There was something deadly here.
The instinct to leave might have come from that remnant instinct, some racial memory all humans had when they lay awake at night, certain that a predator lurked in the darkness.
There was a predator here.
Something that could kill.
The stink of death lingered in the air and she revised that.
Whatever was here had killed, and recently. It was a sickly, sour smell and she knew if she dared to look around, she’d find a body.
Please not DeeDee, please not DeeDee…
The hair on the back of her neck went on end and she saw Linc tense his muscles and right before he lunged, she moved, pushing herself between Linc and that circle of death. Somehow, she knew.
He couldn’t cross that line.
He couldn’t.
“Out of my way,” he growled, his hands coming up to grip her arms, peeling her away.
She set her feet, ready to take him down. She wouldn’t stop him for long. This was sheer desperation—
Then he wasn’t pulling her away any more. He was straining, jerking his hands. Although nothing touched him.
Taige’s face was tight, lines of strain fanning out from her eyes and mouth.
“How many can you hold?” Oz asked.
“Nobody else.” Taige looked at Jay. “Please tell me I won’t have to deal with you.”
Jay turned away. “I feel what’s over there. I’d just as soon live through…whatever this is.”
“Let me go,” Linc snarled, the muscles in his arms bulging as he strained at Taige’s unseen hold.
Mays laughed. It was a laugh of pure evil, something that made Jay’s skin crawl, and if her ears had started to bleed, it wouldn’t have surprised her.
She wanted to scrub the very sound of it from her soul, from her memory, but things couldn’t be unheard, couldn’t be unseen. Thanks, Principal Wood, she thought sourly. Buffy-lore had kept her sane once upon a time, and maybe the sarcastic quips would hold her steady for a few more minutes as she edged closer to that circle and tried to home in on the source of wrong.
Not wrong, some part of her brain whispered.
Broken.
That made her shiver and she wrapped her arms around her middle.
Broken. Full of fear.
“Go on, girl,” Mays whispered. “Go out there and see.”
“If you don’t shut up,” Taige said, her voice lethal, “I’m going to march you out there like a marionette and you can see.”
Jay didn’t turn to see his reaction. It was enough that he was silent.
A hand touched her arm.
She looked over, met Oz’s gaze.
Oz, her silvery eyes unreadable, slid her arm around Jay’s shoulders. “You’ll have to let me go in first.” The words were strangely stilted. “You’ll know once the threat has passed.”
Studying her boss’s face, Jay narrowed her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Probably a lot of things.” Oz let it go with that oblique answer, shrugging. Then she closed her eyes, breathing in slow, deep breaths. Tension sloughed away.
Reluctant to disturb her when she understood how important it was to stay focused, Jay backed away. She came within a few inches of Linc, saw him still struggling against Taige’s control. In a low voice, she said, “Stop fighting. It won’t do any good and it’s going to exhaust Taige. We might need her yet.”
“Don’t fucking tell me—” Abruptly, he went silent.
Jay knew why.
Oz had crossed over that barrier, the one that marked the regular wooded area from the devastated land.
That one step had a wail rising in the air.
It brought to mind the cries of the dead. The screams of the damned. Her flesh crawled and she tensed as a piece of wood ripped up from the ground and came flying toward Oz. Oz hit the ground in a crouch, just a split second before it would have hit her. It went harmlessly into the trees a few yards to the right of where they’d been standing.
“What the fuck…” Linc whispered.
“I need to be on watch in case any of that comes our way,” Taige said, her voice stark. “Big guy, if I let you go, will you behave?”
Linc jerked his head around, staring at Taige.
Another piece of fallen debris, a branch as big around as Jay’s thigh, came flying through the air. “Jay!” Oz shouted.
Jay hit the ground. It wasn’t needed. Taige cried out and the branch stopped the second it crossed over that odd, eerie line.
“Will you fucking stay here?” she snarled, whipping her head around and glaring at Linc with pale, snapping eyes.
