The Protected

THIRTEEN

IT was an innocuous, dark blue sedan following them.

Gus had noticed it nearly thirty minutes earlier, and in those thirty minutes, it hadn’t once gotten any closer than it was now. Staying about a good fifty feet back, usually more. Sometimes two or three cars would get between them. Sometimes it would veer over into another lane, keeping that easy, casual distance, but there was no mistaking it . . . the car was following them.

And Alex was scared. It didn’t help that his fever had come back, either. Some Tylenol knocked the fever down, but nothing took the fear from his eyes. Sweat that had nothing to do with illness beaded on the boy’s forehead, and he sat there with his hands clenched in his lap, his entire body trembling.

Terrified.

“They found us again, Tío,” Alex said softly.

He didn’t respond. Fear spread through him, but giving voice to it wasn’t going to help Alex. It curdled in his belly, a twisted knot, but he accepted that fear, swallowing it down and welcoming it. He’d channel it. Make it his own, and use it.

They’d moved back onto the highway halfway through the afternoon and had made good time, leaving Florida behind nearly thirty minutes ago. But now, driving up I-65, speeding through Georgia, he felt like he was bashing his head against a brick wall.

He didn’t know where to go.

He’d been so sure if they just hit the road and got some distance between them, they’d be okay. Every other time somebody had tracked them down, all it had taken was a few hours and some distance and they’d lost them. Gus knew how to lose people.

You’ve never had to run from people who can track a psychic child, though, the dark, ugly voice of self-recrimination whispered from deep inside him.

No. He hadn’t had to do that before, had never realized it would be a concern. Even when Vaughnne—

Stop. Looking back wouldn’t help now. He hadn’t trusted her, and in all honesty, there had been no reason to trust her. He didn’t know her, had no reason to trust a total stranger. His experience with Alex over the years had served him well enough.

Things had changed and he’d fucked up.

Now he had to fix it. First, he had to get the hell away from the people trailing them.

He couldn’t take the boy on a high-speed chase. Not in the car he’d stolen.

And he had to ditch the car soon.

There was no way around that.

But if he stopped . . .

“They are going to hit us soon.” Alex’s voice was low, thin.

Gus swore.

Gripping the steering wheel, he looked back in the mirror and then at the cars all around them. “How are you feeling, m’hijo? How is your stomach? Your back?”

“I feel better with . . . um . . . that.” He shrugged, a restless jerky motion, and his cheeks were a dull, ruddy red. “I guess the medicine stuff is helping.”

Gus nodded shortly. “Good.”

“My head hurts . . . I’m . . .” Alex swallowed and looked away. “I’m trying to do what Vaughnne was showing me. It’s giving me a headache, but I don’t feel like I did yesterday.”

Vaughnne—

Mierda. He’d been trying not to think about her. She’d been right. He’d been wrong. There was no other explanation for how they’d been tracked down.

Psychic bloodhounds.

They’d tracked them down. Somehow. Gus didn’t know if it was because of something they’d done or what, but somehow they’d tracked them down. Maybe it was really as simple as she’d said and it was something Alex was unintentionally doing.

And it was something that did him no good to worry about now. They were hours away from where he’d left her and no telling where she was now. He had no way of finding her, which was exactly how he had thought he’d wanted it.

For now, he had to figure out the best way to take care of Alex.

Get those men off their tail.

“You think you can get in their heads?” Gus asked slowly, hating that he had to ask, but knowing he didn’t have much choice.

“You mean—”

“You know what I mean, boy,” Gus said quietly, staring straight ahead. “We need to be away from here. We need another car. We need to get you safe. But we have to make sure they can’t follow us, can’t try and take you from me. We need to make you safe.”

Alex swallowed, and the sound was terribly loud in the silence of the car. “If I do it out here, they’ll wreck. People will get hurt.”

Gus nodded. “Then we leave the highway.”

It would be better that way anyway. If they could find a quiet little road, someplace where they thought they might be safer to make a move, it would be easier for Alex to focus on them. Fewer people around to get hurt. Gus was willing to do whatever it took to protect his nephew, but if possible, he didn’t want to harm a bunch of innocent people.

