Hunted by the Past, page 4
He didn’t move, his body steady and relaxed, completely unruffled by my tirade. “It was a command decision made for your protection.”
“Excuse me if I don’t believe you.” God, why did I even bother? Was I still hoping for an apology? If so, I was pretty sure I was out of luck. “I don’t have time for your games, so I’ll ask one more time. Why are you here now, and why is Ellery after me?”
“I’m here to protect you and get your help.” His quiet statement hung between us.
“Your protection sucks,” I snapped, even as I mulled over the implications of the second part. I would need his help to keep Ellery off my ass. Kayden’s and whoever he worked for. I choked down a frustrated scream. Time for a different tact. “Exactly how do you think I can help?”
His gaze remained level as the lines in his face softened with some emotion I couldn’t read. “We know what you can do.”
Studying his too-knowing gaze, worry flickered. Again with the mysterious ‘we’. “Excuse me?”
A grim little smile quirked his lips. “You see things others don’t.”
His bombshell trapped my breath under the one-ton elephant that parked its ass on my chest. “Uh?” I wheezed. Witty repartee, that’s me.
“You’re not the only one out there with psychic abilities.”
Recoiling, I struggled to keep my voice even. “Who said anything about being psychic?”
“Just stop,” his warning growl cut my protestations short. “If you want the truth, you have to give it. Otherwise, I can’t help and I’m out of here.”
Somehow he knew, and wasn’t that a kick in the ass? What now? Admit or deny? My options were limited. One, I could kick his ass out and stumble around trying to find Kelsey on my own. Or, two, I could use him and his resources. Contrary to his opinion, I wasn’t stupid. Going after Ellery alone amounted to a suicide mission. Plus, it wouldn’t save Kelsey. But if I could use him and Tag? Not to mention the resources they could access that I couldn’t touch, then my chances increased dramatically.
I looked away and the sight of Kelsey’s discarded sunglasses lying forlornly on the counter made my heart clench. To save her, I would shout the truth from the rooftops and damn the consequences. No matter how much it grated to depend on him, I couldn’t risk Kelsey’s life for my injured pride.
It wasn’t like anyone would believe the truth if Kayden and company decided to share it. Hell, they were quick to dismiss all the irregularities in the initial report. And yes I knew there was a ‘they’, because there were a bunch of powerful someone else's behind Kayden.
For now, that ‘they’ would be nothing more than a possible tool to get Kelsey home safe. Afterward, if I played it smart, I could deny everything. My word against theirs. I took a deep breath and dove in, “Fine.”
Kayden’s lashes lowered, veiling a strange flicker before I could figure out what it meant. “Tell me how your ability works.”
Stalling for time, I straightened my shoulders and countered, “I have a better idea. Let’s trade.”
His reluctant humor came and went. “Question for a question?”
Tempted by the thought of controlling our exchange of information, I nodded. “You level with me and I’ll level with you.”
Speculative interest colored his voice. “I’ll go first.”
I shook my head. “Uh-uh. I go first.”
He took the couple of steps necessary to crowd into my personal space. Then he leaned in until a mere breath separated us, reminding me of things I didn’t want to remember. He was so close, too close. “Trust issues?”
I bared my teeth in a parody of a smile. “Just the ones you taught me.” Good lord, he was hot. Literally. A disturbing heat radiated from him and curled around me, dulling the chill edge of nerves. Sucking in a shallow breath, I fought not to reveal how unsteady he made me. “First question, why is he after me now?”
His gaze sharpened, an indicator that my attempt to appear unfazed failed miserably. He drew back, turned, and went to sit on the other side of the counter. As he moved, his T-shirt tightened over the telltale lump in the middle of his back.
Nice to know he hadn’t resorted to pulling out his gun while we were wrestling in the hallway. Which reminded me, I needed to find my gun.
“You’re hard to pin down.”
