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I need you to see me.
Jana eased back and stared up at him.
Come in.
His power wouldn’t work against the spell locking them in the room, but there was nothing locking him out of her. So Zane took a breath, stared into her eyes, and went in.
Straight into the fire.
Chapter Eleven
The fire was all around him, burning so hot and fast. Screams echoed. Screams that came from him—no…her.
The fire Zane saw, the twisting orange and gold flames—it was in Jana’s mind. Her memories.
Paint peeled off the walls, boiling and dripping even as she screamed for the fire to stop. Screamed and choked on smoke. Screamed for help that didn’t come.
And the flames wouldn’t stop.
Zane sucked in a deep breath and fought through the memories. Jana’s first fire. He could see the charred body of her stepfather. Hell.
Another scene flashed in his mind’s eye. Jana hunched over a wooden table as tears trickled down her cheeks. “I didn’t mean for it to happen!”
A balding man in a suit loomed over her. “So you admit you started the fire!”
“I didn’t mean to?—”
“You started the fire. He died.”
Her eyes squeezed closed. “I want my mom.”
“Too damn bad because she sure as hell doesn’t want you. She knows you’re a killer, and she never wants to see you again.”
Jana’s fingers trailed up Zane’s chest. He knew she was right in front of him, but the images of the past were all he could see in that instant.
Jana walked forward, one foot in front of the other. The juvie facility was behind her, the hard gray walls looming like thick fog in the light. Her clothes were clean, her steps slow. She stared at the cab that waited for her.
“Where to, Miss?” the driver called out.
She didn’t speak, but Zane heard her thoughts so clearly, heard her lonely thought of…I don’t have anywhere to go.
The images whirled through his mind. Jana, a few years older, with dark red hair now. She was in a diner, and a guy was yelling at the waitress. No one said anything when he started cursing at her. But when the waitress ended her shift, Jana followed the woman.
Jana watched through an open window, and she saw the waitress and her two kids—and the man who’d come to the diner, drunk, to make trouble for her. The woman’s husband.
Only the man wasn’t just yelling now. He was hitting the wife and the kids.
Anger fueled Jana’s blood. Hot, thick fury and the charge she’d swore never to feel again coursed through her.
“The charge can come from anger, from rage. It’s so easy to stir the power. You just need the right stimulant.” Her voice echoed in his ears as her fingers trailed down his chest.
When the wife ran out of her house, holding the kids, bleeding, she found Jana in her yard.
“I can make sure he never hurts you again,” Jana said.
The woman stared back at her with terrified eyes and a broken jaw. Then she nodded. She didn’t question Jana. Didn’t say so much as a word. But then, maybe she couldn’t speak. Her jaw had doubled in size and the skin had already started to darken.
“Take the kids away,” Jana ordered. “They don’t need to see this.”
