The Innocent: FBI Psychics, Book 2 (19 page)

The only one who’d gotten any visitors at all was DeeDee—no, Del.

Just as Jay leaned her hips up against the hood of the car, Del’s most frequent visitor came outside, staring at his feet, his shoulders slumped, head bowed.

Linc Dawson looked completely worn out.

She wanted to wrap her arms around him, guide his head to her lap and just let him rest.

But every time she’d tried to give him comfort, he’d pushed her away.

When she’d tried to call, he’d refused to answer.

When she’d gone to his house, he hadn’t answered the door.

Now, here he was…and if he pushed her away this time, she’d have her answer.

In a number of ways.

She’d have that answer for Taige and she’d have the answer for herself too.

If he turned away this time, then she was done.

She knew the very moment he sensed her.

He hadn’t even looked up.

But he stopped in his tracks.

His shoulders tensed. Slowly, that slump left them. He sucked in a breath of air and she watched as tension rippled through him and, in the next moment, energy seemed to crash into him and the exhaustion died away, replaced by a taut, pulsating rush that had her catching her breath before he so much as lifted his head.

Twenty feet remained between them.

But his eyes caught hers, held hers and he stared at her, his gaze a palpable stroke against her senses.

She gripped the metal at her back. If she had superhero strength, that car would have the indentations from her fingers at this point. As Linc started to walk toward her, she had to remind herself that not only was breathing a good thing, it was kind of necessary.

The dull ache that had lived inside her for the past couple of months seemed to spread as he came to a stop a few feet away.

He didn’t say anything and the silence gnawed at her.

When in doubt, she thought, fall back on attitude.

It had gotten her through many, many things.

“I take it you saw Del,” she said.

His only answer was a short nod.

Sighing, she hooked her thumbs through her pockets and tried to figure out just what to say to him.

He echoed her posture unconsciously, rotating his neck like he’d been carrying a lot of tension there. She imagined he had. He was here every week, like clockwork, on Tuesdays at eleven. Once he’d been here with Del’s mother but that hadn’t gone over well. Now Del’s mother called daily, although none of them had told Del or Linc that. The calls weren’t going over well and the woman ranged from desperate to threatening and none of them could tell her the real reason Del was there.

Did they tell her that Del was a powerful psychic who could kill dozens if she left before she was ready?

Or did they tell her that Del didn’t
want
to leave?

Either of them were true, but neither of them were the truths the woman would listen to. It was even worse, though, that the woman had every right to be angry, worried, scared, frustrated. It was even worse when Del had screamed at her so loudly everybody in the Foundation had heard.
“Get out…! You don’t understand and I can’t make you understand…just get out! I don’t want to see you!
”

“She’s doing a lot better.”

Now, finally, a response. A faint smiled curled his lips and he nodded. “I know. I can see it.” Then he looked away. “She doesn’t want to leave, though. I asked her if she thought she was ready and she said didn’t ever want to leave here.”

Jay closed her eyes. “She can’t stay forever.”

“I can pay whatever—”

“It’s not that,” Jay said gently, shaking her head. Then she gave him a faint grin. “Although we will be billing you. The families and patients who
can
pay, we try to collect. This place is maintained through a trust, and through…unusual funding and endowments that Oz was able to set up. But the money won’t last forever so we’ll bill those who can pay.” She looked around, her gaze resting on the walkway that led to the watergardens not quite visible from where they stood. “We can only have five people here at a time. Usually there are two or three at any given time, but there will come a day when Del is able to maintain, and we’ll need her bed for somebody who is…broken. She won’t always be fragile. We can’t turn somebody away because she just feels safer here.”

“And what if she is never…not fragile?” he demanded, his eyes stormy and dark.

Jay stared at him. “The girl who was able to survive for two months in hell, alone, is too strong to
not
pull through this.”

“You…” He shook his head, looking away. “You can’t know that.”

“Yes. I can. I’ve seen the broken ones. Your daughter isn’t broken.” Jay looked down at her boots. “She’s bruised and battered, and she’s going to have a long fight ahead of her to deal with the guilt and all the memories, but she’ll get there.”

His silence stretched out, long and heavy. When she finally looked up at him, his gaze was shuttered. “The guilt.”

Jay inclined her head. “Yes. You and I both know that taking a life is nothing to be taken lightly. But she has three innocent lives that lie between her and Stephen Mays. Now, Mays
is
the one responsible—he turned her into a weapon, primed and ready to fire. But she
was
the weapon. She knows it.” Jay paused. “I know it…and so do you. You can’t
help
her if you refuse to acknowledge it.”

When he said nothing else, she pushed away from the car.

She paused by him, rose up on her toes. It felt like her heart was going to crack, just split straight down the middle with oozing, bitter blood spilling out of it. Then it would wither, turning into dust before the wind blew it away. In the end, there would be nothing of her heart that remained, save for a few bitter and awful and wonderful memories.

Pressing her lips to his cheek, she murmured, “She’ll get better. She just needs you. And you’ll get better…if you let yourself. Try to let yourself, Linc. Find a life beyond this.”

She hoped he would.

