The Protected

TEN

LISTENING to the police scanner, Esteban leaned back and crossed his hands over his belly.

He hadn’t expected anything to come of this. Still, he’d flown to Florida and checked into the Peabody, just in case. As an added bonus, he was away from the señor and it gave him some breathing room as he planned what to do next, where to go next.

If the boy and his uncle were there, he had to take care of it personally. But he hadn’t expected anything to happen so soon.

It had, and he hadn’t been there in time.

Now the boy and his uncle were on the move, and the man he’d hired was in the hospital. So far, the señor hadn’t called and he hadn’t had to explain anything. That was good. He’d already bumped up the offer on the website, and another had accepted and was on the move.

This could all be fixed.

So simple. After all this time and all it had taken was that website.

It was too bad the initial man he’d hired had been inept. He should have sent more than one. Esteban realized the error of his ways now. The second offer had come from a man who outlined a plan of attack that included working in teams. He had a partner he worked with and they’d both move in on the child and the reward would be split. A much smarter approach. The first one had just hired some muscle and that hadn’t been enough.

He was paying for his lack of foresight now. In the hospital. The boy’s handiwork? Esteban didn’t know and he hadn’t been able to get much information out of the hospital. He’d claimed to be Watkins’s next of kin, but the nursing staff hadn’t given him anything useful.

For a moment, he eyed the phone and then he shifted his attention to the police scanner. The other one was likely still sitting in a jail cell. Had he talked? Not that he could have said much. Watkins wouldn’t have told the muscle why he was needed. It was good, over all, that they hadn’t told him why his services had been required, and even better that he’d only been paid five hundred up front. Esteban had agreed to that added expense and he was glad it had been a minimal one.

Whoever would have thought that such a pretty little man-whore would turn out to be such a pain in the ass?

That was all he had ever been. He’d done a stint in the military, but it hadn’t lasted—they booted him out, after some disciplinary measures. Since then, he’d drifted through life, fucked his way into some money, and put that pretty face to use. He excelled at whoring around, gambling. He could hold his own in a fight, but he had no real use in life as a man. Esteban had done his research over the years. Eliminating this one man should never have been this complicated. Tracking him down should never have been this complicated.

But it had been.

And if he didn’t find those two soon . . .

The phone rang.

Part of him didn’t want to answer. Closing his eyes, he said a quick prayer that his voice wouldn’t shake.

Then he answered. His bowels almost turned to water as nothing but dead air greeted him.

Seconds of silence ticked away, and unable to handle it another moment, he said, “I have promising news. I tracked them down to their most recent location. They’ve been living here for a while, I believe.”

“And do you have my son?”

Squeezing his eyes closed, he clenched one hand into a fist. “No, señor. I don’t. But we’re getting closer and I have found more useful tools to help locate them. Now that I have, it shouldn’t be long.”

“It had better not be. I’ve been far more lenient with you than with your predecessor. Do not make me regret that, Esteban.”

Esteban swallowed the spit pooling in his mouth. “Of course not. Thank you for your trust. For this opportunity. I will—”

The phone went dead.

REYES stared outside.

Turquoise waters glistened under the sun. Carefully tended gardens with vivid bursts of flowers stretched out in all directions.

His domain.

His property.

He’d worked hard for this.

He was respected. Feared.

People knew his name and knew to stay out of his way. Some of the most powerful men and women in the world owed him. He had secrets of those powerful people tucked away that could be used to destroy so many lives.

He had more money than he could ever hope to spend in his lifetime.

But the things he wanted the most eluded him. He wanted his son back in his home, and he wanted that pendejo dead.

Simple. It should really be simple.

There was a knock at the door.

He ignored it, rage still churning inside him.

“Ignacio, may I come in?”

Despite his anger, the woman’s low voice pricked at something inside him. She . . . she was like a drug to him. He’d never touched any of the products he sold. They were the fall of too many men, he knew, and he wouldn’t be like them. But this woman . . . she was a safe addiction. And only his. Turning, he called out her name and watched as she entered.

Her long hair, pale and thick, fell to her hips. A bikini, lush and red, barely covered her curves, and he brooded as she came to him.

He had money.

He had power.

He had this beautiful woman.

And yet he couldn’t get his hands on the child. That child . . . the absolute pinnacle of his power. But was he here? Where he belonged? No.

Reaching out, he touched his finger to her lower lip.

She closed her hand around his wrist and smiled at him.

“You’re not happy,” she said softly. “Is it the same problem bothering you?”

“Yes.” He hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. “The man I’ve hired to solve it isn’t working out. I think I need to remove him from the equation and find somebody else.”

She pushed her fingers into his hair. “Maybe you can worry about all of that later . . .” She arched against him and pressed her lips to his jaw. “Worry about me for now.”

