A Gift of Thought

by Sarah Wynde

  Could Dillon be with him? Sylvie glanced around for her bag. Maybe she should call Lucas. She needed to know whether her son had moved on or was still a ghost after all, she thought, trying to ignore the sense of relief she felt at the idea of talking to Lucas.

  “Did you know this was going to happen?”

  “What?” she asked, as she reached for her bag, digging into it for her phone. Ty couldn’t be asking about Dillon; she hadn’t told him anything. She would, eventually, but she hadn’t had time. And Ty, although accepting of her abilities, was going to have a hard time believing in ghosts.

  “The story in the Post.”

  “Oh, right.” Sylvie paused. She needed to look at that story, find out what it said. “Not exactly, no.”

  “Have you seen it?” Ty asked.

  “Yo,” said James, entering the room with a wide grin on his face. “Superhero Sylvie. Hot stuff, my friend.”

  “James?” Sylvie blinked in surprise. He shouldn’t be here either. They worked together Monday through Friday and he hadn’t missed work on Thursday. “Are you working today?”

  “Nope,” he answered, cheerfully. “Just stopped by to visit the hero. I tried to call but couldn’t get through. I figured your phone must be off the hook with reporters calling.”

  “Uh-oh.” Sylvie dropped into the chair by the desk. She looked from James to Ty and back again. James was smiling, Ty was not. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Depends on your point of view,” Ty responded, voice dry. “Did you want to be famous?”

  “Famous?” It took a second. “Because of the guy in the parking lot?”

  “What were you thinking? How could you take that kind of risk?” The anger in Ty’s voice didn’t cover the worry and concern underneath.

  She waved off his words. “It wasn’t that much of a risk, honestly.” She was grateful that he couldn’t read her emotions the way she could his or he’d know she was lying. He was right. That guy had been big and tough and she could have been in real trouble. She should have been more cautious.

  “Too late now.” Ty’s worry reached the surface, the anger in his voice disappearing. He sighed.

  James was looking between them, smile fading. “What’s the big deal?”

  Ty shook his head. “Nothing. Except the hell it’s going to play with my schedule while Sylvie takes the week off.”

  “Wait, what?” Sylvie protested. “I can’t take a week off.”

  Ty rubbed his forehead, pinching his brow as if he had a headache. “We’re going to have to hope it blows over in a few days. You’ll have to decide how you want to deal with it, of course, whether you want to talk to the media or hide out, but either way, you can’t do your job while this is going on.”

  “This? What this?” Sylvie protested again. She couldn’t leave Rachel, not now. “I say no comment to a few reporters and ignore my phone calls. What’s so hard about that?”

  Ty folded his arms and just looked at her. Sylvie could feel that he was exasperated, but she didn’t think she was being stupid. Reporters moved on to new stories like terriers chasing squirrels; once they realized she wasn’t talking, they’d be gone.

  James started whistling between his teeth, trying to suppress his smile. “That photograph is the real problem,” he offered. “It makes you look . . .” He paused.

  Sylvie glared at him. Why the hell was he so amused? “What photograph?”

  “Hang on, it’s in my car,” he answered, grin breaking free, as he turned and hurried out the door.

  “What photograph?” Sylvie demanded of Ty. She should have known, of course. The woman in the art gallery had recognized her, therefore her image was somehow public. But it had all happened too quickly and Rachel’s situation had taken precedence.

  “The Post ran a picture of you,” he said, a half-smile tugging at his lips. “James is right, it’s the problem. It’s a nice picture, though.”

  Sylvie shook her head. How could anyone have gotten a picture of her?

  “Someone must have taken it at the police station,” Ty added. “Maybe with a cell phone? You’re sitting, and there’s a guy standing next to you, checking out your bruise.”

  Lucas. Sylvie hadn’t noticed anyone taking a picture, but she might not have if it was a cell phone, not a camera. “And?”

  Ty’s half-smile turned into a real smile. “And you get to choose how to handle the media.”

  “I can’t take the week off, Ty,” she said, feeling annoyed, as James returned with a folded newspaper in hand.

