by Meg Ripley
4
“All right. Here we go.” Jack got behind the wheel and fired up the ignition.
“Can our first stop be for a decent cup of coffee? The Department always buys the weakest stuff, no matter where they have me working.” Erica rubbed her face, the heaviness of sleep still thick behind her eyes. She hadn’t slept well for the last two nights. The little cabin resort wasn’t exactly a luxury hotel, but it was the type of place that should’ve been a welcome relief for her. The little winding lane that led back into the woods hadn’t been traveled by anyone but the mission team, and the cabins were well spaced out. It was exactly what she’d needed to keep her head clear as she prepared to go into the field.
Something was disturbing her, though. At first, Erica had thought it might be Jack. His presence had inundated her mind, flooding her with flashing images even before she touched his hand. To make things even more frustrating, she didn’t understand what any of it meant. Most people were pretty easy to read. Erica could pick up on childhood trauma, abusive relationships, and mental illnesses, and she’d learned to interpret and understand the symptoms fairly early on. Not everyone with a rough past acted out, but they couldn’t hide it from her, either.
Jack made her mind feel as though she were suddenly in a small crowd, one that she couldn’t parse out and separate to make the thoughts into smaller pieces her mind could handle. Her body reacted to him as well, but that was easy enough to understand. He was tall and well-muscled, his broad shoulders fitting tightly into his t-shirt. The smooth lines of his face and the intensity behind his light brown eyes would’ve made any woman weak in the knees.
“Didn’t sleep well?” he asked as he guided the battered car down the bumpy road.
“Hm? Oh. No, not really.” She’d almost gotten lost in her thoughts about him, even though he was right next to her.
“If you’re nervous about the mission, I don’t think you have any reason to be. This sounds like it’ll be a pretty easy operation. We get in, we get the information, and we get out.” Jack turned onto the highway.
Erica scowled at him. “For your information, I’ve been on plenty of missions before. I don’t need your reassurances.”
“I’m just trying to be nice,” he said with a shrug. “A lot of people get a little tense at the start of something like this. No matter how many times you’ve gone out, you’re always heading into something new.”
“I’m fine,” she said through gritted teeth, “and I don’t need you to mansplain my job to me. The only thing that bothers me about this mission is that I didn’t have much time to recover from the last one. That, and I’m working more directly with you than with Winston.” She folded her arms across her chest and turned her head to look pointedly out the window. The trees whizzed by, but she wasn’t really looking at them anyway. She was too busy fuming.
“What exactly did I do to piss you off?” Jack had been quiet and mild-mannered the previous day as they’d discussed the mission’s particulars with Mr. Worth. There was a hard edge to his voice now.
Erica pulled in a deep breath through her nose and let it out through her mouth, but it wasn’t slow enough to actually relax her. She had a feeling there never would be any relaxing around this man. “It’s not necessarily something you did, I guess, but I have to admit I’m pretty resentful that they would call in a consultant on this mission. I can handle this myself, and I don’t need you.”
“Clearly, Mr. Worth thinks you do,” he pointed out.
“No, I don’t! I’ve worked plenty of missions on my own, thank you very much. I’m sick and tired of having to deal with men in this line of work who think I’m too delicate to do it. They’re all afraid I’m going to have my period or something and not be able to complete the mission. It’s fucking ridiculous.” All her anger leading up to this was pouring out of her mouth. Erica didn’t know how to stop it, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She’d spent years keeping it all pent up inside, lest anyone should find out how she really felt, and now it seemed like there was no point in trying. It hadn’t really gotten her anywhere.
Jack was quiet for long enough that Erica risked glancing at him. He gripped the wheel with his right hand while his left rubbed the back of his neck. Tension filled his face, and she waited for him to explode right back at her. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “It’s not fair that anyone should treat you that way. But it isn’t as though I was the one doing it. I was asked to come here and help, so I did.”
Erica snorted. “The words are nice enough, but I know you don’t mean it.”
“Excuse me? First, you tell me you’re pissed off simply because I happen to be here, and now you’re calling me a liar? You don’t even know me!” Jack’s left hand slapped against the wheel as he adjusted his grip, guiding the car smoothly around a curve despite his anger.
She knew him much better than he realized. True, Erica didn’t know how to explain the visions that pounded her head when she was around Jack. Some were easy enough, with a lot of sand and guns and blood, but others were more like a scene from a National Geographic documentary. Even without her psychic powers, she’d seen the doubt in his eyes. He was just like Randall Holt, perturbed over her gut feelings that had served her so well in the past. “I don’t need to know you. I saw the way you looked at me when I was trying to explain why we have to go after Jones. You’re the type of man—just like almost all of you are—who doesn’t believe in anything you can’t see with your eyes.”
“I see. You’ve worked with some assholes, and you decide that just because I’m a little skeptical that I’m one, too. What an awesome mission this is going to be.” His grip tightened on the wheel now, his knuckles turning white.
