Patient Darkness: Brooding City Series Book 2 (23 page)

Alex nodded slowly before affixing him with her intense eyes. “I have to ask, though. Mara, Clara…both pretty brunettes, about shoulder-height with you? You certainly have a type.”

He sighed. “And you’ve been through my emails…I can see why Benjamin values you so much.”

“Not your emails. I was there the night of your date,” she reminded him. “She was with you when I found you under fire in the alley. And as for Benjamin, I hardly know him. He values
you
, Detective.”

“Only as far as I am useful to him.” Brennan wiped a hand over his face, the earlier humor he’d felt now completely dissipated. “If anybody asks, you’re under my protective custody.”

“What’s the nature of our relationship that I would come to you for help?” She shrugged at the gaze Brennan gave her. “What? I’ve picked up a lot of things along the way. They’ll be curious why I came to you for protection rather than staying at home, or going to the station, and you don’t have a good response for that.”

Brennan didn’t bother telling her again not to read his mind. Everything she said was true. “In that case, we’d better not get spotted by anybody. But we won’t be able to get much done by staying here. Kellogg knows where you live, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he uses my name to track me down soon enough.”

Alex nodded. “I think I can find Kellogg,” she admitted, “but we’re going to need some wheels. Where are you parked?”

“I don’t have a car.”

She smiled lightly. “I know…it was a joke. You need to get on board with this telepathy trick, or maybe you aren’t as quick and interesting as I thought you’d be.”

A nervous laugh escaped his lips as Brennan turned sideways and gestured for her to step out first. He caught a whiff of her floral perfume, and her light hair nearly brushed against his face as she breezed past. As he locked up, she continued down the hall, pausing only for a second to glance back at him.

“Keep your thoughts to yourself.”

ф ф ф

Brennan made sure
nobody was watching them as he and Alex climbed into the back of a taxi. The driver seemed confused at their lack of direction, but Alex handed him a thick wad of bills and told him to start driving in an outward spiral. He raised an eyebrow at that, but the money in advance kept him from asking any more questions. Brennan kept one eye on the meter and the other trained on the strange psychic. Her eyes closed as she cupped her knees with her hands, and Brennan felt the subtlest thrum of energy charging the air around her. He glanced toward the front of the car, but if the driver had felt anything, he didn’t give any indication of it.

Alex started to mumble, and Brennan closed the glass window to provide a modicum of privacy. “This is a new sensation,” she said. “I’ve never read so many people at once. It feels…incredible. And overwhelming.”

“How so?” Brennan asked.

She breathed in sharply. “I can hear and see and feel everything they do.” She shuddered. “It’s cold outside.”

It was a tad chilly, but they were wearing jackets and the heat was on.

“I can still hear you,” she continued, sounding annoyed. “And let’s see how
you
deal with the cold when you’re experiencing it a hundredfold.”

Brennan retreated to his side of the taxi and stared out the window. There were hundreds of people walking by at this hour, and this was just one street out of an entire city.
Are you sure you can find Kellogg among all of this?
he asked, knowing Alex was still listening.

It’ll be easier if you aren’t constantly distracting me.

Chagrined, he leaned his forehead against the cool glass. It helped clear away some of the thoughts clouding his mind, which would in turn help Alex by providing less of a distraction. An idea occurred to him, and he thought back to the days of his Sleeper training. He envisioned a massive wall around his brain, a dome that shielded anyone from prying into his thoughts. It was a trick he had been using to keep Sleepers at bay for years, but now that that threat had passed, he realized he could repurpose it to block his thoughts from Alex while she worked her magic.

Learning how to create a mind-shield had been a laborious process all those years ago. Like a physical structure, there were plenty of ways a shield could be undermined by a Sleeper’s psychic attack. It required a solid foundation, usually built from the memory of a loved one. The foundation had to be molded from something that was immutable and unchanging, something that the person believed in wholeheartedly. Brennan chose the day he and Mara had been married.

The next part required two components: building blocks for the dome, and mortar to hold those blocks in place. Each brick was fashioned from the dark deeds Brennan had committed as a Sleeper; their nature would also dissuade any curious telepaths from probing too deeply once they sensed that darkness. For the mortar, he poured his enduring faith that he acted in the interest of the greater good. For each life he took, he had saved many more, and that belief was what held him together. It would serve the same function for his mind-shield.

Finally, the centerpiece that would sit at the top of the dome, the keystone. This was the most difficult part of the shield’s construction, the one which prevented most from creating something that lasted. It required something of all three qualities: love, action, and purpose. Ironically, it was the first piece Brennan had ever collected.

The betrayal of his father to a rival crime boss. The keystone memory fit snugly into its slot, and Brennan felt his ears pop as the shield, completed, washed away the psychic pressure emanating from Alex. The low thrum of power was still there, but he no longer felt it crackling across his skin or causing the hairs on his arms to raise.

Alex opened her eyes wide and stared at him. “What did you just do?” she asked.

“This is me helping,” Brennan said. “Now, look for Kellogg.”

She shook her head. “He could be moving, or else he’s just outside my radius. Even being everywhere at once, I can’t find him, and this is going too—” She broke off, and Brennan heard something vibrating. Alex took out her phone and scowled at the number before she answered. “Dad, this isn’t a good time.”

He could only hear one side of the conversation, but Brennan knew better than to try to listen in.

“No, Dad, I already told you,” Alex said, turning her head away. “We obviously aren’t safe at home, so I’d rather be in the city. No, I need to do this. I’m not coming home.” There was a pause while Mr. Brüding spoke for nearly a whole minute, and Alex’s voice was softer when she responded. “I know you told me not to get involved, but I can’t sit around and do nothing. I’ll be home when I can feel safe again.”