“Obviously not hard enough, since you and Tag found me just fine.” I narrowed my eyes, his answer felt more like an evasion. “And that’s not an answer. Why now? Why me?”
He wagged a finger at me. “That’s two.”
I crossed my arms and stared.
He dropped his hand and drummed his fingers against the Formica. “You’re next on his list.”
“List?” Not the answer I was expecting. “What list?”
“Nope, it’s my turn.” Despite his casual tone, his gaze remained serious. “Tell me about your ability.”
“That’s not a question.” It took effort to keep my voice light and unaffected, while every other part of me wanted to bolt. Instead, I headed toward the living room with studied nonchalance, leaving Kayden to follow or not.
The scrape of wooden chair legs over tile preceded his response. “Fine. What is your ability?”
Against my chest bone, my heart beat like a hummingbird on crack. Nerves left my mouth dry and a light sweat beaded my forehead. Classic signs of an impending panic attack. Less than an hour in his company and whatever progress I made in the last few months went up in a puff of smoke. Damn him.
Focus on the missing gun, Cyn.
With shaking hands, I pulled the cushions from the sofa. Maybe my gun had fallen between them? No gun, instead my search garnered a total of eighty-three cents, a paper clip, and stale popcorn.
“Answer for an answer, remember?” Kayden’s deep voice came from right behind me.
I gave a tiny jump and turned, holding the cushion in front of me like some plush shield.
“Tell me what your gift can do.” His quiet demand cornered me, leaving me with nowhere to hide.
Strength drained from my legs, and I sank to the edge of the couch, my fingers plucking at the cushion. “It won’t help you.”
He crouched in front of me, not touching me. “It won’t, or you won’t?”
“That’s two questions,” I muttered, avoiding his gaze.
“Put it on my tab.” Then he waited, giving me time to find my waning courage.
Maybe I should’ve considered my Q&A dare a little more thoroughly as things were about to get FUBAR. Fear slithered low in my belly. My ability was the furthest thing from a gift you could get, and what I shared next could send me to therapy, and therapy and I were not good friends. When I was a kid, everyone’s answer to my strange behavior was pills.
Needing distance from both the man and his questions, I pushed to my feet and resettled the cushion. “Sometimes I can see what happened in the past.” No exclamations of disbelief sounded from behind me, and when I turned around, he didn’t stare at me like I was bat-shit crazy. Strange.
“Post-cog.” His answer raised something old and hungry. At my raised eyebrow, he explained, “The official term is retro cognition, the ability to read the past of a person or object.”
“Just people, not objects.” Granted, sometimes certain objects could help my focus, but they never automatically triggered my ability. A shudder ran through me at the prospect of how much worse things could be if the objects around me could drag me into the past. Guess I should be grateful for small blessings.
Speaking of objects. I rounded the sofa, determined to find the missing gun. “How do you know this?”
“Is that really the question you want to ask?”
Was it? No, but asking what I wanted meant I was seriously considering working with him again, willing to join the hunt for the monster who turned my world upside down. And how stupid was that? Rubbing the dull ache under my scar and along my jaw, I dropped to my knees to peer beneath the sofa and continue my search. I wasn’t hiding. “Maybe.”
“You sure?”
Dignity be damned, I leaned down until my cheek pressed flat against the cool floor and scoured the forest of dust bunnies. And there toward the far end, just out of reach lay the gun.
From somewhere above me, Kayden asked, “What are you doing?”
“Looking for a gun.”
“You generally keep one under the couch?”
Snorting in this position would result in a never-ending chain reaction of sneezing. “No, smartass.” Sitting up, I found him standing over the back of the couch. I nodded toward the far end. “Do me a favor and lift that, would you?” While he got into position, I couldn’t help but add, “By the way, your tab o’ questions is now at four and counting.”
He sank into a squat, gripped the edge of the sofa, and lifted, making it look easy. Damn, guess those muscles were more than ornamentation. “Actually, three,” he grunted.
