Behind Blue Eyes

by TL Schaefer

  Brian had already ordered regular coffees all around, and we’d placed a carafe on the table so I wouldn’t have to interact with Davis or Foudy.

  When Farrell entered the room, every sense within my body went on alert.

  He was a presence. Of that there was no question. Although he reached only average height, he nonetheless carried a military bearing and attitude that begged compliance. Or at least it probably did in most people. In me, it bred rebellion, automatic and sure as the tides. And his aura... Like Wes’s, it was one I’d never seen before. Pure white light shrouded him like a brilliant cloud. Even if I’d never encountered it before, I knew what it meant. Farrell was a true believer... His cause was right, righteous, and nothing would deter him from it. Nothing.

  A small, almost unnoticeable Asian man trailed him like a shadow. A Null, like Roney. But as much as Roney exuded a confidence and competence that couldn’t be defined by an aura, this man disappeared behind the imposing aural drift Farrell projected. He would be easy for others to dismiss or ignore altogether. I got the impression that would be a dangerous thing to do.

  Both men sat at the table, and the group began to compare notes on Wes. I watched Simpson as they talked, and saw the chief’s aura shift to pure disbelief as Roney laid everything on the table. I wasn’t terribly surprised.

  But Farrell’s next words were what caught my attention.

  “And Miss Covington, I’m assuming she’s well?”

  “She’s fine,” Brian replied blandly, and received sharp looks from Davis and Foudy in return. “She’ll be even better if we can figure out a way to convince her the goon that nabbed her isn’t yours.”

  Farrell’s aura tinged to red. He was pissed. “The only thing I want from Sara is her assistance from time to time. Dr. Summers could use some guidance on making CASI what it needs to be, and her gift could be utilized in particularly difficult situations. A sort of ‘aural profiler’, if you will. That’s all.”

  “Just so I’m clear, she wouldn’t have to move to Colorado, and she could keep her current identity, her current life?”

  “That’s what I said,” he replied, and impatience and frustration flashed through his aura and his voice. “CASI isn’t what she remembers, not any more. I’ll keep it the way it is now or die trying.”

  I shifted my eyes from him to his assistant, who had pinned me with his gaze. His eyes were the purest dove gray, a color that implied compassion, but I knew better. Even if he was a Null, I could read him. He knew.

  I gulped, then nodded. He reciprocated with the barest of head dips, then waited, inscrutable. He’d let me make the first move, but I wasn’t getting out of here without revealing myself. It pissed me off because as much as I trusted Roney, and had from the beginning, I was getting the exact opposite vibe from this guy.

  A customer walked to the counter and placed an order. I rang her up on autopilot and considered my options. Once the customer was out of my line of sight, I watched Farrell square off with Foudy. She, who’d been my biggest detractor, now seemed to be a staunch ally. That’s what made my decision to “come out”, more than anything. With people like Brian, Foudy and Davis standing behind me, it would be all right. It had to be.

  I’d spent my entire life alone, except for those two years with Wes, and I was tired of it. If it meant putting myself on the line for people I cared about, didn’t that begin to make me the person I’d always wanted to be? The kind of person I’d been afraid to admit was truly in my heart?

  As much as I liked to believe I was happy with the whole “lone wolf” persona, being around these people had shown me there was so much I was missing. Even if things didn’t work out with Brian and me, the simple contact of people who cared...people who’d put everything on the line to help me, had changed my world irrevocably, and it was time I admitted it to myself, at the very least.

  I’d always distanced myself with the camera, even while trying to help the victims of the crimes I shot. It was time to put down the camera and get on with life.

  As if on cue, the “real” cashier appeared and slid behind the counter, a conspiratorial grin on her lips. I gave her a smile, then grabbed a cup and another carafe of coffee, walked around the counter and plopped into the vacant seat between Roney and Davis.

  They all gaped for a split second, except Brian, of course, then I saw light dawn, first in the eyes of my friends, then in Farrell. The little Asian man watched me with a measuring gaze.

