by Rebecca York
Look at that.
She gasped.
How?
I thought of it, and you gave me the power. But let’s switch. You make the sparks fly.
I’ll try.
He felt her focus on the effect, and he mentally stepped back as she increased the size of the dots of light, giving them more brightness.
“How am I doing that?” she breathed.
“You’re asking me?”
“Would it hurt if that touched us?”
“I don’t know.”
She might be new at this, but she increased the paranormal lights, and he felt the temperature inside the room rise.
As she focused on the effect, he reached behind her and unhooked her bra, then slipped his hands under her shirt again, pushing the bra out of the way as he took her nipples between his thumbs and fingers, pulling and squeezing.
She gasped, and he knew she’d forgotten what she was supposed to be doing.
“Concentrate,” he murmured.
How can I, when you’re driving me crazy?
Let the arousal work for us. Fuel the erotic feelings into the visual energy.
You’ve got great powers of description.
Moments later, he saw a small shower of fairy lights flicker around a chair.
Oh!
He couldn’t see her face, but he knew she was grinning as she moved the energy across the floor to the bed.
“Very nice,” he murmured, as his hands went to the front of her jeans. He pulled open the button at the top, then lowered her zipper.
When his fingers slipped into her panties, she gasped.
What are you doing?
Giving us a little power jolt.
He held her bottom pressed to his erection as his hand slipped into the slick, wet folds of her sex while his other hand played with her breasts, teasing them as he built her passion.
He knew she was struggling to hold her focus as she climbed toward orgasm. When he felt her body shudder with release, he saw a shower of small fires exploding around the cabin.
As she came undone, the rag rug began to smolder, and she made a strangled sound.
“Not to worry.” Luke eased her against the wall, then dodged around her, snatched up the rug and carried it into the bathroom, where he ran water on the fabric, preventing it from bursting into flame.
Gabriella staggered after him into the bathroom, zipping her jeans, staring at the rug.
“Is it ruined?”
“It would have been, but I caught it in time.”
She goggled. “We did that?”
He grinned at her. “I guess you’re pretty hot.”
“Together.”
“I’m not absolutely sure what I did.”
“We can figure it out—together.”
She reached for him. “Aside from the sparks, I think we neglected you in that exchange.”
She brought his mouth to hers for a long, passionate kiss while she undid the button at the top of his jeans. After lowering the zipper, she reached inside, closing her hand around his distended flesh.
And when she sent him a vivid picture of what she intended to do, she reveled in his reaction.
EXHAUSTED FROM MAKING love and making sparks, Gabriella staggered to the bed with Luke. Together they turned back the covers and flopped down beside each other.
At first Gabriella’s sleep was peaceful. Then a dream grabbed her and made her chest tighten painfully. She was in this room, alone. Luke had told her it was better if they separated. He’d promised he wouldn’t leave, but now he was gone, and she felt an aching void open up inside her.
She had longed for a soul mate, and the power of the universe had granted her wish. She and Luke had found each other—against all odds. How could he walk away from that?
In the dream, she called out, heartsick at her loss. When he didn’t answer, she rushed from the cabin. The car was still out front. He must be here.
But where? She staggered into the bayou, still calling him. He must have heard because he was beside her on the bed again, slipping under the covers as he gathered her close.
“Gabriella, it’s all right. Gabriella.”
Her eyes blinked open, and she stared at him.
“I…thought you left.”
“I promised I wouldn’t.”
“Where were you?”
“In the chair. Reading.”
“Thank the Lord you’re here.” She pushed herself up and looked across the room. Apparently he’d been sitting in one of the chairs with papers spread out around him on the floor and the table.
Papers?
When she saw what they were, her mood shifted abruptly, and anger flared.
“Those are my mom’s property,” she said in a voice she couldn’t quite hold steady.
IT WAS FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON when George looked up in surprise as an older man with salt-and-pepper hair stepped into his hospital room.
He turned to the cop in the doorway and said, “I’ll take it from here.”
George had never seen the newcomer before but he was pretty sure who he was.
The man closed the door and held out a shopping bag. “Here’s something for you to wear. Get dressed.”
“You were coming at two in the morning.”
“I never like to make firm plans. Get dressed.”
“How come I can leave?”
“Because you’re on special assignment with the Secret Service. And I’m your boss. I have the papers to prove it.”
“Oh.”
“Come on. Let’s split.”
George didn’t like the setup. And he was pretty sure the guy was wearing stuff on his face that changed his appearance.
Could he get away before the guy got him into a car?