IT was a lousy, long-ass forty-five minutes and Vaughnne felt like she was going to come out of her skin.

Her very hot, tight, itchy skin.

She just felt that much worse, every time she looked over at the bed and saw Alex huddling in on himself, clutching at his belly as he slept fitfully. His dusky skin was flushed, and the few times she’d touched him, he’d felt hot enough to burn her hand.

Each time she’d touched him, she’d felt the weight of Gus’s gaze slamming into the back of her head, like he was ready to snap her neck if she so much as moved wrong around the boy. She had no doubt he was ready to do just that.

His words echoed through her mind, over and over.

There is nobody, and I mean this with every bit of strength I have in me, absolutely nobody who means as much to me as that boy. I can, and have, killed for him. I will do it again, without blinking. Am I understood?

He’d been trying to scare her, she knew. Yeah, some part of her had been a bit thrown by his intensity, but he obviously had no idea just how far she would go to protect somebody she loved. She’d been ready to throw her badge away, her life away. Everything, if it would have saved her sister.

She hadn’t been able to save her.

So she’d been ready to do the same thing just to avenge her.

Daylin . . .

Her heart ached as an image of her sister’s smiling little face flashed through her mind.

Daylin had been just four the last time Vaughnne had seen her. Four years old. Vaughnne had been fifteen years old the day her father threw her out into the streets, when he realized he hadn’t been going crazy, that Vaughnne really was able to whisper into people’s minds. He’d thought it was the devil’s work. That was what he’d claimed. She knew better now.

Psychic ability tended to stick to families. If one person was psychic, chances were there was somebody else in the same gene pool who had abilities, too. It could range from just being very, very astute with an insight that just seemed way too sharp to be natural, to abilities like Vaughnne’s. To freaky-ass shit like Tucker could compel, and everything in between.

She’d gotten her abilities from her father. She realized that now, with the wisdom that came from distance and age. She’d often wondered why he’d hated her so much, and now she knew. It wasn’t hate . . . it was fear. Fear of something he hadn’t understood, fear of something inside himself that he’d never been able to control.

She had no idea what his ability had been, but she knew she wasn’t wrong.

He’d chased her away, while her mother stood there, wringing her hands and crying. They’d just . . . thrown her away, and Vaughnne had never seen her sister again. She never would have known her baby sister was missing if she hadn’t been watching things on her own. He hadn’t once tried to call her. She’d found out nearly a week later, when she’d been doing one of her infrequent stops by his Facebook page, one he’d never bothered to make private. There had been a plea to help find his baby girl.

And Vaughnne’s first look at her sister in more than a year had been on a missing poster.

The grief still hit her hard.

“Why the FBI?”

Pulled out of the pit of grief and memory, Vaughnne looked up and found Gus watching her from his position by the window. Abruptly, she realized there was something . . . practiced . . . about the way he stood. Too practiced. Not like he was posing, although she’d seen enough of that, too. No, this was the carriage of a man who knew how to . . . protect. How to fight. How to hunt. Attack.

Fighter. That much, she knew. She’d seen the clues and already pieced them together, but it went deeper than that. There were fighters, like cops. And then there were those who were modern-day berserkers, warriors without any real equal. Navy Seals, Airborne Rangers . . . but she didn’t think he was from here. Where had he learned . . . whatever he did, she wondered.

He’d turned all the lights off save for a dim one by the bed, enough so that the boy could see. He stood lost in the shadows, his hands empty . . . empty, and ready.

“Well?”

Swallowing, she looked away from him and shrugged. “Why not?”

He snorted. “I can think of a thousand reasons. Why work for the government? I don’t imagine it’s for the money, or the glory.”

“All about the glory,” she said soberly, shooting him a quick glance. “I get up every damn morning and do my workout and my mantra is for the glory of the FBI.”

Gus just stared at her.

Obviously, her sense of humor wasn’t appealing. Rolling her eyes, she rose from her chair and started to pace. “It just fit. I was a kid in trouble . . . a lot of trouble. The man who heads up my unit has a knack for finding the people who’ll fit best into his unit. I’d just come off a stint in juvie and—”

“Juvie?”

She lifted a brow. “Juvenile detention center. I was something of a problem child.” That last trip in, she’d stolen some food, and when she’d gotten caught by the store owner, she’d beaten the shit out of him. Not because he’d caught her. But when he did catch her, he’d decided he’d take it out of her in a rather inappropriate manner. Of course, nobody had believed her.

The story was a little different when he was arrested for sexual exploitation of a minor two years later, but by then, she was out of the system and busting her ass to get her GED so she could get into college. Still, it had been a pleasure to see that man going to jail.

