Flirting With Fate (6 page)

Tanner ignored him. “Can you explain women to me?”

Fernandez snorted. “He is a Nobel Laureate in
physics and has supernatural powers. He’s not omniscient.” He set his jaw and
added, “Hell, I don’t think God himself even understands women.”

Darian chuckled. “The man has a point.”

Darkness descended around them and Fernandez
released a stream of curses that made even Tanner wince. “How the hell is it
fair to put the light manipulator on the same team as the guy with night
vision?” Fernandez grumbled before crawling out into the open. “Got you,
bastard,” he said and seconds later, they had light again.

Fernandez ran back to cover with his team. “What?”
he said when Tanner and Darian looked at him. “I made the night vision guy
shoot the light manipulator.” He wiped off his hands. “Problem solved.”

“Risky but profitable,” Tanner said, approving.

Darian turned to Tanner. “So, is Josie giving you
trouble?”

Tanner groaned. The sound of her goddamn name and
he was hard again. “She has no idea what she does to me.”

“It’s for the best, man,” Fernandez said,
apparently deciding the conversation needed his input after all. “If women knew
how much power they really have over us, we’d be doing laundry, rubbing feet,
and handing over the credit card the rest of our lives.”

Tanner shook his head. “I think I’ve just waited
too long with her. It’s too late now.” Six months he’d wanted her and hadn’t
had the balls to make a move. And now he’d made a mess of it.

“It’s only too late if you let it be,” Darian
said. “Cover me?” Tanner did, rolling invisibly to an opening and firing while
Darian ran behind the next tree. “If you want her, you need to stop hesitating.
Just kiss her already.”

Decades-old insecurity gnawed at Tanner. But he
wasn’t the filthy foster kid with all the funky bruises anymore.
Just kiss
her already.

He smiled, thinking about taking her by surprise,
finally getting to taste her, pulling her body against his.

“Tanner!” Darian warned.

Tanner realized he’d dropped his invisibility in his
distraction. He focused to put it back up, but it was too late. The purple ball
of paint slammed into his right shoulder and exploded.

Josie stared down at her notes, then ran her hand
over her face. She’d been spending hours each night decoding the hidden messages
in her mother’s journal and still had pages of code to break.

Something told her she needed to act quickly,
decode the whole message, but her eyes were crossing. She slammed her hand
against the table. She should have seen the pattern years ago.

When Marilyn Bovard and her husband had been
murdered ten years ago, she’d left behind a daughter with an IQ of 160. She’d
known her daughter was capable of seeing the complex pattern of words and
letters that encrypted her message, but even a genius would need time to decode
some five hundred pages of cryptic writing. To make the complicated pattern
more difficult to decipher, the pattern of the coding changed at random
intervals. In other words, the journal didn’t hold one extremely difficult
puzzle; it held five hundred.

After she’d lost her family, Josie had been too
loaded down by grief to see the journal for anything more than what it appeared
to be. Which she figured gave her a decent excuse for missing what was in front
of her eyes for the first two years—but it didn’t excuse the last eight. She
should have seen it before now.

What she had managed to decode since last weekend
wasn’t enough, and she needed more information if they were going to find the
doctor they were looking for.

Josie had known her family had planned on changing
their identities and running, but her mother’s messages explained that they’d
found a geneticist at a D.C. fertility clinic who could change their
appearances with their identities. Her mother’s coded message referred to the process
as DNA conversion and compared it to the way a Shifter’s DNA worked.

While Josie worked on decoding the rest of the
journal—a process that would take her weeks, not days—she wanted to find this
doctor. Even though there was no guarantee the doctor still worked at the same
place, fertility clinics had seemed like the most logical place to start. She
couldn’t drag Tanner around forever, though. She needed to focus her search.

Her mother had known they were in danger, and she
must have wanted Josie to find out who killed them. This geneticist might know
what they were running from and have information that would lead Josie to their
killers.

He might have information about the sister that
didn’t exist.

