have to use her for target practice.”

  “She doesn’t look wounded,” Sam pointed out.

  “Don’t worry about it, Phil,” Elizabeth said, uncurling her body and stretching her legs and arms in a completely false display of ease. “It would take more than a tin soldier to demoralize me.” She knew she wouldn’t fool Grayson, who knew her far too well, but maybe she might fool his wretched friend. If she were really lucky, she might even fool herself. “If he wants to play guessing games we can keep it up for hours. I have nothing else planned for today.”

  “I do,” Sam said.

  “I know.” Elizabeth kept herself from sounding smug as she waited.

  Sam looked down at her. “The Spandau Corporation is a group of terrorists,” he said, and Elizabeth didn’t have time to be surprised by his sudden loquacity. “They’re suspected of having kidnapped Shari Derringer.”

  “The daughter of the secretary of state?” Grayson gasped. “I didn’t even know she’d been kidnapped.”

  “No one does,” Sam replied. “For now it’s being kept completely quiet. We’re waiting to see what sort of demands are being made. We’re waiting to see if it really was a kidnapping, or if she went willingly.”

  “That pretty girl? You’ve got to be kidding,” Grayson protested.

  A savage smile slashed Sam’s face. “You’ve got a blind spot for pretty little girls, Phil,” he said, and Elizabeth wondered why she was stupid enough to be pleased by that obvious referral to herself. “Shari Derringer isn’t the sweet little debutante the media think she is.”

  “They never are,” Grayson said resignedly. “So what’s the connection?”

  Sam turned to look down at Elizabeth. “You want to tell him?” he drawled, his voice a challenge.

  She glared up at him. “All I can do is make an educated guess, Colonel Oliver.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I know that Shari Derringer and Mary Nelson are the same age and same general physical type. If I remember correctly, their resemblance may be even stronger than that. So I would suspect that one of them is going to substitute for the other.”

  Sam nodded. “Give the lady a cigar. And we’re going to find them before they do. We’re probably too late to help Mary Nelson, but we can stop them from fulfilling the rest of whatever they’ve got planned. And you’re going to find them for us, aren’t you?”

  Elizabeth looked at him. A thousand things flew into her mind, not the least of which was the thought that she didn’t want to be around him for one second longer than she had to. Far more dangerous to her than his hostility and distrust was the perverse, undeniable attraction he held for her. But she had no choice, and she knew it.

  “Yes,” she said, shutting her mind to the horror and death that would follow. “I’ll find them for you.” And she closed her eyes.

  Chapter 4

  ELIZABETH WASN’T used to feeling hatred for any living soul. She wasn’t used to feeling much of anything, at least not directly. She could feel anger, fear, passion, even happiness, through her visions, through other people’s emotions. But her own reactions had been tucked away in a dreamlike limbo. She cared about Phil. She could trust his safe, older brother kind of concern, and she knew he wanted nothing from her. She used to have friends, family, people she liked. But for the past two years she’d lived alone, shut off from everyone and everything.

  Until Sam Oliver forced his way into her life. She sat beside him in Phil’s late-model Ford sedan, her eyes shut as they drove higher and higher into the mountains, and she hated him.

  Even Phil’s calm presence in the back seat didn’t penetrate the fog of anger that enveloped her. It didn’t matter that he clearly liked, trusted and respected Sam Oliver. It didn’t matter that she’d always believed in Phil’s judgment. She hated Sam Oliver with a strong, life-affirming rage, and nothing she could do could bring back her safe cocoon of apathy. She’d been dragged out of it, by Oliver’s strong, electric hands, and she was mortally afraid she wasn’t going to be able to return.

  “This place look familiar?” Sam’s deep voice rumbled beside her, the faint curl of mockery twisting the edges.

  She turned to look at him, at the too-handsome profile, the too-short hair, the too-cold eyes. “I’ve never been here before.”

  “Not even in a trance?”

  “They aren’t trances,” she snapped, feeling the rage crackle around inside her. “I just . . . see things.”

  “You just see things,” he mimicked. “All right, swami. Have you ever seen this place before?”

  She found she was clenching her fists, and she slowly, deliberately relaxed them. “I don’t think so,” she said, her voice neutral once more. “Keep driving.”

  She could feel movement in the back seat, and it didn’t take exceptional powers of observation to know that Phil was uncomfortable with Sam’s treatment of her. But he said nothing, and Elizabeth could feel her anger grow to encompass everyone in the big American car. Including herself.