“Anyway, it was right before I was eighteen and I was reading in the paper about this woman who’d found a kid down south. She was one of the bloodhounds in the unit, although I didn’t really know about them. I headed down there—my gut told me that was what I needed to do. I wanted to talk to her. I hadn’t realized there were others like me until then and I . . . hell, I don’t know. I wanted to talk to her. She was in the hospital—I never did talk to her, but her boss? I did talk to him. He told me I wasn’t ready. Had to get my GED, had to go to college. Had to get myself together and under control—in other words, I had to stay out of trouble. He helped me get my life together, and he was there walking me through the mess while I did just that.” She shrugged self-consciously and looked away. “When I got out of college, I told him I was ready. He didn’t have much to say to that, but a few days later, the paperwork showed up at my place.”

“Paperwork?”

She lifted a brow. “You don’t just walk into the FBI and say, Hey . . . I want a job, Gus.”

Swiping her palms down her jeans, she moved over by the bed and touched her palm to Alex’s brow again. “He’s still so damned hot,” she muttered.

“We should put him in a cool bath.”

Vaughnne shook her head. “Bad idea. I’ve taken basic first aid courses . . . sometimes it comes in handy. Doctors don’t always think that’s the wisest thing these days. Sometimes the body reacts by the fever shooting even higher.”

Rising, she checked the time. “The doctor will be here soon.”

Gus looked like he wanted to argue, but after a moment, he just went back to staring out the window. “You never really answered. Why the FBI?”

“Because it fit. I’ve seen too many monsters, too many assholes in my life. I know what it’s like to be victimized and I hate it. With the Bureau, I have a chance to use what I can do to help people. I don’t have to hide what I am all the time and I can actually use it to make a living.” She shrugged and then suppressed a wince as the movement sent pain streaking up her neck to echo through her skull. She was too damn tight, too damn tense. Somehow, she didn’t think she’d have time to work in a massage or anything in the next few days, next few weeks, either. “Nothing else is going to come up in my life that lets me use what I can do the way this does.”

“And how can you use it?” Gus continued to stare at her. “How does your . . . talking . . . thing make you at all useful?”

“Pair me with a telepath who can receive as well as send and the two of us can go infiltrate damn near anything without having to worry about being spied on or caught because we had to reach out and make contact with the unit. For that matter, I can always be in contact with my unit. My range is pretty much limitless.” She smirked at him and added, “Just in case you’re thinking you can use me for hostage purposes or something. It’s a bad idea. I can reach out and touch somebody, so to speak, anytime I want.”

One black brow arched fractionally as he studied her face. “Anybody?”

“I have to have had a connection with them. Even if I’ve just seen them face-to-face one time . . . that’s all I need. If I know them personally, the contact is stronger.” She didn’t mention that distance could be a factor. No point in making her ability look less impressive. Sending a message to Jones in D.C. from here wasn’t an issue. She’d be in debilitating pain for a long, long while afterward, but if the need was extreme, she could do it several times over as long as adrenaline kept her going. She’d just pay for it afterward.

“So you have to have seen the person,” he said slowly.

“Yes.”

His eyes narrowed. “Did you see the men earlier? Those who came to attack us?”

Ahhhh . . . I see. Smiling a little, she inclined her head. “Yes. I did.” Then she shrugged and turned away. “But I’d rather not reach out and make that connection blindly, so don’t go asking me to play messenger girl.”

“Why?”

She shot him a look. “Because they tracked your boy. If I send a message without knowing just how capable they are, it’s entirely possible they can track me. And my job is to keep him safe. I can’t do that if I’m leading his attackers to his door, now can I?”

Any answer he might have made was cut short. She saw him stiffen at the window, watched as he pulled out that deadly Sig Sauer he liked to shove in her ribs every few hours.

“Somebody just pulled into the parking lot,” he said quietly.

Vaughnne pulled out her phone.

Gus continued to stand there, watching. “They are just sitting in the car—”

Her phone chimed with an incoming message.

You asked for a house call? –Grady

“IF I had to guess, without doing any kind of lab work, I’d say a UTI.”

Gus stared at the doctor like he thought she was going to chop off the kid’s hands and feet and feed him to alligators. Vaughnne carefully kept her body between them, although Dr. Grady was probably used to working around temperamental, pissed-off people. She didn’t even seem perturbed at being called to come to a hotel in the middle of the night.

“A UTI.” Gus spat the words out like somebody had shoved his mouth full of horse shit.

Vaughnne glanced over at him. “A urinary infection. Somewhere in the kidneys or bladder.”

“I know what it is,” Gus said, giving her a withering look. “But how would he get one? He is a healthy boy.”

“Anybody can get one,” Dr. Grady said gently. “He’s also a preteen boy. Boys his age are often too busy to slow down and drink as much as they should. That can predispose you to a UTI. Sometimes their body hygiene starts to slip.”

