The Unwanted

Chapter Ten

It was the most he could offer her. As they left the hotel, he knew it hadn’t been enough, but what else was he supposed to do?

It had been months after his fuckup before he had come to grips with things. And he’d only caused his own injury. There were times when he woke up in a cold sweat still, thinking he was back in that dark hole and it wouldn’t be long before they came back in, carrying a hot piece of iron they’d use to brand his flesh.

He suspected her nightmares were far worse.

As if they hadn’t been bad enough already…and shit, she hadn’t even come to grips with those yet.

He bit back a sigh as they climbed into the car. Destin slid him a look. “What are you so grim about?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Oh, come on…”

Skimming a hand back over his hair, he shrugged restlessly before fastening the seat belt. Destin started the car but instead of backing out, she just waited there and turned her gaze his way like she wasn’t going to do anything else until he talked.

“I was just thinking about the nightmares this must have given you,” he said, keeping his voice neutral. “It’s not like you ever slept all that well anyway.”

Her lids flickered. “That’s not everything.”

“No. But we don’t have time to get into it, do we?”

The skin around her eyes went tight. “You’re still caught up on that, aren’t you?”

He didn’t have to explain it. She already knew what he was thinking, where his mind had gone. He’d only approached it a few times—those dark, tormented dreams of hers…sometimes an ability as strong as Destin’s had its roots in trauma. A deep, hidden trauma. She knew that, theoretically. Logically, though, when he’d tried to connect those dreams of hers to her ability…she never wanted to talk about it.

And now wasn’t the time. It wasn’t like she’d wanted to talk about this anyway. He stroked a hand down her face. “We’ve got a job to do, Destin. We’ve wasted enough time around here today.”

“Why are you so certain?” she demanded.

It caught him off-guard. Staring at her, he tried to figure out how to approach this. Brush it off, answer her? He shook his head. “This isn’t the time, Destin.”

“You brought it up.” She jutted her chin up and glared at him.

“Destin, I’ve seen it,” he said, wishing he’d never said a damn thing. She didn’t need this in her head right now. “You can’t remember…but some part of you does and every time you dreamed it, you pulled me in. I can’t block it out the way you can.”

At his words, what little color remained in her face drained away until she was chalk-white, her gaze too dark in her wan face. “No…” Then she clamped her mouth shut. “You know what? We don’t have time for this right now,” she said, her voice stark and cold.

He didn’t bother pointing out to her that he’d tried not to bring it up. There didn’t seem to be any point.

Destin’s shields were built on her ability to control herself. Her emotions. Right then, her shields were falling apart. She kept picking up random flickers, bits and pieces of everything around her. As they slowed to a stop at a light, she felt an overwhelming rush of rage, one that left her gasping for air. But it wasn’t hers. Breathing shallowly, she found herself following the source of that emotion and she saw the two passengers in the car next to her arguing. The windows were up and nobody could hear them, but the silence of their rage was no less powerful.

At least not to her.

Because it hit her so strongly, she knew she was in trouble.

Swallowing the strong, bitter taste of the fear creeping up her throat, she spotted the parking lot up ahead and turned into it. “I…”

The words locked in her throat.

“Destin?”

She shook her head and nosed into the parking lot. “Need a minute,” she said, her voice thick and hoarse. She tried to find that place in her head, the white noise she needed, the silence. It wasn’t coming.

Clambering out of the car, she leaned against it and wrapped her arms around her middle, staring up the hill toward the campus. She had to get a grip on this—

Her phone, the shrill sound shattering the silence.

Flinching, she reached into her pocket with awkward fingers, fumbling it out.

“Mortin here,” she said, her voice rasping a little. She cleared it.

“Destin. It’s Oz.”

“Oz.” She licked her lips. “Hello. I was going to call you and give you an update tonight.”

“And do you have much to tell me?”

“Some.” She glanced around and saw that Caleb had climbed out of the car and stood just a foot away, his sunglasses shielding his gaze. He had his arms crossed over his chest and in her mind’s eye, she saw those scars. Those awful, terrible scars. “It’s too complicated to go into in public, though.”

“Won’t be necessary. I’m in Charlottesville. Where are you?”

Destin blinked. “Ah…” Glancing around, she spotted the sign for the bank and named it. “It’s on the main drag through town in front of the campus. Oz, why are you here?”

“It’s complicated. Don’t worry about it, though.” There was a heavy, thick pause, weighted and long. “Why are you at the bank?”

“I needed to get off the road. Head is messed up.”

Another one of those heavy silences. “I’m actually not far away. I’m pretty familiar with the area. Why don’t you just wait there for me?”

Blood roared in Destin’s ears. Out of habit, she locked on Caleb’s face, wishing she could see his eyes. She reached out a hand and at the same time, she lowered her shields.

Something odd…something missing.

“Sure, Oz,” she said quietly. “Sure.”