“Uh?” Realizing i was staring instead of getting the gun, I gave myself a mental slap and dropped to the floor. I shifted my shoulder, snagged the black matte grip, and sat up, determined to stick to our conversation.
He set the couch back in place. “Your request to lift the couch? Took my tally back down to three.”
Appreciating his willingness to play along, which gave me a chance to get my bearings back, I checked my gun. Ejecting the magazine, I racked the slide, emptying the bullet from the chamber. “Fine, three then.”
I counted the bullets in the magazine—fourteen. Kelsey never got a shot off. “So, Ellery took Kelsey to get to me, and now you think playing Peeping Tom with the past will help you catch him?”
He settled beside me on the floor, his shoulder brushing mine as I re-inserted the magazine. He rested his arms on his upraised knees. “I don’t think so, I know so.”
The surety in his answer scared me, enough that I gave up keeping score on our question and answer game. “Why?”
He looked to the weapon I held. “How did you know the gun was under the couch?”
I answered before my mental brakes kicked in. “Kelsey managed to knock it out of his hand during her fight.”
His eyes narrowed. “Who was Kelsey fighting?”
Damn it, nice slip there, Cyn. Never comfortable about actually talking about my little quirk, I got to my feet.
He caught my wrist, stopping me before I could walk away. When my gaze dropped to his, he asked, “Who did you see, Cyn?”
Twisting against his grip proved useless. Not that I tried very hard. The warmth of his fingers sank past skin and bone and was strangely reassuring. “Just her, I couldn’t see his face.”
He rolled to his feet with surprising grace. “Is that normal?”
A short, caustic laugh escaped. “Normal? What exactly about being a voyeur to the past is normal?”
He let me go, but studied me with an unsettling intensity. “How much do you understand about your gift?”
His careful question scraped over emotions still raw from watching Kelsey’s attack. “Not one damn thing, which makes living with it damn difficult.”
Difficult wasn’t even close to describing how it was to grow up under the watchful eyes of the foster care system, especially knowing you were different. When I was younger, telling the past from the present was a challenge, one that took awhile to master. Even then, trying to explain how hard it was not to get lost in the past, made it sound like I lived in some fantasy world.
It took me years to discover how to suppress this stupid ‘gift’ and find my place in the real world, instead of floundering in the past. By then, understanding the how’s and why’s didn’t matter, as long as I could keep it tamped down, I was good. Only then could I function ‘normally’.
“Then let’s start from the beginning.” A steely undertone of his words rode the edge of an order. “Tell me what triggers your ability.”
He wanted answers? Fine. “Emotions. The stronger the emotion, the clearer the picture.”
“Does it matter if the emotion is negative or positive?”
I shook my head, but qualified, “Generally negative. The more intense the situation, the closer I am to the subject, the deeper the imprint it leaves behind.” I struggled to explain something I never before tried to put into words. “It’s like developing a photograph. If the emotional intensity of the person involved is the developing solution, then the scene etches itself in more detail on whatever it is that causes this ability.”
Now that I was giving him what he wanted, he relaxed. Leaning against the back of the couch, he crossed his arms across his chest and gave a small nod. “That makes sense.” His relaxed pose was deceptive because his next question was sharp. “How sensitive are you?”
Confused, I uttered an intelligent, “Huh?”
Studied patience colored his voice. “When you’re reliving a scene, how deep do you go into it?”
Understanding dawned. “It depends. Generally, if it’s someone I know, I can prepare for it. Surfing the waves is like watching a silent film.”
“Silent films?” He frowned. “So, you can’t hear anything, just watch?”
I nodded, not ready to admit that might have changed.
“If you’re not prepared?”
Revealing any weakness to this man made me uncomfortable, but he wasn’t giving me much choice. “Then someone better be around to snap me out of it.”
“How?”
My hands curled into fists. “Physical distraction.”
“Like what?”