  She reached down for the thermos of coffee that rested at her feet and took a deep swallow
of the rich, sweet stuff. She couldn’t seem to get warm, despite the heat blasting from the car heater, despite the relative warmth of the day. The heavy snowfall was melting in the bright sunshine, and Elizabeth sat there in her down coat, her arms wrapped around her narrow body, and shivered.

  She could feel Sam’s eyes on her, and she met his gaze defiantly.

  “Got any coffee left?” he asked.

  “This has cream and sugar in it. You drink yours black.”

  “Forget the parlor tricks, Elizabeth. I’m not impressed. Give me the coffee.”

  She passed if over to him, watching in dismay as he tipped it back and swallowed. He handed it back, and there was a challenge in his dark blue eyes, one she knew she should ignore.

  She put her mouth where his had been, draining the coffee, shuddering slightly at the sweet sludge at the bottom of the Thermos. “Next time bring your own,” she said.

  “Next time? What makes you think there’s going to be a next time?” He sounded genuinely horrified at the notion, and Elizabeth found herself smiling.

  “I hate to tell you this, Colonel Oliver, but life is not that simple. I can’t just tell you how to get to the place I saw in my ‘trance.’” She used his word mockingly. “I don’t know where it is. All we can do is drive around until I start feeling something.”

  “I’m feeling something right now,” Sam snarled. “Irritation, bordering on exasperation.”

  “That’s nothing to what you’ll be feeling in a few days,” Elizabeth said, her voice a soft purr of malice.

  Phil leaned over the seat, suddenly the peacemaker. “This doesn’t feel familiar, Elizabeth?”

  “Not at all.” She pulled her coat tighter around her. “And it’s getting dark.”

  “Can’t see in the dark?” Sam chided. “What the hell kind of psychic are you?”

  “A very, very good one,” she murmured. “But it doesn’t take special gifts to know that you’re a—”

  “Children, children,” Phil said, putting a restraining hand on Elizabeth’s tense shoulder. “Let’s not fight. We’re all working for the same thing. Let’s go home, get a good night’s sleep and get an early start the next morning.”

  Elizabeth leaned back against the cushioned seat, willing herself to relax. She hadn’t had time to fully recover from her last session with Phil before this large, disturbing creature forced his way into her home, into her life. If she was going to find that deserted spot in the Rocky Mountain foothills, she was going to need all the rest she could get, and she wanted to find that location with a need that bordered on desperation.

  Because that was the only way she was going to get rid of Sam Oliver. He was as tenacious as a bulldog. He wouldn’t let go of her until he found out everything he wanted to know, and she needed him gone, quite desperately. She needed to crawl back into her safe, quiet world, where anger and frustration had no place, except as the vicarious leavings of other people’s emotions. Her own feelings were dead, and they were going to stay that way.

  Sam cursed, a short, sibilant obscenity, as the big car slid on the iced-up road, and he started back down into the twilight, toward the sprawling environs of the Mile High City. Outside the Ford the temperature dropped as the sun went down, and a thin layer of ice formed on the road, which was wet with melted snow. Elizabeth felt the car’s heat finally penetrate her bones as they drove farther and farther down toward the suburb, and she knew with depressing certainty that they’d been close, too close, to the place where Mary Nelson had met her end.

  “Feeling better?” Phil asked, leaning over the front seat again.

  “Yes.” She kept her voice noncommittal, but she could still feel Sam’s intent gaze washing over her.

  “What was wrong?” Sam demanded.

  “We were getting close. It can . . . affect me.”

  “Hell and damnation!” Sam stomped on the brakes, and the car began to fishtail on the icy road, swinging back and forth until it finally landed in a snowbank on the side of the road.

  “You can’t jump on the brakes on roads like these,” Phil said mildly enough. “Want me to drive?”

  Sam told Phil what he wanted him to do in short, succinct terms that paid no attention to Elizabeth’s genteel ears as he shoved the car in revere, spun the wheels for a few moments and then gradually edged back on the road.

  “I take it you were in the Army together,” Elizabeth murmured. “You couldn’t have learned language like that in civilian life.”

  “You wanna bet? You should see some of the scum I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis,” Phil said. “They’d make Oliver up there sound like a gentleman.”

  “That’s impossible,” Elizabeth said sweetly, and was rewarded with Sam’s glare.

  “Why the hell didn’t you say something sooner? You told me that nothing looked familiar,” he snarled.