It would be lousy if both of them were trapped in some sort of holding pattern, forever caught in this twilight.

The scent of him rushed in and the need, the love she had for him swamped her. Part of her wished—the small, selfish part of her—that she’d stayed in Texas. If she’d stayed, she’d never have known just what it was she was missing. She’d already known she was falling in love with him and it had been like losing a limb when he cut her out of his life. If she hadn’t come here, hadn’t learned just what she was missing out on—not just the physical contact, so hard for her to find, but that
connection…

Swallowing, she eased back down and forced a smile.

She’d lock herself in one of the meditation rooms, find some peace, some quiet.

Then—

Then what?

She was walking away.

As she took a step away, he shot out a hand, snagged the back of her jeans and jerked her to a stop.

“A kiss good-bye?”

She whipped around, twisting out of his hold and glaring at him.

“What?”

He advanced on her. “What was that?” he asked, growling at her. “Some sort of
good-bye
kiss? Is that what that was?”

“You already said good-bye,” she pointed out. She inclined her chin. “That was just—”

He caught her chin in his hand. “I take it back.”

She gaped at him. “You take it back?”

“Hell yes.”

“You can’t just
take it back
. What if I don’t want you now?”

He curved his free hand over her hip. “Is that what you’re saying?” Through the thin material of the skin-tight black shirt she wore, he could feel her. Her skin was hot, all but scalding him. And a fine buzz of energy seemed to snap between them. With his free hand, he cupped her face, brushed his thumb over her lower lip, watched as her green eyes clouded. “You don’t want me now.”

He bent, replaced his thumb with his mouth and she opened for him, her mouth a sweet, welcoming wonder. He licked at her, shuddered as she sucked at his tongue. Her arms came around his waist, her hands pushing under his shirt, her nails raking across his skin. Pulling back just a breath, he whispered, “If that’s your way of showing that you don’t want me, I can’t wait to see how you act when you do want me.”

She shoved at him and put a few feet between them. “You arrogant son of a bitch.”

As she started to pace, he resisted the urge to pull her back against him.

Abruptly, she stopped and whirled around, glaring at him. “You think I’m a fucking toy? You can push me away, then pull me back whenever it suits you?”

“You always suit me.” He rubbed his hands down his face and turned away, swearing under his breath. “Do you have any idea what a punch in the gut it was to have you show up when you did? If you had come to me any other time, I would have practically been begging you to stay. But…fuck. Everything in my life was a nightmare. My
life
was over, Jay. As it is…” He looked past her to the building where he’d left his daughter behind. Again. “It’s never going to be the same. I don’t know how I’m going to help her through this, and a few weeks ago, I don’t know if I could have looked at the rest of my life and seen anything but…” He stopped, laughed sourly. “I don’t think I could have looked at the rest of my life. I was having a hard time looking past the next day. I didn’t want to drag you down a few months ago when the only thing on my mind was revenge—and I won’t apologize for that. If you were any other woman, I don’t know if I could stand before you now and say I want to take a chance. But you are you…you understand what…you get Dee…Del. You get it.”

Jay stared at him. “I get it.” She came to him, reached up and curled a fist in his shirt. “I won’t say I’m okay with why you pushed me away the first time.” Then she let go of his shirt long enough to thump him in the chest. “I
will
say you are an
ass
for pushing me away the past few weeks.”

He caught her fist, lifted it to his lips. “I’m an ass. But I had to work it through. You know that.”

Jay sighed. Pressed her head to his chest. “Yeah. I get that.”

Slowly, he curled his arm around her. “So…are we going to do this? Give it a shot?”

“Hell no.” She lifted her head and wrapped her arms around his neck. “We’re going to do this. We’ll make it work…come Hell or high water. After all, considering what we had to go through just to get to
here
, everything else should be easy.”

“Hmmm.” He dipped his head, pressed his lips to hers. “Good point.”

About the Author

Shiloh Walker has been writing since she was a kid. She fell in love with vampires with the book
Bunnicula
and has worked her way up to the more…ah…serious works of fiction. She loves reading and writing just about every kind of romance. Once upon a time she worked as a nurse, but now she writes full-time and lives with her family in the Midwest. She writes romantic suspense and paranormal romance, and urban fantasy under the name J.C. Daniels. For more about Shiloh Walker, please visit her website:
www.shilohwalker.com
.

Also, check her out on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/authorshilohwalker
and Twitter:
www.twitter.com/shilohwalker
.

Look for these titles by Shiloh Walker

Now Available:

Talking with the Dead

Always Yours

For the Love of Jazz

Beautiful Girl

Vicious Vixen

Playing for Keeps

My Lady

The Redeeming

No Longer Mine

A Forever Kind of Love

The Hunters

The Huntress

Hunter’s Pride

Malachi

Hunter’s Edge

Grimm’s Circle

Candy Houses

No Prince Charming

Crazed Hearts

I Thought It Was You

Tarnished Knight

Locked in Silence

Grimm Tidings

Blind Destiny

Some scars cut right to the heart.

Beautiful Scars

© 2013 Shiloh Walker

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