The Protected

Part of him didn’t want to answer. Closing his eyes, he said a quick prayer that his voice wouldn’t shake.

Then he answered. His bowels almost turned to water as nothing but dead air greeted him.

Seconds of silence ticked away, and unable to handle it another moment, he said, “I have promising news. I tracked them down to their most recent location. They’ve been living here for a while, I believe.”

“And do you have my son?”

Squeezing his eyes closed, he clenched one hand into a fist. “No, senor. I don’t. But we’re getting closer and I have found more useful tools to help locate them. Now that I have, it shouldn’t be long.”

“It had better not be. I’ve been far more lenient with you than with your predecessor. Do not make me regret that, Esteban.”

Esteban swallowed the spit pooling in his mouth. “Of course not. Thank you for your trust. For this opportunity. I will—”

The phone went dead.

* * *

REYES stared outside.

Turquoise waters glistened under the sun. Carefully tended gardens with vivid bursts of flowers stretched out in all directions.

His domain.

His property.

He’d worked hard for this.

He was respected. Feared.

People knew his name and knew to stay out of his way. Some of the most powerful men and women in the world owed him. He had secrets of those powerful people tucked away that could be used to destroy so many lives.

He had more money than he could ever hope to spend in his lifetime.

But the things he wanted the most eluded him. He wanted his son back in his home, and he wanted that pendejo dead.

Simple. It should really be simple.

There was a knock at the door.

He ignored it, rage still churning inside him.

“Ignacio, may I come in?”

Despite his anger, the woman’s low voice pricked at something inside him. She . . . she was like a drug to him. He’d never touched any of the products he sold. They were the fall of too many men, he knew, and he wouldn’t be like them. But this woman . . . she was a safe addiction. And only his. Turning, he called out her name and watched as she entered.

Her long hair, pale and thick, fell to her hips. A bikini, lush and red, barely covered her curves, and he brooded as she came to him.

He had money.

He had power.

He had this beautiful woman.

And yet he couldn’t get his hands on the child. That child . . . the absolute pinnacle of his power. But was he here? Where he belonged? No.

Reaching out, he touched his finger to her lower lip.

She closed her hand around his wrist and smiled at him.

“You’re not happy,” she said softly. “Is it the same problem bothering you?”

“Yes.” He hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. “The man I’ve hired to solve it isn’t working out. I think I need to remove him from the equation and find somebody else.”

She pushed her fingers into his hair. “Maybe you can worry about all of that later . . .” She arched against him and pressed her lips to his jaw. “Worry about me for now.”

* * *

IT was a lousy, long-ass forty-five minutes and Vaughnne felt like she was going to come out of her skin.

Her very hot, tight, itchy skin.

She just felt that much worse, every time she looked over at the bed and saw Alex huddling in on himself, clutching at his belly as he slept fitfully. His dusky skin was flushed, and the few times she’d touched him, he’d felt hot enough to burn her hand.

Each time she’d touched him, she’d felt the weight of Gus’s gaze slamming into the back of her head, like he was ready to snap her neck if she so much as moved wrong around the boy. She had no doubt he was ready to do just that.

His words echoed through her mind, over and over.

There is nobody, and I mean this with every bit of strength I have in me, absolutely nobody who means as much to me as that boy. I can, and have, killed for him. I will do it again, without blinking. Am I understood?

He’d been trying to scare her, she knew. Yeah, some part of her had been a bit thrown by his intensity, but he obviously had no idea just how far she would go to protect somebody she loved. She’d been ready to throw her badge away, her life away. Everything, if it would have saved her sister.

She hadn’t been able to save her.

So she’d been ready to do the same thing just to avenge her.

Daylin . . .

Her heart ached as an image of her sister’s smiling little face flashed through her mind.

Daylin had been just four the last time Vaughnne had seen her. Four years old. Vaughnne had been fifteen years old the day her father threw her out into the streets, when he realized he hadn’t been going crazy, that Vaughnne really was able to whisper into people’s minds. He’d thought it was the devil’s work. That was what he’d claimed. She knew better now.

Psychic ability tended to stick to families. If one person was psychic, chances were there was somebody else in the same gene pool who had abilities, too. It could range from just being very, very astute with an insight that just seemed way too sharp to be natural, to abilities like Vaughnne’s. To freaky-ass shit like Tucker could compel, and everything in between.

She’d gotten her abilities from her father. She realized that now, with the wisdom that came from distance and age. She’d often wondered why he’d hated her so much, and now she knew. It wasn’t hate . . . it was fear. Fear of something he hadn’t understood, fear of something inside himself that he’d never been able to control.

She had no idea what his ability had been, but she knew she wasn’t wrong.

He’d chased her away, while her mother stood there, wringing her hands and crying. They’d just . . . thrown her away, and Vaughnne had never seen her sister again. She never would have known her baby sister was missing if she hadn’t been watching things on her own. He hadn’t once tried to call her. She’d found out nearly a week later, when she’d been doing one of her infrequent stops by his Facebook page, one he’d never bothered to make private. There had been a plea to help find his baby girl.

And Vaughnne’s first look at her sister in more than a year had been on a missing poster.

The grief still hit her hard.

“Why the FBI?”

Pulled out of the pit of grief and memory, Vaughnne looked up and found Gus watching her from his position by the window. Abruptly, she realized there was something . . . practiced . . . about the way he stood. Too practiced. Not like he was posing, although she’d seen enough of that, too. No, this was the carriage of a man who knew how to . . . protect. How to fight. How to hunt. Attack.

Fighter. That much, she knew. She’d seen the clues and already pieced them together, but it went deeper than that. There were fighters, like cops. And then there were those who were modern-day berserkers, warriors without any real equal. Navy Seals, Airborne Rangers . . . but she didn’t think he