He was already too close to becoming the monster he was trying to protect Alex from as it was.

They had to get off the highway, and fast. He checked the upcoming exit, mentally mapping things out. He’d spent long, long nights going over his exit strategies for the time when he and the boy had to leave. He wasn’t as familiar with this area as he’d like to be, but he knew the major interstates and the highways as well as he could hope to.

If he took the upcoming exit and headed east for a while, they’d get away from the traffic. There was a smaller county road that went north. There . . . they’d try to make it there.

“Okay, Alex,” he said, leaving the fast lane and watching as the car back there casually did the same thing. “This is what we’re going to do.”

VAUGHNNE woke up in more pain than anybody should have to feel without pharmaceutical intervention.

And when she opened her eyes a slit, she could see the highway speeding by. Not the bright lights of an ER, either. That was what she’d rather see. An emergency room. With a nice doctor . . . preferably a sexy one so she could have something to focus on while she waited for pain medicine, because damn, she hurt.

That wasn’t happening, though, she didn’t think.

She continued to sit there, breathing shallowly while she did a mental check. She had all of her body parts, and even though she hurt, she didn’t think she was in bad shape, considering she was pretty certain she’d been in an accident. Might have something to do with the fact that, even as scared as she’d been, she’d still been pretty limp and lax from whatever Gus had pumped into her system—

Gus . . . shit. Alex.

Fear flooded her, crowding up the back of her throat in a metallic, nasty rush, and she had to battle it back. Okay. Time to figure out what was going on—

“Calm down, Vaughnne,” a tired, familiar voice said. “It’s just me.”

She went to turn her head, and pain streaked through her, just from that. She winced, barely managing to keep the cry behind her teeth as she found herself staring at Tucker’s profile. “You.” Closing her eyes, she blew out a breath. “You heard me.”

“Yeah. Kind of hard not to. You wail like a banshee.”

She might have flipped him off if she could have moved without it hurting. Instead, she just sat there, letting her body adjust to being awake. Her body didn’t like it. Not at all.

“What happened?”

“I . . .” He paused and tapped a gloved fist against the steering wheel. “I might have forced the car you were in to wreck. Overloaded the system with a discharge.”

“A discharge?” She stared at him, trying to figure out what he was saying. The words sounded like English, but they weren’t, because he just wasn’t making sense. Or maybe it was the pain in her head.

“Yeah. It’s . . .” He blew out a breath. “I manipulate electricity, basically, and I store it inside me. Science says it isn’t possible, but then again, look at what most scientists would say about people like you.” He shot her a glance and shrugged.

“You . . . you store electricity.” Yep. It was official. He wasn’t speaking English. Okay. Whatever. “What are you talking about, discharging the car?”

“Think of a lightning strike. I took what I had in me, sent some of it into the car.”

“Then why weren’t we electrocuted?” Her brain was too muddled for this.

“The car.” He shrugged again. “I wanted to stop the car, and I did, but the car’s metal exterior protected the people inside . . . well, except for the guy driving. And the other guy. He got burned. Had his gun. He was touching metal.”

She narrowed her eyes down to slits, glaring at him. “I had a weapon on me, you ass. I dropped it like five seconds before you did . . . whatever . . .”

He grimaced. “Sorry. I was reacting on instinct, going with the best plan that seemed viable at the time. I knew you were there. And I . . . hell. Every one of us feels different, but those who don’t have a problem killing anything or anybody just have a different sort of vibe to their minds. I can’t read them—that’s not my thing—but you were in the car with a couple of people who would just as soon kill you as look at you. I didn’t figure you’d want to be dead so I took the chance.”

She closed her eyes. No. Dead wasn’t what she wanted. “They had information about the boy. Were tracking him. I needed to know who else was doing it—it would have been good to talk with them and figure out what in the hell was going on.”

“I can help you there.” He grabbed something from the backseat and dumped it in her lap. It was an iPad.

She turned it on and stared. “Now what?”

“Go to Safari. It’s the only page open. You’ll see.”

