The Lost Soul

by Jen Talty

“For starters, she was pregnant, and they foreshadowed my being tortured.”

  “Do you have names?” Chad asked with wide eyes.

  “General Mallard and Riley Jacobs.” His heart fluttered as the names rolled off his tongue as if it were an everyday occurrence. He’d always known he’d been adopted, but he never questioned who his real parents were or why they’d given him up. They had their reasons, and who was he to judge? He’d had a pretty damn good life because they’d let him go.

  “Come again?” Brett blinked. “You can’t be serious. Her name was supposed to be Claire.”

  “She obviously changed it, or someone before her did,” Hunter said.

  “That explains why our search came to a screeching halt,” Savanah muttered, resting her hands on Chad’s shoulders as he slumped into a chair.

  “Mallard’s known all along and didn’t say one fucking word to any of us?” Chad asked, shaking his head. “I’ve known him since my days at the Naval Academy. He tried to recruit me then.”

  “I’ve been working with him for a year on this operation.” Hunter clenched his fists. “He knew what those men were going to do to me, and he let it happen.” He swallowed the bile that inched up his throat. “In the past, he stated he was doing this all to protect the Collective Order.”

  “I never thought anything weird about Mallard asking for me specifically to remote view your team in Korea.” Brett leaned against the wall. “I did question it, though.”

  “And what were you told?” Chad asked.

  Brett shrugged. “That he asked for the records of those psychics that Perception Project would recommend and that he chose me.”

  “Sounds like he might have gone looking for you.” Hunter stole a glance at Alexis. Not a single stress line etched her face. She looked as though she might be dreaming of something wonderful. The pull to be near her was stronger than when he’d first met her thirteen years ago.

  It was strange back then.

  Now it didn’t seem all that weird.

  But the rest of it freaked him out more than he wanted to admit to himself. His mother used to warn him that he couldn’t save the world, no matter how much he tried.

  Only, as part of the Collective Order, that would be exactly what was expected of him and his brothers.

  “What’s going on?” Alexis asked.

  Hunter raced to her side, sitting on the edge of the bed. “How does your head feel?”

  “I’ve got a killer headache, but that’s about it. Why?”

  Hunter kissed her cheek. Her skin sizzled against his lips, making his pulse kick into high gear. “I don’t want you to hurt another second because of me. You healed me years ago, and something tells me a few other times as well.”

  “Probably.” She brushed her hair from her face as he helped her to a sitting position. “Oh, good. The entire family but Willow. Did he tell you what we saw?”

  “He did,” her sisters said in unison.

  “So, what are we waiting for? Let’s go talk to Riley Jacobs.”

  Hunter smiled. She might be older and prettier, but her personality was intact. She had a bluntness that could only be described as a no-nonsense attitude with a dash of sweetness on top. “I think you should stay here.”

  “Yeah? Well, not happening. Where you go, I go.”

  “I wouldn’t argue with her,” Brett said, slapping him on the shoulder. “I think we should split up.”

  “I’ll go talk to Mallard,” Hunter said.

  “Not a good idea,” Brett interjected. “If anyone on that base sees you, they will be suspicious. They’ve all but written you off as dead.”

  “Not to mention they think you’re still in Germany.” Chad took Savanah by the hand and inched toward the door. “We’ll go talk to Mallard in person.”

  “Stay in touch,” Brett said. “I have to get back to work. I can use Perception Project’s resources to do my own little investigation into Mallard and Riley.”

  “Do we know where Riley is at the moment?” Alexis asked.

  “Not yet.” Hazel held her phone. “But Willow and I will get right on it. Before the two of you walk out of here, I want the doctors to examine you.”

  “I don’t think Alexis should—”

  Hazel held up her hand. “You’re not leaving my sister unattended.”

  “I’m a big girl and can take care of myself,” Alexis said.

  “Not the point.” Brett twisted the handle on the door. “We don’t know what might have happened to the two of you in the abyss or in the past. Those two things are unprecedented.”

  “If that’s the case, then I shouldn’t be watching out for her. One of you should. Or she should stay here and let the doctors run tests.” It wasn’t that Hunter didn’t want to spend time with Alexis, getting to know her, but now was not the time.

  “I’m not a guinea pig, and I’m going whether you like it or not.” Alexis jabbed him in the center of his chest.

  “This could be dangerous.” Hunter glanced toward Brett. “If anyone knows who Riley really is, then they could be coming after her as well. I’ll need a weapon.” Hunter turned his gaze on Alexis.

  Her face tightened as her lips drew into a tight line.

  “I can’t be worried about you if this goes upside down,” he said.

  His brothers coughed.

  Her sisters laughed.

  “She’s a good shot.” Savanah lifted her shirt and unclipped her weapon, setting it on the bed. “What you haven’t learned yet, is that we have our own private investigation firm. We’ve had our fair share of dangerous situations.”

  “Not like what—”

  “Like what?” Alexis glared. “Because I just risked my ass to save yours by chasing you into the abyss.” She picked up the gun, checking the chamber. “The only one of my sisters that is a better shot than I am, is Willow, and that’s just because she has an unhealthy obsession for every weapon known to man. She’s a walking arsenal.”