Erica sucked in a breath. She didn’t know if she felt like crying, screaming, or flinging herself from the moving vehicle. Jack was big physically, taking up far too much space in the moderate sedan Mr. Worth had secured for them. Now that he was angry with her, his already massive psychic presence had grown tenfold. There wasn’t a molecule of air or energy that wasn’t saturated with him. “Maybe you should just turn around.”
He kept the gas pedal steady, with no hint of slowing down or looking for a place to turn. “I don’t think so.”
“I do,” she asserted. “We’re clearly not meant to be doing this together. I should’ve convinced Winston to come with me, or I should’ve just gone by myself.” It would look awfully damn good on her record if she actually got a solo mission. Erica knew that was a rare thing, and even the top-ranked specialists didn’t get those opportunities very often. The Department was big on keeping not just the citizens safe, but their employees as well.
“It’s not happening.” Jack’s throat moved quickly, thrumming with his heartbeat.
She was getting him riled up. He was a big man, and the bulge of his arms under the short sleeves of his t-shirt might have intimidated some. Erica didn’t sense any threats from him, though, despite his anger. She just needed to push him a little bit further, and then this whole farce would be over with. She’d get reassigned—most likely to the shittiest undertaking DHS could find for her—but she didn’t care. “It is. I’m not continuing with you.”
“You’re not going to continue with anyone else,” he growled.
A shiver of electricity flowed through her body and sparked at her pulse points. Her throat tightened and her mouth went dry as she responded to the possessive sound of that statement. The logical part of her brain knew that Jack’s protest only meant that he was being stubborn and he wasn’t about to let anyone see this mission as a failure before it even started. Her body had other ideas, and she quickly shut it down.
Fine. If arguing with him was only going to make things worse, then she’d use logic as a weapon instead. “Look, there’s no way we can possibly make this work. According to everything Mr. Worth has gathered, extremists like to recruit single people who don’t have a lot of connections. They don’t want families because it’s too messy. So he had th
at whole idea of us coming in as long-time BFFs.”
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye but quickly returned his gaze to the road. “Right.”
“We can’t pull that off,” Erica concluded. “We’ve only known each other for a couple of days, and we’re already at each other’s throats.”
Jack pointed at the road. “We’ve got half a day of driving ahead of us. I’d say that’s plenty of time to get to know each other and come up with our backstories.”
She shook her head. “No way.”
His jaw tightened. “Look, you don’t trust me. I get that.”
“Do you?” she challenged. Erica highly doubted that he understood anything about her. No one did, and she didn’t dare try to explain it. It was easier to just avoid people like him, people who gave off waves of emotion and who couldn’t possibly accept her for who she really was.
“I can’t say that I trust you, either. But—”
Erica wasn’t listening anymore. The line of trees through the passenger window disappeared, and in their place, she saw a massive green tractor. As though someone was operating her mind with a penchant for a zoom lens, the machine instantly grew closer. “Slow down.”
“I’m going the speed limit.”
“Stop!” she screamed. Panic blossomed in her chest.
“I’m just trying to explain—”
“No!” Her foot was pumping the floorboard, instinctively searching for a brake pedal that wasn’t there. “Stop the car! Stop the car right now!”
“There’s no place to pull over!” he yelled back. “We’ve been through this!” The sedan topped a hill, and Jack slammed the brakes as soon as they began descending. Their seatbelts strained against them, and the tires squealed as they slowed down just before slamming into the back of a massive John Deere. The tractor chugged along, making its slow march down the road to the next field.
Jack said nothing at first. He concentrated on looking for a safe place to pass the farm vehicle, a flat strip of land where he could see clearly. When they were on their way again without any impediment, he glanced at her. “How did you know about that?”
She’d been waiting for the question. They always came. Sure, most of the time, people didn’t really pay any attention, but every now and then, someone realized that things didn’t quite add up. Fortunately, Erica was an old hand at making excuses. “I saw the tractor on the previous hill and figured we’d be catching up to it.”
“No.” His word was firm. “I did plenty of driving while I was in the service, and you learn to keep an eye on everything. You always look as far ahead as possible so you know what you’re getting into, and it’s not a perishable skill. I still do it, and I’ll be doing it for the rest of my life. Now, how did you know that tractor was going to be there?”
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Erica said flippantly. “We’re in farm country, and there are tractors everywhere.” As though the universe was trying to help her make a point, they passed a field where a massive combine churned up dust as it moved through the rows.
“Hmph.”
He didn’t seem inclined to continue the argument, and Erica couldn’t decide how she felt about that. She wanted to argue; it was easier than acknowledging the heaviness in the air between them. There was something about this man that got to her, something that poked beneath the protective wall she’d put around herself so long ago, something that wouldn’t leave her alone. At least when he spoke, she could focus on his actual words instead of his seemingly random thoughts, and now she distinctively heard one of them. “I am not.”
“What?”
“You just said I’m stubborn.”
Jack shifted in his seat, stretching his spine upwards until his head nearly touched the ceiling and then settled back down again. He let out a breath as he did so. “I didn’t say that.”
“You did. I heard you.” And she’d heard it many other times from other people, especially men. It didn’t bother her in the same way that it used to. In fact, Erica had almost come to like the fact that people thought she was stubborn. Any remark on her character that came from Jack, however, was a potential point of argument.
