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Chapter 1
Two setsof eyes stared at me with restrained dismay. In a way, I felt like the suspects placed on the other side of the table in the interrogation room, the detectives asking questions and drawing their conclusions. Only, in this case, my interrogators were worse than the police. In my world, they were as close to the police as one could come, and at the moment they were not happy with me. Both because I had done something wrong, and because I had done something right. Only to no avail in either case.
“How long has it been since you slept, Maggie?” Gerard asked me, attempting to kill me with kindness. He was a big man in his fifties, heavy muscled with broad shoulders and thick arms. His russet skin was his softest feature as he otherwise had a weather-beaten face, graying beard, and balding head. A broad jaw and heavy features told of a long life lived, and of a once handsome young man.
“I don’t know,” I answered him and inhaled sharply, trying to think. Two days, probably. Two days since it all went awry. Which was a nice way of telling myself I had messed up royally.
“I’m betting a couple of days,” Annalise chimed in, who narrowed her eyes. “You look like it.” She was not a woman of patience, Annalise, nor was she inclined to spend her time on bullshit. Not in the least. Though one of my favorite people in my life, she could be tough to deal with. She had her own issues, though. I got that. She was about Gerard’s age, thin, and more and more frail-looking, which pissed her off to no end. But she still had her beauty, despite fine lines on her face and the light-gray haircut in a straight bob that reached just below her jaw.
“So what?” I told her, trying to sit up on Gerard’s soft couch. It made me sink down again. With them on each of their chairs facing me, the power show was all but decided.
“Andrea won’t be saved by me sitting on my ass.” The thought of the kidnapped woman who’d been tied to a chair for two days and now most likely chained in a dark basement, made me draw breath again. While I was out gaining no information, her situation worsened, and it pained me to think of it.
“She won’t be saved by you exhausting yourself and making mistakes, either,” Annalise pointed out. It made me hate her a moment. Then I realized she was right. She always was.
“No one has seen anything of the cars you described,” Gerard said. “Nor has anyone seen any of the men you encountered on the farm where they kept her first.”
I nodded. I knew we were at a dead end. But I couldn’t give up. I needed to help her. Bad shit happened to the affiliates of our Community. That was how it was. But you always did what you could to help. That was how we survived. That was how we stayed hidden.
“Doesn’t mean I should give up,” I told them.
“We’re not saying that,” he argued. “But you can’t go on like this. And you’re not alone.”
I knew that as well. Gerard had reached out to the Community. There were so many on the lookout for anything that could help that me wandering around blind didn’t add much. Not unless I happened to walk onto whatever hell-hole they were keeping Andrea in.
Fat chance.
“The time has come for you to step back and wait,” he continued, his voice soft now. Friendly. He knew how much this hurt me. Of course he did. When I had met him five years ago, my first impression of him had been that of a hard man; it still was, actually, but his ability was such a contrast to that. As an empath, he picked up emotions like a sponge, and unlike me, he couldn’t turn his ability on and off. It made it difficult to lie in his presence, and it also made it downright impossible to tell him he didn’t understand how you felt. He understood all too well.
“Please don’t make me do that,” I said. No point in protesting loudly.
“Only until we find something concrete. There are others that are in need of help.”
“What can possibly be worse than what happened to Andrea?” I said. Ashport wasn’t the biggest place in the world. Though bad things happened often, a kidnapping was not commonplace. A kidnapping that had been meant for me, I might add. The men who had taken her belonged to a company called Yorov, and they had been after me before. They were the reason I had been taken from my childhood home, and now they had found me again. And taken Andrea by mistake.
“I’m not saying worse,” Gerard said and rubbed a hand over his head. “But other things have happened.”
“You revealing our existence to a cop being one of them,” Annalise said.
I cringed at the thought. I hadn’t had a choice. I had tried so hard to keep Hansen in the dark about everything, but the problem with cops is they’re like dogs with bones. They keep sticking their noses where they don’t belong to find answers. And he’d gotten answers all right.
Get out of my head.
“There was no choice,” I said weakly. “He was going to arrest Rob. What was I supposed to do? He’d already seen Andrea’s mental projection.”
“Yes, I talked with Rob,” Gerard said. “He backs up everything. If his seeming like a psychic had been all the cop had seen, that would have been okay…but as it is—”
“We now have a cop in the know running around town,” Annalise broke him off. “You know how that usually goes.”
I nodded. Cops always did what Hansen had tried to do. He’d wanted to arrest Rob because to him there was no other reason for Rob knowing anything about Andrea than him being involved. It was why he had been so suspicious of me as well. He knew there was something not right. Cops usually did. That’s why you stayed away from them. That was rule number one.
Get the fuck out of my head.
I shook my head a little. Trying to think of something else. I’d had to reveal my own abilities to protect Rob. Of course I had. But in doing so, I’d done what I knew was a violation. I’d hated it. I never used my ability on anyone I knew. Not even remotely. And I’d stood there hearing him screaming at me, not verbally, no, but the words might as well have been roared into my ear:Get out of my head. Get the fuck out of my head. Get out. Get out.Over and over again. And the look on his face. I felt shivers run through me.
“I get why you did it,” Gerard said. He’d likely picked up on my certainty that protecting a friend was the right thing to do despite the danger. “However, we’ve heard enough stories of cops becoming even more difficult to deal with when they know about us.”
“I know,” I said. It wasn’t unheard of that they downright started hunting affiliates. There were even rumors of one such cop in Ashdale. No need for one of them here in Ashport as well.
