Instinct didn’t let him go any closer. He knew that much without lowering his shields at all.
Trouble lay inside that cabin, and he wasn’t getting paid to get in trouble. Shit, he wasn’t getting paid to do anything. He was just helping Dru because he’d realized she was in over her head and she was one of the few people he called friend. He’d rather not lose her. That was a thought that left a weird little ache inside.
Lingering in the shadows, he continued to watch the cabin.
It was quiet.
Damn quiet.
Sighing, he settled down. He could head home, he knew. He’d done his part.
But he wasn’t quite ready to do that yet.
* * *
DRU wished she hadn’t destroyed the phone.
Lying in the bed, she wished she had a way to contact Tucker, but it would be tomorrow before she dared. If she hadn’t destroyed . . .
Bugger all.
She was so tired, her mind frayed out and stretched thin. She wasn’t thinking. She’d been shattered from everything that had happened that day, from the odd man she’d met, her reaction to him . . . both when he kissed her, and when she’d thought of him as Patrick was there. All of it left her not thinking well.
There had been no reason to dispose of the phone so hastily.
None.
She could have gotten up for her run early, as she always did, and disposed of it then. But no. She’d panicked.
Had he learned anything?
She wished she had a skill that was a bit more useful, able to reach out and touch his mind. Tucker had a mind that was open to that, when he allowed it. He couldn’t talk back, but if she was telepathic at all, all she would have to do was initiate the contact and they could have a nice little chat, right inside his head.
He’d spent quite a few years hiding from his abilities, a self-defense mechanism more than anything else. And he hid well. She felt nothing from him. Not a burn on her brain like what she’d felt earlier with . . . him. Not a spark of recognition that sometimes passed when she sensed another like her. With Tucker, she felt nothing.
But her gift didn’t work that way. She had no way to contact him that wouldn’t catch attention. Not until she could swipe another phone. She had a few more throwaways stashed, but she had to be careful not to use all of them, and getting one out now was just being silly.
She lay there, in the silence of the room, worrying, brooding.
It was a long, sleepless night. But she’d had a lot of those lately.
* * *
“RUN that by me again.”
If Joss hadn’t been so pissed off, he might have been amused at the tone he heard in Jones’s voice.
“I have a body.” He paused for a count of five and then added, “Relax. I didn’t kill him. I want to, and if you don’t get here soon, I just might let myself. He’s in the trunk of a car that I’m stealing from him. I don’t know what to do with him, but we can’t exactly just let him start making all those free phone calls he’s entitled to.”
Joss believed in rights—he believed in rights even for the guilty—the very fucking guilty, in this case. But he also knew that if this guy went and lawyered up right now, he’d be making phone calls that would endanger their case . . . and lives.
That was a pickle, he supposed.
One he was glad Jones would have to juggle.
“I’m starting to think you enjoy this,” Taylor muttered. “All of you. Complicating my life has become a pastime in this unit.”
“Nah.”
“If it’s not a pastime, it sure as hell ought to be.”
“Oh, it’s a pastime. But you said has become. It’s more like always been. We love seeing you get a little hot and sweaty and smoothing down those ties you like to wear. I told people that was the one sign you showed when you were getting pissed—you smooth your tie down. Dez used to make you do it three or four times a day.”
Taylor didn’t sound amused as he said, “I’m not smoothing my tie right now. I’m about ready to take it off in preparation to strangle you with it.”
“Nah, you won’t do that. Then you’d have to find somebody else to stick in here, and you can’t exactly stick your lady in here, can you? Call me when you’re ready to meet.” Joss hung up and glanced around. He didn’t see anybody, sense anybody.
It had been a fun thing, rolling the body in a blanket and then lugging it out to the car. If anybody had looked, really looked, they would have figured out what he was moving, but fortunately, nobody had seen.
He was ninety-nine percent certain that no cameras could have caught it, either. He had a few small gadgets on him, but he’d get more sophisticated ones after he hooked up with Jones. His scanner told him there was nothing in the area currently. More than likely, it was correct.
