A Gift of Thought

by Sarah Wynde

  Knowing that it was Lucas waiting, not a burglar or a kidnapper, didn’t slow Sylvie’s heart rate. If anything, a combination of dread and anticipation had it racing. How long had it been? A decade at least, she realized.

  That time in Milan was the last. She’d been just out of the corps, angry, bitter. He’d been . . . rich. Her lips quirked as she helped Rachel up the back staircase, her hands gently guiding the girl’s wavering steps. He’d always been rich, of course, and wasn’t that half the problem?

  She would have been what, twenty-seven? Her thoughts continued inexorably on. They’d been in the galleria, that street with the huge glass ceiling by the cathedral. She’d been drinking espresso at some café, wondering what she was going to do with her life, and he’d been walking by with that woman, the one with the honey-colored hair and the little black dress that probably cost more than a Marine earned in a month. Walking and laughing until he saw her, and then his face froze.

  Sylvie felt almost nauseated. Milan hadn’t ended well. She pushed away the memories of Lucas’s lips on her skin, his hands caressing her, the bedroom in his posh hotel that they didn’t leave for two days, the bitter words that she’d thrown at him when she stormed away.

  Had he looked for her then? She hated to admit it, even privately, but she probably owed him an apology. Maybe more than one.

  Or maybe her sick feeling was caused by the smell of vomit that lingered around Rachel.

  She wondered what had happened to the blonde.

  “Do you want to take a shower?” she asked the girl as they entered her bedroom. Instinctively, Sylvie assessed the room. Ugh. She’d seen the house blueprints for security drills, so she knew where Rachel’s room was, but this was the first time she’d ever been inside it. It was pretty but cold. White furniture, mauve walls, and the only personal touches were the crowded bookshelves.

  “Uh-uh.” Rachel shook her head.

  “You should brush your teeth and change your clothes.”

  “Don’t wanna,” Rachel mumbled, dropping onto the bed, and letting her eyes close.

  Sylvie eyed her, not quite sure, and then made a decision. “On your feet,” she ordered, using the voice that in a different life had made recruits cower.

  Rachel’s eyes opened and her head rose. “Wha—” she started.

  “Come on,” Sylvie said, taking her arm and tugging her up, off the bed, toward the bathroom. The bathroom was as bad as the bedroom, both ostentatious and somehow austere. Marble, glass, gold-plated fixtures, but none of the mess that would say a teenager actually worried about pimples in front of the multiple mirrors. “You can get in the shower on your own, or I can put you there. Which is it going to be?”

  Rachel batted Sylvie’s hands away, then spotted her bedraggled self in the mirror. She winced. “All right,” she said. “Okay.”

  Sylvie gave her a considering look. Satisfied, she said, “I’ll be back to check on you.”

  Closing the door to the bedroom behind her, Sylvie took a deep breath. Why was Lucas here, she wondered, as she headed to the study. Why had he come looking for her? And why hadn’t he turned on the lights, she thought irritably, flipping the switch by the door.

  The look of surprise on his face as he looked up from an open desk drawer was an answer of sorts to her questions. Without pause, without thought, she took two steps sideways, putting her back to the wall instead of the open doorway as she slid her hand smoothly into the carefully disguised slit in her little black cocktail dress and pulled out the semi-automatic that had been holstered at her waist. She flowed naturally into a comfortable shooter’s stance, both arms up, gun aimed at him, as her brain finally caught up with her actions: he hadn’t known. He wasn’t here for her.

  She concentrated, reaching out with her sixth sense, searching for other intruders. Was he alone? The only other presence she felt was Rachel, so she let the tension drop out of her shoulders as she frowned at him.

  “Beth?” He looked older, she noted. The black hair had a few touches of silver, and there were new lines around his eyes. It looked good on him. ‘What did you do to your hair?’ he thought. ‘And—ruffles? Really?’