She blew out a breath and opened the browser, trying to think past the pain pounding in her head. Five seconds later, the pain was forgotten as a rush of adrenaline slammed into her.

Item.

Swallowing, she licked her lips.

“Please tell me this item isn’t what I’m thinking it is.”

“I’d be lying.”

She shot him a look, and this time, the jolt of pain that went screaming up her neck barely even slowed her. Absently, she reached up and rubbed her neck, although it didn’t do a damn thing to help the stiffness there. “It’s damn vague. It could be anything.”

“Scroll up to the top . . . read what the site is about. Who it’s for,” he said quietly. “Then decide if you think it’s nothing.”

She flicked her finger across the screen and found herself staring at the header. It was just an eye. The words were a jumbled mess. Shaking her head, she said, “I’m not getting it.”

“It’s a code.” His hands tightened on the wheel. “It’s called The Psychic Portal. An underground site for psychics . . . people like us. And they put up a want ad for the kid, Vaughnne. Anybody with the ability to pick up anything is going to know that isn’t an item being talked about. And there are no requirements for moral fiber to get in there.”

Her lids drooped as fear closed an icy, cold fist around her throat. Scrolling through the page, she started to dig deeper and then her heart jumped up and slammed against her ribs, hard. “This . . . this says they’ve got almost ten thousand members.”

“Yeah.” Tucker’s mouth was a tight, narrow line. “I bet a bunch of them are fakes and wannabes. And a lot of them aren’t going to be interested in going after a kid. But think this through to completion . . . you know there are plenty of scum out there who’d kill their own mother for a few hundred dollars. Grabbing some kid they don’t know?”

“Shhhhittttt . . .” she whispered, breathing the word out as her mind started to process that. “Tucker, we have to find them. Whether Gus likes it or not, we have to find that boy and get him in. It’s his only chance.”

Tucker’s lashes swept down over his eyes, and she recalled just how loudly he made known his dislike of the FBI. Damn it, if he started fighting with her over this—

He flicked her a look and gave a short, single nod. “I don’t know if turning him over to the FBI is the best idea, but he needs to be protected. We can agree on that much.”

“Good. That’s good. Thank God.” She shifted on the seat and groaned as her abused body screamed out at her. “I feel like I was run over by a truck.”

“You’re not far off.” He sighed and lifted one hand to his mouth.

She watched, wary as he used his teeth to strip off one of his gloves.

“Let me see your neck,” he said.

She just stared at him.

He blew out a breath. “Come on, Vaughnne. This will help.”

“Aren’t you the one who was telling me all the crazy shit about how you carry electricity inside you? And you want me to let you touch my neck?” He was out of his mind.

“Haven’t you ever heard of electrical stimulation therapy?” he asked, giving her what was probably supposed to be a charming smile. It failed. By a long shot.

Tucker looked too devilish to ever pass for charming.

Narrowing her eyes, she tucked herself more firmly against the seat.

“Come on.” He smiled again. “Chiropractors use it all the time.”

“I heard about this one chiro who was doing an adjustment on a woman—he severed her carotid artery. She ended up in the ICU, all because of his adjustments,” Vaughnne said, smiling at him.

“Well, I’m not going to give you an adjustment. I just want to help with your neck, seeing as how I helped put it in the shape it’s in.” He sighed and shrugged. “But if you want to sit there and suffer . . .”

He went to pull his hand back.

“You think you can really help?”

“Well. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t offer,” he said.

She muttered under her breath and then eased forward. As his hand came close, she squeezed her eyes closed and prayed. The first brush of his fingers wasn’t anything. Then, as she went to glance over at him, she felt something buzz against her skin. Hissing out a breath, her eyes widened.

But before she could say anything, it hit her again, and again.

He pressed against her neck, and the heat of his palm, combined with whatever the hell he was doing, managed to ease that horrid pain. “Oh . . . hell,” she mumbled, sagging in relief.

She needed to start to think. And she would soon. Really soon. Once they had an idea where they were going.

It was almost too soon when Tucker pulled his hand away. “I can’t do much more,” he said softly. “I have to limit how much I touch others, but that should help.”