More than likely.
Now he just had to worry about getting out of here without being stopped. Get this bozo to Jones. Get back here. Get some rest. Figure out how he was supposed to pretend to kidnap three girls . . .
Think about her . . .
FOURTEEN
BACK to the warehouse.
That was where Joss found himself on his first full day working as a slaver. Broker. Whatever the PC term was for somebody who kidnapped women and girls and arranged for them to be sold to the highest bidder.
Ideally, he figured he could be out looking for his “mark” except there wasn’t going to be a blind mark.
He already knew how this would play out.
All he had to do was wait for Jones to get in contact with him and then he’d lay things out.
First, though . . . back here. Back to where he’d had that crushing weight of grief.
Now that he had Dez’s unique ability to gab with ghosts, he could find whoever was lingering here and maybe help them along.
Plenty of voices were screaming at him, but he ignored all of them, pushing through the cold weight of their presence to get back to the one spot where he’d felt all that grief. All that anguish.
And it was there . . .
Just there.
He could feel all the grief.
All that pain and anguish . . . bracing himself for her presence, he waited.
And he waited. But whoever he was waiting for, she never showed up.
* * *
“WE’RE going home today.”
Jillian stared at Cullen, her blue eyes unreadable. But the pout on her face was unmistakable.
“I don’t want to go home,” she said, slumping in her chair and glaring at him over the breakfast table.
“Too bad,” he replied, keeping his attention half focused on the closed door.
Taige hadn’t come out of there all morning.
If she thought she could hide all day—
“She’s not hiding.”
Cullen jolted, caught off guard by Jillian’s comment. Sighing, he passed a hand over his face, and then he leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the table. “Jilly, you know better than that. Thoughts are private.”
“I know.” She shrugged. “But I hardly ever hear yours and well . . .” She shrugged again. “Mom’s not in the room. She’s gone to talk to Taylor. She thinks he’ll need her for the case.” Something drifted through her eyes and her mouth turned down. “He’s going to.”
Cullen all but bit his tongue off to keep from swearing.
“Dad.”
Looking up, he saw Jillian staring at him, her eyes somber. “Do you love me?”
“Jilly . . .” Unsure where that had come from, he shoved the chair back from the table and moved around to stand by her, kneeling down so that their faces were level. She looked so much like her mother, his first wife. Cullen’s memories of her were dim—they hadn’t really known each other, but he’d married her when they discovered she was pregnant. The marriage had been short-lived; she’d died during childbirth and Cullen had been on his own from day one.
Up until Taige came into their lives . . . into Jillian’s life, back i
nto his. He’d known Taige since he’d been a kid, just a few years older than Jillian was now. He’d known her then, loved her then. And because he’d been a short-sighted fool, he’d lost her. He pushed those dark thoughts aside and focused on his daughter . . . their daughter.
“Baby, you know I love you. You’re everything.”
“Would you try to change me?” She watched him with eyes that were far too old, far too wise, for a fourteen-year-old child.
This was boggy ground here, he realized. Blowing out a breath, he weighed his words carefully. Jillian might not be able to read him the way she could read others, but she’d know a lie. “Change who you are? Not in a million years. But if there was something I could do to make life easier on you? I’d almost sell my soul to do it.”
“Mama’s told you a hundred times over . . . some of us just aren’t made for easy.” She reached over and caught his hand, linked their fingers. “I’m not made for easy. Neither is Mama. Regretting and wishing she wouldn’t do what she has to do hurts her, Dad. You can’t keep doing this to her.”
Old eyes. Old soul. “You’re too young to be this smart,” he said, sighing. “I’m supposed to be the one giving you advice. How did you get to be so smart?”
“That’s easy. You gave me a good mom.” Her nose wrinkled as she grinned at him. Then she bit her lip. “Dad . . . I want to go home. But Mom needs you here. Maybe Grandpa can come get me.”