  “Nothing did. But we had to be close. It was too cold.”

  “Oh, hell,” Sam said. “Are we going to be spending the next few days in a Stephen King novel?”

  “You can spend the next few days back in Washington with my blessing,” she said. “I’m sure Phil is more than capable of handling things around here.”

  “The problem is, I think you’re more than capable of handling Phil,” Sam said. “I don’t trust you, and I don’t trust Phil’s blind faith in you.”

  “Go to hell, Sam,” Phil growled.

  “I’ve been there. You know that as well as I do,” Sam said bleakly.

  “I was there with you,” Phil said.

  “So you were.”

  Elizabeth leaned back against the seat, shutting her eyes. For a moment the men, locked in their own dark memories of something they’d rather forget, had forgotten she was there. She could feel it, feel the searing pain that swept between them like a satin ribbon of blood, and she pulled her coat tighter around her once more. A name came into her mind, one that was little more than a shriek of agony, and then it vanished, swirled away on billows of smoke.

  She opened her eyes when the car stopped, realizing with surprise that they were back at her house. It was a dark shape, alone in the tall woods, and the whiteness of the fresh snow glistened in the moonlight.

  “Didn’t you think to leave a light on?” Sam demanded, slamming out of the door and heading toward the house, his tall, strong body radiating irritation. Elizabeth watched him go, not moving for a moment, and then she turned to Phil.

  “Who was Amy Lee?”

  “God, don’t ask Sam about her!” Phil said with a shudder. “Where the hell did you come up with that name?”

  Elizabeth shrugged, both of them knowing how unanswerable that question was. “Is she the reason he’s such a bastard?”

  “He isn’t. He’s a good man, Elizabeth. I’d trust him with my life. Even more, I’d trust him with yours. I don’t really know what’s gotten under his skin right now, but when the chips are down you can count on him. I promise you that.”

  “I just wish he’d go away.”

  She could feel Phil watching her, sense his concern. “Be patient,” he said finally.

  “I don’t seem to have any choice in the matter,” she said wryly, stepping out onto the snowy driveway. “Do I?”

  Phil got out beside her, and together they watched her house flood with light as Sam went through and turned everything on. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t think you do.”

  MUHAMMED ALI Reza knew it was getting colder. He’d trained himself long ago not to give in to physical discomforts. Not to give in to days of sleeplessness, hunger, cold or heat. Not to give in when he’d been without water and was on the brink of dehydration, not to give in to headaches, or electric cattle prods and other, more refined forms of torture. He would recognize and accept these things, but he never let them reach his inner core, where a fire of determination burned so brightly that nothing could quench it.

  Standing in the dark, silent forest outside Elizabeth Hardy’s house, he could see his breath form ice cr
ystals in front of him. His fingers were getting numb, and he flexed them in the pockets of his down parka, making sure they could still function. He had no intention of making his move, not yet, but he was a man who knew to expect the unexpected, and that move might be thrust upon him by the man he’d been following, by the man who’d joined him, maybe even by the woman.

  Any other man would have been long gone by now. He’d done his part; there was no need for any more random victims to cover his intent. It was the one weakness in a man thought not to have any. He was a little too thorough.

  The Americans were very stupid, particularly the police. He should leave the country and count on the man in the house, the police detective he’d been keeping tabs on, to botch the job and accept Ali Reza’s setup at face value. Mary Nelson was simply one more in a line of victims, one whose body would never be found. At least, not found as Mary Nelson.

  But his instincts were telling him that it wasn’t going to be that simple, and the man who’d arrived yesterday wasn’t someone to be lightly dismissed. Ali Reza didn’t know him, but he recognized the way he held himself, the lack of expression in his face, the wariness that radiated from the tall, military body. The man who’d joined Grayson was a man like himself, a wolf, and therefore a danger.

  But the one who worried him most of all was the woman. He had one other weakness, and that was a streak of superstition that ran down his backbone. He couldn’t see Elizabeth Hardy without making the sign of the devil, and at night he didn’t dream of Mary Nelson’s terrified blue eyes, or the eyes of any of the other women he’d killed. He dreamed of Elizabeth Hardy’s eyes, following him, watching him, no matter where he went.

  He was going to close those eyes. She’d be the final victim of the Colorado Slasher, and if that seemed just a bit too convenient for the Denver police, he’d be long gone. But maybe, just to be certain, he’d finish Police Detective Phillip Grayson. It had been a long time since he’d had a man.