She hung up before her father could respond.

“I take it he isn’t pleased,” Brennan commented.

“That would be an understatement.” Alex turned to him, and he could see the angry gleam in her eyes. “My mother was murdered. Why can’t he see that I need to know Kellogg is brought to justice? And how can he ask me not to get involved, especially when I can do something to help?”

Brennan nodded slowly, not wanting to alienate his only real chance of finding Kellogg. “I trust you,” he said. “Your father needs to learn to do the same. You’re old enough to make your own choices. And for what it’s worth, I think you’re doing something incredibly brave by being out here.”

Alex stared at him, seemingly stunned by the compliment, and her cheeks reddened more rapidly than her mouth could respond.

“On another note,” Brennan continued, “I want you to stop seeing Sam.”

Her words finally found themselves. “Fair enough.”

“That…was really easy. You don’t need any further convincing?”

“No,” Alex said with a shrug. “I was getting bored with him, anyway.”

“Oh.” Brennan looked outside his window again in a bid to escape the uncomfortable silence that followed. When he finally glanced back, Alex had resumed her near-meditative state. Her eyes moved rapidly beneath her eyelids, but she was otherwise completely still.

Her power couldn’t touch him, but Brennan still felt its influence persistently lapping against the mind-shield like the tide of the ocean. Their taxi turned and further widened its route, riding along the circumference of an ever-expanding circle. They rode on in relative silence as the sun started to fall toward the tips of the western skyscrapers.

A phone vibrated, and this time it was Brennan who patted at his pockets in a hurry to answer. He spared a quick glance at Alex, but she seemed unfazed by the distraction as he answered. “Sam?”

“Where did you go?” Sam’s voice was hard to hear over the buzz of activity in the background. “Noel said you were all having a big meeting, but by the time I showed up, you had already split.”

“Sorry, Sam, I’m with one of my old contacts now,” Brennan said, skirting the truth.

“I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but I hope they have something good.” Sam’s voice lowered, and the tone changed in a subtle way. “Brennan, I wanted to say that I’m sorry. I know I’ve been giving you a hard time these past few months, pushing you about how you knew Noel was being held in that hospital. You obviously know some people I don’t, though, and they’ve proven themselves to be trustworthy.”

Brennan gulped after hearing his friend’s apology. He didn’t have the heart to tell Sam that Noel had been found by Greg while patched with a psychoactive drug, and that his partner now was a near-omniscient telepath, the very same woman Sam had been regularly sleeping with for weeks. “Don’t worry about it,” he said simply. “What’s all that noise in the background?”

Alex’s eyes opened. “Stop the car,” she told Brennan urgently. She opened the small glass window and spoke to the driver before Brennan could even respond.

“They think they have a lead,” Sam was saying. “Security cameras caught Kellogg entering a building on Eighteenth and Guerricke.”

Brennan faintly heard Alex relating the same information to the taxi driver—slightly before Sam said it over the phone. Her psychic probe was just barely ahead of the FBI resources at OPD’s disposal. “We’re close to the location,” he told Sam, confirming it with a glance at the driver’s GPS. “Stay at the station, Sam, you’ve done enough.”

“I hear you loud and clear.”

“Uh, you don’t need any further convincing?” Brennan asked. He saw Alex smirking out of the corner of his eye.

“Hell no,” Sam said, elongating the first word with feeling. “This dangerous crap is exactly why I left the force to begin with. I’ll go check in on Greg while you do all the heavy lifting.”

“He wasn’t at home when I left.”

“But I already have the spare key in hand, and I don’t mind the walk.”

Brennan smiled. “Fine, go ahead. Lock up when you’re finished raiding my liquor cabinet.”

“A man’s work is
never
finished, you know that.”

He ended the call and glanced at the rising cab fare meter. It was a good thing that Alex was covering the tab. They drove the last several blocks in silence, but Brennan could sense his partner’s rising excitement as they approached Eighteenth Street. Her eyes remained riveted on the large, tiered skyscraper that marked their destination.

The taxi pulled up alongside the curb, and the two of them stepped out into the shadow of the building. It was a large corporate office center, and the name of SymbioTech was hung in bold, steel letters in the middle of the expansive lobby.

“Why would he come here?” Alex asked.

“You’re the telepath, you tell me.”

“I’m not going anywhere near that. The only thing jumping into that psychopath’s head is a bullet.”

“We’re here to capture Kellogg, not execute him,” Brennan reminded her.

Alex gave him an unrepentant look. “He’s a murderer. Doesn’t he deserve to die for that?”

Brennan waited for the helpful voice in his head to speak up, but it remained silent. His power apparently didn’t extend to moral dilemmas. “How do you think that will look to OPD?” he asked instead.

“After what happened this summer, I would have thought you’d be used to standing in blood.”

“Is there something you want to say to me?”

Alex waited until Brennan had waved his badge at the security guards before responding. “I’ve been inside your head. Your moral high ground is shaky at best,
Sleeper
. You have killed before, so I don’t understand why you hesitate to do so now when faced with the man who murdered my mother and kidnapped your nephew.”

False. True.

“What was that?” Brennan demanded as his steps faltered. “Where’s Greg?”

Alex pointed straight up. “On the thirty-first floor, your nephew is kneeling on the ground. His heart rate is up, and I’m not getting any visuals from him, but otherwise he seems fine. For now.”

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t know until now.”

Something about that statement didn’t set right in Brennan’s stomach, but he didn’t have time to worry over it right now. “And what about Kellogg?”

“Same floor,” Alex reported. “He was just with someone, but now I can only sense Kellogg.” She placed a palm to her temple as they boarded an elevator. Her eyes looked around at the walls with a heavy dose of distaste. “I think it’s this
place
. It’s messing with my ability.”