“All right. I did say that, but only in my head. I never opened my mouth.”
Damn! Had she really done that? Had this man gotten her so vexed that she’d mixed up her signals? Erica had done this before. It was, in fact, how her mother had come to find out about her talent. It hadn’t always been easy to distinguish when someone was saying something instead of just thinking about it, particularly if the thought was a strong one. For a while, Erica made a point of pretending she didn’t hear well and used it as an excuse to watch people’s lips moving. It made her feel better in knowing that the words had actually been spoken before she acted on them or replied to someone. “People do that all the time, you know. They mean to keep their thoughts to themselves, but their mouths betray them.”
His smile wasn’t a pleasant one. “Erica, I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but something’s up. I suggest you tell me.” He fully turned his eyes from the road to look at her.
Jack’s presence completely filled the interior of the car and Erica thought she might choke on it. There was the man she could see before her, the soldier, the one who’d been called in as a consultant for the DHS, even though she didn’t want him there. But there was someone else as well, someone with the cleverness of a wolf and the cunning of a cat, someone who spent a lot of time alone and had used his skills to slip around fences and penetrate fortresses. Winston had claimed they could trust him, that he was the best man for the job, but she now knew for sure. “I don’t know why you’re bothering to ask me. You’re the one who’s a spy.” It was the only answer that made sense.
“Excuse me?” he practically laughed. “Who the hell am I spying for? I haven’t done a damn thing since you met me besides sit through a bunch of meetings and drive a car.”
Erica rubbed a hand over her forehead. No matter what she did or said, this wasn’t getting any better. His spirit was incredibly strong, and it’d practically invaded her mind. Her skull was starting to throb. “I know.”
“You keep saying that,” Jack reminded her. “I’m starting to think that’s just your sorry excuse for not having done all your work. I don’t blame you. If it’s worked for you so far, then that’s great. You can go right ahead and keep fooling Winston and Mr. Worth with it, but that bullshit doesn’t work on me.”
Something exploded inside her. Erica felt a rage bubble up and detonate like a massive volcano of psychic energy, something she could no longer hold back. “I’m a fucking psychic, okay? Does that make you happy? Is that what you wanted to hear? I can feel both sides of you inside my brain. You’re like two people wrapped into one, and it’s completely overwhelming. If I have to spend another second in this car with you, I think I might explode.”
Jack said nothing.
Erica stared through the windshield, but she wasn’t looking at the road. She closed her eyes. What the hell had she just done?
“A psychic.” It wasn’t a question, simply a statement.
Erica swallowed. This was it. Jack was a trained military man, the kind of guy who didn’t put up with crazy things like psychic powers. But she’d already said it, and there was no turning back now. She could blame him for ruining her career, but she was the one who’d opened her big mouth. Maybe she could go get a job working for Dionne Warwick. “Yes.”
“That explains a lot.”
She slowly turned her head and opened her eyes. Everything felt heavy and difficult, like she was moving underwater. “It does?”
“Yes. And you’ve got me on the dual personalities. I’m hiding something, but I’m not a spy. I’m a shifter.”
“A what?”
“A shapeshifter.” Jack’s grip on the steering wheel tightened again. “I can morph from man to fox and back again at will.”
Erica swiveled her head back to face the front. Her body sank
down into the seat, too exhausted to do anything else. She felt too tired to even talk. Whatever had just happened between them, it’d sucked every ounce of energy out of her. She knew she should still be fighting for him to pull the car over and let her out, and there was no way they could actually make this mission work. She’d just have to try again later. At least, for the moment, the waves of energy Jack was emitting had settled down somewhat. The two of them continued on that ribbon of Kentucky highway in silence.
5
Jack tried to ignore the dirt around the edge of the sink as he leaned over and splashed his face. He’d been driving for three hours, and he needed to get out of the car for a bit. It wasn’t just the ache of staying in the same position for so long, either. It was being stuck in there with Erica.
He snagged a paper towel to wipe his face off and glanced at himself in the mirror. What kind of an idiot are you? he asked himself. Actually telling her what you are, like you’re some kind of amateur? You’ve just sent generations of hard work right down the shitter.
He and the others like him had done a lot to maintain their secret. Granted, there were a few humans here and there who knew about them, but they were shifters’ mates. They’d forged distinct bonds that would never allow for betrayal. Those with animals inside them didn’t even go to normal physicians. Their anatomy was slightly different to accommodate for the movement of bones and organs as they went from one form to another, and anyone who noticed that would surely expose them. Max’s mate, in fact, was even working on starting up a specialized (and very secret) hospital to ensure the shifters got all the medical care they needed. They had their own government in the form of conclaves, and now the SOS Force even served as a small Army. All of that was wonderful, but Jack had decided to just blurt it out.
Not that he could’ve helped it. Jack tried to comfort himself with that thought as he stepped out of the gas station bathroom and into the convenience store area. He perused the cooler, looking for something cold to slake his thirst and make him feel as though he’d been doing anything other than purposely not looking at Erica for the last couple of hours.