It wasn’t going to be easy and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
He was aware of that.
He didn’t entirely believe her, either.
That would make this easier, in some ways.
Opening the door, she met his eyes and then looked at Taige, standing by the door.
Cullen waited near the steps with Robyn.
“I’ll call with updates,” Taige told him.
He just gave a short nod.
Robyn, her hands linked at her waist, looked at them, confused. “Do—” she licked her lips and cleared her throat, “—you think you have information then? On DeeDee?”
Taige gave her a professional smile. “Following up leads, that’s all, Ms. Bronwyn.” She was good at handling potentially tricky questions. She’d been doing it for years.
A few minutes later, they were out of the house.
“We need a bigger vehicle,” Taige said, scowling at the sleek little bullet of a car that belonged to her husband and her. It was a Mercedes. Jay had recognized that much. Part of her wasn’t pleased with the idea of a bigger vehicle. She wanted to ask why, but she knew better.
Linc didn’t bat a lash, just headed to the right and circled around the sprawling manor of a house.
They arrived at what she assumed was a garage and he hit the lights. There were four cars, one a cute little VW Bug, and she watched as he passed by it, touched it with his hand. The gesture left an ache in her heart. Then he moved straight to a big, black Ford Explorer. “Big enough?” he asked, looking over at Taige.
“Perfect.”
They all climbed in and, without another word, drove off into the bright morning sunlight.
It was hot out, the sun blistering in the sky.
But Jay was cold, freezing right down to her bones.
Taige spoke little, in simple monotones as she gave directions.
It was his town, but she was calling the shots here.
Jay had worked with bloodhounds before. She knew how they worked.
Closing her eyes, she wondered how long this would take.
Her nerves were frayed already.
Relax. Breathe. Relax…
Under normal circumstances, even on a run-of-the-mill job, she could calm her mind simply through will alone. She had iron control over her emotions when she needed it.
This wasn’t the ideal time, it wasn’t the ideal day.
Everything was different on this job.
Never get personally invested, she’d been told.
By her boss, Oz.
By various people both from the company where she worked now and the Bureau. Getting personally invested was a recipe for disaster and there had never once been a time when it was an issue.
Not until now.
And now was a time when it was crucial to remain distant.
Since she couldn’t rein her emotions in the normal way, she resorted to meditation.
A cool, blue light, the sound of rushing water, all around her. She let it surround her, sank into it. It was sweet, a welcome relief against her frazzled nerves.
Peace.
There was nothing but peace.
There was—
“Son of a bitch!”
Only years behind the wheel, dealing with drivers far more dangerous than that fool, kept him from plowing into the dark red Jaguar that had pulled out in front of him. Even though he no longer carried a badge, he automatically cataloged everything he could about the car, the make, the model—and the tall, older blonde who’d just climbed out of it.
He reached for his weapon.
Taige, riding shotgun, reached over, laid a hand on his wrist. “Don’t. We know her.”
“I don’t.”
Jay sighed. Just the sound was enough to send a shiver down his spine and he damned himself. Damned her. He was still pissed, still angry. He believed her—he knew when he was being lied to, but it didn’t matter. His daughter was there. Lost, and it was time to bring her home, grieve, let her go—his chest knotted and he refused to think about what Jay had said. He couldn’t think about it.
If she was alive—
“She’s my boss,” Jay said.
The door behind him opened.
He shoved his open as well, went to grab Jay but she evaded him, moving like water out of his grasp. He swore, striding to catch up with her as she met the blonde woman in the middle of the road.
It was early and he lived in a rather out-of-the-way area but there were still cars coming.
He glared at Ed Zimmer as he laid on the horn. Zimmer caught sight of him, gulped, and then darted around the vehicles, his eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead of him.
“Oz,” Jay said.
Oz—
The blonde inclined her head.
She was a striking woman. In her fifties, Linc thought, if he was guessing right, and he usually did. Pale, almost ice-blue eyes, and skin that was porcelain. She was handsome rather than beautiful, her features almost square, unsoftened by even a bit of makeup. And her gaze…it was unsettling.
She looked at him with the most unflinching gaze he’d ever seen.
Goose bumps broke out over his skin and he had the weirdest urge to back up a few steps.
He’d seen that look before. It was the look of a—
She slid him a cool glance. Then she lifted her chin and smiled before looking at Jay. “You’re on the trail.”
“Well. Not me exactly.” She glanced back at the truck. Taige was already climbing out. “She is.”
Oz didn’t look away from Jay’s face. “You need to go back. Taige knows where to go—I need a few hours. Then you can find me.”
Linc tensed, ready to lunge for the blonde. “Go back?” he bit off.
Jay stepped between them, a hand on his arm. “Oz—”
She swept Linc a cool look. Dismissive. “I understand where you’re coming from, Mr. Dawson. But this is outside your area of expertise.”
“The fuck you understand. My daughter is missing. You got any idea what that is like?”
“I have a daughter, so yes. I can very well imagine.” Oz inclined her head. Then she slid a look at Jay, at Taige. “But trust me. This is far more complicated than you can understand, and trust me on this. If you insist on coming—and I don’t have the time to fight you—if you insist on coming, you’re going to see things you don’t want to see, learn things you can’t unlearn. You ready for that?”