Eyes closed, she sighed in bliss. “That was enough. I almost don’t hate you now.”

He laughed a little. “Gee, thanks.” A few seconds passed, and then he asked, “Why don’t you give me an idea just what we need to do here, Miz FBI? You got a plan?”

“Gimme a minute,” she groused. “This has been one lousy day for me, okay? Car wreck. Kidnapped. Oh, and hey, I was drugged this morning, too. Not to mention losing the kid I was supposed to be protecting.”

“Drugged?”

There was an odd, heavy note of tension in Tucker’s voice.

She cracked one eye open to peer over at him. “Yeah. Gus, his . . . ah, the kid’s guardian, he drugged me. Gave me some sort of short-acting sedative, if I had to take a guess. Caught me off guard. I woke up when they were shoving me in the car and I probably hit my head or something, because I went out again for a few minutes. I don’t know where Gus and the kid disappeared to.”

“I can help there.” Tucker stared ahead, his face grim. “I’m tracking the kid’s . . . brain waves, basically. He’s got an electrical signature that’s pretty unique. If nothing else, it will make it easy for me to find him. I’m keyed into the electrical shit.”

“I can’t imagine that. Really.” She made herself move her head, checking it one way, then other. Oh, bliss. She could move her head without major pain. The rest of her body was still in major protest, but other than that, there didn’t seem to be any problems. Wrenched a few things, probably. No major damage, she didn’t think. “How far?”

“It’s faint. We’re closing in on them, but if I had to guess, I’d say twenty miles or so.” His dark brown eyes were flat. “The kid isn’t the only one out there, though. I don’t think he’s been grabbed. I think he’s being followed or something, but there is at least one or two others close by. Probably looking to grab the kid.”

“So we just get there before that happens.”

Tucker muttered under his breath, “Yeah. That’s all we gotta do. Easy, right?”

NALINI came upon the accident scene only moments before the cops did. She sighed and climbed out, although it was just going to slow her down.

She had to get out there, because she needed to get her hands on . . . something. Her psychometry wasn’t going to kick into place unless she touched something, and she had to know what was going on so she could figure out where to go from here.

Mexico.

That was where she needed to go.

Except she was needed here, too. And she couldn’t be in two places at once.

Forcing herself to focus, she made her way over to the truck and studied the dead bodies there. The sirens wailed, closer now, and she knew she was missing out on her chance to grab anything from the scene.

Bracing herself, she made her way over to the body and touched the man who lay on the ground.

Images slammed into her.

Tucker.

Vaughnne.

Memories piling into her head, too hard and fast, fractured and burning hot in her brain. That was normal. She shoved them to the back of her mind, where she could pick through them when she had time to breathe . . . and time to not worry about local law enforcement.

What she needed was buried deeper and it was fading. The human body wasn’t exactly like an inanimate object. Inanimate objects held imprints longer. Human bodies were like the sand on the beach. One good, hard wave was all it took to wipe the slate clean and death was one hell of a wave. But it was there . . . just . . . there—

She grabbed it, took it.

Memories of the promise of money. The boy. It all circled back to the boy. She should have headed straight back to Mexico, she realized. None of this would stop until that damn listing went off-line. She severed the connection and sucked in a gasp of blood-drenched air. The night was thick with death and she closed her eyes, tried to process everything she’d just taken in.

It was too much.

This wasn’t her strongest ability, and she’d never perfected it as much as she should have. But a few things were clear.

They had been hunting the boy.

That wouldn’t stop until somebody made it stop. That was actually one thing she could probably do, all on her own. That one listing wasn’t going to rock the boat too much, she didn’t think.

The crunch of gravel was as loud as the crack of a weapon fired in the night, and Nalini was glad she’d had all those years of practice, all those years dealing with shock and fear and surprise. All those years had given her another gift, one that had nothing to do with psychic skill. She wiped every emotion she felt off her face and then replaced those emotions with the emotions she suspected she should feel. Horror, nerves, a bit of anxiety.

