Hidden Currents (39 page)

“I just know. Sit up and drink your tea. He wants you afraid because he can better control you that way. But you’re home, here with us, and we’re going to heal you and make you strong again. He can’t win. He believes in his own power because he’s never had anything or anyone stand in his way.” She crouched down beside her youngest sister, gently pushing her hair from her face. “Look at me, honey.” She waited until Elle lifted her head and their eyes met. “You aren’t alone. You have all of us. You have our men. You have Jackson. You have this town. But most of all, you have your own talent, your own strengths. He isn’t going to win.”

Elle drew in a deep breath, turned and leaned her head back against Jackson’s legs as she took the teacup from her sister. She looked around the room at the people who loved her—the people who would fight for her—fight with her. “He killed Dane. My handler. Dane’s the only one who knew my identity. I was loaned out and he was afraid someone in his agency worked for Stavros. He claimed that Stavros had police on his payroll throughout Europe and even possibly here. He didn’t want to take any chances. We built the Sheena MacKenzie cover very carefully over a period of time in order to bring her into Stavros’s world.”

“I’m sorry, baby,” Jackson whispered gently. His fingers found the nape of her neck and began a slow massage to ease the tension out of her.

“Dane was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die on my account.”

“It wasn’t your account, Elle,” Sarah corrected. “He was trying to stop a human trafficking ring. You and I both know how dangerous that is. It’s becoming the number one moneymaker, edging out drugs and weapons trafficking all over the world. Every branch of law enforcement everywhere is concerned, and all of them know the risks, just as they do when they’re trying to bust a drug ring.”

Elle bit down hard on her lip, not wanting to think about Dane. He came from a long line of law enforcement and his family had spent generations working for their country trying to stop crime. Dane had requested help from the United States and he’d gotten her. She hadn’t done very well for him. Stavros had gotten to him, which meant Dane had been right—someone in his office was on Stavros’s payroll. It was only a matter of time now. Even if Dane had protected her identity, Stavros knew Sheena MacKenzie was an undercover agent. He’d never stop now until he found her.

Jackson said nothing, knowing how the Drake family worked. He’d been around them enough times. He knew he was an intelligent man, but several in the room were better thinkers than he was. He was the quiet, action type, finding little reason for a lot of talk and a lot of reason for action.

For him, it was all quite simple. Stavros would never go to prison. Even if he was caught red-handed, he had too much money and too much clout for the evidence to stay untouched. It would disappear or be destroyed. Even in the unlikely case that he was convicted, he would be running his empire from where he was and reaching out to destroy Elle’s life. No, Stavros wasn’t going to prison.

Jackson glanced up and met Ilya’s knowing eyes. The Russian just nodded at him, a small, barely there assent. There were two of them that felt the same way and Ilya was a good man to have at his back.

“I think the real question we need to be asking ourselves is, why is he so strong,” Damon ventured. “When any of you use your talents, it drains you. He’s a sea away yet he sustains power. That makes no sense.”

Jackson’s attention jumped to Damon. The man’s brain was a machine. He was on to something. Whatever it was had to be important and valuable or he wouldn’t have brought it up. He’d been giving it some thought and if he asked the question, he had an idea of the answer.

Damon shot him a quick glance and Jackson had to struggle to maintain his expression. Damon also knew that Jackson was planning to go after Gratsos and he wanted in, it was there on his face. Damon was no fighter, but he could plan a battle—hell, he’d developed defense systems for the United States.

“Maybe it’s because he’s a male,” Jonas said, using his logical voice.

Hannah cuffed him hard. Joley smacked him as well, not once but twice.

“You’re such a freakin’ chauvinist, Jonas,” Joley accused him.

“He has a point,” Ilya said, straight-faced. “Look at me.”

Joley punched his arm. “Don’t flatter yourself, Prakenskii. I’m looking and all I’m seeing is a lot of hot air.”

He caught her by the back of her hair and pulled her head back, finding her mouth with his, unapologetically taking possession. When he lifted his head, his eyes laughed. “I’ve obviously not been doing my job lately.”

Joley grinned at him. “You do well enough.”

Sarah made a little sound in the back of her throat, bringing everyone back to attention. “Actually, Damon brought up a good point. How is he able to maintain his energy?”