He stared at the branch, looked at Jay.
Then he closed his eyes and nodded.
Something here was dead.
He could smell it.
The scent of death was unique and unlike anything else.
A low, ugly voice split the air as Oz moved closer.
“Go. Away.” The snarl was barely human and he didn’t know what to think as Oz moved closer still. Maybe going away was the best thing.
She was only a foot away now and the piece of debris to go flying was the largest piece yet—it looked to be the top half of a tree trunk.
But it shook and swayed in the air and didn’t move more than five feet.
Oz stopped at the lip of the pit, staring down inside with a dispassionate look on her face.
“You’re tired, aren’t you?”
Whoever was down there just screamed.
The sound of it broke Linc’s heart. It fanned the flames of fury that rode inside him and he turned to look at Mays, at Blayne. Blayne’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he jerked his gaze aside. All the while, they’d been unable to move, but they’d watched the whole ordeal with rapt fascination, like they couldn’t tear their eyes away.
Freed now from the weird bonds that freaky-ass woman Taige had wrapped around him, he moved and crouched in front of Mays and Blayne, watching as Blayne went white, the blood draining out of his face bit by bit. “You need to know,” he said quietly. “Whatever happens here today, you two are going to pay for it. You’re going to suffer.”
Mays curled his lip. “Like you can do shit. You think they’re going to believe jack shit when this goes in front of a court of law? They’ll laugh at you. They’ll think we’re all crazy and nobody will believe shit.” He looked away for a second and then abruptly looked back and spat at him. “That’s what I think about you and your threats, son.”
Linc wiped the saliva away. Then, without blinking an eye, he shot out his hand, hauled Mays forward. Whatever Taige was doing to the evil piece of work, it wasn’t stopping Linc from touching Mays. “I’m not talking about a court of law,” he said, his voice low, raw. “I’m not a sheriff anymore and the law doesn’t tie my hands. You ran me out and maybe you did me a favor. The things I’m going to do to you are things you can’t even imagine.”
For the first time, he saw a flicker of fear in the man’s eyes.
It didn’t feel good, though.
He was just too fucking tired. Too heartsick.
He rose and turned, saw that Oz was kneeling by the lip of the pit. She’d swung a pack off her pack, he saw, and he watched as she unzipped it, then stared inside, a despondent look on her face.
She lifted her head, stared across the clearing at Taige.
Taige’s shoulders stiffened.
“I can’t reach her.”
Taige knew she wasn’t talking about the rope.
For the past ten minutes, Taige had been backing up Oz’s shields with her own, deflecting the power of a mind gone mad.
This, she thought bitterly, is what happens when one of us is broken.
A child.
Just a child.
Flicking a look at Linc, Taige looked back at Oz. “If she sees her father, it might break through. But she won’t recognize him if he just walks over. We have to get her out and he can’t cross over there. He’s too vulnerable
.” Oz had sensed the attacks. Taige would sense them. Jay might, but Jay couldn’t deflect those attacks the way Taige could, couldn’t sense them as Oz did.
So hard to believe that the center of the devastation was a girl. Just a girl.
A girl who was like a nuclear weapon, ready to blow.
“What do we do?”
“I shield her.” Oz looked back into the pit. “I’ll have to knock her out while I’m doing it. You bring her out.”
Taige went rigid. That girl would feel anything Oz did and she’d react to the threat. “No,” she whispered.
“It’s the only solution. I’d hoped there’d be another. But I knew, in the end, this was how it would be. It was why I came down here.”
“Don’t!” Taige snarled, taking a step forward. “She’s going to kill you!”
Oz just flicked her eyes to Taige. Then she nodded. “I know.”
Chapter Ten
Jay knew, in the very moment Oz acted, what was happening.
Frozen in horror, she stared as Oz reached out.
Passive shields were just that—shields generally built around a child or injured psychic, completely harmless.
But just because something was harmless didn’t mean the psychic in question would see it as such.