Keeping her breathing level, she lifted her gaze and summoned up the saddest expression she could, let tears fill her eyes as she looked up at the sheriff coming her way. “I . . . I think he’s dead.”

NOT long now, Gus thought, brooding, as he stared into the rearview mirror. They’d just passed a slow-moving old farm truck, loaded down with four people in the cab and four in the truck bed. As it passed around a bend in the road, he glanced over at Alex. The boy was fiddling with his seat belt, tugging at it where it rode over his chest. “Leave the belt alone, Alex,” he said quietly. His muscles were tense, and deliberately, he relaxed them. “What do you feel?”

“They’ll be doing something soon,” Alex said, his voice reed-thin, his skin pale.

Reaching over, he checked the boy’s forehead. No fever. He felt clammy, actually, and Gus wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. “We’ll do this and you’ll be safe.”

Miserable, Alex stared at him. “If Vaughnne’s right and they can feel me or track me, how can I ever be safe? I don’t know how to stop . . . doing whatever I do.”

“I’ll find a way to keep you safe,” Gus said, his voice flat and level. He didn’t know how, but he’d do it. Vaughnne’s face flashed through his mind. The way her gaze had bored into his.

And how many times had she told him that she’d help keep Alex safe?

I’m here to help keep him safe . . .

Carajo. He should have trusted her. It was too late now—

Abruptly, Alex’s hand, small but strong, reached over and clamped down on Gus’s forearm. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged.

He didn’t have to say a word. Lifting his gaze to the rearview mirror, Gus saw that the car behind them was closing the distance and fast.

“Block them out, Alex. Hurt them if you can.” He checked the Sig Sauer. It was loaded. Ready. He knew how to kill; had done it more times than he could even count, really. There was blood on his hands, and it didn’t even bother him for the most part. He could do it again and it wouldn’t haunt him at night. Not any more than anything else, at least.

As the car came bearing down on them, faster and faster, he slammed on the brakes. Tires squealed. “Hold on, m’hijo,” he ordered. He whipped the car around and found himself staring at a surprised face. The driver slammed on his brakes, watching them.

A moment later, he felt a pressure shoving against his mind—familiar, that, but nothing he hadn’t felt from Alex—and he ignored it as he aimed, squeezed . . . the pressure disappeared as the man’s head exploded in a mess of blood, bone, and brain matter.

Without waiting another second, he hit the gas and took off barreling down the highway.

He’d made it maybe five hundred yards before the car went airborne.

“WHAT in the hell . . .”

Vaughnne watched as the car a few hundred yards ahead went flying, up and backward, flipping over the dark blue sedan parked in the middle of the road.

Tucker jerked the steering wheel to the side to avoid having the car plow into theirs, and for the second time that day, she had the pleasure of having her body flung about. This time, the seat belt stopped her, but it wasn’t really that much of an improvement. It still hurt.

The car flipped upside down, landing in almost the exact spot where Tucker’s car had been three seconds earlier.

Neither of them took a second to breathe a sigh of relief, although Vaughnne did say a quick prayer of thanks as she fumbled for her seat belt. She was out of the car, weapon in hand, before Tucker even had his car at a complete stop. Every muscle in her body screamed and she suspected she was going to crash, and hard, sometime soon. For now, adrenaline, determination, and fear were the only things keeping her going.

“Stop,” she said, positioning her body as a man climbed out of the passenger side of the dark blue sedan still sitting in the middle of the road. He had blood splatter on his face, she noticed. Blood splatter, and either he didn’t notice, or it didn’t bother him.

She peered around his body and saw the driver, slumped over the steering wheel, and although she couldn’t see him well enough to be certain, she had a bad feeling she knew where the blood had come from.

The man took another step toward her, hands lifted in the classic pose . . . Hey, I surrender, don’t shoot me . . .

It might have worked, if he hadn’t been walking toward her, if he hadn’t had blood all over him, if she hadn’t recognized his vibe. Psychic as all get-out, and since something had sent Gus’s car flying through the air, she was going to assume this bastard had something to do with it.

“Hey, I just wanted to help . . . I saw the accident,” he said, smiling a little.