Something flashed in Gus’s eyes, and as he took a step forward, Vaughnne slammed a hand against his chest. “Throttle back, big guy,” she warned. “She’s not wrong. I’ve known more than my share of kids his age. You tell them to get in the bath ten times before they do it and they are out in the blink of an eye. They barely have time to get wet, much less really bathe. She’s not saying you’re not taking care of him and she’s not calling him a sloppy little heathen, either. So chill out.”

Dr. Grady’s brows had arched up high over her eyes by the time Vaughnne was done. “Exactly so, Vaughnne. If he’s not drinking adequate fluids, if he’s not using proper body hygiene . . . that could do it. Is he circumcised?”

Gus’s face went tight and harsh flags of color rode on his cheeks. “No, I don’t think he is.”

“Good grief.” Vaughnne rolled her eyes and turned to the doctor. “Gus has only been his guardian for a few years. The parenting gig is a new thing for him. I think some of this is making him uncomfortable.” She shrugged as she tossed it out there and gave the doctor a look that hopefully conveyed . . . guys, what can you do?

The doctor studied Vaughnne consideringly and then turned away. “If he isn’t circumcised, that’s more of an issue, then. It’s even more important that he’s cleaning himself properly. I need a urine specimen.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a cup, as well as a little square packet. Holding them out, she looked back at Gus. “We need to wake him and you need to get him to void.”

If the kid hadn’t been so damn sick, if the entire situation hadn’t been almost painfully serious, Vaughnne might have laughed at the look on Gus’s face. He stared at the cup like it was about to bite him.

Sighing, Vaughnne said, “If you can’t do this, Gus, I’ll do it. But I suspect it will be easier if it’s his uncle helping him, not some chick he barely knows.”

Gus nodded shortly. “Leave us for a bit.”

Vaughnne met the doctor’s eyes and the doctor inclined her head. “I’ll wait on the patio,” Vaughnne said.

The doctor could cover the hall. If Gus was going to try to escape, it would most likely be this way . . . closest route to the car.

And if he did go through the hall, the doc could send her a message. Vaughnne wasn’t terribly friendly with Grady, but she knew her. Jones had sent one of the doctors from the Bureau. She didn’t practice medicine much, but Grady knew her stuff.

And she carried a weapon, so if Gus tried to intimidate her, he’d be in for a surprise.

Of course, if he pulled the methods he liked to use on her . . .

Stop it, she told herself as she slid out onto the patio. She had to stop it and preferably now.

The last thing she needed to be thinking about was Gus using that damn near overpowering sexuality of his. Especially on another woman.

IT took a good twenty minutes to get Alex to wake up enough to get him into the bathroom, and by the time they were done, Gus wasn’t sure who was more embarrassed. He’d bet on himself.

If Alex wasn’t so miserably sick, the boy probably would have died from mortification.

It was a shame that when Gus looked in the mirror, he saw a man who was red-faced. A simple fact of life and he couldn’t handle it without feeling like he needed somebody to walk him through it. Consuelo, could I mess this up any more? he wondered as he made sure Alex washed up before they left the bathroom.

They’d have to deal with that embarrassing hygiene thing, too, he realized. Things Consuelo would have handled with grace and calm and ease, and he was all but tongue-tied just trying to figure out how to even approach it.

It took another five minutes to get Alex situated back in the bed. “I’ll bring the doctor back in.” He brushed Alex’s hair back.

Alex’s eyes opened wide and panic flared across his face. “Doctor?”

“Yes.” Sighing, he cupped the boy’s face. “M’hijo, you are sick. She thinks it might be an infection in your . . .” He grimaced. “They call it a UTI. It’s all the parts that lead up to where you make the urine, then empty it out. She thinks there is an infection and they can get serious. Your mother had them a lot as a child.”

It occurred to him, then, perhaps he should have mentioned that to the doctor. Did that run in families? He didn’t know. He wasn’t used to handling sick children. He hadn’t ever been prepared to handle children period.

You must do this . . .

The ghost of that voice danced through his mind and he shoved it out. Bad things to think about when Alex was so ill and likely to be less in control than normal. “You needed a doctor. We have a doctor.”

“But what if—”

There was a knock at the door and the boy went white. So pale and white and scared. Gus’s heart twisted in his chest and he rested a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “It’s okay, m’hijo. I’ll take care of you. You know that.”

He rose and headed to the door.

He was two feet away when the patio door opened.

Vaughnne came inside, sleek, dark, and silent, her eyes moving to linger on the boy. Alex stared at her as she came to kneel by the bed. “You can look in my head again,” she said quietly. “I won’t hide this time.”

The look of shock, shame on the child’s face was another blow to Gus’s heart. He’d put too much pressure on the boy, he knew. But when you were fighting an unwinnable war, fighting to protect a boy, you used whatever weapons you had. Even if the boy was the weapon. “I think we didn’t have you as ready to face things as we thought, Alex,” Gus said quietly. “That is my failing. Not yours. You’re still young.”

