The Protected

“I am, huh?” Tucker stared Joss down. Yeah, he read the look, all right, but he didn’t do the whole do-what-you’re-told thing well.

Yes, a voice snarled into his mind. Or would you rather go to the police station? Keep your trap shut and you can walk away with me and I’ll get you out of this. Otherwise, you’re on your own and I don’t care if Dru gets upset.

As that voice, strong and powerful, echoed through his mind, Joss just smiled and said to the cop, “I have the warrant, if you need to see it. Unless he’s under arrest here?”

Tucker curled his lip. “They can’t arrest me for not ponying up a phone number.” He slid Joss a narrow look and thought hard. Stay out of my head.

Joss didn’t bat a lash. “Let’s not make this any harder than it has to be, son.”

Son. Tucker snorted. Well, at least he hadn’t given up his real name. Sighing, he headed down the steps and fell into place at Joss’s side. Once they were halfway down the walk, Joss shot him a dark look. “Behave, dickhead. Where the hell is Vaughnne?”

“Fuck off.”

Joss laughed.

“The sentiment is mutual, buddy. Now get in the car. I was in the middle of something when the boss called and I’d like to get back to it.”

Once they were in the car, with the windows rolled up, blocking out the sound, Tucker stopped behaving. He gathered up the remnant energy rolling through him as he shot Joss a look. “You don’t even want to think about trying to take me to the FBI, Crawford. You hear me?”

“Oh, suck my dick,” Crawford said, looking unperturbed.

Tucker snarled and went to claw off one of his gloves. Even as the red of rage rolled through him, a gun jammed into his ribs. “You want to think long and hard about doing anything else. I know what you can do, Collins—in great detail. The only way you can stop me is if you kill me. I know killers. You’re not one. So either we call a truce or you cross a line you don’t want to cross. Which is it?”

“You don’t get the gun away from me, you’re going to find out.”

The air in the car all but crawled with tension as Tucker turned his head, stared into Joss’s eyes.

A mean grin slanted Joss’s mouth. “I think I could almost like you.” Then he withdrew the gun.

Tucker slumped low in the seat. “If you try to take me anywhere, I’m going to cause you more grief than you can possibly imagine, Crawford. Keep that in mind.”

“I don’t plan on doing anything but getting you out of the way so Agent MacMeans can do her job.”

“Well, then, that is a problem.” Tucker closed his eyes. “You see, I made a promise that I’d make sure the kid she has with her was safe and I can’t do that if I’m out of the way.”

He cracked one eye open and looked at Crawford. “I don’t break promises.”

“You might have to break this one,” Joss muttered.

As they neared the end of the block, Tucker had just one thought in mind. He wanted him to turn left. That was all he needed. A left turn. And then he’d take it from there.

And sometimes, he actually got what he wanted.

Crawford turned left, driving right past the little alley where Tucker had parked his car. Satisfied, Tucker focused and reached out. The car sputtered to a stop and died.

He was out of the car in a heartbeat, Crawford reaching for him a split second later. He slammed the door and focused again, listening as the locks snicked shut. All the electronics in cars these days . . . it made some things so interesting.

Crawford swore and drove his fist against the window, and Tucker flashed him a grin before spinning on his heel.

The big, mean black muscle car was still waiting behind Vaughnne’s house and he climbed inside. He could feel his hold on Crawford’s car lessening, bit by bit, but that was okay. Once he was out of sight, the man would have a hard time tracking him down.

He supposed he could have blown the engine, not just killed it.

But in the end, antagonizing the FBI wasn’t going to do him any good. All he wanted to do was make good on his promise to Nalini. Then he’d relocate. Get a new phone number. Get lost in the world so that the frustrating little work of sexual art could never find him again and make him wish that for once, just once, he could actually lose himself inside a woman.

* * *

“WHAT’S the status?”

“Beats the hell out of me.” Joss shot the phone he’d dropped in his cup holder a dirty look and wished like hell he’d actually finished his job here on time. He was wrapping up the loose ends from the assignment from hell. And it had been the assignment from hell. Somehow, it was one that had Joss both thanking God and cursing fate, all in one breath. He’d met Dru . . . found Dru, because of that job.

And he’d almost lost her, almost died because of that job.

Assignment from hell, in a nutshell.

“Crawford . . . I need to know what is going on in Orlando,” Jones snapped, his voice about as close to pissed as Joss had ever heard him. “There’s a kid’s safety at stake, you understand me?”

“Yep.” He cut left on the street up from where Vaughnne had been staying and did another drive by but he already knew he wasn’t going to find anything. Tucker Collins had kept him locked in his car, like he’d been trapped inside a damned tuna can, for a good three minutes, and by the time Joss had been able to get the car to turn over or the doors to unlock, the man had already vacated the premises.

And his phone hadn’t come on for a good hour afterward.

He was debating on whether or not to fill the boss in on all of that. They hadn’t ever had anybody in the unit that could play with electricity like that. He’d almost bet Jones would get a hard-on at the idea. Figuratively speaking, of course.

But he also knew, even if he hadn’t picked it up from Collins’s mind, there was no way that guy wanted in the fold.

And thanks to the gift he had riding hard inside him, he had more than a few blips from the other psychic. Up until a few minutes ago, Joss had been convinced he was the freak show of all freak shows. The label he’d been stuck with was mirroring. He could pick up the psychic gifts of anybody he’d been imprinted with and the gift would stick until he synched with another psychic and was imprinted with another gift.

It was a weird-ass gift, he knew.

But Tucker made him look almost normal.

The man had shut down his car. Locked him in his car. And he’d shut down his phone.

He’s like a walking electrical rod, basically, Dru had told him. He can do crazy shit, and I don’t know just how much crazy shit he can do, Joss.

That had been a few months ago, back when he and Dru had been piecing together everything that had happened, both while they were working together, and when they’d been working toward the same end without realizing it. Tucker had been at her back, all along. It was one of the few things that made the nightmare of those months just a little more palatable. As in, he no longer woke up about to choke on his vomit as he thought about the hell that Dru had been living in. She’d had a way out. Tucker had been the way out. One scary-ass way out, but Dru trusted the guy and that meant something.

That meant, basically, that Joss was going to trust him, too. Dru’s ability wasn’t one that he was going to discount. Not now. Not again.

“Listen, Jones,” he said as the silence stretched on. “Vaughnne isn’t here. There are cops all over the place and I saw an ambulance. I don’t know what the deal is, but unless you want them being alerted to the fact that we are nosing around, we might have to stay in the dark for now.” He elected, on the side of wisdom, not to bring Tucker into the picture. Sooner or later, he might have to, especially if he got pulled into this job, but he wasn’t sure if that was going to happen.