“My daughter’s been missing for two fucking months. If it’s going to help me bring her home—” His voice broke and he looked away. When he thought he could speak again, he looked back at her. “I just want to bring her home.”
Troubled, she stared at him. Then she nodded slowly. “You will. But be prepared to pay a high price, Mr. Dawson. A very high one.”
Chapter Nine
They’d left the brilliant light of day behind.
It felt like they’d even left behind simple things like oxygen and humanity.
Jay couldn’t breathe.
Fear seemed to squeeze what little air she had left in her lungs right out of her body and her heartbeat hammered away somewhere in the vicinity of her throat. It almost made her feel sick as they plowed along through the trees, Oz directing Linc in a cool, emotionless voice. She seemed to know exactly where she was going, but every now and then, she’d falter. When she did, she would pause, look back at Taige and wait.
Taige would point and then they’d move along.
She’s acting weird, Jay thought, focusing her thoughts and staring at Taige, hoping only Taige would pick up on them, but having no guarantee. Oz had a strong but erratic gift.
There was no change in her expression, not even a twitch of her lashes.
But that didn’t mean anything.
Oz revealed emotion when and if she wanted, if she was in the mood. She was mercurial at times.
Right now, she was shut down and locked up tight.
That bothered Jay more than she wanted to acknowledge
.
“She’s acting weirder than you probably realize,” Taige said, her mental voice tight, almost strange. “She keeps trying to shut me down.”
Jay closed her eyes.
Shut Taige down—
“I mean exactly what you think I mean.”
Aw, fuck.
Turning her head to look out the window, Jay began the tedious process of altering her shields. She had to keep the basic shields up. She’d learned that brutal bitch of a lesson last night, but there were layers to shields. She could have shields that allowed her to feel shit she didn’t like to feel, but there were things she had to feel so she could do her job. There were shields that allowed her to pick up on the subtle nuances as she handled objects and keyed in on a missing child, a kidnapped woman.
And there were shields that allowed her to skim, so to speak, surface emotions.
She kept most of her shields solid and in place.
But she shifted the outermost shields, the ones that normally kept her from picking up on all those random vibes—the listless, almost lost sadness a woman felt when her husband walked out the door without saying good-bye, the frustration a man experienced when he wanted to fix things, make everything broken better, but just didn’t know how, the hopelessness a young girl felt when she walked back home after school, knowing she’d be going back to a cold and broken home, knowing that nothing would ever get better, that nothing would change—until it did, but not the way she hoped.
Solid shields kept her from picking up those random vibes, just as solid shields kept her from picking up private things—the way a woman felt when she saw an attractive guy and felt that thrill of lust, or the way a guy felt when he saw a woman bending as she loaded groceries into the trunk.
Those shields, something she’d instinctively developed months before she’d walked in and found her mother dead of an overdose, had kept her sane.
Now, her gut told her she needed to lower them.
All she picked up was…resignation.
A cold shiver of dread drifted down her spine and she fought the urge to lean forward, grab Oz’s arm and shout at her.
Tell me! What have you seen?
Because Oz did see things.
Bits and pieces of things, and sometimes they didn’t make sense. Sometimes they were weird things, like lost wedding rings.
Other times, they were miraculous—like the location of a girl who’d been kidnapped more than thirty years earlier. Then there were the harder ones; victims who were already past help and all Oz’s people could do was bring them home so the family could say good-bye.
The words Oz had spoken to Linc came back to haunt Jay and she lifted her hands, dug the heels of her palms against her eyes.
No…
She didn’t want to be here for this. It was a cowardly thing.
She knew it, but she couldn’t help it. Some part of her wished she hadn’t ever come. If she hadn’t come, maybe Oz wouldn’t have seen what she’d seen. Maybe—
“Turn left,” Taige said, abruptly, her voice tight and strained.
And she rested a hand on Jay’s back, rubbed soothingly as she whispered mentally, “This was meant to happen, kid. Whatever is happening, it’s because it had to happen.”
Jay forced herself to sit up, looking around as the trees closed around them. They’d been on a heavily forested, narrow dirt road and Linc was forced to bring the Explorer to a stop. Taige squeezed her shoulder and then let go.
“Do you know what’s coming?” Jay asked, unable to keep the question trapped inside.
Taige paused, for just a second. Then she shook her head. As though they hadn’t been carrying on a silent conversation, Taige looked at the others up front. “We walk from here. It shouldn’t be far.”
“What are we looking for?” Linc asked, his voice hoarse, harsh.
“We’ll know it when we see it,” Oz said, her voice eerie. Almost…haunted.
We’ll know it when we see it…
Linc stopped in the middle of the narrow footpath.
Behind him, the trees were a tangle, vines and roots ready to trip the unwary. Foliage was a curtain that had obscured everything until they had rounded a bend.
Now this.