  She resisted the urge to touch her hair, tightening her grip on the gun. The color, a demure brown, was much less noticeable than her natural ginger and much better suited for the invisible companion she aspired to be. As for the ruffles, ‘Tough to hide a gun under a skin-tight dress,’ she answered the thought. “What the hell are you doing here, Lucas?”

  The flood of feeling she got back from him didn’t answer the question, but she tried to sort out the emotions. He was angry, frustrated, searching for something.

  But not searching for her.

  And not searching for Rachel.

  She straightened, letting her gun drop to her side. If her charge wasn’t in danger, she shouldn’t be holding a weapon on Lucas. Yeah, she wanted to know what he thought he was doing, but not enough to risk hurting him.

  “Same question goes,” Lucas answered. “What’s your involvement with Chesney?” Sylvie felt him thinking but the thoughts were moving too quickly for her to catch. The emotions, though—suspicion, hostility, a wary anger—those were as clear as if he were acting them out in semaphores.

  Sylvie looked down, busying herself with putting her gun back into its concealed holster, as she debated her response. Then, with a one-shouldered shrug, she told him the truth. “I work for him. Part of his security team.” Looking up, she added with a wry twist to her mouth, “You know, the ones tasked with stopping people from breaking into his house and ransacking his desk?”

  The sense of hostility she felt from him lessened, but only slightly. “Hardly ransacked,” he said, pushing the drawer closed and standing. “No one was supposed to be here tonight.”

  ‘True,’ she thought to him, ‘but how do you know that?’ Aloud, she said, “Rachel wasn’t feeling well. I brought her home early. And you’re the one who’s not supposed to be here. I should call the police, you know.”

  ‘Yeah, right,’ his thought came quickly. ’And let the whole DC area know your security wasn’t good enough to keep me out?’ His words, though, were more conciliatory. “We should talk.”

  Talk? Inadvertently, her gaze dropped to his lips. That’s what he’d said the last time they met, but that wasn’t what they’d done. Wasn’t what she’d done. He was giving her the perfect opportunity to apologize. She might never stop feeling guilty, but at least she could be honest about her faults. “About Milan,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  He looked startled. “No,” he replied, shaking his head. He paused, then continued, looking troubled, “You weren’t wrong. But that’s not . . . .”

  She wondered what word he was searching for. Important? Relevant? Meaningful? She didn’t want him to say any of them, so she spoke first. “Rachel might come looking for me any minute. You need to get out of here.”

  Lucas’s eyes flickered around the room, a glance that tried to take it all in and store every detail, and then he stepped away from the desk.

  “Looking for a safe?” she asked him, lips tight. She might be letting him go, but he needn’t think he was coming back. Chesney didn’t need to know about this, but she had to tell Ty. They’d find Lucas’s entry point and close the hole in their security immediately. ‘How did you get in?’

  He grinned at her, and she knew he’d read the underlying thought, not only the surface words. She narrowed her eyes at him, not quite a glare, and he put his hands up, in open-handed innocence. “I couldn’t miss that. You know how it goes.”

  She did know. The two of them together reinforced each other’s abilities. Sylvie hadn’t even had—or known she had—her sixth sense until she started spending time with Lucas in high school. When he wasn’t around, she never got clear thoughts, just flavors, sensations. Together, though, it was as if their two abilities created a feedback loop, making both of them stronger. She could understand thoughts and he started seeing below the surface,
feeling people’s emotional responses as well as hearing their superficial thoughts.

  ‘Did you take the security cameras down?’ she asked him mentally, as she gestured him out the door ahead of her. She heard the sound of the shower in Rachel’s bathroom, but she put a finger over her lips to indicate the need for silence anyway. ‘I don’t want to get recorded with you.’

  ‘In the back,’ he conceded, so she led him that way, treading as quietly as possible. Her mind was racing, trying to decide what to say, what to ask. She had so many questions. At the back door, they paused and she turned to face him.

  She might not see him again, so she had to ask the most important question first.

  “How’s Dillon?” She tried to muster a smile. “He ought to be in college now, right? Did he follow you into the Ivy Leagues?”

  “Beth . . .” he started and then stopped.

