Dark Obsession

by Sydney Somers

  That deer-caught-in-headlights expression was back on Drew’s face. No matter how sharp his senses were, he apparently hadn’t seen this coming.

  “Dude.” There was a slight edge to his voice when Braxton nudged Drew’s chair.

  Blair walked up to them. “He just needs a few minutes to let it sink in.” She didn’t sound worried, but it wasn’t hard to tell that Drew’s reaction wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as she’d been hoping for.

  Her eyes narrowed when she glanced over at her brother.

  Braxton at least had enough sense to look guilty.

  “I was trying to figure out the best way to tell him, bonehead.”

  Wincing, Braxton shoved his hands in his pockets. “It sort of slipped out. I didn’t know he was around.”

  Blair snorted. “The man can practically hear cockroaches having sex if he tried. Of course he would overhear you.”

  Canting his head to one side, Brax looked at Parker. “Do cockroaches have sex?”

  Ignoring her brother’s attempt to change the subject, Blair crouched down in front of Drew. “He took it better than I thought, actually.”

  “Because he didn’t come running down the hall?”

  An explosion of thunder boomed outside and all three men stared at Blair, knowing her rising emotions had brought it on.

  She scowled at her brother. “Molly has only been living with us for a couple of months.”

  Drew gripped her hand. “Marry me.”

  Their collective attention shifted to Drew, who still looked about as animated as a slab of granite.

  “What?”

  In a move that proved his speed was just as strong as his hearing, Drew switched places with Blair, leaving her clutching the arms of the chair and him kneeling at her feet.

  The bewildered look on her face matched the white-knuckled grip she had on the chair. From the fast move or what Drew had said?

  She sputtered for a second—yeah, definitely over what he’d said—and then threw a helpless glance at her brother.

  Like Parker, Braxton looked smart enough to stay out of it.

  “Marry me,” Drew repeated.

  “If this is because I’m pregnant—”

  “Spare me the ‘I’m a strong independent woman’ stuff for a second. This isn’t because you’re pregnant.”

  “With twins,” Braxton provided helpfully.

  Parker fought a grin.

  “This is not because you are pregnant.” He brought Blair’s hand to his chest, covering his heart. “You can feel what I’m feeling. You know I’m asking because I’m crazy about you. Because I love you, have since the moment you tackled me on the beach.”

  “You were the one who tackled me, actually.”

  Feeling like he was treading on a private moment, Parker retreated a few steps, wanting to give them some privacy.

  “Stay.” Drew didn’t look away from Blair when he spoke. “I might sound less like an idiot if I have an audience.”

  He smiled up at Blair. “I know you can feel it, beneath my heart that’s racing at the thought of not only screwing up with one kid, but three. Beneath the scared-shitless fear that I’m fucking this up, you know I love you. So much it hurts.”

  When Blair raised her head from Drew’s chest, her eyes swirled with silver. Parker knew she called it transitioning since her vision actually changed with the rush of emotions she sensed in others.

  “Yes.” She launched herself off the chair and right into his arms. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

  Drew fell back on his ass, his arms wrapped tight around Blair. “You are sure it’s two babies, right?”

  “According to the ultrasound I had yesterday.”

  Drew grinned and stood, pulling her up with him. “I need to call my parents. And Molly. We need to tell Molly.”

  “Maybe we should do that in person,” Blair suggested.

  “Right. Right.” Drew glanced around. “I need to call Gage and tell Quinn and Jordan…” The rest was lost as he disappeared around the corner. A moment later, his head popped back around. “You coming?”

  Blair waved him off. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up with you.” She sank back into the chair, her face as pale as Drew’s had been earlier.

  “Not getting cold feet already, are you?”

  She shook her head at Parker. “Just a little nausea.” She pressed her lips together and Parker suspected it was more than a little nausea.

  Braxton swooped in with a hug. “Congratulations. Mom is going to be over the moon.”

  Blair’s eyes widened. “She’s going to want to plan a wedding, isn’t she?”

  “Oh yeah.” Braxton’s phone rang, and he turned to grab it off his desk. “I need to take this.”

  Abandoning her chair, she and Parker left Braxton to his phone and started down the hall.

  “Just out of curiosity, how were you expecting Drew would take the news anyway?”

  Blair stopped and studied him intently. “What happened?”

  He started to deny anything was wrong, not wanting to bring her down after the last few minutes, but she only shook her head.

  “Might help to talk about it.”

  Parker rolled his shoulders for a minute, working it through his brain first. “Did it ever cross your mind to hurt Drew?” Once the question was out he wished he hadn’t said a word. She didn’t need to talk about that stuff when the man had just proposed. Whatever he was thinking—or not thinking, really—it was all around shitty timing to ask her about it now.

  “Forget I asked, okay. You should go find Drew.”

  She frowned. “It’s okay. I assume you mean after I was initiated by the storm demon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was a bit of wreck when I realized I was feeling Drew’s emotions, in some cases even enjoying it.” A look of guilt flashed across her face, but quickly faded.

  “My fear of how it was changing me was scarier than what was actually happening to me, and a couple times it was a little too touch and go.” She shook her head. “But I don’t think you’re talking about those times.”

