by Gayle Wilson
He fought the urge to put his lips against the place his thumb had brushed. That would happen eventually. He knew it as surely as if he were the one with the gift.
“That’s what I felt tonight.”
Her whispered words were so far from what he’d been thinking that it took him a moment to make sense of them.
“Evil?”
“The unspeakable kind that thinks nothing of anyone else’s suffering. The kind that’s unable to imagine how suffering feels. And wouldn’t care if it could. It was so strong it terrified me.”
“At dinner?”
She nodded.
“That’s what you felt from the tables behind us?”
Another nod, her eyes still on his.
“The man who called me over—”
“Carl Steiner.” She had supplied the name before he could even complete the question and then she went on to answer it. “He’s…ruthless,” she said, seeming to choose her words with care. “And he knows a lot about me. More than he wanted you to know, but…” She shook her head. “What I felt tonight didn’t come from him. His interest is like a scientist with a new bug to dissect. The other—”
“Tell me,” he demanded when she hesitated.
“The other was that same madness. In this case a very organized, focused madness. Far more ruthless than Steiner ever thought about being.”
“Could it have been someone who was with him?”
Those people should be easy enough to check. He remembered a couple of the names, and with Griff’s help—
“I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. I didn’t touch any of them. I didn’t look into their eyes. Besides…”
“Besides what?”
“If what I felt came from someone who was with Steiner, then we’re left with the same unanswered question.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If that feeling originated from someone who was standing next to us, then why in the world would I have gone up those stairs to the balcony?”
Chapter Twelve
She wasn’t sure why Ethan had come to her door. Maybe simply to ask her again the questions for which she still had no answers. Why she’d gone upstairs. And, more important, why she’d gone out on the ledge.
Without those two pieces of the puzzle…
“Maybe in the morning things will seem clearer,” he’d said before he left. “Maybe while you sleep, your subconscious will remember something that can explain what happened tonight.”
Since the only other occasion on which she had lost time was the first night she’d seen the image of the pond, she had no experience to guide her. What she felt right now was that the black void that hid both her actions and her motives was impenetrable.
“Maybe,” she’d said noncommittally.
There was another of those awkward pauses before he had nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow then. Sleep well.”
She wouldn’t. She knew that as surely as she knew that she had nothing more to fear tonight. Of course, she hadn’t felt any sense of anxiety about the function they’d attended, either.
All she had felt as she’d dressed was anticipation. Not about what would happen at the dinner, but about what she knew would happen when they returned to the hotel. To this suite.
And she’d been wrong.
The lack of foreknowledge since she’d been in Washington had never happened before. It confused her, making her doubt something that had once been as natural as breathing.
As a child she had believed that everyone knew the things she knew. When it would rain. What someone was really thinking, despite what they said. The days her mother was going to be too sick to get up in the morning, leaving her to her own devices. Not that she ever minded that.
There was a whole world to explore. A world that consisted not only of the sights and sounds everyone saw, but her world, rich with the color and texture of thoughts and emotions.
Some of those had been dark, a little frightening to the child she had been then. It had taken her a long time to encounter real evil, however, which was far more rare than most people believed.
And when she had finally learned the taste and smell and feel of it, she had chosen to protect herself in the only way she knew how. She had chosen to deny the ability she had been born with.
And now, when, for the first time in her life, she needed the gifts with which to protect herself, they were no longer hers to command.
A punishment for having denied them? Or the natural result of attempting to stifle the sensations that had once bombarded her with images and emotions, like some psychic Fourth of July fireworks display?
Whatever its cause, the effect seemed certain. What she anticipated was no longer a reliable guide to what would happen. And she could encounter people like the man at the hospital and not be aware of the danger he represented until it was too late.
Which brought into question her ability to sense other people’s motivations. She had told Ethan that the evil she’d been aware of tonight had not emanated from Carl Steiner. What if she were wrong about that? Just as she had been wrong about what she had thought would occur between her and Ethan.
If she were wrong about Steiner, what would be the consequences? Consequences that would affect not only her, but the man who had just crossed the suite to return to his bedroom.
She glanced up and realized that without any clear idea of how she had gotten there, she was standing in front of one of the windows overlooking the city. Although the penthouse suite was too high to allow her to hear the traffic, the scene below was not so different from what she had glimpsed during those terrifying minutes she’d spent edging along that ledge. And she had no more idea how she had reached this point than she had about how she had gotten out there tonight.
Was she losing her mind? Had the thing she had always feared more than any other finally happened? Had evil, which had been her adversary since she’d accepted that what she could do was almost unique, finally won?
Determinedly pushing that thought out of her head, she reached up to pull the heavy draperies across the expanse of glass. For an instant before the curtain hid it from sight, the sheen of its surface had been as cold and dark and opaque as the pond in her vision.