  “Sylvie, now,” she said into the silence. Why couldn’t she read him? His emotions weren’t making sense to her, as if they were a scent she couldn’t identify, a taste she didn’t recognize.

  “You went back to your own name?”

  She nodded, as if it wasn’t important, as if reclaiming her name hadn’t caused her months of mixed emotions, a complex twist of anger, pain, relief, satisfaction, grief, happiness, even fear. She was still trying to understand what she was sensing from him. “Lucas, what aren’t you saying?”

  “It’s complicated.” The words on the surface were meaningless. It was the words below that mattered. ‘He’s dead.’

  “He—what?” The words felt strange in her mouth, as if her face had suddenly gone numb and her lips couldn’t shape the letters.

  “It’s complicated,” he said again.

  ‘You were supposed to keep him safe!’ Her thoughts were a scream. She brought her fist to her mouth, biting down so the sound couldn’t escape.

  “Sylvie.” Lucas reached for her, putting his hands on her shoulders, but Sylvie brought her arms up, knocking his away. Stepping back, she glared at him.

  “Get out.” She reinforced the words with mental fury, ‘Get out or I will call the police.’

  Chapter Two

  At the sound of the woman’s name, fascination overcame Dillon’s anxiety. He let his father disappear into the darkness outside the house without a second thought.

  Sylvie?

  Really?

  Holy crap.

  She didn’t look anything like her picture. He’d only seen the one, taken shortly after he was born. In that image she was a pretty teenager, gazing down at the dark-haired bundle in her arms with an awed smile. Lucas, standing next to her, was looking at her face instead of the baby, his expression almost dazed.

  But she’d had a cloud of red-gold hair, completely different from the brown hair that was tied up in some kind of fancy braid now. And she’d been . . . well, round. Curvy. Okay, he could admit it: she’d been chubby. Maybe it was because she’d just had a baby? But he’d thought it was what she was like.

  When he’d imagined her, it was as an older version of the same girl, the mom version. Like Mrs. Weasley from the Harry Potter books.

  Instead, she was Alice from Resident Evil. Except with a stupid-looking black dress with layers of puffy ruffles that Alice wouldn’t be caught dead in. But still, the way she pulled out that gun? That was seriously cool.

  Dillon frowned as he thought about the conversation he’d overheard. His dad recognized her right away, but he’d called her Beth. And then she’d said something about Milan. What was that about? Dillon felt a stab of annoyance as he realized what it must mean: his dad had seen her since she’d disappeared.

  She’d been standing motionless by the door, but when she finally moved and Dillon got a better look at her, his frown deepened. She was paler and she was moving slowly, without the grace and speed of her earlier actions, almost stumbling as she made her way through the house until she reached the foyer. At the base of the wide, sweeping staircase, she stopped, resting one hand on the carved wooden banister, swaying a little, eyes closed.

  What did his dad do to her?

  She’d asked about him, about college, and Lucas didn’t answer, not really. But then she’d snapped at him and kicked him out. Why?

  Damn. Only one answer made sense. His mom read minds, too. Dillon wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or annoyed: here was further proof that he should have had a psychic gift of his own.

  But that meant . . . oh.

  Her weird behavior was because she knew he was dead.

  Dillon felt guilty. Watching people be sad about his death wasn’t the worst part of being a ghost but it was close. But even as he had the thought, Sylvie pulled herself together. She shook her head, straightened her back, and took a deep breath before starting up the stairs.

  Dillon trailed behind her, not sure how he felt about her quick recovery. Didn’t he deserve a little more than that? Like, really? Two minutes of sad and then she was over him? On the other hand, at least she wasn’t going to cry. He would not have liked watching her cry.

  At the top of the stairs, she took a left and headed down a corridor. Dillon followed, looking around curiously. He’d never been in a house this big or this ridiculously grand. The white walls were decorated with fancy trim, both along the ceiling and breaking up each chunk of wall. Lights tucked unobtrusively into the ceiling shone on paintings, mostly pastel landscapes in gold frames, spaced every few feet. The hardwood floors were smooth and shiny, with an ornate carpet running down the middle of the hallway.