  He shook his head, knowing she was the only one besides Rae who knew about his mother.

  “No. Even when I felt split in two, it never crossed my mind to intentionally lash out or hurt Drew.”

  “You sure?”

  “The only thing I’m sure about is that if some part of me had hungered to hurt him, I would have fought it long enough to get far away from him and anyone I cared about. Hell, that’s what I did when it hadn’t been intentional.”

  Parker nodded, resisting the urge to rub at the pain expanding beneath his ribs. “You really should go find Drew before he decides to tell your families without you.”

  Blair smiled, absently running her hand over her lower abdomen. “If you want to talk again—”

  “I know where to find you. Thanks.” He squeezed her hand. “Congrats on the pregnancy and engagement.”

  “Thanks. You think Drew is back to panicking by now?”

  He laughed. “Without a doubt.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  After finishing her conversation with Adrian, Rae opened her office door at the same time Drew came whooping down the hall.The second he spotted her, he threw his arms around her, swinging her around. “Twins, Rae. She’s have my baby. Babies,” he corrected. “Two of them.”

  “Blair?”

  He bobbed his head, releasing her.

  A little dizzy from the twirl as Drew stepped away from her, Rae tried to keep up. “She’s pregnant with twins?”

  He looked fine right up until she said “twins”. He paled before her eyes. “I think…I think I need to sit down again.” He walked straight past Rae and into her office.

  Adrian clapped him on the back. “Congratulations.”

  Drew shook his head at no one in particular. “Twins?”

  Stepping into the hall, Adrian looked a little confused. “Do I need to get him a paper bag or anything?”

  Rae s
miled. “I’ll go find Blair.”

  Leaving Drew to Adrian, she found the former journalist sitting in the training room, surrounded by print-outs and scrawled notes, her laptop perched on her thighs.

  “I hear congratulations are in order.”

  A million-watt smile lit up Blair’s face. “I take it you’ve seen Drew.”

  “Seen and been bear-hugged by him. He’s in my office at the moment actually.”

  “White as a ghost?”

  Rae grinned. “Close.”

  “I figure it should only happen another few times today.” Setting aside her laptop, Blair hopped up.

  “Making any progress?”

  “Not as much as I’d like. But I’m better off than Cass.”

  Quinn’s twin sister, Cass, had gone missing a couple months ago and ended up being initiated by a telepath demon. Since then, she’d been in training to provide tech support for their field office and was currently working out of the network’s head office on the east coast.

  “I’ve got the easy part,” Blair continued. “I’m tackling the stuff online while Cass is digging through the physical archives that haven’t been entered into the main system yet. You’ve seen those archives, right?”

  “Shelf upon shelf of ancient scrolls and tomes? Yeah, rings a bell.”

  Blair grinned, though her smile had faded by the time they reached the door. Just inside the room, she paused.

  “After that storm demon attacked me, how worried were you that I would hurt Drew or Braxton?”

  “So few gene carriers survive being initiated by storm demons that I wasn’t really sure what to expect.” Her only previous experience had been with Parker’s mother, Helen. “If you’re asking because you’re worried about your pregnancy—”

  “No. I mean, I am.” Blair gently touched her stomach. “How can I not worry when there’s no way to know how my ability to sense emotions in others, even feed off them, will affect the babies?”

  “More than likely it won’t affect them at all.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling myself since I found out. I guess I was just wondering after something Parker said, or didn’t say, actually.”

  Apprehension snaked though Rae. She put her hand on the door but didn’t push it open. “Parker? He talked to you about his mother,” she guessed, her stomach tightening. “Was that before or after Drew found out the good news?” She wasn’t sure how she managed to keep her voice even. The thought of Parker asking questions about Helen’s death all over again when he’d promised to let it go years ago drilled a hole clean through her chest.

  “After. It’s just…there should have been signs that she was becoming unstable. I mean, I was a mess about the whole thing more than once and it wasn’t like anyone could have missed it. So how did Parker and his sister, even the network people, not see it?”

  Blair shrugged, stepping into the hall. “You’re not headed back this way?”

  Ignoring the nausea churning in her stomach, she forced a smile. “Not yet.”

  Blair hesitated, looking uncertain about something.

  She didn’t want to ask, not after last night when she’d shoved her uncertainties aside. If she’d thought for a second that he still hadn’t accepted the circumstances around his mother’s death…

  “Is there anything I need to know?” The authoritative tone was intentional, both to remind Blair that at the end of the day Rae still needed to know the mindset of her agents, and because embracing her cool, practical side made it easier not to give in to the fear that history was going to repeat itself.

  She couldn’t watch him be dragged back down all over again.

  Blair only hesitated for a second. “Whatever is weighing on him is leaving him confused. Torn.”

  Wishing she could believe that whatever Blair had picked up on stemmed from the search for Rae’s father, or even the memories they’d stirred up after last night, she worried there was more to it than that.

  “Okay then.” Blair turned away only to stop again. If she’d looked uncertain before, she looked downright nervous now. “You know, it took me a while to realize that being afraid of what I felt was harder than facing it.”