  “Here you go.” He passed her the paper.

  She took it, about to ask where to look, and then glanced down at it. Oh, hell. She didn’t say the words, but she probably didn’t have to. The paper was open to her image. She was seated, hair messy, head tilted up, lips slightly parted, with Lucas standing next to her, head bent to her, his finger touching her cheek.

  “Oh, God.” Something about the perspective, Lucas’s size, the worry on his face, and the angles of hers made her look almost delicate. “I look—” she started in dismay before pausing, searching for the right word.

  “Pretty?” Ty offered. “Attractive?”

  “Cute?” James suggested, openly laughing. “Although sexy as hell would work, too.”

  She swatted at him with the paper before pulling it back to her and looking again. Any of those adjectives would do. The photograph was very flattering. She might have liked it if it wasn’t running in a national newspaper.

  She looked away from the image and up at Ty.

  “Cute little girl takes down two-hundred pound serial killer. You can understand why the media might be interested,” he said, voice sympathetic, before frowning and adding, “A week might not be long enough.”

  She scowled at him. “He was at least two-fifty,” she said huffily. Not that that was important, but still . . .

  “Oh, that makes it so much better.” Ty rolled his eyes.

  She grimaced and leaned back in the chair, rubbing her neck. The timing was terrible. How could she help Rachel if she wasn’t even here? “I changed my phone number. They can’t reach me. I’ll ignore them.”

  “I drove by your apartment building on the way here. There are at least twenty satellite trucks in the parking lot.”

  “I’ll stay someplace else at night,” Sylvie offered.

  “And if a reporter or photographer catches sight of you while you’re on duty?” Ty asked, before shaking his head.

  Sylvie tilted her head, staring up at the ceiling. Ty didn’t need to state the obvious: a distracted bodyguard was a bad bodyguard. She couldn’t do her job if she couldn’t focus on Rachel. Damn it.

  “Your choice is about how you want to handle it, not whether you’re taking the time,” Ty said, tone gentler than the words.

  *****

  Sylvie was bored.

  Seriously, seriously bored.

  And it was only the third day of her exile. Pulling aside the curtain on her hotel room window, she stared down at the busy street below. It was raining, hard, the wind whipping big drops of water that splattered and dripped down the glass, turning the scene into something out of an impressionist painting. That is, if there were any impressionist paintings that were mostly gray and bleak. Sylvie was almost bored enough to Google impressionist painters and find out, but instead she let the curtain drop with a sigh and turned back to the room.

  It was lovely as hotel rooms went. Maybe a little bland for her taste, with the colors all whites and navy blues, but the four-poster bed that dominated the room was elegant and the Italian marble bathroom pure luxury. The television set into the bathroom mirror was an interesting high-tech touch. Sylvie didn’t actually care to watch television while she used the bathroom, but she appreciated the concept.

  Jeremy, Ty’s husband, was a partner at a prestigious DC criminal defense firm and he’d taken care of the arrangements. Sylvie didn’t know the details and she was sure she didn’t want to see the bill, but her faint
hope of heading to North Carolina to spend her enforced week of vacation with her mom, her step-dad, and her half-sibs had been shattered when her mom had called to ask why there were television news crews in the driveway.

  She’d see them in a few weeks anyway. One of the nice things about being back in the States was getting to go home for Christmas. She hadn’t told her mom what she was doing when she ran away, but she called about a month later, after she’d enlisted and was partway through basic training at Parris Island and desperately homesick. Her mother had promptly moved to South Carolina, picking up a job as a waitress in a nearby roadside diner, and then followed Sylvie to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. There she’d met a staff sergeant, married him and started having babies. After her solitary childhood, Sylvie now had two half-sisters and a half-brother, all teenagers. She smiled as she thought of them, remembering how excited her brother Sam had been about the television crews.

  And then she sobered. Would Dillon have been excited? She looked at her phone, sitting on the nightstand next to the four-poster bed. He hadn’t texted her. And Lucas hadn’t called.