“Would it have been too much to ask to leave the
geneticist’s name, Mom?” she grumbled, but her mother had probably had a good
reason for leaving messages often as cryptic out of code as they were in it.

Exhaling slowly, Josie turned on the teakettle to
make another pot of green tea. She had a long night ahead of her.

It was as she set the water on the stove that the
pattern clicked into place in her head. She frowned, casting a glance over her
shoulder to the work she had scattered across her kitchen table. If that were
right, wouldn’t that mean—?

She headed for the journal, not bothering to turn
on the stove. She went cold as she studied the pages, stopped breathing as she
ran the decoded sentence over and over in her mind.

Hard to imagine this young woman we love as the
catalyst for Ascendant rule. They must be stopped.

She didn’t need to find the geneticist and talk to
him. She needed him to complete the planned DNA conversion.

The boy rolled off Tara and gave a grunt of
satisfaction.

Tara stared at the ceiling of the small dorm room,
willing her tears to dry. The faint smell of dirty socks and stale beer
surrounded them and the muffled sound of the party in the hall crept under the
door.

Okay, so it hadn’t been magical. It hadn’t been
fun or exciting or even remotely romantic. But she hadn’t been looking for any
of those things.

She closed her eyes and thought of Collin. He
thought he was too old for her. He thought he was protecting her by staying
away. But maybe someday he’d change his mind. And if not? She’d move on.

The boy gave another grunt and adjusted himself.
Revulsion rolled through her.

Calm down, Tara.
The last thing she needed
was to throw up on this guy. But between the utter disappointment of an
experience Paige always told her should be special and the clawing fear that
she would be ordinary, that she wouldn’t manifest powers at all, she couldn’t
choke back the nausea.

She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. When she
was going through round after round of chemo, she’d used positive imagery to
get through some of the rougher patches—times when the nausea was so intense
she’d thought she might rather be dead than take another breath.

This was nothing compared to that.

She inhaled, counting to five, exhaled for five
counts. Repeated.

Relaxing infinitesimally, she pictured Collin’s
face. Beautiful icy blue eyes, dark hair, the scar that cut from eyebrow to
lip.

The boy stirred next to her, and she begrudgingly
opened her eyes but kept her mind focused on Collin, who had the power to calm
her even after breaking her heart.

“You said you go to—” But he stopped as he turned
to her. “Holy fuck!” He scrambled to get out of bed, but the sheets tangled
around his ankles and he landed on his ass.

“What’s wrong?” But her voice came out deeper than
it should.

The boy was looking at her like she’d grown a
second head.

Tara sat up.

“Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” He grabbed his pants
and dashed from the room still nude.

Well, if that wasn’t just—

Tara’s gaze dropped to her hands—or, more to the
point, not her hands. These hands were big, masculine, and the backs were
covered with a smattering of dark hair.

She tried to swallow but there was a knot in her
throat. She counted to three and forced herself to look down to her chest.

Instead of her small breasts was a man’s broad
chest.

Could this be...?

She threw back the covers and hurried to the
mirror. Sure enough, Collin looked back at her.

What the hell sick kind of power was this? She’d
turned into her unrequited love?

She should have listened to Paige. Paige told her
chasing after powers was asking for nothing but trouble, and oh-my-God was she
gonna freak when she saw Tara. Her eyes would go all big and she’d get that
I’m-too-wise-for-my-own-good look on her face and—

Tara’s internal panic screeched to a halt.
Stunned, she watched the image in the mirror morph into her sister.

She studied her reflection. Paige’s hair. Paige’s
eyes, nose, mouth. Paige’s...naked body.

Tara shuddered lightly.
TMI.

But, how?

A small smile tugged at her lips. She’d been thinking
of Collin, then of Paige.

She closed her eyes and concentrated, thinking of
the most beautiful woman she knew.

When she opened them, she saw Josie smiling back
at her.

Tears formed in her eyes and she’d blinked them
away. She was a Special. And not just any Special.

She was a Shifter.