  Only after Blair had left did Rae realize her parting comment had nothing to do with Parker, and everything to do with the conflicting emotions she’d sensed in Rae.

  Alone in the training room, she was surrounded by dozens of weapons capable of inspiring fear, strength, even hope, and not one of them could protect her from feeling like her life was about to spin out of her control again.

  She also knew none of them would do Parker a damn bit of good when she got a hold of him. Blair might be right about her being afraid of the feelings Parker was awakening inside her, but none of them scared her as much as the thought of being helpless to save him from himself a second time.

  And feeling helpless really, really pissed her off.

  “So who did it?”

  Rae turned as Quinn strolled into the training room. “Did what?”

  “Put that murderous look on your face?” Quinn tugged her black hair, streaked through with electric blue, into a high ponytail. It instantly made her looker younger than her twenty-four years.

  “Given Drew’s track record, I might have assumed it was him,” Quinn continued, “if he wasn’t a wee bit preoccupied at the moment.”

  “Still in my office?”

  Quinn shook her head. “He was pacing in the break room last I saw him. I was going to ask him to spar with me for a bit, but it would just be too easy when he’s that distracted.”

  “I thought you were at the clinic last night?”

  Rolling her eyes, Quinn studied the wall. “I’m fine. It was just a minor concussion, which I told Brax last night.” She stopped in the middle of the training room floor. “Have some place you need to be at the moment?”

  “Now isn’t a good time.”

  Quinn mulled that over. “I know if I’d been the one to piss you off, I’d be wishing you had worked off the worst of your anger before you came looking for me.”

  Turning away, Quinn removed two staffs from the brackets on the sidewall. She tossed one to Rae, knowing full well that she’d catch it. “Or you could look at it this way. You’ll be good and ready to tear into Parker after I wipe the training room floor with you.”

  “I never said it was Parker.”

  Quinn took a swing at her and the end of the staff whistled past Rae’s head. “So what’d he do anyway?”

  Twisting around Rae brought her staff up, deflecting Quinn’s next blow. “Hid something from me.”

  Quinn jumped back, escaping the end of Rae’s staff before retaliating and catching Rae across the back of her leg. Jamming her own weapon down to keep from falling on her face, Rae eased back, waiting for an opening.

  “Because he thought it would somehow protect you?” Quinn’s irritated tone conveyed just how much she was speaking from experience on that front. “Or because he knows you’ll kick his ass?”

  “Probably the latter.”

  Making a move, Quinn came at her hard, using her forward momentum to knock Rae off balance when they hit.

  “You and Parker had sex?”

  Rae whipped her head around to look at Darcy—who’d just burst through the door—too distracted to prevent Quinn from jamming her staff between her feet.

  She landed flat on her back, the air in her lungs forced out on impact. Both Darcy and Quinn hovered over her, though she couldn’t be sure if it was the fall or Darcy’s statement that put the stunned look on Quinn’s face.

  Feeling a little stunned herself, Rae managed to swing her staff across the floor. Quinn was quick enough to get out of the way, but she nailed Darcy, knocking the telepath forward.

  Darcy shot her a sheepish grin. “I guess I shouldn’t ask how he was in bed then?”

  Rae let her head drop back to the floor, ignoring the two of them.

  Parker turned away from the bulletin board he’d been stari
ng at without anything new jumping out at him. After getting Braxton to look into tracking his mystery caller and hopefully giving him something to go on, he’d locked himself in his office, determined to focus on work.

  Work was productive and necessary if they were going to find Hurst. Work also didn’t involve ripping the bandage off an injury that had never fully healed. He’d already given Rae enough to worry about without letting old fears and doubts consume him.

  He was being played for a reason and until he knew who was trying to pull his strings, it was safer to focus on questions he stood at least half a chance at finding answers for.

  Like why now? Why had Hurst fallen off the network’s radar ten years ago, but waited until now to run more experiments? Rae hadn’t volunteered much on the flight home except to say that after the network had tried to take her away, her father had promised no more experiments or tests.

  Parker leaned back, dropping his arms over the back of his chair. Hurst might have been eccentric and cryptic when it came to recording his theories and findings, but everything else Parker had learned painted him as straight-up methodical.

  The experiments had all been run on a set schedule that never deviated. He never seemed to push beyond his daily objectives or go off course from whatever scenarios he’d planned to examine in advance.

  So how did a focused, predictable scientist end up snatching children at random?

  He’d used a process before, engaging the parents’ consent, even if he’d misled them about his intentions. This time children had been taken indiscriminately. Some before school, some after. Some were out with their parents, some from their beds. There were no indications of intensive planning or any studying of each child’s routines before he made his move.

  Had Hurst simply gotten sloppy? Parker wasn’t convinced. Hurst could have hired someone or put someone else in charge of the abductions, but the last time this had all gone down, Hurst had been involved in every aspect of his test subjects’ lives, right down to their diets and bedtimes.

  Calling him a control freak was probably putting it mildly, so it didn’t make sense that Hurst would just hand off that part of his plan. So much wasn’t making sense, and the longer it took them, the more those kids were being traumatized.