As the energy mounted in the air, Jay knew the psychic hiding in that pit didn’t see anything passive.
She saw a threat.
Shoving her fist against her mouth to keep from crying out, she squeezed her eyes shut.
“What is she doing?” Sending the wild question to Taige, half hoping for an answer, not expecting one.
She got one.
But the answer made her want to sob.
“Killing herself,” Taige said, her voice blunt. “Trying to save somebody who is already lost.”
The psychic blast slammed into Oz with a hard blow, so hard even Taige and Jay felt the impact, like a sonic boom against their shields and Jay shuddered from it. A fine trickle of blood appeared from Taige’s nose, but she didn’t even seem aware. The men didn’t seem affected.
Oz swayed on her hands and knees.
And continued to craft shield after shield after shield.
The next psychic lob was weaker.
A broken cry, softer, came from the pit.
“Go away!”
“We’re here to help you,” Oz said, her voice thready.
There was a pause. “Help…me.” Something that might have been sense underscored into those words.
“Yeah.” Mays chuckled. “Here to help fuck you up!” His shout echoed all around.
Jay whirled around, drawing the Glock from the holster at her spine.
She lunged for him, roaring.
But it was too late.
The girl had heard him.
The clearing behind them turned into a maelstrom.
Oz was trapped inside.
“You fucking cocksucker!” Jay shoved the muzzle of the gun against the soft underside of his chin, her voice ragged, fury pulsing inside her. “You son of a bitch! Do you know what you did?”
He just stared at her, his eyes ugly. His body was rigid, tense with the need to move.
But he couldn’t.
That didn’t help.
Jay wanted him to move.
Wanted him to fight, so she could pound him bloody. “You can’t kill me,” he jeered. “FBI bitch.”
Jay bent her head, put her mouth to his ear. “Oh, silly boy. I’m not FBI…”
Oz’s scream cut through the air.
The maelstrom went silent.
A cold shudder went through Jay.
Slowly, she straightened. Staring down at Mays, she met that insolent, angry stare. Knowing what she’d find behind her, she went to stand. He started to sit, but before he made it halfway, she reversed the gun in her hand and brought it down across his temple.
Then she turned.
Oz lay in the clearing, her body broken, crumpled.
A huge branch, as thick around as Jay’s bicep, skewered her.
Jay started across the clearing.
Linc reached for her.
“It’s safe,” Taige said, her voice dull. “Oz did her job.”
Safe, Jay thought. Looking at the devastation around her, she wondered, how could they call this safe?
Oz’s eyes were dull, full of pain.
Jay caught her hand.
“Taige…”
“I’m here,” Taige said from behind Jay’s shoulder.
“Use…Jay.” Oz closed her eyes. “Empathic…link. Will help get through.” Blood trickled from her mouth. “She’ll…be okay. Just give her…time.”
She started to cough, blood flecking from her mouth. Then she looked around. “Dawson…where…?”
Jay looked up, saw Linc standing a dozen feet away. When their eyes met, he approached, reluctant, his eyes lingering on something off to the side. Not the pit. Something else. She glanced, saw the white of bone, understood.
He didn’t realize yet.
He didn’t know.
Her heart clenched.
“Yeah?” he asked, his voice harsh.
“Be…gentle with her.” Oz forced herself to smile. “She’ll need you…more than…you…”
A sigh rattled out of her.
Then Oz was gone.
Linc looked at her, his gaze lingering on her face.
Fuck.
It fell to her then.
She reached out, gently closed those insightful, silvery-blue eyes, eyes that would never again look through her and see all those secrets. Eyes that would never glitter with silent laughter or harden with unspoken threats.
Oz…gone.
It just didn’t seem right.
“Come on,” Taige said, holding out a hand. “Our job isn’t done.”
No. In a way, it was just beginning.
Jay let Taige help her up and then she turned to Linc.
She held out a hand to him. “Come.”