“Let the doctor in, Gus,” Vaughnne said softly.

He watched for a moment as she caught Alex’s hand. Then he turned away. He needed to get the boy better. Then he could figure out where to go from here.

“I gave him an injection. It should help him if it’s a UTI. It was a broad-spectrum antibiotic, so even if it’s not a UTI, it may give some coverage. I’m betting on the UTI, though. I did a finger stick and got enough blood to run a blood count, although I wish I could have talked his guardian into letting me draw enough blood for blood cultures.” Grady sighed, a disgruntled look on her face as she met Vaughnne’s eyes. They stood out on the patio, and through the window, they watched as Gus sat on the bed with the boy. “I’m leaving you some antibiotics, too. If it’s not a UTI, they aren’t going to help much. I’ll run some tests on the urine . . . I’ll have a better idea within a day or so.”

Vaughnne nodded.

“You’ll leave a number?”

“Jones has it.”

“Okay.” Grady nodded, a concerned look on her face. “He needs rest. He’s pretty sick and everything in me tells me that he should be in a hospital, preferably hooked up to an IV for a day or two. He’s getting dehydrated, and if he gets any worse, he’ll have to go into a hospital, Agent MacMeans.” She paused, studying Vaughnne’s face. “Am I understood?”

“Yes.” Rubbing the back of her neck, Vaughnne looked up at the sky. “If I thought it was safe, I’d try to talk them into going now. But I don’t think it is. I can’t risk him, I can’t risk the casualties that might come up if I took him to an unsecured facility. We’ll head north. If he has to go into the hospital for a day or two, I’d rather it be closer to where Jones can provide more protection.”

“Taking him to D.C.?”

Vaughnne snorted. “I don’t think that will go over well, although that might be where he is safest.”

“How much trouble is he in?”

Sliding the doctor a look, she said quietly, “My gut tells me you’re better off to forget you ever saw them. They have that much trouble trailing after them.”

Grady pursed her lips for a moment. Then she nodded and pushed a small plastic bag into Vaughnne’s hands. “I brought the basic meds with me, just in case. An antiemetic in case he starts having issues with nausea, one of the better antibiotics for a UTI. I’m leaving a setup with you to collect another urine specimen in a few days.”

“I don’t know if we will be anywhere to get it tested.”

Grady waved a hand. “I’ll take care of that. But if it’s a UTI, we need to know it’s clearing up. It doesn’t do you any good to keep his neck safe if he ends up with a kidney infection that could kill him, now does it?”

Vaughnne closed her eyes. “Shit.”

“Yes.” The doctor touched her arm. “Head to D.C. Be close to there, if for no other reason than so you can get him medical treatment if he needs it, and if the antibiotics don’t kick in, he’ll need it. Jones has people who owe him favors. If he had to, Jones could put the boy up in his home and I’ll take care of him there. I could use a few days off. But we need to keep him healthy if we want to keep him alive, right?”

TUCKER’S brain felt too wired.

Trying to lock on the wildfire that was the boy’s erratic ability was almost impossible right now.

Crashing in a hotel five hours north of Orlando, he tossed a ball up in the air over and over, letting the repetitiveness of the motion calm the ragged edges of his mind. Or that was the plan. And the plan was failing.

Swearing, he jacked up into a seated position and grabbed the phone. He jabbed in a number and it wasn’t until Lucia’s tired voice came on the line that he realized how late it was.

“Shit, Luce. I’m sorry. Ah . . . I just wanted to make sure you remember to feed Heywood.”

“Mr. Collins, I’m hardly about to let the cat starve,” she said, sniffing a little. “I might let you starve, but not the cat.”

He laughed a little and then reached up, rubbed the back of his neck. “You’ve got the alarm and everything set, right?”

“Of course.”

She had the alarm set. He’d gotten the notice on his phone. And if he knew Lucia, which he did, she’d also have her weapon handy. He and Lucia understood each other well. She was one of the few people he allowed around him with a weapon, because he knew she’d kill for him. Just like he’d kill for her. She was one of the few people in this world that he actually trusted. He might even almost love her, if he understood how to love anybody. She was definitely one of the few people he’d call a friend. He didn’t like being here and her there, with all of this going on.

“Is everything well, Mr. Collins?” she asked softly.

He closed his eyes. He didn’t know if he could answer that without lying, without worrying her. Lucia worried was a bad thing. People had died because Lucia worried. Not often, and he couldn’t say the people hadn’t deserved to die. He’d been flat on his back, dealing with one of the attempts to . . . return him. It had also been the last attempt. Something about the fact that he’d fried a half dozen of the men who’d been involved and Lucia had gone after the others . . .

There was something to be said about having a former mercenary as your housekeeper, he guessed.

