The Unwanted (A Novella of the FBI Psychics)

Dedication

With love to my kids and my guy, always.

Thanks to all my readers and my editor, Tera. You all are amazing.

Chapter One

“He dumped me because he got tired of washing the blood out of our sheets.”

Destin Mortin swallowed the knot in her throat and lifted her gaze to stare into the unreadable eyes of her boss, Elise Oswald, aka Oz. Although Destin’s heart was racing a mile a minute and her palms were sweating, none of it showed on her face.

She was a master at hiding how she felt. Came in handy in her line of work.

It didn’t matter if she was tracking down a rapist, if she’d just connected with one, if she was caught in the middle of his mind while he tracked down his next victim.

Being a psychic, that was something that happened fairly often, especially with her. For reasons she couldn’t quite fathom, she usually connected with violent sexual predators. It was a screwed-up ability, but because of it, she knew how to hide what she was thinking, what she was feeling, pretty damn well.

And it was definitely coming in handy now, under the eagle eye of her boss, the woman who’d just asked about the man who’d held her heart, and broken it.

With a cool smile, Destin met Oz’s gaze and shrugged. “What does it matter now? We broke up five years ago and he’s still with the Bureau. I’m very much not.”

Oz cocked a silvery-blonde brow, her expression remote. It wasn’t the expression she usually wore here in the office.

Oz smiled. She laughed. She let people know if she was pissed or cranky or if she’d been up too late reading a book. When her emotions didn’t show, it was cause for concern—if she felt a need to hold those cards close to her chest, there were usually problems; a bad case, a troubling one. When one of her agents was about to get thrown into a job she knew they wouldn’t like.

And Oz had just asked about Caleb…
shit.

Stop it
,
Destin told herself. It couldn’t mean anything. Caleb Durand had left Oz’s group years ago and he was still an agent with the FBI. Oz did private work now.

Nothing to worry about.

But that tight, composed expression on Oz’s face was troubling. Very troubling. Over the past few years, her pale blonde hair had slowly gone silver. There were a few more lines around her green eyes. But other than that, Oz looked pretty much exactly as she had when she’d recruited Destin ten years earlier. She was every bit as inscrutable now as she had been then and that blank expression had Destin’s belly shrinking down into a tight, cold knot.

Why in the hell is she asking about Caleb?

Destin slumped more comfortably in the seat and prepared herself to wait it out. If it had been just anybody else in the group, she might have tried a psychic probe—she didn’t always strike gold with those, but on occasion, she’d pick up something. But she wouldn’t with Oz. The other woman was a blank surface, until she decided she didn’t want to be.

Oz leaned back in her chair absently toying with a Montblanc pen. The boss loved them. Loved them, and lost them.

Destin didn’t see why she bothered. A pen was a pen. And Montblanc pens were
expensive
pens. Losing one of those was like just throwing money out the window.

As Oz tapped the pen on the arm of her chair, she studied Destin, her eyes close and watchful.

Destin was damned glad she knew how to hide what she was thinking. What she was feeling. That gaze seemed to see clear through to her soul and Destin felt like curling up into a little ball and hiding, like that would make whatever this was just go away.

Seconds ticked away and then the silence was shattered by Oz’s blunt statement, “You’re full of it, Destin.”

Destin shrugged. “Hey, you can’t blame the guy. It gets disconcerting to wake up and find your girlfriend covered in blood and nearly catatonic once or twice a month.” Destin had gotten caught in odd dream-like visions for more than half of her life and when they came at her unawares, they often came with vicious headaches and heavy nosebleeds. Very attractive stuff.

“Did it happen that often?” Oz’s face softened a little, the blank mask fading away as she leaned forward.

The visions that hit Destin didn’t always happen easily. Sometimes they were a mere figment, just a wisp of a thing. Other times, they came with a brutal, one-two punch that left her reeling, dealing with the physical aftermath.

Bad? Not always. But sometimes? Yeah. And nothing freaked out a boyfriend quite like waking up in the morning to find his woman covered in blood and practically catatonic.

Destin shrugged. “Yes. Sometimes more.” She smirked and hoped it masked the pain she felt. “I got used to it a long time ago, but it’s probably a little disconcerting for others. Probably gets real old too, after a while. Hell, it gets old for
me
. But I’m stuck with it. No reason for others to deal with it.”

The nosebleeds came with the visions. They were something she was stuck with and there was nothing she could do but deal. Granted, Caleb hadn’t ever acted like they bothered him and more than once, she’d come out of the trance-like state to find him gently cleaning the blood from her face.

He’d never once made her feel like the freak she knew she was. He’d never once made her feel like a monster or like some twisted, perverted thing that should never exist.

She
made herself feel like that. Her parents had. One or two of the friends she’d tried to trust with the information.

But Caleb had—

Stop. Caleb walked
out
, remember?
Just like everybody else in her life. He’d walked out.

And just like it was yesterday, she saw it all playing out. The way he’d looked as he sat across from her and told her he didn’t know if they were heading anywhere or not. Destin had been frozen with terror, because she had known where he was going. Out the door. They all hit the door sooner or later, and that was exactly what happened with him too.