She stood too close.
To that pit.
He couldn’t look.
Whoever it was, he’d try not to hate him.
He understood, because somehow, somebody like Jay or Taige or even that eerie woman Oz had wound up here. And Mays had found him. Broken him. Tortured him.
Linc was going to try not to hate the kid—and he was almost certain it was somebody young down there, a teenager, maybe—because that voice he’d heard had almost sounded sane, for a brief moment before Mays had so cruelly taunted him.
Had almost sounded…not normal, exactly. More like the threads of sanity were just barely within reach.
But he also knew, with uncanny clarity, whoever it was, that person had killed. Not just Oz, but he’d seen two bodies in this clearing and he suspected at least one was Lem Clinton, missing a month now. Lem had been a hunter and an odd man, at best, wearing bright orange galoshes, a bright orange vest, regardless of whether it was hunting season or not. That bright orange was unmistakable. Even flecked with blood.
“No.” He backed away from that outstretched hand.
As she looked over to Taige, he fell into familiar routines. Now that Mays was unconscious, he helped himself to the man’s handcuffs. Stripped away the man’s weapons. Cuffed Mays to his son. Blayne started to babble. “I’m sorry, Sheriff Dawson, I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”
Linc tuned him out. Just as he tuned out the low, quiet voices of Jay and Taige.
He’d just pretend he was the sheriff, doing what he knew best.
Processing a crime, because a crime had happened here.
A fucked-up crime, yes.
But a crime.
As long as he focused on the crime, he didn’t have to think…
“It’s easier this way,” Taige said, cutting Jay off. “He’ll think better once he sees her. I need her out before I bring her up.”
“Can you?” Jay gaped. “You saw what she did to Oz.”
“Oz doesn’t do what I do. She shielded. She’s doesn�
��t have offensive abilities.” Then Taige closed her eyes. “Didn’t. I do. Just…stay back. Okay?”
Stay back.
Stay back.
Brooding, Jay paced a small, tight circle, feeling like a caged tiger as she watched Taige work. Her heart leaped into her throat as the other woman gathered her power. There was a short, sharp scream and Jay prayed, like she’d never prayed, ready for the backlash. If this didn’t work, she’d have to drag Linc out of there, find somewhere they had a signal and put in a call to the FBI.
Surely Jones’s unit had somebody who could handle this.
Surely.
But there was no backlash and a second later, Taige looked at her, nodded. “She’s out. I’m going down.”
Jay didn’t even need to ask how because Taige pulled up a rope, something that had been neatly coiled in Oz’s bag.
The next few minutes were a blur and a buzz and she worked to rig up the rope to one of the still-standing trees outside the clearing, her heart pounding, grief ripping at her, exhilaration and terror giving her strength unlike any she’d ever known.
Soon…soon…
Taige came up first.
Then, the two of them together started to pull.
Her muscles ached.
Burned.
Pulling up an unconscious girl was so much harder than Taige, who’d been able to help bear the burden of her weight.
Time slowed to a crawl.
“Get her,” Taige said, the word coming through gritted teeth. “Hurry…she’s already waking up. She’s panicking.”
But she wasn’t watching either of them.
Her pale gray eyes were focused on Linc.
Linc, who had gone oddly still, his back to them. His hand on his weapon.
He wouldn’t watch.
He wouldn’t let himself blindly hate.
He wouldn’t attack and drag the answers out of whoever that was…
DeeDee wasn’t here.
He’d been so certain he’d find answers.
So certain.
But the two dead bodies were male.
One was Lem. The other was unidentifiable.
And DeeDee…still lost.
Hand on his weapon, he stared into the trees. Be patient…
Gentle.
Oz had told him to be gentle. He’d thought she meant with Jay. Had she meant whoever was in the pit? Could that be why he had to be gentle? To find the answers needed to bring DeeDee home and lay her to rest?
The Innocent: FBI Psychics, Book 2 Page 11