by TL Schaefer
“I’ll kill you for this,” Cam said, and for a moment, Fred actually believed her.
NAUSEA CURLED CAM’S stomach. She yanked at the knots tying her to the chair, but Maxwell had done the job too well. She’d be better off just trying to demolish the chair, but there was no way to do that quickly.
And now he’d gagged her. The filthy rag had come from the back of his SUV and tasted of oil and cleaning solvent.
He was taking his time with Susie. He’d pulled up a chair and sat in front of her, so she couldn’t see Cam, and with the gag in place, Cam couldn’t goad him away from the girl. She also couldn’t reassure the waitress, tell her that they’d be all right, that someone would be here soon to rescue them.
She hoped she wasn’t lying to herself with those thoughts. Maxwell had snagged them quietly and effectively. The same haze she’d experienced before had been there, a fog that only cleared once she and Susie were already strapped to the chairs.
She’d heard Susie tell him where to go, knew they were only a few miles out of Tin Cup, but they might as well have been on the moon for all the good it would do them.
She planted her feet on the ground between the chair’s rungs solidly as the bastard began to move closer to Susie, began to get more handsy. The idiot hadn’t tied their feet. Maybe he hadn’t had enough rope. Maybe he thought they’d be too out of it to resist. Didn’t matter. With his back to her fully now, his attention engaged with Susie, he’d given her the opening she needed.
She lowered her head, knowing this was going to hurt, and launched herself at him, aiming for his head with her own, the mother of all head butts.
As she flew through the air she sent out another psychic plea to Asa, hoping like hell that Susie wasn’t about to be his next tragedy.
ASA GRIPPED THE DASHBOARD so hard he thought it would crack in half. The vision assaulted him, showed Cam on her back, the shattered remains of a chair behind her, an enraged Maxwell pointing a pistol at her. His face bled profusely from a cut over his eye and a steady stream from his nose, and his eyes looked almost as if they were glowing.
Jesus. He was going to kill her. For real.
“Faster,” he ground out, “then take a left at the Old Mill Road.”
The Sheriff took one look at him and put the pedal to the medal, screaming through the forest until he was abreast of the dirt road, and swung left, almost tipping the SUV over.
“Slow it down now,” Asa said, still holding the dash with a death grip. “Fourth cabin on the right.” He opened his eyes, saw they hadn’t even come into view of the decrepit cabins. “He’s armed. Cam is on the floor, Susie is bound in a chair.”
The Sheriff shook his head. “I don’t even want to know.” He rolled over a small hill and before them spread a dozen old cabins in various states of disrepair. He shut the engine down a few cabins away, then he and Asa crept forward on silent feet.
They heard a crash, then a man’s yelp, then his curse. “You bitch! I don’t care who you are, you’re dead now!”
The Sheriff kicked in the door, and the scene unfolded in front of them, just as it had in his vision. Maxwell swung the weapon toward them, roaring when he saw Asa, bringing the weapon to bear. In that second, Asa knew he was going to die. The Sheriff might be fast enough, but Maxwell was already pulling the trigger.
With a sense of detachment, he wondered if the tragedy he’d foreseen had been his own death. Again.
Then Cam was moving, tackling the man from behind, driving him to his knees.
The shot went wide, but still struck Asa in the shoulder, blinding him with the pain.
All those years downrange and I never got hit. I had to come to Colorado for that.
He found it vaguely ironic, then Cam was pressing on his shoulder, staunching the blood. “Asa,” she yelled at him, and he knew he had to look glassy with shock. He’d seen it enough times on gunshot victims in the past. “Asa, snap out of it. I need to know what else to do.” Her voice was brisk, as if this was another day at the office. Then again, for Cam Ryder, it kind of was. He laughed a bit at the thought, and then her lips were on his, and she was doing what he’d done back in her RV, shocking her away from the fog.
For a moment their lips clung together, and he would have sworn he saw stars, and then she was back above him. This time she was the guardian angel.
“Keep up the pressure,” he instructed, his voice gravelly. He turned his head to the Sheriff. “You need to gag him. He’ll hypnotize you into letting him go.”
The Sheriff started to object when Cam cut in. “How do you think he got to both me and Susie? I’m no one’s fool Sheriff. Gag him.”
The Sheriff grumbled, but complied after cuffing a cursing Maxwell.
