by Sarah Wynde
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.’
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
DEDICATION
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
PREVIEW OF A GIFT OF THOUGHT