“He’s not really using his own energy,” Damon said.

Tyson leaned forward, a puzzled frown on his face, hands clasped together in his lap, his gaze locked on Damon in that focused way of his. Nothing and no one else was in the room at that moment. “You think he sets the energy seeking in the fog? Free from him?”

Damon nodded. “It has to be that, Ty. How else? There’s no way he could sustain an attack in so many places at once. I looked up the Hidden Currents website and the fog was in sixteen places around the world at
exactly
the same moment. Now, most of those weren’t even in the same time zone, but still, the fog hit precisely at the same moment regardless of what time it was in that particular region.”

Tyson snapped his fingers. “I see what you’re getting at. Clever, clever man.”

“I don’t understand,” Jonas said, his voice irritated. “Enlighten me.”

Damon’s brows drew together. “He creates the fog to find psychic energy.”

“I get that,” Jonas sounded disgusted. “How does he sustain it? If he doesn’t feed the energy, his fog would collapse, just dissolve. Something has to sustain it.” He looked to Hannah for confirmation.

Hannah’s attention was on her sisters. They were all looking at one another. “Could he do that? Have any of you ever tried? Ilya?” She looked to her brother-in-law.

“What?” Jonas exploded. “Try not to make the rest of us feel like idiots. All this hoo-do crap is annoying as hell.”

“Don’t you see, Jonas?” Tyson obviously didn’t notice that Jonas was about to lose his temper. “He sends out the fog, sustaining it himself until it finds psychic energy.” His eyes lit up, admiration gleaming for a moment. “Then the fog feeds off the psychic energy available to it, leaving him free to create another trap in the water. Because he uses anything natural to the environment, he just basically has to set things in motion for his traps to work. He used kelp, sharks, fishing nets, wind, and he’s got to be traveling on the hidden currents on the water. If there isn’t one available he creates his own.”

“If he’s adept enough, he might be able to do the same thing, prepare a trap and the user of the psychic energy might be feeding the power to him,” Damon said. “It’s just a theory, of course, but where else would he be getting the energy? All of you are feeding it to him, and it explains why you were all so drained even when you were doing a surface healing on Elle.”

There was another long, stunned silence.

Jackson tightened his fingers on Elle’s shoulder to get her attention. “If he can do it, you can do it. And maybe on a much larger scale.”

Elle shook her head. “I don’t know how.”

“You zapped him, baby. We both know you did. In that moment, before you went down, when you stopped that wall of water, you lost your temper . . .”

“Big surprise there,” Jonas muttered.

Joley kicked him halfheartedly and Hannah glared at him.

“Well it isn’t,” he defended. “Is anyone here surprised?”

Elle felt the knots in her stomach loosen. Surrounded by her family, the familiar teasing in the face of dangerous threats, she was beginning to feel safe again. Jonas loved them and she felt secure in his love—at home—in the same way she did with her sisters. She found herself looking around the room.

I’m very lucky, Jackson.

“Damn it, Elle.” He reached down and caught her around the waist, dragging her up and onto his lap. Her tea fountained into the air, but simply stayed there, hanging while he wrapped his arms tightly around her and hissed into her ear. “You do that again before Kate works on you and you won’t be able to sit down for a month.”

Elle burst out laughing. The overturned teacup on the floor righted itself and the liquid streamed back into it. Elle threw her arms around Jackson’s neck and hugged him, burying her face against his throat. “Did I tell you this morning that I’m madly in love with you?”

His large hands framed her face. “As a matter of fact you did.” He trailed kisses over her, from the corner of her eye to the corner of her mouth before brushing her lips with his. “But that isn’t going to get you out of trouble. Every time you use telepathy, I can feel the lesions in your brain increasing. You have to stop.”

“I’m honestly trying,” she admitted, shocking her entire family.

Elle rarely enlightened anyone to what she was thinking or feeling. The fact that she was explaining herself to Jackson was very telling to them all, especially that she was doing so in front of them. If any of them had doubted her feelings for the deputy, they were convinced now.

“I don’t realize I’m using telepathy. We’re so bonded it just seems natural.”

