Illicit Intuitions: Sensory Ops, Book 3 (13 page)

More like impossible. Every time she’d gotten close to anyone, she got burned. Every time she opened herself up to the possibility of love, she was slapped back. “You make me wonder if maybe I wasn’t alone. The more I learn about you and what you do… You intrigue me. And I don’t know why or how, but you make me want to understand myself better.”

“I don’t know that I can work with you, Ava. I don’t know that I can trust you to be honest.”

She pulled back, suddenly feeling more exposed than when she’d lain naked before him. Wherever her confession had come from she didn’t know, but it was solid truth. For the first time in her life she’d almost come close to pinpointing what made her different.
 

Loneliness washed over her in an almost-crippling surge. Her failed relationships had been because of her, but not because of anything she’d done wrong. Her inept attempts at fitting in on a team were more a result of a defense mechanism. If she stayed alone she couldn’t be hurt.
 

“I understand.” She’d never met anyone capable of understanding or accepting her. Until H, and she was screwing it up with her every move. Every word. She stepped back. Her hands shook at her sides and tears swelled in her throat.

“I’ll be in the living room if you need me.” He headed out, but paused at the doorway. “I want to believe you, Ava, but your evasions and secrets make it hard.”

And she wanted to tell him the truth, but she’d promised the team she would work within their parameters. This wait-and-see bullshit didn’t sit well with her style. She preferred to get in, assess the situation quickly, achieve the objective and get out.
 

This entire case, from the moment Whitestone had sent her in as a call girl to work for Madame V, was royally screwed up. She’d helped save Breck and Kami, but she’d failed to find Lori, the missing operative she’d replaced in Madame V’s operation. She’d learned the truth about Whitestone and left them, but she wasn’t fitting in smoothly with her new team.

Always looking in from the cold, she remained the outsider.
 

H had checked on Ava throughout the night, waking her to make sure she was healing well. Each time he’d seen the pain lingering behind her eyes he’d considered making a connection to help her. Each time he’d stopped himself before risking another volatile link.
 

By the time morning had come and he’d heard her rolling out of bed he’d been all too willing to greet her with an energy shot before getting the hell out. He’d stuck around, looking at her in yet another ridiculous T-shirt.
 

Now, two hours later, she was still lodged in his head. Upsetting and confusing and vibrant.

He’d known she was on to him, but acknowledging how close she was… He may as well have done a long jump and hurdled into chaos. Linking with her, healing her, hadn’t been his first miscalculation. It had been the impetus to set the pendulum of disaster into motion. He’d gotten too close, too fast, and with the clarity of a sniper’s scope, he sensed the rising danger.
 

His office door swung open. Dana stepped in, anger buzzing through the air around her. “Good. You’re alive. Now I can kill you.”

“Dana.” He slid a file over the papers on his desk and faced his sister.
 

Instinct told him he was going to have to get used to lying, and be good at it, very quickly. His inner thoughts and bodily responses would have to match precisely or she would nail him. He couldn’t allow his baby sister by five minutes to know Eston White was making a return. Especially considering he would be their target.
 

“You didn’t call me. You always call me.”

“You’re right.” Every night at the same time he would either call her on the phone or reach out to her mentally. Last night, when he should have been contacting her, he was getting into bed with Ava.
 

He dredged up every lesson in control and restraint he’d learned during General Scott’s torments to modulate his reactions. “I’m sorry.”
 

“Where were you? I was worried.”

“Ava had no one else to keep an eye on her.”

“Right.” Her tone screeched bullshit.

“She has a concussion, Dana. You would have done the same thing.” Except for the part of revealing their identities to a woman withholding information he needed.

“I would’ve taken the lying slut to a hospital.”

His gaze snapped to Dana. His spine stiffened and his blood slowed. “Watch yourself, Dana.”

She drew back. Her forehead bunched up, but a moment later she shook her head and advanced as shock set in. “You told her.”

“I told her nothing.” The weight of the truth shook his voice.
 

“But she knows.” Dana sank into the chair across from him. Her shoulders slumped. “She knows who we are.”
 

“Yes.”
So much for lying to protect her.
 

“You said—”
 

“That General Scott assured me we would never be found or revealed. I know.”
 

“Then how’d she find out if you didn’t tell her? Does she work for the general?”

“I don’t think so.” He dug his fingers into the knots in his neck. “I know she’s not telling me everything, but I also know she doesn’t deserve the level of hatred you have for her.”

“She almost killed you!”

“Damn it, Dana!” He slammed a hand on the desk. She jerked back. “I told you what happened. It was my choice to connect with her. I endangered myself. And I’d do it again if I could.”

“What a ridiculous thing to say.”

“No. It isn’t.” They’d never gotten into the discussion of what they would like to do. They always stuck to what they would do to maintain a low profile. “If I could use my abilities to help ease suffering I would.”

“H…”

“I get it. I can’t cure everyone and I would pay a tremendous physical toll.” He scrubbed his face, hating the stresses piling up. “Trust me when it comes to Ava. She’s different.”

“You like her.”

“She…” He’d almost gone with the intriguing excuse, but Dana deserved the stronger truth. “I care for her.”

“But you don’t know her.” Confusion rested on the underbelly of Dana’s argument. She wanted to be a free spirit, but some things still confused her.

“No. And I know she’s keeping secrets from me, but I also know she’s not interested in hurting me.” Nope. There was nothing malicious in Ava’s intentions. In her touch. Her taste. Her kiss.
 