  Sylvie knocked on a door and waited.

  Dillon wished he knew what was going on. What was his mom doing? And why had his dad come to this house? What was he looking for, if not his mom? He hadn’t been able to talk to Lucas during the flight, but after they’d picked up a rental car and headed out onto the highway, he’d tried to ask Lucas what he was doing. If he had a voice, he would have said something like, “Why are you pretending to be some guy named Murray? What are you doing?” But he’d abbreviated his texted question to, Why Murray?

  Big mistake.

  His dad had answered with annoying brevity. “It’s a clean identity and I don’t want to leave a paper trail.” Oh, like that was helpful. His dad wasn’t an undercover agent. Why was he worried about leaving a trail?

  Dillon had still been formulating his next question when his dad said, “Sorry, Dill, but I’ve got to turn the cell phone off. Can’t risk it buzzing while I’m working.”

  Working? Was that what he called it? Dillon had tagged along, wondering the whole while. It didn’t look like work to him; it looked like an impressively efficient burglary. Except for the part where he got caught before he managed to get anything, anyway.

  Sylvie knocked again, a little harder this time. “Rachel?”

  Dillon looked at her, looked at the door, then shrugged and pushed himself through it. Not waiting around for people to open doors was one of the few advantages of being a ghost. In the back of his mind, he imagined his grandmother scolding him for his lack of manners. But ghosts can’t knock, he protested silently to the voice of his conscience, shutting it up for the moment.

  Inside the room, a girl in cotton pajamas, dark hair twisted in wet tangles down her back, hurriedly slid a book onto a shelf. Dillon frowned. Something about her hurry was furtive, as if she was trying to hide the book. He drifted closer.

  The spine was black with a red ribbon on it. Eclipse, he read. Was that one of those weird vampire books?

  “Rachel!” The knock was harder, the voice a demand.

  “Coming.” The girl glanced back at the shelf, touching the book one last time, then crossed to the door. Dillon took a look at the other books on the crowded shelves. He didn’t recognize most of them, but she had a couple by Terry Pratchett. That was a good sign.

  As the girl opened the door, Dillon wondered who she was. But he supposed if he was going to be haunting her house, he’d find out soon enough.

  *****

  Dillon
was dead.

  Had been dead for a while, judging by the flavor of Lucas’s emotions.

  Sylvie knew that if she let it, the pain would overwhelm her. Every morning when she woke up and thought of Dillon, wondered what he was doing, where he was, every morning he’d already been gone. Every night before she fell asleep, when she’d wished him a silent good night and God bless, he’d already been gone.

  Was this what drowning felt like? This choking sensation closing off her throat?

  But she had a job to do.

  Rachel.

  She needed to check on Rachel, make sure she was okay, then test the security system, find out how Lucas had gotten in, get the cameras back online . . . yes, she needed to work. To make her charge safe.

  She stuffed the pain down, burying it deep inside her. Later, she promised herself. Later.

  Rachel was fine. A little forlorn-looking still, but going straight to bed and to sleep. Twenty minutes ago Sylvie might have insisted she eat something or at the very least rehydrate, preferably using a drink with electrolytes. Instead, Sylvie just nodded and walked away, heading straight to the security room on the lowest level of the house.

  She and Rachel had come in that way, through the garage, and up the back stairs to the third level where the bedrooms and Chesney’s private office were located. Lucas, though, exited on the mid-level, through the French doors that opened from the large family room onto the back terrace. But how did he bypass the security system?

  The room that the security team used as their base of operations was tucked between the caterer’s kitchen and a staff work room. A wide-screen monitor displayed multiple camera feeds. Lucas had said that the ones in back were down, but they all appeared to be running. Sylvie ran a quick system check. Managing the technology wasn’t her job, and apart from turning the system off and on, the system check was all she knew how to do. But the lights were green and it seemed to be working the way it was supposed to.