  And she hadn’t called Lucas.

  Was she being cowardly?

  She thought the answer might be yes. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to call him. It was that she wanted it too much.

  It was maddening.

  She needed to do something to take her mind off him. But she’d already spent two hours in the fitness room and the weather was miserable for a run. She’d watched all the television she could stand. The hotel had a lovely little book room, but she was too restless to read.

  She had her laptop with her, so she could work on researching Chesney again. But she’d spent enough hours trying to learn more about his history during the past two days to realize that she didn’t have the skills to discover anything useful. Ten million Google hits were about nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand more than she had the patience for. No, if she wanted to know more about Chesney, Google wouldn’t work. She’d need to get help.

  She touched the top of her laptop, closed where it rested on the desk next to the window, thinking about who she could ask for help while firmly pushing thoughts of Lucas out of her mind, even as a traitorous whisper in the back of her head pointed out that he must have thoroughly researched Chesney already. And then she paused.

  She’d been aware of the man in the room next to hers all morning long. His anxiety level was so high that she couldn’t not know of his presence, any more than she’d be able to ignore him if he were playing a violin or burning incense. But she almost thought she’d caught a wisp of thought there.

  She stepped away from the window, closer to the wall between their rooms. No, nothing.

  And then, suddenly, his voice was in her head talking about earned income ratios and value added. He was preparing a presentation, she realized, but she was hearing his thoughts, not spoken words.

  Hurrying to the door of her room, she pulled it open and stepped out. She recognized Lucas’s back, the dark hair curling at the nape of his neck, even before she felt the sense of him that was indefinably Lucas and no one else. He was halfway down the long hallway, turned away from her, talking to someone she couldn’t see.

  “Lucas,” she called his name without thought. She didn’t know why he was here, but she couldn’t help but feel glad to see him. And then he whirled around and she felt the full brunt of his emotions as he saw her.

  Fear.

  Relief.

  Fury.

  Lucas’s emotions washed over Sylvie as he strode down the hallway toward her, his long legs eating up the distance between them, and she felt herself responding automatically, her anger rising to meet his own. Her chin went up, her back straightened, and she braced herself, feeling hot words simmering on her tongue.

  He reached her, eyes searching her face, then grabbed her shoulders, fingers tight, pressing into her muscles. “Damn you.” He wanted to shake her, she could tell. He was angry. Deeply, seriously angry. And under it, hurt? But violence was close to the surface.

  ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven . . .’ She took a deep breath and started silently counting backwards. She could feel the intensity of his emotions as if he were shouting. Ten years ago, she would have shouted back first, thought later. But not now, not this time. She didn’t know why he was so angry but she didn’t have to let him get to her.

  “Are you all right?” His words were almost mild, the question a surprise, but his thoughts tumbled over one another in a chaotic babble.

  Unanswered phone calls. Unreturned messages. Dillon. Chesney. Drug dealers. Danger.

  “Of course,” she answered automatically, trying to make sense of what he was thinking.

  “Counting?” he asked, voice light but with an edge to it that almost matched his emotions.

  She didn’t answer. Anyone else would have believed him calm, but she knew better. And putting the pieces together, she finally understood.

  She’d disappeared.

  He hadn’t known why.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, breathing the words out. Her own anger, usually quick to rise but slow to fade, was gone as she realized what she’d done to him and what his past few days had been like. While she’d been sitting in a hotel room, bored and aimless, he’d been desperately searching the city for her. Or for evidence that Chesney had killed her or had her killed.

  For a second, his fingers gripped a little harder, and then he released her, stepping back. “Not a problem.” To someone without her senses, he would have sounded nonchalant, as if the matter were trivial.

  ‘Liar,’ she thought at him. The retort was instinct, but it was a little like waving a red flag at a bull. Behind him, a door opened.

  “I thought I’d gotten you killed. I thought you’d looked for evidence and gotten caught. Your boss works for the Mexican—” he started, snapping out the words, no longer trying to disguise his fury. Her eyes widened fractionally and she shook her head at him, raising a hand to shush him, as the man who’d been working on a presentation stepped out of his room and glanced in their direction.