“Josie Bovard and Tanner Wiley have an appointment
at Martin’s clinic today,” Alyson said. She was dressed in the long skirts she
preferred, and he couldn’t help but think how old she was beginning to look.

The Keeper frowned. “Not seeking fertility
treatments, I presume.”

“That’s their story. They’ve been poking around
clinics for the last two days, Your Majesty.”

“You’re her Handler,” the Keeper said. “You have
my permission to get closer.” All his followers knew the Keys’ lives were not
to be disturbed without explicit permission. “We need to know what she’s
looking for. Dig into the minds of her friends if you need to.” Even the
smallest inkling of what she was a part of and she’d resist the path that had
been set for her. “Find out what she thinks she knows.”

Alyson nodded. “I will, Your Majesty.” She lowered
her head and turned to the door.

“Alyson!” the Keeper called. “Chin up! Everything is
falling into place.”

 “We’ll start with some tests,” Dr. Llewellyn said,
leaning his beefy arms onto his polished desk. “And then we’ll discuss your
options. We’ll draw some blood and look at your hormone levels and do a basic
physical exam.” He looked at Tanner. “You’ll be willing to give us a sample
today?”

Tanner cleared his throat and shot a glare at
Josie. Josie responded with the sweetest smile she could muster.

She had to hand it to him. He was being a good
sport. The Llewellyn Fertility Clinic was the eighth specialist they’d been to
in two days, and every clinic wanted a deposit from him when all she had to do
was lie back for a quick exam.

“I’m sure he’d be happy to,” Josie said. She
leaned toward the doctor and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “Making samples
happens to be his special talent, if you know what I mean.”

Llewellyn chuckled. “Well, now we’ll have to rein
that in if you’re going to make a baby. Masturbation, while healthy, can lower
a man’s sperm count if done in excess.”

Tanner gave Josie a bland stare—one that said he’d
be scowling at her if it wouldn’t break their cover. She bit her lip. So she was
having a little fun at his expense. Who could blame her? She batted her lashes.
“Do you think you can refrain from your little hobby outside of the doctor’s
office, sweetie?”

The muscle in his jaw ticked. “No problem,” he
muttered.

Llewellyn smacked the desk. “Fantastic. Our nurse
will take you back to a private room. Let her know whether you’d prefer video
or magazines.”

Tanner’s would-be scowl turned to a grin.

Uh-oh.

“What I’d prefer,” he said, slowly, keeping his
gaze trained on Josie, “if it’s not against the rules, is to have my wife in
there with me.”

“Tanner,” Josie hissed. She probably deserved that
for teasing him, but he really needed to make the deposit if this clinic was
going to take them seriously, and she needed them to take her seriously.

Tanner took her hand and toyed with her fingers.
Looking into her eyes, he said, “It’s just easier when she’s around.”

Josie looked to the doctor whose chest shook in
silent chuckles.

“That’s just fine,” Dr. Llewellyn said. “We’ve had
couples handle this in all sorts of ways. Your wife is welcome to—”

Josie shook her head. “No, really, it’s okay. He
can do this without me.”

“It’s no problem at all, ma’am.” He stood, ending
the conversation.

As a nurse scurried in, Josie intercepted
Llewellyn and took his hand. “I want to thank you again for everything,” she
said softly, holding his fleshy hand in hers and looking for pieces of his
future.

Nothing.

Her eyes met Tanner’s over Llewellyn’s shoulder.
Tanner cocked his head quizzically.

“You’re welcome, dear. The nurse will take care of
you from here.” He tried pulling away, and she held his hand.

“It’s just that I have a good feeling about you,”
she said, focusing on their hands and the contact of their skin.

Nothing.

“Very well, then,” he said, pulling his hand from
hers with a little more force. “The nurse will take care of you now.”

Josie stared after him as he left the room. He was
definitely a Blocker, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. To varying
degrees, Blockers kept Specials’ abilities from working. Some
Blockers—especially ones who had no other ability—didn’t even know they were
Specials. If they didn’t know about the Specials, and no one told them, they’d
have no way of knowing they had any powers.