ETHAN WAS STANDING in front of the windows in his bedroom, looking unseeingly out on the capital’s landmarks when his cell rang. He stepped over to the bed where he’d tossed the phone while he’d undressed and picked it up on the second ring.
“Snow.”
“I’ve arranged a meeting here in my office for you and Ms. McAllister in the morning at ten,” Griff Cabot said. “I assume she has nothing planned for tomorrow.”
“Like a little casual shopping maybe? If she does, she didn’t mention it to me.”
He knew he shouldn’t be offended at the tone of Cabot’s question. Griff hadn’t been out on that ledge tonight when he’d almost let her fall. What had happened to Raine hadn’t been the result of Cabot’s inattention.
“How’s she doing?” Reacting to his sarcasm perhaps, Cabot managed to eject both compassion and concern into the inquiry.
“Probably as well as anyone could be who’s been through that kind of frightening experience. Especially someone who has no explanation for it.”
“That isn’t your problem.”
“I know. My problem is making sure nothing like that happens again. At least, not until we can determine what she knows.”
He could almost feel Cabot evaluating the tone of that last sentence. How well he had was evidenced by his next comment.
“Don’t get emotionally involved, Ethan. That’s advice from a friend, by the way.”
“As opposed to being from the head of the Phoenix and my boss?”
“I’ve never had much success ordering my operatives to avoid emotional entanglements. I have had my share of trouble in dealing with them.”
“She told me why she stopped working child abductions.”
Maybe he wanted Cabot to ask. Or maybe he had ju
st wanted him to know some of what he was finally beginning to understand about Raine McAllister—the burden and the curse her so-called gift had always been.
And that presumes you believe she has one.
He had, he realized. At least during those few moments when she had talked about encountering the real evil in the world. He had seen enough of it to know at a level far deeper than the intellectual exactly what she had meant.
“I think we all can appreciate what working those kinds of cases—”
“We may think we appreciate it. She experienced it, Griff. All of it. All the things that were done to those children. She felt what they felt. We can’t possibly appreciate that.”
The accusatory words were out before he remembered that Griff’s baby daughter had been kidnapped. Cabot had a better understanding of the terror that kind of situation generated than most people. Certainly better than he had.
“I’m sorry,” Ethan said quickly. “I’d forgotten about your daughter. I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant,” Cabot said brusquely. “I take it that you believed her. You think she’s an empath.”
Ethan had never heard that word used outside the realm of science fiction. If Raine could really do what she had claimed tonight, however…
“I don’t know what she is. All I know is that when she told me about the children… I knew she was telling the truth.”
“As she understands it,” Cabot said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I’d be interested in testing Ms. McAllister. If she really believes she’s able to do the things that she’s been credited with, she shouldn’t object to undergoing some kind of objective evaluation.”
“Maybe we could just point to a place on the map and ask her to describe what’s there.”
His anger over what Raine had endured as a child must have come through loud and clear. Maybe she wouldn’t object to an evaluation, but Ethan knew he would. It was just another form of exploitation. As was what they were doing to her.
“We went to her,” he reminded Cabot. “She made no claims about her ability. Actually, she said all along she couldn’t help us.”
“She already has.”
“How?”
“What happened tonight proves we’re on the right track. And so was Monty.”
On the right track…
The phrase keyed a memory. Something he hadn’t told Cabot. The thing that had let him know he was on the right track in his search tonight. Maybe it wasn’t significant, but he’d been trained that every detail was important in a debriefing, and this was something he’d forgotten to mention.
“That reminds me. There was something I didn’t tell you about the dinner. It had slipped my mind until I was undressing tonight.”
“Yes?” Cabot sounded slightly impatient.
“It’s probably not important, but it’s how I knew Raine really had gone up to the balcony, despite the fact that Steiner suggested otherwise.”
“I thought you saw her.”
“I wasn’t sure. Not sure enough to search the entire balcony. Not until I found one of the earrings she’d been wearing.”
The silence on the other end of the line suddenly seemed thick. Pregnant with anticipation.
“An earring?” Griff said finally.
“She said they had belonged to her great-grandmother. I’m not sure how to explain it, given the darkness at the top of the stairs, but somehow the stones caught what light was there. As soon as I noticed the earring, I knew she was on the balcony. I kept looking until I found the open window and the cloak I told you about. And then…I found her.”
If he hadn’t, who knew how long she could have stayed out there without falling. Or maybe she’d been programmed to do that, too. To close her eyes and lean forward—
“Her great-grandmother’s earring.”
Griff’s inflection had not been questioning, but Ethan could think of no other way to interpret the phrase.
“That’s right.”
“Interesting.”
Once more he was unable to read Cabot’s tone. There seemed to be something going on under the surface of their conversation. Something he didn’t understand. It was a feeling he’d experienced once too often tonight.
“As I said, it was nothing important, but I wanted to—” Suddenly it hit him why Griff might be interested in jewelry Raine claimed had belonged to her great-grandmother. “She didn’t say which side of the family.”