He would stay open-minded when things were fully revealed. Or at least try.
 

“What do we do next?” Hesitant resolve deepened Dana’s normally happy voice.
 

She’d worked so hard to overcome her fears of the world. Trying to protect her came naturally. The desire to protect blinded him to the inner strength she’d drawn on to survive. She hadn’t abolished all of her fears, but she would fight to stay free.
 

“We go on. We can’t change what Ava’s learned, and we can’t allow what-might-be’s to control us.” H sighed and stretched his neck. The morning’s swim had done little to wash away the effects of stress plaguing him.
 

“Why are you tolerating her? Why aren’t you forcing the truth out of her?”

“Because that would make me no better than General Scott. I’m not sacrificing my soul for answers.” A moment of peace that felt remarkably like Ava erupted in him in a flash of brightness. He shook his head, dislodging the feeling. She was nowhere near him. They couldn’t be sharing a connection still. “And unless I’m very wrong, she’s special.”

“Special?” Dana scoffed.
 

She was only getting warmed up again, so he waited.
 

“Special like you’re entertaining foolish thoughts like spending your life with her or special as in she’s gifted with abilities?”

“Yes.”
Clarify that fast.
“To the gifted part. She’s either empathic or psychic. Maybe a little of both, which would make her very unique.”

“Or maybe she’s a great actress planted here by General Scott or Janus. Maybe she’s just using you to get information.”

Like him, Dana saw a conspiracy in everything and a spy in everyone. As far as she was concerned, only children were safe. And even they were only safe to a certain age. But he’d already explored that theory.
 

His own paranoia fueled each decision he made, from doing his grocery shopping at random times to the security protocols he’d put into place at home and the lab. After being shot at yesterday he wasn’t about to drop his guard. Neither was he going to reveal everything to his sister.
 

Sometimes not knowing was safer.

“Dana, I know this is scary for you. Trust me to handle things.”
 

“Fine. But don’t get so wrapped up in her you become stupid.” She checked her watch and pushed out of the chair. “The applicants you wanted back for the study will be here soon.”

“Thank you.”

“She’s blinded you.”

He laughed. “No.”
But she could.
“She intrigues me enough to want to learn more about her.”

“I’m watching you.”

Her tone clearly said she didn’t believe his claims, which was okay. It was comforting to know she had his back. Dana had been the one bright spot of his life. It thrilled him that she’d agreed to come out of her self-induced hiding to work with him.
 

“I’m glad you are.” He winked and slipped the contact lens schematics he’d been working on into his drawer and locked it. “Do me a favor and settle everyone in the white room. I’ll be right there.”

“What are you doing? What are you hiding?”

“I’m only making a quick phone call.”
 

“To Ava?”

“Give it a rest. You’re sounding more like a jealous girlfriend than my sister.”

“Resting.” She curled her lip up in the bratty sarcastic way she’d never outgrown. “I’ll see you in there.”

When she reached the door and had almost pulled it closed, he called out. “Dana.”
 

“Yeah?”

“Do you miss who we were? With them?”
Our parents?

She leaned against the door and thought about her answer. That she didn’t blurt one out raised his suspicions that she was as conflicted as him.
 

“Sometimes.” Her eyes watered up and she shrugged. “Then I remember that we can’t get them back. We can only make the best of what we have now.”

“I love you, Dana. I’m glad every day that I have you.”

She swiped at her eyes and left him alone. Wishing he could’ve found a way out for them sooner was pointless, but he couldn’t stop himself. He would give almost anything to erase the pain she’d suffered and return everything that had been taken away.
 

For now, the best he could do was eliminate whatever threats were heading their way. Ava was somehow broiled up in the midst of it all.
 

Eston White had killed Channing for the x-ray lenses they’d developed together. Lenses H had agreed to test, not knowing they would fuse with his DNA the first time he put them on.
 

Now, the corrupt general was after the contacts that had molded themselves to H’s eyes, unseen unless he lowered his shields and used his abilities. Then they radiated a blue glow that lit up a small room.
 

The general was after him. Or would be if he learned the truth.
 

Recognizing the need for help, and the need to keep Dana and everyone else near his lab safe, he pulled out the card Agent Lawson had left.
 

He’d recovered the bullets from yesterday. The Feds could work them and see where they led.
 

While they worked the evidence, he would work on figuring out Ava. He needed to know exactly what made her so different, because he’d only nicked her shell.
 

After making the call to Agent Lawson and agreeing to turn the envelope over to Agent Burgess later that afternoon, H returned to work. He stepped into the room of fourteen waiting people and was disappointed to not find Ava there to audit.

He looked at Dana, thinking maybe the missing woman had gone to the restroom.
 

Dana shook her head. “We’re ready to begin when you are.”

He didn’t need lowered shields to feel Dana’s disdain. Yes, it was worrisome she hadn’t shown up. What surprised him was that he was more concerned she’d had a complication from her injury.
 

He couldn’t lower his shields and reach out to her in a room of witnesses, so he settled in to work.

One-by-one, he and Dana tested the abilities of their volunteers. By lunch they were left with eight people. He would’ve dismissed the man with the buzz cut, Simon, if not for the vibes bouncing off him toward Dana.
 

Not dangerous, but curious and interested. They didn’t make sense, and with all of his experience in reading people, H couldn’t pinpoint why.