Heat crawled up my face and it took a lot to meet his gaze. “Shaking or slapping works.”
His eyebrows rose. “Aren’t there other ways that don’t involve hurting you?”
My shoulders hunched. “Not that I’ve found.”
“That sucks.”
I didn’t bother responding because he was right. It did suck.
“I’m not judging,” he said.
“Sounded like it.” I turned away and went back to the kitchen. With no holster available, I tucked the gun between the waist of my jeans and the small of my back. Not the best place to stash it, but it might stave off the temptation to use it. Besides, if things kept being as weird as they were now, I wanted it with me.
He followed me. “Look, I need whatever information you can give me. I need to know what you saw. Maybe there was some clue to where Ellery took Kelsey.”
“If it was Ellery.”
“What do you mean?”
Stopping short, I spun around, and threw up my hands. My sudden move pulled him up short. “What do you want me to tell you, Kayden?” I resettled my hands on my hips. “Kelsey walked into her room, someone broke in, attacked her, and then they both disappeared. I couldn’t see his face, but I can tell you he stood close to your size and had military training.”
“Show me.”
His steely demand snapped my mouth close and made me blink. “Excuse me?”
“Show me what you saw.”
Taken aback, I managed, “That’s not how it works.”
He folded his arms across his chest and stuck out his chin. “Does now.”
Chapter 4
“Explain this one more time.”
We were back at the couch, me sitting, knees bouncing with nerves. Kayden knelt in front of me and rested his hands on my knees, holding them still. With more patiently than I expected, he did just that. “Every person leaves an energy signature behind. I’m a Tracker, which means, most times, I can follow those signatures. Considering your ability, I have an idea that might help us.”
“I still don’t understand.” I studied him. Something wasn’t adding up. “If you can track psychic energy signatures, you should be able to read what happened without me.”
His big shoulders rose and fell in a casual shrug. “I could, but theory has it that post-cogs like you, can recreate the past by re-energizing the echoes of what happened. If the theory is right, it means while you’re reliving the past, the energy signatures should be stronger than if I read whatever is currently left in the room.”
“How does having a stronger picture of psychic signatures help us to determine what happened to Kelsey?”
“Think of it like a power boost. If we’re lucky, maybe your silent films will develop a soundtrack.” His fingers tightened on my knees. “Sometimes, with a strong enough signature, I can get a glimpse of what someone is planning on doing next. So if this is Ellery…”
My mouth dropped open. “You can see the future?” I squeaked.
“What?” Startled, he shook his head. “No, I don’t see the future, only seers hold that ability.” Before I could process that, he continued, “Think about it, Cyn. When you were on a mission, did you plan your next move or stay focused on the task at hand?”
I opened mouth to answer, only to stop and think. A glimmer of understanding rose. “We always went in with a set plan, but things change at the drop of a hat. If you kept running various scenarios in your mind, you could adjust your actions instinctively.” I studied the man kneeling in front of me. “You think that if it is Ellery, and that’s what he’s doing, you might catch an echo of his plans. That’s a hell of a lot of maybes.”
Kayden’s gaze didn’t waver. “Probably, but it’s better than doing nothing.”
That was debatable. “So, a power boost, uh? And we have to touch?”
Under his goatee a small smile appeared. “Pretty much. Physical touch has proven to increase psychic connections. Once I have all three signatures, it’s just a matter of separating yours and Kelsey’s out so I can focus on the last one. Hopefully, together we’ll get a better picture of what happened and confirm who attacked her.”
I bit my lip, considering. “You’re not seeing what I’m seeing?”
He shook his head.
It still didn’t make sense, but he seemed to believe it would work. He had me go back over everything from my earlier trip down memory lane, then he suggested we concentrate on the last scene, explaining he hoped his presence would trigger more details. That explanation made me wonder if I was missing something. I searched his face and the studied calm he gave me. “What aren’t you telling me?”
