The Unwanted

The images flooded him, drowned him.

And as quick as they came on, they were gone.

Whenever he did have a solid connection, it always hit him like this—just like this. Too insubstantial for him to link on, like trying to grip cotton candy, and it was already fading away.

“Caleb?”

Her hand touched his and he heard her quick, startled breath, followed by her hand closing around his wrist as he dropped his shields. She had already done the same.

He couldn’t process this the way Destin could but they merged their abilities too late. It was already gone.

“Where did he go?” she asked, her fingers still gripping his arm.

Still trying to clear his head, Caleb turned his head and stared. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice tight and rusty while a headache started to pulse at the base of his skull.

“Damn it.” Destin shot him a narrow look. “You up for a walk?”

He grimaced. “Doesn’t matter if I am or not.”

A look flickered across her face as she studied him and then she reached into her pocket, pulled out a little tin box. “Here. Tylenol. I expected I’d need them, not you.”

He took a couple and tossed them back dry as they started to walk. “We’re looking for a needle in a haystack here,” he said. There was still an annoying tightness in his throat and the headache was swelling to massive proportions. Pressing the heel of his hand to his eye socket, he dodged a group of laughing girls and met back up with Destin as she stopped at a crosswalk.

“Yes.”

Maybe he was off-balance from the connection. Maybe it was from the headache. Or maybe he needed to see a reaction from Destin, he didn’t know. But he looked over at her and instead of trying to find a subtle way to say it, he just threw it out there. “You know, we might be able to work this a lot faster if your boss wasn’t holding back on us.”

Her spine went straight and tight. Slowly, she turned her head to look at him, her mouth flattened out into a thin, flat line. Her eyes flashed cold fire at him. “Excuse me?”

“She’s hiding something.”

“Oz knows how we work,” she said coldly. “She’s given us everything we need to do our job.”

The kid next to them looked at them strangely and Caleb moved in, grabbing her arm. “Keep it down.”

She jerked her arm away. “Kiss my ass.” Spinning on her heel, she said, “I’ve been doing my job solo a long time and I’ve been working with her a lot longer than you have. She gave us what we need. If we need more? It’s up to us to find it.”

It went from nothing to overload in the blink of an eye.

That wasn’t the case, not really, but it sure as hell seemed that way, and all because of that one moment on the street. If it had been her who’d gotten bumped instead of Caleb, she could have already found that connection, she knew it. Still, even with their fumbling around, they were getting closer.

“It won’t be much longer.” Destin could feel it, the dark, ominous weight hovering around her. Each day they’d returned to the same area and Destin had gone unshielded each time, hoping to catch something. She’d caught something, all right, a headache from the sheer amount of stimuli. She was tuned into the vibes from sexual predators, but she was still psychic and nobody had emotions running on high the way college students revved up on life, nerves and caffeine did.

But that wasn’t what she needed.

What she needed was…this. This dark, ugly connection that was just out of her reach.

But so close.

She just needed one thing to close that gap.

“I feel like something is missing.” The second she said it she wanted to kick herself.

Caleb said nothing, just continued to stare out over the campus.

It had been a quiet two days. They’d both watched the police reports, listened to the radio. And Destin slept unshielded. Because she did, she knew he was doing the same. Heaven help her if she picked up on a rape in progress. Her control was paper-thin right now, but she’d get through it without losing control again, because she had no choice.

Caleb’s words came back to haunt her.

Something is missing…

We might be able to work this a lot faster if your boss wasn’t holding back on us… Was there more going on than what Oz had led them to believe? Shit, of course there was, but did Oz know more?

It was enough to make her head hurt even more than it already did and after the past two days, it hurt plenty. She’d taken to carrying around an entire bottle of Tylenol, plus the medications that had been prescribed for migraines. She hated taking those because they left her head all muzzy, but if a migraine grabbed her, she’d be at the mercy of her gift and that wasn’t acceptable in a place where there was a rapist running free.

She had to be logical about this.

Could Oz be holding something back on her? Loyalty tried to insist no. There was no reason for that, right? What reason did Oz have for holding anything back?

Destin knew there was something out there, a missing piece that she needed to make that connection, but it could be any number of things. She was working blind. She hadn’t talked to a victim yet. Hadn’t even tried. Hadn’t talked to any law enforcement. Hadn’t tried to do that, either. Hadn’t tried to talk to any of the suspects and that would have been easy enough too, thanks to Oz’s list.

All she’d done was wander the town and visit the crime scenes.

And they’d hit the mother lode at the first crime scene. Alleged crime scene, a sardonic voice inside her head reminded her. To that voice, she said shut up. She wasn’t an agent anymore and she knew the rapes had happened. She felt the vibe in the air, felt the hum in her blood. She didn’t have to worry about all the legal trappings of alleged, didn’t have to worry about those lines anymore. Caleb did, but she didn’t.

She’d been standing right where it had happened and when she’d lowered her shields? The rush of fear, lust, pain and the need to hurt had grabbed her, threatened to suck her under. It had gripped her for so long Caleb had ended up walking her near-zombified form off the campus after they’d started to attract attention.

That night, she’d had the first nosebleed but the connection had hovered just out of reach.

With each passing hour, that darkness moved in more and more, until it felt like it was going to choke her. And now…it was just moments away. It could hit in an instant. Of course, it could also take a week. She needed that one missing piece.

The echo was turning into a hum even now and every step she took made the awful music grow louder.

Caleb sensed it too. He was watching her with those dark eyes, watching and waiting for the time to step in. “Do we need to leave?” he asked quietly.

“No. It’s better if we stay.” She shook her head and continued to stare out over the campus.

One of the buildings loomed in front of her and her gaze landed on the doorway—logically, she shouldn’t know what it was. Logically.

But she did.

And…click…

“It was here,” she said, her mouth going dry. The images slammed into her brain. Caleb was silent as everything played out in her head, her vision blurring as the girl’s vision superimposed with her own. Right there—that was where he stopped me/her…

“I need to walk. I’ve finally got something,” she said, forcing her shields up enough so she could focus and talk to Caleb.

“Okay.” Caleb blew out a breath. “Do you need me?”