Picking up the bag, he walked into the bathroom and closed the door as if he was modest or something. That bitch Gabriella must have gotten out the bathroom window at the motel. There was a window in this bathroom, too, but he knew he was on the third floor. Too far to jump. Was there some way to climb down without breaking his neck?
Chapter Eleven
Luke kept his gaze on Gabriella. “You don’t want me looking through your mom’s papers?” he asked, hearing the edge in his voice. He was an investigative journalist. Research was his forte, and he’d thought he was doing Gabriella a favor by using his time to good advantage while she got some much-needed sleep. Apparently not.
“I…”
He watched her take her bottom lip between her teeth and hurried to explain himself. “You were sleeping. I didn’t want to wake you. I thought I’d start looking through these.”
“They’re private. And—and, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to share them.”
He kept his gaze fixed on her. “Are you saying they’re more private than what’s in your mind?”
She stared back, and he waited with the breath shallow in his lungs to hear what she was going to say now. They’d gotten close to each other. Closer than he’d ever imagined with anyone. But neither one of them quite knew how to handle it.
“Sorry,” he said in a tight voice. “I thought we were trying to figure out why we…developed psychic talents. And you risked getting kidnapped to bring these boxes along.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t want me to look through the papers without your express permission?”
He saw her considering his words and his tone. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to…sharing so much. My mother was that way, too. I guess I inherited it from her.”
“Okay.”
“I’m on edge. What did you find?”
He wasn’t willing to switch topics so quickly. “I think we’d better deal with the basics of the relationship first. You didn’t want me to leave you. Are we in this together—or not?”
“Together.” She swallowed. “All my life I longed to be close to someone. I saw how warm and comfortable people were with each other. I wanted that…so much. I thought I was…damaged. Abnormal. Then…I met
you. And everything changed. But…it’s hard to trust it. I think that’s why I was dreaming that you’d left.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“And I’m so sorry that I reacted to your looking through the papers. Maybe it’s because my mother never let me look at them.”
“She didn’t?”
“No.”
He reached for her again. When she snuggled against him, some of the tension went out of him, but there was still something important he had to tell her.
“Everything you said about being alone. Feeling defective. That was true for me, too.”
“And now we have more than anybody else.”
“Uh-huh. But both of us are afraid to trust that it won’t…vanish. So maybe we push to see if it will all blow up in our faces.”
She nodded against his shoulder.
They sat together on the bed, each of them reaching out to the other, each of them desperate to make everything right between them. Too bad there was no way to figure out the rest of their lives. Not when they were both operating under the terrible tension of being hunted.
“Now that I’m thinking clearly again, did you find out anything we can use?” she asked.
“I’m not sure, but I did come across something interesting. Did you know your mother was treated at a fertility clinic in Houma, Louisiana?”
Gabriella blinked. “No.” She considered the implications. “That means she went to a lot of trouble and spent a lot of money to have a baby. Then she got me—and I wasn’t what she’d longed for.”
“Not your fault. We both know that.”
“You think our…talent has something to do with her going to that clinic?”
He shrugged.
“But the next logical question is— Did your mother go there?”
Again, all he could do was shrug.
“Did she ever talk about it?”
“No.”
“What was the name of the place?”
“The Solomon Clinic.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Me, either, but it’s possible that we both were conceived as the result of treatments there.”
“Now that you mention it, I remember going somewhere for tests when I was little. But you don’t remember anything like that?”
He shook his head.
“Did your family live in Louisiana?”
“New Jersey. But we moved there when I was really little. I don’t remember anything about where we came from, and they never talked much about it.”
“Which could mean they didn’t want you or anyone else to know.”
“Maybe. But why?”
He slung his arm around her, studying the pictures in her mind, seeing her in a waiting room with parents sitting on chairs around the walls and kids in the center of the room playing.
“If your mother went there, maybe your parents thought all the tests were intrusive,” she said. “Or they were upsetting you or something.”
“Maybe. Or maybe my dad just found a better job on the East Coast.”
“What did he do?”
“He was a science teacher.”
“Are we going to Houma?” she asked.
“Yeah. But we’re going to keep a very low profile. And first I’m going to do as much internet research as I can.”
“I think we also need to practice our…skills.”
When he gave her a wolfish grin, she went on quickly, “I mean try talking mind to mind when we’re not touching. Find out how far apart we can be.”
“When those guys came after me and you told me what you were going to do, I was downstairs.”
“Right, but I could see you out the window. Then I was desperate.”
He laughed. “That seems to help.”
They showered and got dressed, then Luke went outside and walked away from the cabin, and Gabriella tried to contact him.
It worked—up to about fifteen feet. Not far enough. They needed more practice.