Then the Sheriff cut away Susie’s bonds before crouching in front of her. She crumbled into his arms, confusion filling her face. “Uncle Billy? Where am I? How did I get here?”
Asa met Cam’s eyes.
Good, she didn’t remember any of it. It would help in the long run.
A moment later the cavalry arrived, to include a deputy who was also an EMT. Since Asa couldn’t treat himself, it was a good deal all the way around.
THE CLOSEST HOSPITAL was a few miles down the road in Gunnison, something Cam was eternally grateful for.
Maxwell’s gun had been a twenty-two caliber, nothing to sneeze at, but not big enough to cause major damage. The gunshot wound itself wasn’t the problem. It was what it had damaged as it transited through his shoulder.
The bullet had nicked Asa’s subclavian artery. It was enough to be bloody as hell, and if there hadn’t been an EMT almost on site, and a hospital close by, she shuddered to think of the potential results. It was entirely too easy to bleed out from a wound like that. As it was, the docs didn’t think there’d be any nerve damage or loss of function.
He was supposed to be hospital bound for at least a few days. She expected he’d discharge himself long before the docs decided it was a good idea.
Right now she was behind the wheel of Betsy, towing Asa’s jeep behind as she relocated them to Gunnison. They could have stayed in Tin Cup, but as much as she enjoyed the town, the campground itself reminded her of what Maxwell had done, how powerless she’d felt, and that wasn’t an easy feeling for her to accept.
She pulled into the hospital parking lot, angling Besty over several spaces at the back end of the lot, then headed into the hospital. Two steps from Asa’s door she heard an unfamiliar voice.
His words were muffled, but she heard Global Dynamics, Talented and Canon City, and went on alert. Those were words she’d heard from Asa, and rarely. That meant the man inside had to be the mysterious Heath.
There as an ice to his tone that made a shiver go down her spine. As a woman who wasn’t often intimidated, it said something. She crept closer to the door. It sounded as if the man was issuing some kind of ultimatum to Asa.
“I need to take care of some things.” Asa’s tone was tired, as if the words were being torn from him.
And that fast she realized what those “things” were. Her.
So much for their partnership. It had given her a mission of sorts, something to look forward to. And now he was turning his back on her. It hurt in a place she hadn’t felt in years. She’d thought Asa was her friend.
She pushed past the hurt. It had no place in the here and now. Not for a woman her age, of her experience.
She strode in the door, tossed the keys to his Jeep on the table, ignoring the man who stood at the foot of Asa’s bed. Ignored the almost frigid bubble around him. She stared at Asa, fighting back tears of frustration. “Your Jeep’s on the back row of the parking lot. Been nice, Asa.” She turned on her heel and headed down the hallway knowing he wouldn’t call her, wishing she wasn’t so sure about it.
ASA RUBBED A HAND OVER his face, stubble scratching his fingers.
“Are you happy, Heath?”
“Was that who I think it was?” Heath asked. In any other man Asa would say
he’d spoken with a bit of awe, but not Heath Farrell.
“Yeah. She’s been the focus of my visions for the last few weeks. I don’t know how she’s important, but she is. My talent says so.”
Heath looked at him with troubled eyes. “We’re not done defending CASI,” he said. “I can’t pin down what’s making me antsy, but I’m getting a very bad feeling.”
“Are the kids okay?” Asa asked, truly concerned for the first time since Farrell had walked into this room, telling him that Maxwell was taken care of. Asa wasn’t sure he wanted to know what that meant.
“They’re fine. Maybe I’m just being overly sensitive.”
Asa bit back a laugh. Those were words he’d never use to describe Heath Farrell.
“Where’s Lloyd? What’s he say?” Asa asked, referring to Farrell’s ever-present bodyguard. Who wasn’t present right now.
“Downstairs, probably watching Cam Ryder walk away. I’m sorry, Asa. I really am.”
“If I can win back her trust, you need to stay away,” Asa said, hardening his tone. “Cam and I need to do this, Heath. But she can’t be part of what you’ve got going on.”
“So I lose you to a damned premonition?” Farrell’s voice was frustrated, almost angry.
“No,” Asa said. “I’ve been thinking. Cam has been finding Talented as she crosses the country. Maybe because people recognize and trust her. Maybe for some other reason. But it’s true nonetheless. What if Cam and I start to find the Talented? Offer them CASI? What if they’re looking for a place to go?”