  “Maybe she should come with me while you rest.”

  “Oh boy,” Brett said, lifting his hands in the air. “I think this is our cue to leave.”

  After the room cleared, Hunter counted to ten. “Please. I’m begging you to stay behind. If I need you, I’ll find you.”

  “I’ve never been able to heal anyone as badly torn apart as you were and trust me, I’ve tried.” She swiped at her cheeks. “I couldn’t save my own parents, but I managed to save you.”

  Nothing like shoving his big fat foot into his big fat mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “When we got to my parents, I tried to heal them, and my father, for a moment, began to recover, but it was a false healing. It happens sometimes with the mortally wounded, or the chronically ill. Brett and the Perception Project have run tests, but so far, they’ve never been able to do what I just did with you.”

  “And we traveled through the abyss and into the past. So, what’s your point?”

  She tilted her head and stared at him with her big, brown eyes.

  He swallowed.

  “You don’t know if you’re really healed.”

  “So, what you’re saying is that if we separate, I could die?”

  “It’s possible.” She sat up a little taller with a sarcastically proud smile. “We shouldn’t take the risk.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  There had to be a way to make sure he didn’t die while she stayed behind in a safe environment and he ventured beyond these walls. “Tell me something. Over the years, have you ever thought you felt my presence?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

  “When I first met Mallard, he asked me what other psychics I had met along the way.”

  “And you told him about me and what happened right before you went into the Navy.”

  He nodded. “Periodically, he’d ask me to reach out to you. Find your essence and pull it toward me. He said it was to help me find hea
ling energy if needed. Or if I ever needed to contact someone on the psychic realm if anything were to happen to him. I thought it was simply an exercise.”

  “You can tap my abilities anytime you want?”

  “Basically, yes.”

  “I feel so violated,” she said with a hint of sarcasm.

  “I don’t blame you. But you see, I can call on your abilities from anywhere.” He closed his eyes and focused on the girl in the park staring at the sky. Her aura floated about like a big, puffy cloud.

  “Stop it.”

  He shut down the connection and blinked his eyes open. “We don’t have to be together.”

  “This doesn’t change anything.” She tugged at the IV. “Either you wait for the doctor to come take this thing out, or I rip it out.” Her scathing glare made him take a step back.

  Never in his entire career in the military had he ever tossed up the white flag. “Fine. But we do things my way.” A little voice in the back of his head told him he’d lose that battle too.

  “No. You heard me correctly. This affects me and my sisters as much as it does you and your brothers. We work together; it’s that simple.” Alexis cocked her head as if she dared him to continue the argument.

  “I have a sudden urge to say ‘yes, dear.’”

  2

  Alexis had always struggled in large groups of people. Crowds in general drained her because if someone hurt, she couldn’t help but give a little piece of her healing energy to whoever needed it. She did it willingly and without reservation. But it had been her choice. She never believed it had been taken from her, like Hunter suggested he could.

  As she walked through the halls of the exam rooms in the Perception Project, five spirits projected pain. When she first came into her abilities, healing had all occurred through touch. It wasn’t until a year after her sister, Hazel, had suffered from an unknown source of pain that Alexis realized she’d healed Brett remotely. But that had been channeled through her connection with her sister and consented to by Alexis.

  “I wish you would change your mind.” Hunter rested his hand on the small of her back. His aura fused with apprehension.

  “You can wish all you want,” she said.

  They turned the corner and stepped into a modern style lobby with plush white chairs and a statue of a white dog by the front door. Brett leaned against the reception desk holding a rucksack.

  “How are both of you feeling?” Brett asked.

  “Hard to believe that a week ago someone had jumper cables hooked up to my chest,” Hunter said with a trace of sarcasm.

  “I still have a bit of a headache, but otherwise, I’m good.” She glanced between the two men, searching for similarities. Brett and Chad looked more alike, but Hunter had Brett’s eyes and casual demeanor, where Chad was a bit more uptight.

  Brett handed Hunter a yellow folder. “This is all we have on Riley Jacobs. Seems she keeps a very low profile. Her last known address is in Baltimore, not far from the hospital. I find it curious that she’s never once made a public appearance regarding her book. The sales weren’t horrible on it.”

  “They weren’t stellar, either.” Alexis had remembered first reading the book when she’d been seventeen, about a year after it came out. Her parents had found it fascinating and thought she and her sisters would enjoy the concepts presented. That’s when she and Savanah began to unravel their roles in the future. Alexis welcomed the Collective Order into her life, only she never expected it to come in the form of a man she’d met once. “She also left out a lot of key information, like who the quad brothers were. Based on what we heard while traveling in the past, she knew the future.”

  “Or potential outcomes of the future,” Hunter added.

  Brett pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and flipped them through his fingers. “The future can be changed. We all know that. Whatever she might have kept out of the book I’m guessing was for our protection as well as hers. Either way, we need to find her. You can take my car to her place. Hazel is going to pick me up later; we’ll all touch base for dinner at the Raven house and regroup.”

  “Sounds good.” Hunter snagged the keys and rotated them though his fingers just like Brett had.