“I know.” His voice was so tender, Elle leaned in to kiss him again. “Just try harder.” He looked at Kate. “Really, Katie, I don’t know what to do.”

Kate looked at her younger sister, struggling to keep emotion from her face. Jackson had never called her Katie, not once in all the time they’d known one another. And the expression on his face when he looked at Elle brought tears to her eyes. He looked as if the sun rose and set with her, and more than anything, all of them wanted Elle happy.

“We brought some candles and a few other items, Elle,” Kate said, her voice a little wobbly. “We’ve talked a little on how best to try and still give you privacy. Are you willing?”

Jonas stood up. “Maybe we’ll leave you to it. We can go out to the deck and drink some manly coffee for a change.”

There was a note in his voice Jackson understood. Jonas wanted to talk. Jackson flinched inside. Jonas was law enforcement all the way, but he knew Jackson, and he knew Jackson’s way of thinking. He would want to arrest Gratsos, believe there was some way to take him down within the law and Jackson didn’t feel much like arguing.

Jonas sighed and jerked his thumb toward the door.

Jackson set Elle’s feet carefully on the floor. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, baby. But don’t worry, I’m not letting you go.” He stirred in her mind, reminding her he was helping to create a strong barrier between her and her sisters so they wouldn’t feel what she’d gone through.

The intimacy between Elle and Jackson had grown fast, ever since she’d connected with him when he’d been in the prison camp. The more they shared their minds, the more tightly woven the connection had become. He had been alone most of his life, not just alone, but a loner by choice, and now he couldn’t imagine his life—his mind—without Elle in it. Her touch, not just physical, was addictive. The warmth she shared with him, her unreserved, uncompromising love that she poured into him was so much a part of him now. When he looked around at his home, he knew it was home because she was there.

Jonas made a sound in the back of his throat. He caught the grin Hannah and Joley threw at each other. The Drake women loved Jonas. He was more than Hannah’s husband, he was truly their brother in their hearts. The only one they had. Their fierce protector and their biggest pain. They knew he wanted to talk to Jackson in spite of Jonas’s attempt to keep it a secret.

Elle flashed him a small smile and he winked at her. Her smile widened.

“You’re going to do this, then, Elle.” Jackson made it more of a statement than a question. “Once you do, we move back to the Drake home. It’s the center of power and we’ll have even more ammunition against the son of a bitch. In the meantime, that house can protect you better than I can.”

She shook her head. “No, it can’t. He’d be all over me if you weren’t stopping him, Jackson.” There was quiet conviction in her voice. “He can’t get past you.”

Damon stood, leaning heavily on his cane. “Are you certain?”

“Absolutely certain. I can’t keep him out. I don’t know if it’s because of the lesions and I can’t maintain a natural barrier against him, or if he knows exactly every weak point. But as soon as Jackson pulls away from me, I can hear Stavros whispering to me, telling me he’s coming for me. That if I don’t come back to him he’ll kill everyone I love and that sooner or later he’ll get to that one person who matters above everything to me.” She looked at Jackson and there was pain in her eyes. “He means you.”

Jackson curved his palm around the nape of her neck and drew her to him, tilting her head back with his thumb, pressing his forehead against hers. “Then he’s in for a big disappointment, baby. We both know I don’t kill so easy.”

“I couldn’t bear it if anyone else was hurt or killed because of me,” she whispered, pressing closer. “I don’t know how to live without you anymore.”

“Look around you, Elle,” Jackson said. “Take a good look at your family. Nothing is going to happen to any of us. In this one thing, you trust me. He isn’t going to win.”

Jackson turned abruptly and left the living room, Bomber at his side. He shoved open the door and went out onto the deck, rage welling up inside him. For a brief moment it consumed him, ate at him, until he felt the boards under his feet shift.

Damon and Ilya followed him, Damon dropping into one of the deck chairs. “You’re going after him.”

“I won’t have to go after him. The son of a bitch is going to come right to me,” Jackson said. “He’s so full of himself he thinks he can come onto my home turf and take my woman.” The edge of a glacier was in his voice.

“You have a plan.”

Ilya and Jackson exchanged a long, knowing look. Jackson shrugged. He just needed his gun and the man in his sights and Ilya was with him 100 percent on the strategy.