  Lucas fell silent, but his thoughts continued. ‘—the Mexican drug cartels and you just disappear? What was I supposed to think, Sylvie? No word from you, no word from Dillon—’

  Sylvie forced a smile at the stranger, who’d paused, looking uncertain. Grabbing Lucas by the wrist, she tugged him into her room and closed the door behind him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, interrupting his mental diatribe as she turned back to face him.

  “I—what?” He blinked at her, and then shook his head as if he hadn’t heard what she’d just said.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated herself, feeling impatient. “You’re right. I should have called you. It was stupid and inconsiderate of me not to.”

  He blinked at her again. And then a third time. And then, blue eyes narrowing, said slowly, “What have you done with the real Sylvie Blair?”

  She scowled at him, folding her arms across her chest.

  “No, no, don’t get mad.” He put a hand up in protest and a quick grin flashed across his face before he sobered. “Do you understand—”

  “Yes,” she interrupted him again. “I got all of that. But my boss is not a criminal and I am perfectly safe, just hiding out from crazy television news people.”

  “So I see.” He sighed, and ran his hands through his hair, looking tired. “And Dillon?”

  She shook her head. “No word. Or text. Whatever.”

  He nodded. His mouth twisted. “Well.” He fell silent, but his thoughts continued, flavored with sorrow, ‘Maybe you were right then and that was all he needed.’

  She didn’t say anything, but she felt her heart beating a little faster than usual. She’d never felt Lucas sad before. Not like this. She wanted to comfort him.

  The twist of his mouth turned into a wry smile. “I don’t need your sympathy, Syl. I lost him a long time ago. Knowing that he was okay was an incredible gift. And if
he’s moved on now, that’s okay, too. I’ll see him again.” The words were even but his eyes were bright.

  Sylvie pressed her lips together, but the thought slipped out again. ‘Still lying.’ He was a good actor, but she could see the truth. She might have thought Dillon should move on, but Lucas was not so sure.

  Lucas let a reluctant chuckle escape, looking away. He took four or five steps into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed, facing the wall. He shook his head then dropped it into his hands, letting his palms press against his cheekbones. “It’s been a long few days,” he said, voice muffled. “You did a good job of hiding.”

  “Found me anyway,” Sylvie answered, trying to keep her voice light, as she followed him into the room. “Zane?”

  “Ha.” Lucas sounded disgruntled, raising his face out of his hands. “He couldn’t tell me a damn thing. Without Dillon, I had nothing of yours to give him as a focus.”

  Sylvie frowned. “Why not use a photograph?” She was no expert on Zane’s skill, but she remembered some from when they’d found her the first time. Zane had still been young enough to be bubbling over with enthusiasm for his newfound ability and she’d had to admit, it was a nifty talent. She would have happily traded her own gift for it.

  “I don’t have one that’s current. Zane needs images that are recent,” he answered, standing again.

  She looked at him, wondering whether she should tell him, but the thought escaped before she could stop it. ‘Every subscriber to the Washington Post has a recent picture of me.’

  “Oh, hell.” Gently, he banged his head against the post of the four-poster bed, once, twice, three times. “Of course they do. Of course I do. Damn me.”

  “Stop it,” she ordered him when it looked as if he would hit himself harder and harder.

  He looked over at her, standing a few feet away from him. “You make me stupid, Syl.”

  She tried not to smile, but couldn’t help herself. ‘The feeling’s mutual.’

  Uh-oh. She hadn’t meant it teasingly, but she could see the spark she’d lit flicker in Lucas’s eyes, the blue darkening with desire as thoughts of the past crowded into both of their minds. The sensations were so tangled up that she couldn’t be sure whose memories were whose. Humid Florida air, a barely cool evening breeze, the buzz of the mosquitoes, the sandy grit of the ground, skin against sweaty skin, the feel of him pushing inside her or was she enveloping him? Their first time. Stupid, so stupid. And yet irresistible.