  He paused as Brett stared at him with an arched brow. “Family trait.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Alexis,” Brett said. “Remember what the doctor said. If you have any symptoms—”

  “You’re worse than my sister.” Alexis stepped toward the lobby doors, but Hunter curled his strong fingers around her biceps, tugging her to a halt.

  “What symptoms?” he asked with a cocked head.

  “She didn’t tell you?” Brett planted his hands on his hips, shaking his head. “Of course, she didn’t.” He shook his head “There has been one other healing that we know of where the victim should have been dead. The healer ended up coming down with an illness that no one could diagnosis.”

  “I take it the healer died?” Hunter asked, shifting his glare from his brother to her.

  Now she had two men giving her the evil stink-eye.

  “Not dead. Just lost her mind.” Alexis had known the risks the second Hunter sought her out when the torture had begun. She hadn’t realized it was him at first, but she knew without a doubt, he was one of the brothers and she’d do whatever it took to help him stay alive. “Now, we better get going.”

  “In one second.” Hunter stepped between her and the door. “What are the symptoms?”

  “Starts with typical aches and pains. Fever. Then graduates to delusions and finally coma,” she said matter-of-factly. No reason to dwell on what hadn’t happened and might not. “We’ve all done things in the last few weeks we hadn’t been able to do before, including crossing the abyss, which should have killed us both. So, no panicking, okay?”

  “As long as you promise to be honest with me.” Hunter took her by the arms. His hands ran up and down her bare skin, setting fire to her insides. When she’d been a teenager, he’d stirred things in her that she had no idea what they meant. All she knew was that when she closed her eyes at night, she fantasized about being his girlfriend. His wife.

  And then she had her first boyfriend, and Hunter had been shoved to the back of her mind.

  But she’d never forgotten.

  “I promise. Now let’s go.” She followed him to Brett’s Jeep, where Hunter did the gentlemanly thing by opening the vehicle door and helping her in. She dug into her purse and pulled up the address for Riley on her GPS. “Can we take the long way around the park?”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  She settled into the passenger seat, securing her buckle. The afternoon sun beat down on the windshield, warming her face. She stared out the window as she twirled strands of her dark hair through her fingers. Other psychics who had the ability to heal often found the talent to be a burden. But not Alexis. She savored her gift. The only thing that bothered her had been that she knew she couldn’t save the world. Things like terminal cancer just couldn’t be cured, no matter how hard she tried, and she’d attempted to do so on numerous occasions. That led her to medical school, where she hoped to mix modern medicine with psychic healing.

  “What has you so deep in thought?” Hunter rested his right hand over the steering wheel and leaned against the armrest.

  “Why did Mallard have you tap into my energy if it wasn’t to heal you?”

  “Like I told you, I thought it—”

  “Tell me what you know. What you believe. Not the bullshit that Mallard spoon-fed you.” Alexis could only be described as the quiet Raven sister. She never made a decision without thinking through all the pros and cons. About the only crazy thing she’d done in her life had been to track Hunter’s career.

  “What I know is that when Mallard first recruited me, it was originally for an undercover mission. When he asked me to connect with you, I made the assumption that it was either to keep a pulse on the psychic world, or if something horrible happened to
me, a way to keep myself alive.”

  “And you think that’s the motivation behind what Mallard had you do?” She’d never met the man, and just because he might be the quadruplets’ father didn’t mean she’d automatically trust him. He could be working for the other side.

  Whoever they were.

  “I did at the time, but now that we suspect he’s my birth father and Riley could be my mother, I believe Mallard has been playing us for years, making sure we all end up together and remain safe.”

  She hugged herself as Hunter navigated the city streets of Baltimore. He slowed as the traffic thickened. A man stood in front of a building holding a spray paint can. He shook it vigorously before taking a couple of steps and unleashing a blue stream across the bricks.

  “I can’t believe someone is going to change that graffiti. I love the image. Totally represents the history of the city.” When she’d been a little girl, her father would walk her through the streets, and they’d discussed the art on all the buildings. “That’s weird. The top part of the building has been painted over already.”

  A younger man, with his hands shoved in his pockets, limped past. He glanced over his shoulder, showing off the same profile as the man sitting next to her.

  “That’s you.” She pointed with a shaky finger. “Stop the car.”

  “What?” Hunter glanced in her direction with a scrunched nose.

  “Just pull over.” Excitement simmered in her chest. “That’s the outfit you had on the day we met.”

  “Oh, shit. I don’t think this is good.” Hunter stopped the car about fifty feet from his younger self and parallel parked.

  “Am I having a past vision?” She stepped from the vehicle and glanced up and down the road. Subtle differences from the past and the present emerged, especially the graffiti, which she realized wasn’t being redone, it was the original which hadn’t been finished yet. She remembered it had been completed the summer after she’d crossed paths with Hunter.

  “We both are, only we’re in it. Like we were when we traveled through the abyss.”

  “Is it like this for you all the time?”

  He took her by the hand and led her to the sidewalk, where they fell in line behind the young Hunter. “It’s generally more like watching a movie.”