After going out to buy a fast-food dinner, he turned on his computer, using the motel’s wireless network.
There wasn’t a lot of information about the Solomon Clinic, and the more he learned, the less he liked the setup.
Gabriella came and sat beside him as he worked.
“You look upset. What have you found out?”
“That the clinic burned down about six years after it was opened. And the cause was arson.”
“Someone torched it? But why?”
“I’d like to know.”
“There was a nurse quoted in the paper.”
“We could talk to her.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Because?”
“I don’t want to do the obvious. And anyway, I’ve found out she’s living in a nursing home. Maybe her memory isn’t good enough.”
“Then what?”
“I’m going to look up other nurses and doctors who practiced in town. See if any of them took jobs shortly after the clinic burned.”
“That could take some time.”
“Not as much as you think.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“See if you can turn up something else in your mom’s papers.”
“You don’t think I’ll find anything. You just think it will keep me busy.”
“Sorry. It’s inconvenient having someone eavesdrop on every notion that flits through my head.”
“And inconvenient to have my annoyance bounce back at you.”
“Yeah.”
She turned away, and he went back to work.
Gabriella finished reading the papers without comment and turned on the television set in the cabin. She watched some cooking shows, and he could hear the echoes of her comments as she critiqued the chefs.
You’d do a better job.
I hope so.
When she got bored with that, she switched to a local news channel. The items were unremarkable until he heard Gabriella drag in a startled breath.
“What?”
“It’s coming next,” she whispered, her whole body rigid.
Chapter Twelve
The announcer’s voice turned grave, alerting the audience to something unpleasant.
“A patient who had been in police custody and left the Lafayette Community Hospital without being discharged was found dead in a swampy area outside of town. There was some initial confusion about his identity, but the man has been identified as George Camden. He had been shot.”
“That’s him,” Gabriella whispered.
“You’re jumping to conclusions.”
She gave him a piercing look. “It’s a small town. How many people named George were in police custody in the hospital?”
“We don’t know that’s where he was.”
“Come on. Let yourself make an educated guess. You wounded him and he was in the hospital. And if it’s him, it’s good news for us. Because now he’s not after…me.”
He sensed her thoughts continuing to spin.
However, someone murdered him.
“Or not,” he answered.
“What do you mean?”
“The news report says he was shot. He could have killed himself for all we know. If it’s really him.”
“We could go back to Lafayette and try to find out.”
His vision turned inward as he thought about the pros and cons of making a detour. “If we do, someone could be waiting there for us.”
“Why do you think so?”
He sighed. “I’d like to feel relieved that George isn’t hunting us. But we don’t even know why he was after your mother—then you.”
When she started to speak, he plowed ahead. “The most likely assumption is that he was working for someone who was dissatisfied with his performance.”
“That’s a harsh way to put it.”
“George was a nasty guy. His employer could be worse.”
“Why did he hire George?”
“He could
be too cautious to be caught with his hands dirty.”
“They why did he murder George?”
“He’s getting impatient. But we’re into massive speculation now.”
He could feel more questions churning in her mind.
“What if it has something to do with Houma?” she asked. “I mean assuming he wasn’t after me for my pecan pie recipe. What else is there?”
“We don’t have enough information to make a connection to Houma.”
“But we’ll settle one thing if we know George is off our backs.”
“You want to look at his body,” he finally said, knowing what was in the back of her mind.
“Is that a bad idea?”
“I don’t know.”
“He was trying to kidnap me. He tried to kill you. He shot you. I want to make sure he’s dead.”
He felt the emotions behind her words and something else. Something she was working hard to keep hidden.
She rushed on. “And we can practice our skills.”
“How exactly?”
“We talked about various things we might be able to do. What about something like…”
When she gave him a couple of examples, he grinned. She might be right. If they went to Lafayette first, they could have a dress rehearsal for Houma.
IN THE CHEAP MOTEL ROOM he’d rented, Bill Wellington examined his face in the mirror. He’d used a partial latex mask when he’d sprung George from the hospital. And he’d made sure not to touch anything where he could leave fingerprints.
He’d gotten rid of the bungler. But that left him with some unpalatable choices. He could start again with some other operative who was just as likely as George and that other guy, Carter Frederick, to screw up. Or he could take over the job himself.
If he chose the latter course, he had to proceed with extreme caution.
He knew where Dr. Douglas Solomon had been living the last time he’d checked. He’d better verify the man’s whereabouts, then decide on his next move.
“SHOULDN’T WE GET GOING?” she asked, obviously anxious to try out her plan now that they’d made the decision.
“Let me find out where the morgue is. And also the layout so we aren’t bumbling around like inept imposters.”