Illicit Intuitions: Sensory Ops, Book 3 (15 page)

“Given the circumstances, Breck’s giving you the lead on this. Handle it your way.”
 
Kami pulled into a parking slot in the mostly empty lot of H’s lab. “I’m going to go in and get Dr. H. Before I do, will you try to promise me one thing?”

She didn’t have the energy yet to think too hard let alone raise her head off the headrest. “Sure.”

“Finish this for Channing. If he created those lenses, he wouldn’t want to see people being hurt over them.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Kami nodded tersely before getting out and hustling to the lab. Enclosed in the car, completely alone, Ava tried to figure out what had happened to her. What exactly was it H was doing during his studies and had she missed him doing something to her?
 

She had to find some answers before she filed her report to Breck. He hadn’t been her boss long, but she already enjoyed the job, the team, more than the years she’d been with Whitestone. Until learning the truth just before meeting Kami, she’d thought she was part of an altruistic plan to safeguard and protect the country.
 

Corruption. She’d spent years fighting on the side of corruption.

She’d only woken up when she’d been temporarily reassigned to another handler to finish someone else’s mission. Shortly after beginning to work for Madame V, she’d found Lori’s notebook near the pond she’d enjoyed.
 

Lori Mullins, a Whitestone operative, had detailed her moves from the time she’d first met Channing and began suspecting foul play. After she’d met Trevor and had noticed an evolving pattern in Madame V’s approach, she’d tried to reach out for help.
 

Now, Channing was dead, Trevor was recovering with a few broken bones, Lori was missing, and H was being targeted.
 

And they may all be screwed if the case rested on the shoulders of a woman so messed up in the head she couldn’t be in the same room as her boss.
 

Ever since walking out of her home she’d been bombarded with impressions and feelings and emotions from others. The pain had pierced and prodded and pulverized her defenses.
 

She needed H’s help, but the sheer thought of contact with his power magnified her desire to find a dark, quiet cave and climb inside the thick walls.
 

H stepped out of the testing room and slammed into a wake of waspish worry. His barriers faltered momentarily before he got them back in place. Cautiously, he headed toward the waiting area, wishing he had a receptionist to deal with the latest onslaught of surprise visitors.
 

A blonde beauty with a flaming red streak of hair dominated the spacious waiting area. Class surrounded her and reached far deeper than her elegant slacks and silk blouse. Her gaze sought his with laser-point accuracy.
 

“Dr. H?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Kami Evans.” She moved forward with her hand extended. “My friend needs your help.”

He squeezed her hand politely and then released her. It wasn’t often people dropped in asking for help or handouts or looking for proof of alternate realities, and this woman seemed sane enough, but he gave her the same answer he gave everyone else. “I don’t believe I’m in the business of whatever it is you’re here for.”
 

“Then you better get into it.” She jutted her chin forward arrogantly and arched a refined brow. “I don’t know what you did to Ava, but she’s hurting. She says you’re the only one who can help her.”

“Ava?” His heart plummeted like a lead-filled balloon. Ava was in trouble. If something had happened to her after he’d left… “Where is she?”

He grabbed Kami’s elbow and turned her toward the doors. “Take me to her.”

“In a moment.” Kami gently extracted herself from his grip and stared up at him.
 

She didn’t speak.
 

She didn’t blink.

She studied him, scanning him with her eyes as if she’d be able to sense any malice. Maybe she had abilities, but he had his doubts. Regardless, Ava’s guard dog wasn’t budging until she’d satisfied herself in her pursuit of whatever she sought.
 

He couldn’t lower his shields to scan the area for Ava. Not with Kami standing close enough, alert enough, to notice the metamorphosis his eyes would make.
 

Seconds clanged like gongs.
 

His blood raced with the driving force of his heart. Ava was hurt and this woman was withholding.
 

Clang.

Unless she was part of a plan to keep him off Ava’s trail. He muted the conspiracy theorist in his head. It was possible. It wasn’t likely.
 

Clang.

Kami rubbed her lips together and narrowed her green gaze.
 

Kami.
 

Clang.

“You’re Channing’s Kami.” She was older than in the picture he’d glimpsed at Channing’s lab, but she hadn’t changed much. He should’ve put it together immediately.

She softened in the span of a breath. “Yes. I was his, just as Ava is mine. Can you help her?”

“I’ll do my best. Where is she?”

“In my car.” Kami turned toward the door, clearly deciding to trust him. “I’m not sure what’s happening to her.”

“Is her head bothering her? She took a hard hit yesterday.”

“That may be part of it.” She pointed to a white Lexus sports coupe. “But this feels…bigger.”

Internal alarms blared somewhere on his empathic plain. He shoved past Kami, rounded the hood of the car and pulled open the passenger door. Pale and weak, a battered shell of the woman he’d left a few hours earlier cowered in the leather seat. Her head lolled to the left, almost lifeless.
 

His heart and his shields quaked. He fell to his knees, embracing the bite of hot asphalt searing his skin and using it to brace himself. To be gentle.
 

“Shit.” Kami spoke from behind him. “She was doing better when I went inside. She was talking and looking stronger.”

“How long were you inside waiting for me?” He kept his gaze on Ava.
 

Her eyes fluttered open before falling closed, unable to exert the effort. He’d seen this sort of behavior before. Once. It ended in disaster. Both empaths involved had died.