Cullen grimaced. He wasn’t really quite ready to be away from his daughter. Not after how much she’d been hurting.
He knew his dad would take good care of her, but still.
“You think you’d be okay for a little while if I went to go talk to her?” he asked softly.
“I’m fourteen, you know.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not a baby.”
* * *
TAIGE stared at a picture of a young woman.
If Taige had guessed right, the woman in the image was in her mid-twenties. Absolutely beautiful, with big, blue eyes, big breasts, tiny waist, round hips. She looked like a living Barbie doll. But there was something in her eyes that made her look . . . well, sweet.
Too sweet. Oddly innocent. It bothered her to think of somebody innocent and sweet caught in this mess. Well, it bothered her to think of anybody caught in this, but still . . . innocence wasn’t exactly a common commodity in this world anymore.
“Who is she?” Taige asked, careful not to touch the picture.
“She was one of my prime’s suspect’s girlfriends,” Taylor said without even bothering to look at the picture. “They broke up about eighteen months ago, and a few weeks later, she went on a trip to Europe. Disappeared. Hasn’t been seen since. Naturally, he has nothing to do with her disappearance and is very distraught by it all.”
“Girlfriend . . .”
“Rumors of an engagement were surfacing but not official.”
“Hmmm.” She bent closer to the picture, as though the girl could whisper to her, if she just got closer. If she kept the contact to a minimum, she could keep from going on a little psychic stroll, she thought. And there was one waiting to happen here. She could feel it. The edges of the gray hovered around her, just waiting to suck her up.
She just couldn’t do it yet. She hadn’t yet talked to Jones about hanging around to help out with the case. Over the past few years, she’d been cutting back on the work she did for him and she was torn now, torn between taking care of Jillian and staying here. The guilty ache in her heart demanded she take Jillian home, mother her, baby her, stroke her and soothe her and pat her . . . which would drive Jillian nuts.
The other part of her, the fighter, the psychic, that part of her was being tugged in the other direction. She was needed here. Taige didn’t know why. Joss was the one most capable to handle this. The last thing she needed to do was plant her ass in the middle of a situation she wasn’t equipped to handle and she knew it.
Sighing, she shifted her focus to another picture, using a pencil to draw it closer so she wouldn’t have to touch. This was a girl, maybe twenty. Light-skinned black girl. Biracial, maybe, Taige thought, her skin the same coffee and cream as her own. Short hair, cut a little longer in the front. A pretty smile, just a little wicked. And all sorts of attitude and cockiness in her smile.
According to the info she had, her name was Daylin. She’d been missing for six months. Still officially listed as missing, but in her gut, Taige knew the girl was dead. And it was something awful . . . she could feel the horror lurking as the gray tried to wrap ever closer around her.
Carefully, she pushed it over to the look-at-later pile, again using a pencil so she wouldn’t have to touch it. The ones she’d look at once she decided she had to get involved, she told herself. Although she already knew she was involved in this.
If you weren’t supposed to be involved, you wouldn’t feel like you need to be here. Talk to Jones. He’ll let you know if he wants you in or not, a quiet voice in the back of her mind whispered.
Yeah, and that would go over well. She and her husband were already having a rough time. She’d slept in Jillian’s room because she couldn’t handle being around Cullen last night. But although she was mad at him, she didn’t want to fuck up her marriage and Cullen had so much anger—
A knock at the door had her straightening in her chair.
“I’ll get it,” Dez said, rising from the couch. She slid Taige a grim look and added, “I’m not good for much else on this trip.”
Taige didn’t respond. Hunching her shoulders, she went back to staring at the picture she’d just pushed away. Her fingers trembled as she reached out, hovering just a breath away from the picture.
“You’ve been here for forty-five mintues, Taige,” Taylor said quietly.
Looking up, she met the steel blue of his eyes.
“Is that your polite way of telling me to leave?” she asked. Vaguely, she heard the voices at the door.
