“What do you plan to do now? There doesn’t seem to be a real direction for you to take.”
One hand was rubbing her back, slowly, soothingly. It felt so good, made her want to forget about adoptions and men in white coats or those named Richard O’Riley.
She sighed, suddenly weary. But then, they’d scarcely slept last night and this morning’s lovemaking workout had been a hell of a cardio adventure.
“I wish I knew where to go from here.” She thought about the few pieces of information she had, the name O’Riley and the fact that the adoption had been a private business deal. That really wasn’t much to go on. Definitely no direction, as Aidan said.
She tilted her head back and looked at the man who now owned her fragile heart. “Who do you think those men were last night?” She didn’t have to specify which men she meant. He knew. The ones they’d been running for their lives from.
“Not Lester, not the police.” He lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “I have no idea. Perhaps poachers whose territory we’d stumbled into.”
She supposed that could be true, but then again he’d mentioned some pretty high-tech gear. Poachers didn’t usually walk around equipped with night vision and thermal scans. She wasn’t even certain what the latter was.
“But you were worried that they might have night vision or thermal scans. That doesn’t sound like your typical poacher,” she countered, putting voice to her thought.
His expression closed instantly. The change was so abrupt it startled her.
“That was just a guess,” he pointed out. “I have no idea who those men were, only that they represented a threat of some sort.”
He was lying.
The realization rocked through her like a devastating earthquake, shattering her hopes and deflating her dreams. It damaged her somehow, made her want to cry when she’d remained fairly stoic through all of this. It wasn’t fair. She wanted to keep trusting him, wanted to believe in him. But he had just lied to her. She knew it with utter certainty.
“Let’s sit,” he offered, tugging her toward the sofa. “We’ll sort through this. You tell me everything you remember about your life before you came to live with the Shepards.”
Somehow he tugged her thoughts away from the worry of whether or not she should still trust him. He urged and soothed until she repeated what she’d already told him about the men in the white coats, doctors maybe. All the poking and prodding, tests of some sort. He listened without comment, his expression never altering from that neutral one he’d adopted the moment she questioned him about the men who’d been chasing them last night.
“The only other thing is the word Center,” she concluded. “Whether it means anything or not, I don’t know. Instinct tells me it’s a place…a clinic or something like that. But I can’t remember any more than that.”
He nodded, then inclined his head to the right. “Have you remembered these details more recently or have you known them all along?”
She thought about that for a bit before answering. “I think I’ve known some of it all along, but other parts become clearer in the dreams.”
“You dream about this place called Center and the men in the white coats?”
“Yes. Not often, but once in a while.”
“These dreams frighten you?”
She nodded. “Every time.”
This was the part Aidan needed to be sure of. He had to fully understand her intent. “You feel certain you won’t be safe if these men discover your whereabouts?”
She looked directly into his eyes and said what she felt with all her heart, the depth of it glimmering in those lovely eyes. “I think they already know. I think it was them or people who work for them who came after us in that swamp.”
He frowned, annoyed at her for persisting, annoyed at himself for losing all objectivity. “What could these men possibly want from you?”
Her head moved from side to side. “I don’t know, but I believe it has something to do with this little ESP thing I’ve got going on.” She flushed and shook her head more adamantly this time. “Though I think they’ll be vastly disappointed when they discover it only works when it chooses. I have little or no control over it. It’ll be just like before. They’ll find out how useless my talent is and they’ll want to get rid of me.”
He tensed as a very specific warning went off in his brain. “How do you mean that?”
“That’s why they sent me away,” she explained. “At least I think that’s what happened. They thought I had some sort of gift and when it didn’t work the way they’d planned they sent me away. I ended up with the Shepards.”
“You dreamed this?” He had to know how much more she knew or thought she knew.
She drew in a heavy breath and adopted a skeptical look. “Every time I’ve had one of those stupid dreams, I’m—the me in the dream—certain that if I let them know I have this gift I’ll never escape. They’ll keep me forever. That’s why I pretended it didn’t work, so they’d let me go. It was the only way I could escape the place…Center.”
Aidan’s orders were very specific. He knew precisely how much was too much when it came to what she knew about Center and her past there.
What she’d told him—trusted him with—was far beyond the specified limit.
She had, with her own words, sentenced herself to death.
He could avoid passing on the intelligence to O’Riley for a time. But if she persisted in her attempts to learn about her past, he wouldn’t be able to protect her. Telling her the truth would only