With his back to Kami, he lowered his shields. In the haze of blue mist, fear and darkness and agony cascaded over him. The iced shards of vile hatred Janus specialized in knifed through H. The bastard was going to pay for what he was doing to Ava. Soon.
 

H activated his power and absorbed the negative energy pulsing around Ava into himself. The best he could hope to do was minimize her strain.
 

She moaned. Her eyes fluttered beneath her closed lids. He erected his shields and scooped Ava into his arms. She curled into his chest, wincing. He rose gently, so as not to jar her too badly.
 

“Do you know what’s wrong? Can you help her?”

He wanted only to get Ava inside, away from the dark emotions swirling around, threatening to break her mind. He would require refuge too very shortly. He took a moment to stop by Kami. Tears crept from Ava’s eyes. She burrowed deeper into him, likely in an attempt to escape the innocent fear and worry from her friend.

“She’s just come in to her empathic abilities. I need to get her inside.”
Both of us.
 

H left Kami behind. On the way to the building, he dropped his shields again and invited Ava’s agony into himself. His legs weakened. A mind-to-mind connection would offer her the greatest ease. Most likely it had been his connection to heal her that had awakened her dormant ability. Another union of a similar magnitude would shove them both to the breaking point with no possible rescue.
 

Until she was stronger, he would do his damndest to help her. To keep her from experiencing the fatality of an unexpected power.
 

She needed to be sequestered. He needed to relieve the pressure collapsing in on her.
 

Then, he would teach her to shield herself, because a failure to learn would force her to live in seclusion. Or face a horrendous death.
 

She wasn’t heavy, but this damsel-in-distress bit was a habit he could do without. He liked her better when she was strong and fighting. Shifting her in his arms like he had the morning before, he coded in to the building.
 

He reached for the door. A blast of hatred swept over him with icy familiarity. Ava cried out and shrank deeper into herself.

Releasing his inhibitions, H dropped his remaining barriers, drew on experience to pull the darkness closing in on her into himself. He pulled in a long and steady breath, expanding his lungs as far as possible. Tighter than a snake coiled to strike, he turned toward the tree line hiding the source of negative energy and not sure he could do it, H expelled the vile froth, projecting it back onto Janus.
 

The air cleared of all but Ava’s agony.

Janus was a projecting empath to H’s absorbing ability. The projector made a vile predator and it scared H more than a little that he’d been able to project his emotions.
 

As soon as he’d seen to Ava’s safety he would hunt down the men responsible for this hell.
 

Chapter Eleven

H leaned against his office door and reached out to flip off the light switch. Sunlight shafted through the window blinds that didn’t mute the brightness near enough. The film over his vision lent the room a blue tint, but the laser glow kept it from being completely demolished in the dark. He was too weak to raise his barriers for more than a few minutes, so rather than battle himself, he stumbled to the window, yanked the chord to close the blinds and collapsed onto the couch.
 

His eyes drifted closed. His body sank into the cushions. His muscles released some of the toxic emotions he’d absorbed from Ava and Janus.

He’d worked on her for nearly two hours, with her regaining consciousness in short bursts. Even then she’d been in too much pain to focus beyond her confusion.
 

Dana, familiar with the empaths who’d died at Eston White, stopped arguing once she’d seen Ava and he assured her he wouldn’t link to Ava’s mind. Even if he’d been willing to risk her—himself—he wouldn’t make the connection with Dana in the room.
 

She didn’t know about the contacts. She couldn’t know, at least not until Janus and General Scott were no longer threats.

Not all of Eston White’s test subjects had the same abilities as he and Dana. Some were naturally or even engineered psychics. Some were human lie detectors. And not all of them had wanted his idea of freedom. If they took Dana and questioned her, they would know if she lied.
 

No. With a Whitestone operative clearly after them, she couldn’t know his secret.

Click.
The snick of the door opening resounded through his head with the boisterous clarity of a church organ. He winced and squeezed his lids tight against the dim light slicing through the darkness from the now partially open door.

“Sorry to bother you.” Dana stuck her head in. She spoke sensitively and locked her emotions behind her inner walls. “Those FBI guys are here again.”

Damn it.
He gathered the dregs of his energy, slipped his shields into place to deactivate the lenses and sat up.
 

“I can tell them to come back.”

“No.” Moving slowly, tolerating the stabbing beam of light in the doorway for the sake of adjusting his eyes, he went to his desk and flicked on the lamp he rarely used. The soft illumination sprang to life with a brush of the base and threatened to singe his retinas.
 

Dana shook her head. “I’m telling them to come back. You need to rest.”

“No. I called them.”

“Excuse me?”

“Bitch me out later.” He sank into the chair behind his desk, wanting desperately to give her her way. Turning them back now would raise more questions. “Right now, just let them in.”

“Fine.”
 

It always amazed him how much weight his sister could put on that one word. She didn’t pout, stomp her foot or talk back, but he knew she would skewer him later. He’d pushed the boundaries of lies more in the last two days than in the last two years combined. He didn’t like it.

“Dr. H.”
 

Agent Lawson hadn’t been loud or gregarious their first meeting, but he spoke more sedately as he stepped in ahead of Agent Burgess. Dana lingered in the hallway—watchful. In her role as guardian of the temporarily feeble empaths she’d have warned them to keep it quiet and make it fast. Even if they didn’t know the reasons for the warnings, they seemed to have gotten her message.

H met her gaze, shifting his toward the room where Ava was sleeping. She nodded, silently agreeing to check on their
patient
, and closed his door behind the agents.