“Yeah. Sure.” She braced her weapon with both hands and hoped he couldn’t see the fact that she was swaying a little. “Stay where you are, man.”

Something nudged her. Hard.

She couldn’t see it, but she damn sure felt it.

His eyes tightened when she didn’t react.

The push came again, harder, and this time, she stumbled a little.

“Sir, you are going to desist,” she warned him. “Now.”

“I’m just standing right here,” he said mildly.

“And I’m Santa Claus,” she snapped.

“Ho, ho, ho . . .”

This time, when he pushed, she went down and he lunged.

“Do I get to play, too?”

TUCKER moved between them just as the man would have grabbed Vaughnne. Intercepting them, he smiled a little as the man fell back. Apparently he hadn’t realized there was a third party lurking around. Tucker decided he liked that . . . being the third party.

Stripping off one of his gloves, he tucked it in his back pocket. Something shoved at his chest. He didn’t know what it was, but he figured it was the guy. Telekinetic, he decided, able to move things with his mind. Tucker wasn’t impressed.

Snaking out a hand, he caught the man by his throat, using his still-gloved left hand. “I want to play, too. Let’s start with twenty questions. Who is after the kid?”

Something gripped at his hand—it was like he could feel something trying to pry his fingers off. “Stop it,” he warned.

“Fuck off or I’m gonna fuck you up,” the man gasped out.

“Oh, really?” He laid his bare hand on the man’s face and did a quick discharge.

A scream split the air, and when Tucker lifted his hand, there was a red imprint of his palm left on the man’s face. “Electrical burns . . . such a bitch. You know, I think I’d do the most damage. Want to have a pissing contest or are you going to tell me what I want to know?”

“I don’t know who is after him . . . but it’s a lot of money.” Eyes wide, the man stared up at him. “A shitload of it, and if we don’t take him in, somebody else will.”

“Oh, it won’t be you.” Tucker slammed everything he had into the man and watched as the life faded from his eyes.

Nobody who hunted kids deserved to live.

As he rose, he watched Vaughnne steady herself as she got back to her feet. “Please tell me you did not just do what I think you did.”

“Hey, his heart gave out. That’s all.”

“Damn it.”

“What was I supposed to do? Just let him walk?” Tucker shrugged as he tugged his glove back on. “You think you can arrest him and tell the judge . . . Hey, Judge . . . he wrecked that car with the power of his mind. Yes, sir. He really and truly did. And they’ll believe you and lock him up until . . . oh, wait, it won’t happen.”

She glared at him.

He just shrugged and headed over to the car. He was five feet away when the driver door budged. He heard somebody grunting and then there was another smash as whoever it was kicked it again. Determined son of a bitch.

He surveyed the damage to the door and glanced over at Vaughnne. “That door isn’t opening without some serious assistance.”

She grimaced and went to one knee, peering down.

A gun was shoved in her face.

Tucker swore and went to kick it away, but she lifted a hand to stop him.

Sighing, he turned his back and stared off into the distance.

THE battered face staring in at him was the very last one he’d expected to see. For a minute, he thought perhaps he hadn’t lived through the crash. But then Vaughnne stared at the gun he held for a long, long minute before shifting her dark eyes to his. “You know . . . I don’t think I’ve ever had a man spend as much time threatening me as much as you do without me doing him serious bodily harm. I’m contemplating just how much I’m going to make you suffer for it once this is all said and done, Gus,” she said, her voice tired, husky.

He just glared at her. Alex was behind him, his breath coming in harsh, panicky little stops and starts, and the one thing that Gus knew . . . they were trapped. They were completely trapped and he was out of options. The only chance he had was the woman in front of him.

And Vaughnne knew it.

“Don’t you think it’s about time you start trusting me?”

He gripped the Sig Sauer, staring into her eyes.

You must promise me . . .

That voice danced through his mind, teasing, taunting.

Promises.

Trust.

Behind him, Alex sobbed softly.

His gaze locked on Vaughnne’s, he laid the gun down. Her hand caught his, and gently, she squeezed.

Gus closed his eyes.