The Protected

it in this neighborhood. Pounding it out on the busted-up pavement wasn’t much better than running on a treadmill in the gym. She preferred the park back home, but she wasn’t leaving this area unless she had to, and she definitely wasn’t leaving it to run.

Right now, it was just after six; Gus and Alex weren’t home. According to the tracker, they were at the grocery store, just a mile away, and although she didn’t feel right not being there, hiding just out of sight, she hadn’t followed them that day.

She couldn’t explain why, but she’d felt the need to stay here. Instinct, she knew. Still, her gut was a wild, tangled mess, and she wished there was a way she could have planted a tracker on the damn kid.

She felt almost glued to this place, though. Thanks to the wonders of technology, she had the video feed coming to her live on her iPhone and she kept checking it every few minutes as she ran. At their house, everything was calm, everything was quiet.

For now. But it wouldn’t last.

Something was going to go down. The knot in her belly, the tension crawling through her. All of it added up to something, but the question was what. Yet again, she found herself checking the video feed . . . nothing.

Nothing unusual had activated the alarm sensors that fed into the program she’d set up, either.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough.

She was less than half a mile away at the most and could be over there in no time.

Stop it, she told herself. She was working herself up—

The camera feed caught the image of a car. It cut between the cameras she’d set up at her place and the house directly across from hers, rolling down the street slowly. Slowly, but not too slow.

Everything about it set her hair on end.

The camera feed on her phone wasn’t good enough for her to be able to make out anything about the driver, but everything inside her was already screaming. Long and loud.

It wasn’t screaming danger, danger, danger.

But the warning alert was bad enough.

Wheeling around in her steps, she laid on the speed and hauled ass back.

Son of a bitch.

She’d expected things to make a shift soon. Just not this soon.

The question was . . . is this for the better . . . or the worse.

* * *

TUCKER eyed the house.

Somebody who lived in that house was a problem. Whoever it was, they weren’t home now and all Tucker could pick up was a weird little buzz, kind of like an echo.

One hell of a strong echo.

If it was this strong and the person wasn’t even here, then how strong was he?

A kid. Assuming Nalini was right, and it was a kid involved. She seemed to think so, though, and he wasn’t inclined to dispute her gut feelings. People like them, they lived and died by those feelings.

Sighing, he cut around the corner and headed north, trying to decide what to do. He’d told Nalini he’d take a look around, see if he could find this item. He’d be willing to bet this kid was the item—and if so, that kid was a walking, talking hazard. If anybody in the entire town could possibly be drawing the absolute wrong kind of interest, it was the person living in that house.

Absolutely no idea how to control what he had in his head, very little control period, and more power inside him than Tucker had ever sensed in his damn life.

Swearing, he arrowed the car over to the curb, and under the pretense of making a call, he pulled out his phone and punched in the phone number for his house. He didn’t have an answering machine and Lucia was there only a few days a week, so all it was going to do was ring. And ring. It would buy him a few minutes so he could think. That was all he needed to do. Take a minute and think.

Sighing, he held the phone to his ear and stared straight ahead, focusing on the vibrant energy still riding in the air as he tried to think up a plan.

He would have been better off checking behind him. Then he might have seen her coming.

As it was, he didn’t see her until she already had her gun pulled.

“Well, well, well . . .”

* * *

VAUGHNNE didn’t know whether to cuss or heave out a sigh of relief.

The tattoos spiraling up his arms weren’t what had clued her into whom she was dealing with.

It was the fiery red hair spilling down into his eyes and down over his collar. Tucker couldn’t have tried any less hard to attract attention, she figured. Muscle car. Brilliant red hair . . . not carroty red, but that deep, rich fiery red that a bunch of women would probably sell their soul for, and tattoos that twisted and twined around a rather nice pair of arms. She had to admit that. He had a great set of arms.

Even as she saw them tensing, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. She pressed the gun a little harder against the area behind his ear and moved in, using her body to hide it as best as she could. He’d parked in a damned conspicuous area, so this was going to be hard.

But she wasn’t about to let Tucker, whoever in the hell he was, disappear without finding out why he was here. Because she knew better than to believe this was a coincidence. “You don’t want to go grabbing for my gun, sugar,” she said, smiling at him. “And don’t go trying any of that electrical shit I know you can do. Remember what I can do . . . I’ll shriek inside your skull until you’re ready to gouge out your own brainstem just to shut me up.”

He angled his head around just enough to look at her.

Brave guy. He apparently didn’t seem to think she was going to pull the trigger.

She probably wouldn’t, but still.

“I won’t go pulling any of my shit if you don’t make me,” he said levelly. “How about you lower the gun and we can talk . . . Vaughnne, right?”

“We can maybe talk. But we aren’t doing it here.” Arching a brow, she held out a hand. “Gimme your keys and your phone. I’m getting in and then you can have them back.”

“I can hot-wire the damn car quicker than you can get around to the other side.”

“Probably.” She smiled a little. “But you’re here for a reason . . . I bet it’s got something to do with why I am here.”

His brown eyes bored into hers, a scowl darkening his face. Finally, he jerked his head in a nod and tugged out the keys. “I’m doing it to make you feel better, darlin’. You know it’s a waste of time.”

“I’m all about feeling better . . .” She smiled at him. “Darlin’.”

He tossed her the keys. She barely had time to pocket them before the phone came flying at her. It was an iPhone, and she went into its settings, putting it in airplane mode and shutting down any of the apps that might use the GPS. It wasn’t a surefire thing, but it was all she had without destroying the phone. She didn’t think she had to take that step with him. She’d hold it in reserve, though. As she turned the phone off and slid it into her pocket, she headed around to the other side of the car, fully aware of the weight of his gaze, boring into her.

Broody bastard.

She wondered if Jones had tried to recruit him yet. He’d fit in really well.

Sliding into the passenger seat, she kept her gun in her lap, a firm grip on it, but aimed it away. “See? It’s aimed elsewhere. Better?”

Tugging out the keys, she tossed them at him and nodded behind them. “I’m living across from the house you were probably checking out. Let’s see if you know where it is. Go park in the alley behind my place.”

“See, that’s the problem with you federal types. Got to be all subterfuge, all the time. You can’t just give me the damn address,” he muttered, checking the road before he pulled out.

She shrugged. “Well, I could. I just want to see if my hunch is right.”

He slanted a narrow look at her. “The kid I’m looking for has a brain that glows like neon. He doesn’t know how to shut down. Anybody who knows how to look for people like us can see it.”

Damn. She didn’t let her reaction show, but her heart sank as she caught a