“You know, Destin,” Oz said, tossing the pen down on the desk and leaning back. “I’m not quite buying that. I’m not buying that Durand dumped you because he didn’t like that you wake up with nosebleeds after having one of your dreams. It just doesn’t click.”

Destin shifted in the chair and crossed her legs. “Look, I don’t know why he dumped me. For all I know he got bored with me—” The rest of the words wanted to stick in her throat, but she forced them out. “Maybe he found somebody that was a little less neurotic to deal with. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s over. It’s done.”

“Destin, if it didn’t matter, I wouldn’t have you in here. Like you said, it’s been five years. I’m not asking just because I’m bored, or because I’m going to reprimand you for having an affair with a colleague. It’s because—” Her eyes cut to the door.

A second later, Destin heard the door open.

The skin on the back of her neck crawled and she squeezed her eyes shut. Her heart started to race and her skin felt too tight, too small. Something that might have been happiness bloomed inside her heart before it withered and died as reality shifted and settled into place.

Even before he spoke, she knew.

Opening her eyes, she glared at Oz.

“Good afternoon, ladies.”

The flight from D.C. to Dallas was a bitch and not just because he hadn’t ever planned to return to Texas.

He’d spent most of the trip telling himself he could handle walking into Oswald Group just fine and he knew he’d lied every single time. He could
handle
it, yes. But just fine? Not an icicle’s chance in hell.

Caleb hadn’t seen Destin since he’d walked away from her five years earlier, not even a glimpse. The case he’d just been assigned had him in a different part of the country for nearly three months and he’d been leaving that very day.

Once he’d finished, he’d put in for some personal time and then requested a transfer to the other unit that worked with psychics. It had been headed by Special Agent in Charge Taylor Jones and the man had a reputation for being a brutal, cold son of a bitch to work for. It had suited Caleb just fine—he needed work to forget, after all.

Oz and Jones had worked together to get the first unit going and for quite a while, they’d worked together, but then eventually, they’d split into separate units, handling different areas of the country.

Being in a different part of the country had sounded ideal, and working with somebody who’d work him into exhaustion had sounded even better. There hadn’t been a shortage of work, that was for sure.

The world in general was mostly oblivious of the weirder element that functioned within the FBI. Telepaths, empaths, others who connected with the spirits of the dead.

Caleb’s abilities fell somewhere in the middle. He was psychic, but his gift was classified as a sub-ability. He could pick up on random vibes and he had unusual insights, and every once in a while, he’d get a solid,
real
connection but his main skill was filtering.

He worked with people like Destin who had powerful but erratic abilities, let them cut through the white noise, the pain, everything that might block them from finding what they needed to find.

There had been just as much a need for him in Jones’ unit as there had been in Oz’s unit and he’d buried himself in the work, hoping to forget. Hoping, pointlessly, praying that nothing would send him back to the other unit.

But just a year after his transfer, Oz left the Bureau and when she did, several agents abruptly quit. Others came to work with Jones and the second unit was disbanded.

There had been terse whispers and rumors, but none of Oz’s former agents would talk and Jones had been there to make sure of that. Caleb had been fine with it. He didn’t want to hear about his old unit. The one thing that mattered to him, he already knew. Destin was working with Oz. She was no longer with the FBI and that probably suited her better, anyway. She’d hated rules, had felt stifled by the structure.

The freelance group took on investigative work and although very few realized just how specialized they were, they made a killing and they had a rep for being the best in the business. Which wasn’t surprising. Psychics were going to have a leg up on the competition.

As he cut through the rather posh offices, he studied the faces. More than a few were familiar. A couple waved. The others, people he knew, deliberately turned their backs on him. A nice, subtle
fuck you
if he’d ever seen one. Okay, then.

The others watched him with no small amount of curiosity. Ten employees. And to his senses, they all felt psychic. He might not have one of the flashier abilities, but the skill he
did
have was reliable. Every person in here was a psychic and he had a feeling Oz used them to pull in some high-profile cases. All without explaining just
how
she managed to have a stellar rep.

He didn’t bother to ask where he’d find her. He’d seen the neat little office tucked in the back when the administrative assistant had led him up here and he knew without a doubt where Oz would be. She’d want privacy, but she’d also want to be close to her people.

The door was closed, but he didn’t knock.

Destin was there.

He felt it in his gut. And he wanted one look. Just
one
look at her before she managed to compose her features and hide herself away from him.

As he pushed the door open, his hands were practically sweating and his heart was racing away somewhere in the vicinity of his throat. Racing, pounding. Dancing…

Oz’s gaze cut to him and as desperate as he was to see Destin, he looked at Oz first, braced himself.

She hadn’t changed much. She was still all steel and ice, elegant beauty and deathly self-possession. Unlike his current boss, Oz did have a serious psychic talent, although it was unreliable as hell.

Caleb didn’t think she’d retired, at least not willingly. He suspected she’d come up against something ugly and the higher-ups had told her to let it go. That fit more in line with his memories of Oz. There had been several times when she’d bashed heads with people and she had lacked Jones’…
diplomatic
skills.

Something ugly had happened, he knew. Either she walked…or they pushed her out over it.

But Elise Oswald looked like she was doing just fine, regardless.