Not to mention the fact that she was a killer cook.

“I’m not sure, Luce,” he finally said. “I’m doing a job. Involves a kid.”

The silence between them went strained. Seconds ticked by and finally Lucia said softly, “You didn’t agree to harm a child, Mr. Collins.”

He suspected if he answered in a way that displeased her, she might decide to come hunting his ass. Lucia had lived by few rules in her life as a hired killer, but one of them had been hard and fast. No children harmed. Ever. The reason she’d gotten out was because her handler had decided to try and push that line. When she’d refused, he’d sent people after her.

That was when Tucker and Lucia had met up.

She’d been bleeding out in an alley while he’d been working his own job-collecting information on a drug runner that he’d planned to sell to whoever wanted to pay the most money for it.

He could have walked by. Probably should have.

But when he’d paused by the older woman and looked into those defiant eyes, he’d been sunk.

That had been fifteen years ago. She’d moved out of the life and for a while had acted as a “security” specialist and she and Tucker had often exchanged information, or sold it, depending on the job. But problems from her past life had continued to emerge, and after one of them had landed her in a bloody heap at Tucker’s door, she’d confessed to him that she was tired. All she wanted was a quiet, normal life.

She’d never have one, but Tucker could hide like nobody’s business when he had to. He didn’t mind having somebody around to watch his back, either.

They were a good pair, all in all.

As long as he didn’t cross her lines, and she didn’t cross his.

Her lines were kids.

He smiled a little. “You know me better than that, Luce.”

“Naturally.” Her voice had thawed and Tucker slumped back on the bed, staring up at the cracked, water-stained ceiling over his head. The bed was miserably hard but he’d slept on worse. Hell, he’d spent more than a few years without a bed. This was almost paradise.

“So what is this situation that may or may not be a problem?”

“People after the kid. I stopped the immediate problem, but . . .”

Again, he lapsed into silence. Lucia picked up the ball. “You don’t know if the problem will return.”

“Oh, no. I’m positive it will. Right now, I need to find the kid and my brain feels like it’s been hot-wired.”

“Then perhaps instead of waking me up, you should go find a way to burn the excesses off and clear your mind, focus. So you can do your job.”

“If it was that simple, I’d do it,” he muttered.

“It’s only complicated if you choose to let it be complicated, Mr. Collins,” she said, her voice unconcerned. “Is there anything you need me to do, or may I go back to sleep?”

He blew out a breath. “I think we need to plan on shutting up things here locally and moving on. You think you can handle it?”

There was a long, tense pause. Then, Lucia said, “Do we have . . . past issues aggravating matters, Mr. Collins?”

“No.” Lights flickered. He couldn’t think of those past issues and stay calm, but the flicker was quick. He only saw red for a second. “But I had to give a fake ID to a cop and you know how that goes. So once this is done, we’ll have to move on anyway. You might as well head on out and set things up at the new place.”

“I see. Very well, Mr. Collins. I did enjoy Florida, though. Now . . . why don’t you see about burning off those excesses?”

The phone went dead.

He scowled and muttered something that likely would have had her punching him if she’d been here.

If Lucia Frazier was twenty years younger, he might risk the fact that touching her was a hazard to both her and him. Assuming he wasn’t afraid she’d break him in bed. The woman was scary as hell.

Burn off the excesses.

Shoving to his feet, he grabbed a clean stack of clothes, his gloves. He’d stopped to rest, thinking he might be able to get a better lock on the boy. But that hadn’t happened.

Might as well shower and get back on the road. Maybe he’d get lucky and find some relatively therapeutic way of burning off those excesses.

NALINI had no trouble tracking Tucker Collins down.

But she did have trouble getting out of her current mess for two days. The people she’d buried herself with weren’t exactly the kind who thought it was okay for her to just . . . waltz out. Even though she’d done just that off and on for several years, hoping to intrigue a madman.

It had worked.

Now she had the madman good and hooked, which was the bad news. He was a possessive, jealous piece of work, that was for certain. Another bit of bad news—she was working the job solo, and if she got jammed up, she was screwed. This wasn’t a contract case with the FBI or anything. This baby was all hers. The one bright spot was that she knew a phone call would get her out of said jam. Assuming she had time. But she was good at reading that sort of thing.

Somehow, she thought Jones might be really, really interested in what she’d uncovered over the past few days.

It went pretty damn deep, too, and she’d just scraped the tip of the iceberg.

If she knew anything about Jones and his unit, they’d just love to bust that iceberg apart. Blow it straight to hell.

But her job, first. All of that had to be done because once Jones brought his people in, the man she was looking for would either bury himself or Jones’s people would bury him.

She wanted to be the one to do that.

“So close,” she muttered. Pulling all those little threads, weaving a careful web, drawing closer and closer to the man she’d been hunting for so long.