  I leaned across the table and extended my hand, meeting Farrell’s eyes. “Sara Covington, at your service.”

  Everything he’d said was there in his eyes. He’d been telling the truth. I could be free, be who I wanted, do what I wanted, without looking over my shoulder. If we stopped Wes.

  “Nice ’do, Covington,” Foudy muttered. Davis looked flabbergasted.

  “It worked, didn’t it?” I asked, and yeah, it was a bit cocky. “I know you’re Farrell. I recognize your voice. I’d like to meet your friend. Who pegged me from the get-go, by the way.”

  Farrell found his voice. “Sara, meet Lloyd Trang, my assistant.” He turned to the little man. “Good job.”

  Trang nodded sharply, the ghost of a smile on his lips.

  I poured myself a cup of coffee. “So what do we do now? Why hasn’t Wes killed recently? And how in the hell is he even alive?” My heart thumped in triple-time. I might be playing it cool, but dammit, I was scared.

  Brian must have felt it, because his hand settled on my bare knee and gave it a squeeze, then left it in place, a comforting weight I needed to settle myself. Then I remembered what he’d said about drawing something from me, and I couldn’t find it in myself to get upset. After all, whatever this thing was between us helped me out as well.

  “He hasn’t struck again because everyone he’d target is in seclusion right now.” Farrell said smoothly, obviously over his shock at my sudden appearance.

  “I don’t understand.” I took a sip of coffee and reached beneath the table to squeeze Brian’s hand. I could wait for the answer as to how Wes could be alive, but I wouldn’t wait long.

  “He’s after me,” Farrell stated baldly, but behind that façade of calm was a seething anger and grief that made my heart stutter for a brief moment. Farrell might appear to be in control, but what he was feeling was familiar—what I’d felt when I thought Wes was dead.

  “Pardon?”

  “He’s after me, after CASI and Meece. Taking out my supporters is the way he selected since he couldn’t get to me. Finding you was an added bonus.”

  “I’m still lost.” But I wasn’t. I’d sensed it before, when I’d read Wes’s aura. I wanted to hear Farrell lay it out, nice and clean.

  “Wes came to us right after he joined the Bureau, gave us a lot of background on what had happened at CASI all those years ago, and everything was fine until about a year ago. He started acting strange. When he went underground two months ago and my friends started coming up dead, we made the obvious conclusion.”

  “And you didn’t do anything about him at the time?” I was aghast.

  “With what? With whom? Your little stunt ten years ago shut CASI down. As it should have been. Hell, for what Green was doing there, he should have been disemboweled. I know Hugh Meece rolled over in his grave when everything came out, even if we covered it up amazingly well. Ahhh, but you didn’t know any of this, did you?”

  I shook my head dumbly.

  “CASI was closed until last year. It took us that long to find a headmaster willing to take it on. No one of talent has ever actually graduated from CASI. You and Burke were the most promising candidates CASI had that year, and when it was shut down, Green took Burke with him and disappeared.”

  “Oh no,” I breathed, imagining what Green had done to him in retribution. Images of that last day, of the electricity arcing through my body, swooped through me, followed by a cold chill. But beneath it all, to my shame, was a surge of pride. We’d done it. But Wes had paid the price. “And
yet he became a profiler for the FBI. He worked for you at Meece. He had that NSA goon, Pardo, grab me. Who, by the way, is talented.”

  “Is he, now? Lloyd, run a check on this guy. See if he’s in our database.” Farrell thrummed his fingers against his chin. “Do you remember him from ten years ago? Could he have been a classmate?”

  I tipped my head back, trying to remember. “Maybe, but I couldn’t be certain. Wes and I kept to ourselves. We didn’t play well with others.” I paused. “So all this is revenge. Against the Meece Foundation and CASI?”

  He nodded. “After Burke disappeared we started looking for Green. Finally found his death certificate. Apparently he’d committed suicide, but we figure Wes killed him right before he joined the Bureau. Green had honed Burke’s talent substantially, enough for him to anticipate a person or event not only by touching something of theirs, but by simply looking at them. When we went through Green’s effects, his notes indicated that Wes’s hatred of you was particularly vitriolic after your escape. You left him.”