A few years ago, a tornado had hit a neighboring county and left a path of devastation in its wake. One town had been all but wiped off the map, leaving nothing but timber, rubble, twisted bits of metal and destroyed cars as a sign of its presence. What lay before him reminded him of that, only the damage was focused.
It covered roughly a fifty-foot area, circular.
In the dead center of that circle was a squared-off opening into the earth.
Dimly, Linc recognized it.
Some part of his brain even realized what that pit had probably been. A cellar at one point. Maybe there had been a house here. He had no idea.
He opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t force the words out.
They just wouldn’t come.
He cleared his throat and after two attempts, he finally managed to speak.
“What…” He closed his eyes and then tried again. “What is this?”
The thrashing of sound behind them had him whirling around, drawing the weapon he’d strapped on out of instinct.
When he recognized the face, he lifted it. It didn’t even faze him when he saw Chief Stephen Mays lift his own weapon in response. His son Blayne was with him, and the kid’s eyes wheeled around in his head, darting past the knot of people in the path to look at the hole in the earth.
“You.” Mays smiled, a twist of his lips. “You are trespassing, son.” That smile on his face took on a devious look as he shifted his attention to the women, all apparently unarmed. “All of you are trespassing. All armed. I’m defending my son, myself. You’re on my land.”
The air around him had been hot, muggy. Now, though, Linc felt icy, cold sweat dripping down his spine. He fought the urge to put his body in front of Jay’s. Nobody had drawn a weapon, so as far as Mays knew, they were unarmed, but Linc knew where this was going.
Jay had a weapon. He’d seen her put it on. A neat little baby Glock she’d settled in a holster at the small of her back. The belt she wore just looked like a studded leather belt, though, and she couldn’t draw without giving herself away, and the look in Mays’s eyes was one that whispered of the need for blood.
“They’re unarmed,” Linc said, his voice low, harsh.
Mays laughed. “The fuck if I care. That’s not the story I’ll tell when I report their deaths. You are on my property. Maybe some uppity-ass Feds will come sniffing around, but in the end, it will go down like this—you have made too many public threats against me, against my boy and you’ve got a gun pointed at us.” He jutted his chin at his son. “My boy will vouch for that. He’s scared to death. I’m protecting myself, my kid. You never should have come here, Dawson. Nobody will fight me on it. And you know it.”
He believed that, Linc realized. Dawson really did believe the shit he spouted. Stupidity? Arrogance? Nobody in the town would fight him, but an FBI agent, Jay, whoever the hell her boss was…that changed things.
But it wouldn’t matter if they were all dead.
Mays shifted his stance, smiling a little. “It’s too bad you had to bring the women into it, son.”
Linc tensed. If he went down, he didn’t give a fuck. His daughter was gone. He understood now. Oz had brought them here, to a place of death and destruction. He could die, knowing he’d given Jay a chance—and she’d take that chance, make the best of it. If he knew anything about her… Fuck, he wished he’d told her how he felt.
“You don’t really think we’re unarmed, do you?”
Fuck. He resisted the urge to snarl at Taige. Her voice low, amused. Full of dismissive mockery and it drew Mays’s attention away from Linc and directly to her.
Linc held his breath. But now Mays had the gun pointed at Taige.
In the next second, Linc felt like reality shifted sideways. Things ha
ppened that simply did not happen in his world.
Taige took a step forward.
Mays started to squeeze the trigger.
And the gun was ripped out of his hand.
Taige shot her hand out and caught it as it flew through the air.
She looked down at it, sighed.
Blayne started to babble, his eyes widening as the tall woman started toward him.
He went to jolt away and she shot out a hand, catching him.
Even though he stood taller than her by a good four inches and probably outweighed her by thirty pounds, when she touched him, he went still. “Daddy…Daddy!” He whimpered, going to his knees. “She’s…she’s one of them!”
Through it all, Mays was rigid, still. Like he couldn’t move at all.
Linc stared at him, hard. His face was going an odd shade of purple, and his throat appeared to be squeezed in and he made strange choking sounds, as though he couldn’t breathe.
“Most impressive,” Jay said, her voice a little stunned as she looked at Taige.
“The Force runs strong in my family.” Taige gave them a sour look over her shoulder before she looked back at the two in front of her. “Oz? Any idea what to do from here?”
“Yes.” Her face was remote as she turned and stared at the center of the clearing, trees smashed, uprooted, tossed aside like a careless giant had come through. “It’s time that we see what’s in the hole over there.”
She blinked, the fringe of her lashes falling over her eyes, and then she looked back at Mays and his son. “Agent Morgan, you probably need to let that piece of shit breathe before you kill him.”
“Do pieces of shit really require oxygen?” Taige asked. But she sighed.
Mays sucked in a breath of air and dropped to the forest floor. On his hands and knees, he stared up at them, his eyes ugly pools of hate. “Yeah, bitches. Go look in that pit over there. I dare you.”
Jay tensed.
She’d been aware of something, crawling and unearthly, prickling against her skin for the past few minutes. It had drawn her and repelled her all at once and the second they’d rounded that little twist in the path and came upon this circle of chaos, she’d wanted to back away with all haste.
The Innocent: FBI Psychics, Book 2 Page 10