And now she was at a standstill, because she couldn’t concentrate. The boy. Screaming. A dying woman . . . no. Dead now. Nalini had connected with her in the moments of death, and there was no way that woman had survived. She’d been hurting so much, and death had almost been a sweet release. Almost. Nalini would never go gladly into that good night, that was for damn sure. She couldn’t do anything to help the woman, but she could focus on the boy. Maybe help him.

That was why she was here. Sighing, she tugged the jeweler’s box from her pocket and flipped it open to study the necklace. It had been given to her a few weeks ago. It was a pretty piece of work, she had to admit. Flawless rubies, diamonds, and gold. Nalini knew her stones and this was worth a lot. It should be worn, admired . . . locked away in a safe when somebody wasn’t wearing it, not shoved into a pocket.

But she couldn’t stand to have it on her skin. When she wore it, the sound of screaming was that much louder. So she kept it in a jeweler’s box and the box was tucked inside the inner pocket of her light jacket. Heaven help her if she was mugged . . .

Then she smirked a little, just thinking of it. Not that it was likely. She could make any man who touched her do just about anything she wanted for short periods of time.

When he’d put this necklace on her, she’d almost made him put a bullet through his own brain. It had taken most of the night to bring herself down off that ledge.

Killing him wouldn’t be a bad thing.

But she had to do her job first.

And she couldn’t do it while she was so worried about what was going on with the boy. So she was here . . . all because she’d touched a necklace.

Her main skill was the ability to influence people through touch, to take their energy and . . . work with it. Jones had called it impressions. She could get inside a person’s head, in their soul, and leave an impression. While she was there, she could manipulate a person’s energy, their will. Nalini could channel that person’s energy, if she put her mind to it, and drive people to do either very bad things, or very good things. Since she tended to hunt down scum, she was usually driven to make them want to do bad things . . . to themselves. When she wanted to, though, she could do useful things. When she pulled back, she could filter away some of the negative shit. She didn’t do that much. But then again, when you worked with the scum of the earth, you didn’t have much of a chance to want to do nice things.

The impression/emotional manipulation shit was her main ability, but there was another one, a weaker one that sometimes got in the way. That ability was the reason she was here now and it hadn’t just gotten in the way this time.

It had almost tripped her up in the middle of the job, and if she wasn’t careful, it would get her killed.

A woman crying.

A boy screaming.

A man, almost brutally handsome, staring at the woman, and the woman had known her life . . . and death . . . were in his hands.

Then there was just death.

And the knowledge that the boy was still alive.

She’d gotten a glimpse of him, just that one flash.

She’d lied to Tucker. Lies were, sadly, something she dealt in. She told them, sold them, used them. Half the time, she didn’t know what was truth and what was reality, in part because she sold people another reality entirely, depending on what she needed to accomplish to get her job done.

To accomplish her goal.

Her goal . . . finding one man, one who’d proven to be very, very hard to find. But she had to find him if she ever wanted her life back. It was one of the reasons she wasn’t ever going to officially work for Taylor Jones. He claimed he could help with all of that, but she wasn’t about to let her name into the system, or her prints, or anything else. It was easier to just push some information his way and take the money he’d give her when he was in the mood.

She wasn’t going to barter money or info this time. What she wanted was to point Jones and his group toward that kid. In her gut, she knew why the boy was wanted. Why his mother—and the woman had to be his mother—had been murdered. If anybody could care for a damaged kid, it would be Jones. And if the kid had psychic skill, even better that Jones be the one taking care of him. But first they had to find him.

Narrow things down a bit. That’s where Tucker came in.

Then she’d just give Jones a nudge and sit back, watch while Jones worked.

He might deny any psychic ability, but she’d never seen anybody who could locate their kind the way he could. It was like he had some inborn compass that pointed only to psychics and trouble. She’d once called him Professor X, just to get a rise out of him.

He hadn’t been amused.

She’d almost think he didn’t have a sense of humor. Except she’d gotten that glimpse into him. He had humor. He had heat. He even had a heart, surprisingly enough. He also had a wife, a fact that Nalini had found a damn shame, right up until she’d laid eyes on one Tucker Collins.

There weren’t too many men she’d be willing to drop her guard around. Jones had been one, but he’d never noticed her interest.

Collins, though . . . he was aware of her interest.

And he was interested in return.

She realized they had a complication or two, but that was nothing she couldn’t work with. She’d dealt with volatile types before. She was almost certain she could handle him.

Except instead of walking up to the hotel where she knew he’d rented a room, after more than twenty minutes, Nalini was still standing outside, leaning against her car and staring up at the dark night sky.

A slice of light came spilling out of one of the rooms, and she turned her head. He was too far away and it was too dark out for her to see his face as clearly as she’d like.