  My heart stuttered, though the pain spearing through me wasn’t angina or a convenient heart attack. It was sorrow. Pure, unrequited sorrow. While I was perfectly aware of the fact that Wes was now everything I despised, knowing I was part of the reason for his turn to the dark side, that he hated me, speared deep and bloody.

  “Like his family. Jesus. I thought he was dead. They carried someone out in that body bag.” Everything Farrell said made sense. I’d sensed something off in Wes’s voice, in his note, but had been too shocked and saddened to pursue it. Now I knew. He’d been toying with me and the police with both his chessboard set-up and the notes and calls. For his amusement. It really was a game for him, a way of thumbing up his nose at Farrell, of one-upping him. Like leaving the victims naked had been. Using a blade, close-in, showing that he held a power no one could touch. It was all a big “screw you” to anyone trying to capture him.

  When he’d become bored, he sent Pardo after me. Part of it was to further his own goal, but there had to be a revenge factor there as well. My gut clenched, even as my heart broke a little. So many lives irrevocably changed, or downright lost, because of one person. Dr. Green.

  If CASI had proceeded as Hugh Meece had envisioned, this fucking mess would be nothing but an idea worthy of a fiction writer.

  The people around the table were quiet as I processed everything, and I was grateful. Because I was thinking about more than Wes and me. I was thinking about Davis’s sister. Of all the children who might benefit from a place like CASI if it was handled right.

  When it all came down to it, what was I? Had I been so frightened by facing my own demons that I’d shunned others of my kind when I might have spared them some of the same anguish I’d gone through? Even if it wasn’t in a place like CASI, I could have found others like me, helped them understand what they were.

  If accepting Farrell’s explanation of what had happened made the whole thing easier to swallow, why was I balking?

  The answer was straightforward: because it was simply too much to take in, at least in one gulp. So I focused on the immediate concern before us.

  “So he’s after both of us. Why are we exposed like sitting ducks?”

  Trang smiled, and it was a cold, calculating thing. “Both of you are well protected,” he promised.

  I glanced around slowly. Through the open doors of the coffee shop, I could see several men lounging on the rustic furniture in the lobby, newspapers or PDAs in hand, the picture of business leisure. I recognized what they were, now that I knew what to look for. On the other side of the plate glass window, a taxi sat idle, its driver and passenger at deliberate ease.

  “I guess it’s a good thing you’re on my side, Trang,” I said shakily. I’d lay even odds that every single one of those men was armed to the teeth. Unobtrusively, of course, but still lethal as hell.

  “I’m on Mr. Farrell’s side. As an ally, you are extended that courtesy. For now.” His voice was cold as a glacier, but congenial nonetheless. I shivered. In my experience, that kind of brutal honesty only spelled trouble. Because usually, there was an almost evangelical fervor behind it. It backed me off more than a step.

  “Lloyd, stand down,” Farrell barked, and the little man relaxed infinitesimally. Farrell added, “My apologies to all of you. Over the last eight weeks, he’s been a bit overzealous.”

  “It obviously worked,” Foudy inserted dryly. “You’re still alive. And now, if we’re done with this trip down memory lane, I’ll repeat Covington’s earlier question. What do we do now?”

  Farrell sighed in frustration and more than a little anger. “I wish I knew. You were closer in Dallas than any of us. That’s why we came running when we learned you were alive.” He turned to me, and for a man with such a potent presence, he almost appeared to be pleading. “You’re the key to stopping him, Sara. It’s not myself I’m concerned about, at least not primarily. Hugh Meece had a great vision for the talented. It’s a vision I’ve sworn to see to fruition, even if I’m strictly ‘normal’, at least when it comes to enhanced perceptions.”

  “What was Meece to you?” I didn’t expect him to answer, but to my surprise, he did.

  “My step-father. A man I respected and admired very much. He worked extraordinarily hard to bring his dream of a place like CASI to life. Burke has the power to bring it all down. Again.” His tone was straightforward, honest, true.