As the blood roared in her ears, images started to flash in her mind, burning and imprinting themselves on her memory. Hands—familiar hands. A ring that Destin knew. Oz’s.

Flipping through sheets of paper—reports, pictures.

Stopping on one of them…

A face that Destin knew. She knew it very well, but that girl hadn’t been in the file.

“Oh, shit.” Realization crashed into her. Turning her head, she stared at the bank.

Pieces clicked into place.

“Do you have the file?” she asked, looking over at Caleb while wild terror started to beat inside her.

Oz knew how they worked. That was why she’d called Caleb in. He tended to keep the information at a minimum, trying to keep the stimuli from overwhelming her while Destin put the pieces together. If somebody was in immediate danger, the caution went out the window, but if somebody was in immediate danger, Destin was likely to have picked up on it.

Oz knew this. She knew it.

“Yes,” Caleb said slowly, glancing at the car. “Destin, what’s up?”

“I need the file, now.” She climbed into the car, delving into the back and hoping it would give her a few minutes of privacy. Oz would expect to find them standing outside the car, waiting for her, and when she didn’t, she’d glance in the front seat…at least Destin hoped how that was how it would play out.

“Get in and give me the file,” she snapped over her shoulder.

Caleb was already in action and thirty seconds later, the file was in her lap. She laid her hands on it and then looked at him. “I’m dropping my shields—all of them.”

He opened his mouth and she shook her head. “No time for it to happen any other way. You’ll have to get me steady as soon as you can if anything happens, because you were right—something is missing…and I think it’s one of the victims. Oz wasn’t telling us everything.”

The knowledge in his eyes flashed, burning through them both. Destin looked away and gripped the file, grounding herself.

Then she opened it and let every last protective instinct she had fall away.

Wisps…

Nothing but wisps.

She caught glimmers from the victims, but it was the same sort of thing she’d picked up when she’d walked the crime scene

She wanted to scream as she went through the damn files, the reports, the crime scene photographs, pitiful as they were. Each image of the victim made her heart wrench and her mind twisted as she took in too much. Memories. Sensation. Echoes. Pain. Laughter. All of it churned inside her, but she couldn’t lift much of anything useful out of the morass.

Nausea churned inside her and the breakfast she’d forced down her throat threatened to make a return appearance as she relived hours of confusion, memories of pain and fear and cold. Nothing concrete. Nothing certain.

And nothing from the bastards she needed to connect with…at least nothing solid. There were plenty of threads, but they were all disjointed and loose and when she tried to weave them into a fabric, nothing happened.

She should have enough to get a lock on the rapist, but…

Fifteen minutes later, she put the file down and shoved her damp, sweaty hair out of her face. “This is a waste of time. It’s a fucking mess, sheer chaos.”

She shot a look at Caleb and went to climb out of the car, only to pause, glancing back at him. His face could have been carved from rock, but his flesh was damp, as though he’d been sweating, and his eyes were glassy.

It was, she thought, almost exactly how she’d look, if she’d bothered to check. Not at all the way he usually looked when they’d come out of one of these connections before.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine.” Unlike the way he looked, the answer was level and even. Completely poised.

He didn’t look fine. He looked on edge, his control more than a little shaky, but neither of them had time for this right now. Sighing, she climbed out of the car and met his gaze over the roof.

Unspoken words passed between them. A shared history and so many years of working together so well, it was like their minds were one. Even before he went to ask, she knew what he was going to say.

“Does she go here?”

Destin shook her head. “I don’t know. Oz doesn’t have a good relationship with her anymore. After the divorce…”

A car pulled into the parking lot and a rush of hot and cold chills broke out over Destin’s body while a knot of fear gripped her hard and tight. She’d lied to Caleb. No, she didn’t know for a fact, but her gut had already given her the answer.

Oz’s out-of-character actions, why she’d pulled strings and gotten Caleb out here.

Caleb’s odd feeling something just wasn’t right.

Destin’s inability to see the pieces she needed…it was because she didn’t have them all.

As the silver Lexus swung into a parking spot across the lot, Destin swallowed and then looked over at Caleb. “She knows how we work, you know,” she said quietly. “She knows you withhold the information until it’s something you know I’ll need. She knows I trust you to work it that way. And I bet she tried to get a glimmer off the information she had and didn’t succeed.”

A muscle ticked in Caleb’s jaw as Oz climbed out of her car. “So she sends somebody who feels a connection to this sort of crime.”

Destin nodded. She understood. She really did. She wasn’t concerned because her boss, her friend, had decided to keep her in the dark…what worried her was why.

What was Oz up to?

As the long, lean blonde started across the parking lot toward them, Destin stared at her, tried to pick up something, anything beneath Oz’s sturdy, solid shields.

But there was nothing.

“Mom?”

Oz’s mask…and her shields…cracked.

And Destin stumbled against the car under the avalanche of emotion that came pouring out.