He shook his head. “If I wanted you to leave, I would tell you to leave. But you’ve been here, avoiding a connection you know is there all this time . . . for some reason. And now you’re going to do it, because of a knock at the door.”
Curling her lip at him, she crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back.
As Cullen came through the doorway to the dining room, Taylor gave her a brief smile.
She barely resisted the urge to flip him off.
* * *
IT was a quick meet.
Joss could tell by the look on Jones’s face that they weren’t going to be chitchatting much. They hadn’t chatted much the previous night either when Joss had dumped Hennegan’s unresisting body into Jones’s lap. No telling what Jones had done, but the man didn’t look any worse for wear, although Joss knew he’d slept even less than Joss had.
“Here,” Jones said, his voice terse as he passed on a black duffel. His voice made it clear he wasn’t in the mood to talk.
That was fine with him. He had managed to mostly settle his new gift back into place, but he still needed some time to solidify those shields and get a grip. He’d done this too soon, and he knew it—now he was left trying to patch a busted flood wall.
Studying the black duffel, he hefted it, tested the weight. He had a rough idea what was inside it, although he’d take a better look once he didn’t have so many people around him. “Gee, boss, you shouldn’t have. I didn’t bring you anything,” he drawled.
Taylor gave him a withering stare. “How is your head?”
“Feels like it’s about to split into a million pieces.” Joss shrugged. “Dez, I can handle her talent. It’s creepy sometimes. I can feel these whispers, even in my sleep if I’m not careful. But I can handle that one. The girl, though . . .” He snapped his mouth shut, staring off into nothing. He could still feel the echo of her terror, rooted deep inside him, and it was a raw, twisting ache. He could hear the echo of screams, and unlike Dez’s ghosts, these women were still alive. He knew it—this unreal, uncanny insight that he couldn’t even define
. He could feel the echo of their pain, and the knowledge of what awaited them . . .
Now he just had to figure out how to save them. How to stop the monster behind this. Sometimes, this job really sucked.
“It was getting to be too much for her,” he finally said, slanting a look at Jones. “You know that?”
Jones lifted a brow. “I suspected. Once I saw her. She was . . . fragile. Jillian’s been through hell. Kids tends to be fairly resilient anyway, and she’s even more so. But I suspected she was too close to an edge this time.”
“Suspected?” Joss studied his friend’s face. He knew Jones didn’t categorize himself as psychic, but there was something there. Jones had a knack for finding people like Joss. Taige. Dez had sought the unit out, but most of the psychics had joined after Jones had ferreted them out. He also had a way of knowing who was the right one for the job, who needed to take a break. Who was walking a line. “Or knew?”
Taylor shrugged. “Semantics. She’s a child who saw something nobody should have to see. It’s no surprise it’s hurting her.”
“That’s why you used her.” The power of Jillian’s gift was twisting through him, too much and too strong. Joss knew it would come in handy. But there were others who could get him through this. A telepath could have connected with Jillian and gotten the information Joss needed. An extra step, they both knew, but it would have left Joss a little less keyed up. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing. “You’re trying to find a way to let her exorcise this demon.”
Taylor’s lids drooped, shielding the unreadable blue of his eyes. “Save the armchair psychology for somebody else, Crawford. Her abilities will be useful, and she came to me. I didn’t seek her out.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He nudged Jones in the shoulder. “You just don’t want anybody to know you’ve got a heart inside there.”
Once more, that withering stare returned. “Do you have any idea how you’re going to go about making contact?”
As the job reared its ugly, ever-present head, Joss sighed. “Now that . . . is already done. The rest of it will be hard.” Turning around, he headed back to his car. Jones followed along behind him, the two of them doing another casual look around. There were people everywhere. The Waffle House was packed, people inside chowing down on a good old American breakfast. Eggs. Bacon. Waffles. His belly growled just thinking about it. Joss was going to head in there shortly and do what he could to clog his arteries. He’d invite Taylor, but Taylor wasn’t going to be interested.
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