  When he put it like that, what choice did I really have? “So in your opinion, Wes doesn’t have any available targets, at least not at the moment?”

  “No,” he said, and I could tell something else was bothering him now. He wasn’t lying outright, but he was holding something back. “He came to Santa Fe looking for an...associate of mine. She’s safe.”

  From the way he said it, I got the feeling the woman in question had been more than a passing acquaintance. It made him seem more human, less of a figurehead and more of a person, something I needed.

  “Then if, in your estimation, Simpson here isn’t going to get a call about a body showing up, I need some time.” I held up a hand, forestalling Foudy’s inevitable outburst. “I’m not talking about taking two weeks in the Bahamas. Just a few hours to think this over. I want to see your report on Wes, and I need background info on both Meece and CASI. Not the garbage the public sees, but the real deal.”

  Farrell nodded and cast a look toward Trang. I turned to Simpson. “I’m sorry we had to meet under these circumstances.”

  “Better than looking at your body. Oh wait, been there, done that.” He grinned humorlessly, his teeth a startling flash of white against an ebony face.

  If I hadn’t already had the hots for Roney...

  “Have you figured out who the body in the morgue is?” Davis asked, finally back in the mix. I know my “death” had probably hit him hard, but my sudden reappearance had shocked him more than it should have. Or was I looking for shooters on every grassy knoll?

  “Runaway with your basic bone structure. Anyone really looking would figure it out in a second, but ironically enough, the only picture Dallas has on file is your ID photo—which was awful, by the way—and until last week, there were no prints. If Davis hadn’t lifted them, and Roney and Foudy hadn’t pushed, in the eyes of the world, Sara Covington would be dead.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I’m looking for the parents of a runaway.” The grief every good cop feels was layered beneath his stoicism.

  Farrell pushed away from the table, consulting his watch, Trang a mere second behind him. “We’ve got rooms here as well. I’ll secure a conference room and call in some food. Say, three hours?” He tilted his head my way, asking if that was enough time for me to get myself together.

  I nodded, hoping he was right, and stood. At least I could go back to my room. With Farrell’s goons all around, there was no way Pardo was going to get to me, even if he used his talent. Hell, I was safer here than on the street, which was a pretty weird feeling, considering
I’d thought the exact opposite a few hours ago.

  Brian threaded his fingers through mine and we stepped away from the group. Foudy gave us a raised eyebrow that moved into a quirky smile of approval.

  I allowed Brian to lead me through the lobby, knowing as we walked that a good part of my “introspective” time would be spent in his arms. I figured it was a fair trade-off.

  We stepped into the elevator, and as soon as the doors closed, Brian pushed me against them, his mouth on mine, hungry, questing. I met him with equal ferocity, falling into the safety and absolute homecoming of his embrace. Our tongues tangled, and I could taste his relief, his desperation, and answered it with my own. He lifted me up his long body, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, relishing the hard planes of his body as his heat branded me.

  I lost myself in his taste, the hint of coffee on his breath, the flavor that was distinctly him. My nipples pebbled against his chest as I pressed against him harder, and a groan sounded low in his throat.

  The elevator doors opened behind me, and we spilled into the hallway, almost tumbling to the floor. Only Brian’s quick reflexes saved us from falling into a heap.

  A surprised laugh burst out of me, and Brian joined in until we were laughing so hard we were in danger of ending up on the floor again. I released my legs and slid down his body, and in a blink, the laughter was gone and sexual tension spiked the air so thickly I could almost see it.

  “Sara,” he said hoarsely, and framed my face with his hand. I turned my cheek into his touch. The depth of emotion in that single word made my heart swell and tears mist in my eyes.

  I reached up and grasped his hand, turned and walked down the hallway, heart thumping unsteadily in my chest. This would be much more than sex, and we both knew it. This would be making love, and as much as I was anticipating it, it also scared the hell out of me.

  As if reading my thoughts, Brian settled his hand on my nape and drew me back, into his arms. He nuzzled the top of my head. “It’ll be all right, Sara.”