Heath grunted and tipped his head back, staring at the ceiling for so long Asa was worried he’d had a stroke or something.
He dropped his head. “That could definitely work. But if you see anything about me or the kids—at all—call me.”
“Of course,” Asa replied. “I never meant for it to be otherwise. I just can’t go back to Maryland. I want... I need more, and it isn’t on the eastern seaboard, at least not right now.”
Heath gave him a look, one that almost seemed paternal. “And Cam Ryder is that more?”
Asa shook his head. “I don’t know. But we’re supposed to do something important.”
CAM HEARD THE JEEP stop behind Betsy, wondered how Asa had found her. She thought she’d hidden very well, thank you. But no, two days later he was getting ready to knock on her door.
She beat him to the punch, stood in the doorway putting on her most forbidding look, trying and failing to look at his arm, now encased in a plain white sling. She’d been right, he’d checked himself out very, very early. “What do you want, Asa?”
He held up a bottle of Gozio amaretto, her favorite. “Peace offering.”
She stepped out of the RV, forcing him back a pace. “Carin can’t keep a secret.”
Asa kept a straight face. “No she can’t, especially when I explained to her that what you heard was a misunderstanding.”
“I can’t wait for this.” She propped a hand on her hip. This was going to be good. She wondered how creative he’d be.
“I told Heath I needed to take care of a few things because I had to go back to Maryland to list my condo and re-up the storage on my other car.” His words were quiet, sure and blew her away. “I wasn’t leaving you, or our partnership. I was explaining to him how it was going to be.”
She thought back to what she’d heard, and realized he was right, she’d completely misunderstood his meaning. Jumped to a conclusion. That was totally unlike her.
She slid into the camp chair next to the door. “I didn’t want to make any assumptions,” she felt the heat in her face. Dammit, she’d shown him how much she cared about their friendship, their partnership. Then again, why wouldn’t she?
Asa dropped into a crouch at her feet. “I would never abandon our partnership like that. But I can understand why you interpreted it the way you did.” He waggled the bottle. “What do you say, Cam? Bring out some glasses. I need to tell you about the new plan.”
She stood and gave him a crooked smile, then went to fetch the glasses.
When she stepped out of the RV again, Asa was settled against the bumper of the Jeep with the sun going down behind him in a symphony of reds and oranges. She doubted he realized the picture he made, but the journalist in her salivated at the chance to know more about him, about the new plan.
She joined him by the bumper of the Jeep, poured them both a glass, then tipped hers toward him. “So, oh visionary, what’s the plan?”
He smiled, and in it she saw a wolf’s smile, not directed at her, but at the world.
Oh yeah, they were going to burn it down.
“We’re going to find your levitating friend Olivia. See if she’d like to learn more about her talent. There’s a school in Colorado Springs for people like me, like Olivia. A school where we can explore our powers without fear of retribution. Without worrying if they’ll be used for the wrong purposes. It’s a place I wish had been around when I was growing up. The Colorado Academy for Superior Intellect.”
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Also by TL Schaefer
CASI
Behind Blue Eyes
Crossfire
Shoot to Thrill
Lunatic Fringe (Coming Soon)
Fated Fae
Baptism by Fire
Ends of the Earth
Sea of Dreams
Breath of Heaven
Fated Fae Box Set
Mariposa
The Summerland
The Brotherhood
The Paladin
The Chosen
Something Witchy This Way Comes
Watch for more at TL Schaefer’s site.
About the Author
I’m a great believer in Fate. Yeah, with a capital “F”. And I write in those terms. Why? Probably because my beloved husband said he fell in love with me the first time he saw me. You might ask if it was a two-way gig… In a word, uh-uh. Not that he wasn’t fine to the extreme, but I wasn’t looking for forever…more of a fun vacation experience. Yeah, so now we’ve muddled our way through almost 30 years of marriage, and I have to admit to his superior intuition on that one!!
So, if you’re looking for an Alpha hero who just happens to “know” his life-mate when he sees them, don’t be overly surprised.
If you like your heroes in uniform (be they cops, firefighters, or military) and your heroines with a bit of quirk, then wing by my website www.tlschaefer.com and check out an excerpt or two to wet your whistle! Don't forget to check out my Facebook, and Twitter pages as well!
Read more at TL Schaefer’s site.