But she didn’t need to see him. Tucker’s face was all but imprinted on her memory.

As beautiful as he could possibly be, with those high, arched cheekbones, a jawline that looked like he could take a punch or ten . . . and had, a mouth that would have made her sigh with want if she was disposed to such things. As it was, she just thought about sighing over that mouth. Most people would look at him and think that his hair was the most memorable feature. Deep, dark red . . . completely beautiful. It wasn’t the hair, though. Nor was it the tattoos that crept up over his arms, winding around them and disappearing under the sleeves of his T-shirt. Dressed, she thought, shoving off the car. Even this late at night. Or early in the morning.

What a pity.

No, it wasn’t the hair. Wasn’t the tattoos. Wasn’t even his size and Tucker Collins was a big guy. She’d never been much into that until she’d laid eyes on him.

The thing that made Tucker stand out were the eyes.

A person looked into those eyes and realized very clearly that this was a man who’d clawed his way through life and was going to keep on doing it. He’d killed. She knew it just by looking at him. Death stained the soul and she knew the soul. He’d killed and he didn’t regret it. Nalini was fine with that. She’d killed a few times herself, and she didn’t regret those deaths, either.

His eyes told a story. One of a man who’d caused, and solved, a helluva a lot of trouble.

If Nalini was smart, she’d steer very, very clear of him.

With a slow, lazy smile that felt entirely fake, she shoved off the car and headed toward the open door. The wedge of light framed Tucker too damn well. She stopped just a few feet away, close enough that she could feel the soft buzz that was another psychic’s energy against her skin. Far enough away that she didn’t have to tip her head back to see his face.

She really did like his face.

If it wasn’t for a boy who was in trouble. If it wasn’t for everything that was so damned complicated . . .

If it wasn’t for the screams that echoed in her mind every time she let her thoughts drift for even a minute . . .

“How did you find me?” Tucker bit off even as she let another if it wasn’t . . . dance through her mind.

Smiling a little, she reached out, thinking only that she was curious to see how he’d feel under her hand. That was all she wanted.

A gloved hand caught her right wrist.

The black leather covered his hands from the wrists down, and being the deviant that she was, she had an image of those leather-covered hands covering her. Gliding over her skin, while she straddled him.

“What’s with the leather?” she asked, not bothering to disguise the soft rasp in her voice. “You planning on playing cat burglar or something?”

“Bad things happen when I touch people without them,” he said. He squeezed her wrist once in warning and then let go. “Bad things can happen when people touch me. Just something to keep in mind.”

“Just how bad?” She stared into his eyes. “’Cuz I think it might be worth it.”

THE woman was a menace.

He’d been in the shower when he felt somebody approach and he’d lowered his shields just enough to figure out who it was. Everybody had a different feel, and nobody felt like her.

He’d spent the last few minutes in the shower with a raging hard-on and it had yet to subside.

He had more wild energy sparking inside him than he normally had to deal with and there she was taunting him. She had a smirk on her beautiful face and the mole by the corner of her mouth was just driving him nuts.

He was tempted. He thought he could touch her without hurting her. He doubted he’d ever be able to sleep with her. He’d lose control and that was one thing he couldn’t do during sex.

But he could touch her . . . just to see what happened.

Except if he touched her, even once, he suspected he’d need more. And more. And more—which couldn’t happen.

Still, she needed to get an idea of what she was doing. It wasn’t even fire she was playing with. It was lightning and that was way worse. Holding her gaze, he reached up and tugged off one of his gloves. “Worth it, huh?” Still staring into her eyes, he reached out and caught one of her narrow dreads. Fire licked inside his veins, jolted out of his skin, and he smiled a little as she swayed closer. He flooded the air with electricity. The lights flared. In the room behind him, out in the parking lot. Lights halfway down the strip of rooms went out, and he shoved out as much of the power as he could without it going into her.

Behind him, the light bulbs exploded as he shoved more voltage in them than they could handle. Took a lot to do that, but Tucker manipulated energy as easy as he breathed.

As the room was blanketed in darkness, he cut off the current.

The only sound Nalini made was a harsh intake of breath.

And then he felt her hand on his chest.

“Wow. That’s quite a demonstration . . . got any other parlor tricks you can show me?”

He backed away, glaring at her as his eyes adjusted to the absence of light.

She was still smiling, although he thought maybe it was a little more strained this time around. “Parlor tricks?”

“Hmmm. I’d love to see them . . . just not tonight. I need to know where the boy is. He’s in a hell of a lot of trouble.”

He snorted. “You bet your ass he is. He’s got an FBI agent with him. If I was the kid’s guardian, I’d get my ass as far away from her as I could.”

Nalini tensed. “FBI agent?”

“Yeah.” He shoved a hand through his hair and stared at her. “You work with them. Don’t you all ever talk?”