“No, I’m sure she wouldn’t,” Cabot said, his voice tinged with what sounded like amusement. “I’ll see you both here at ten. That, too, should be interesting.”
Before Ethan could think of a suitable response, the connection was broken. He thought about calling Griff back, but instead he pitched the phone onto the bed again and returned to the windows.
He hadn’t even thought to ask who the meeting tomor row was with. Someone Griff believed would provide a test of Raine’s abilities or someone from her past. In either case, someone Ethan knew he would want to protect her from.
Griff was right. It would be far better if he weren’t emotionally involved with Raine McAllister. And far too late to do anything about the fact that he was.
Chapter Thirteen
Raine told herself she shouldn’t be surprised by the second knock on her door. It was only vindication. Despite the strength of her earlier feeling that something was going to happen between them tonight, however, she hadn’t expected Ethan to return.
She picked up the robe she’d thrown on the foot of her bed, belting it around her waist as she hurried toward the door. Before she allowed her fingers to close around the knob, she took a breath, trying to quell her anticipation.
When she opened the door and saw him standing outside, a surge of sweet, hot heat rushed through her lower body. He had discarded the jacket of his tux as well as the tie. His pleated evening shirt was open at the throat, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of dark hair against bronzed skin.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, pushing the words out past the sudden dryness in her throat.
“Cabot called. He’s arranged a meeting for us at ten in the morning. I thought I should warn you.”
The word seemed ominous, but maybe she was reading more into them than he’d intended. It was already late. Maybe he simply wanted to tell her to leave a wake-up call.
“A meeting with whom?”
“I honestly didn’t think to ask.”
She could sense his embarrassment over the admission. “That’s all right. I don’t suppose it makes any difference.”
“Probably someone connected to the remote viewing experiments. Griff’s been trying to gather information about them, but the agency’s stonewalling him about the records. Even without them, his sources are very good.”
“Thanks for the warning. What time should I be ready?”
“Since it’s a Sunday, it shouldn’t take more than half an hour to get to the office.”
“Nine-fifteen?”
He nodded. Neither of them moved for a few seconds, their eyes holding.
“Well, good night,” he said finally, beginning to turn away from the door.
“Ethan?”
The sound of his name stopped the motion he’d begun. And what she saw in his eyes as he looked back was the same emotion that was in her heart.
“Don’t go.”
He studied her face a moment before he said, “There’s nothing for you to be afraid of. Not here.”
“I’m not afraid.”
A heartbeat of silence.
“Then… What’s wrong?”
She smiled at him, a little bemused at how difficult this was proving to be. “I must have forgotten how this is done. Or is it that you’re just not interested?”
His head tilted as if he were questioning what she’d just said. “If you mean…” He hesitated, still holding her eyes. “I don’t think this is a good idea. Not with what’s been going on.”
/> It was obviously rejection, no matter how it was phrased. Her stomach tightened with disappointment. Given the clar ity of what she had felt about where their relationship was headed, she didn’t allow herself to be deterred by it. There had to still be some advantages to the gift she’d been given.
“I thought you were supposed to keep an eye on me,” she said. “I thought that was part of your job.”
Just doing my job, ma’am.
“Not a literal eye.” His voice had softened.
“And if I asked you to do that? To keep a ‘literal eye’ on me?”
“If you’re afraid that what happened at the hotel—”
“That isn’t what’s going to happen tonight.”
Another beat of silence. “You sound very sure of that.”
She didn’t reiterate her certainty. Her smile, however, undoubtedly revealed it.
Seeing it, he asked, “What happened to the business about everyone having free choice?”
“You have free choice.”
“Like hell.”
The words were whispered as he leaned forward to claim her lips. His head had tilted so that their mouths were aligned at the perfect angle. His fastened over hers with an expertise that was exactly what she had expected. There was no awkwardness. No hesitation.
His tongue demanded entrance. And since she had no desire to deny him anything, her mouth opened willingly to receive it.
As he kissed her, his fingers found the knot of the belt that held her robe together. They made quick work of it, allowing the two sides to fall apart. She was aware of the small intake of breath that signaled his discovery that she’d been wearing nothing beneath it.
His hands settled over the indention of her waist, their palms, slightly callused, sensually abrasive against her skin. Suddenly, as if he couldn’t wait, he pulled her to him, crushing her breasts against the muscled wall of his chest. She could feel the strength of his erection against her stomach.
His hands slipped lower still, curving over the roundness of her hips. He lifted until his arousal was pressed against her lower body. Far more demanding than his lips or his tongue had been.
She put her arms around his neck, standing on tiptoe to continue the deepening kiss. As she did, there was an unwanted flashback to the instant on the ledge when her foot had turned and she had literally been hanging on to him for dear life. In response to the memory her body stiffened.