Seeing Is Believing (3 page)

“This woman is
so
unhappy,” she offered in a whisper. “My heart goes out to her.” She opened her eyes and felt tears. Embarrassed, she handed the photo back to Wes and wiped her eyes.

Stunned, Wes stared at her. Then he remembered that supposedly, Diana Wolf was a psychometrist—someone who could touch an object and tell him about the person who owned it. That was why Morgan had chosen her. Scowling deeply, he slipped the photo beneath the papers he had.

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do.” Diana pointed to the papers. “She’s very unhappy.”

“She shouldn’t be,” Wes growled. “The federal government has paid her very highly for her skills.”

Tilting her head, Diana saw the mockery in his eyes and heard it in his voice. “Why don’t you just start at the beginning, Mr. McDonald? Why are you here? What do you want from me?”

He managed a grimace with one corner of his mouth. “Let me tell you something up-front, Ms. Wolf: if I had my way about this, I wouldn’t be here at all, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be talking to you.”

Stunned, Diana glared at him. “Under the circumstances, I’d guess you didn’t have a choice, Mr. McDonald. So let’s cut to the chase on this, shall we? You’re completely lacking in manners, and I’m not about to sit here and be insulted by you or anyone.”

Wes cursed softly to himself. When she stood up, her eyes blazing, her hands at her sides, he muttered, “I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with my boss, Morgan Trayhern. I didn’t want this assignment. It has nothing to do with you. All right?” He was genuinely sorry he’d hurt her feelings. Once again, Wes realized that his anger was being projected onto someone who hadn’t earned it. It was a terrible weakness he had, and he’d been working to change that particular habit for a long time.

When he lowered his voice, his tone genuine, Diana hesitated. She was ready to walk back to the museum and tell him to go on his way. But for an instant, she saw contrition in his eyes, saw the persistent gleam of fire in them diminish. In that moment she saw the man, not the warrior, and it was a breathtaking discovery. Even his customary clipped tone of voice had disappeared. She gripped the back of the bench to steady herself.

“All right, I accept your apology, Mr. McDonald. Get on with the reason why you’re here—whether you want to be or not.”

Wes opened his mouth to explain, seeing the hurt in her eyes, the soft set of her mouth with the corners drawn inward in response to the pain he’d launched at her. Life was such a bitch. Utterly a bitch. He knew he wasn’t the kind of person many people wanted to have around. Hell, he had a lot of rough edges, and he wasn’t worth sticking around for any length of time. That’s why his army career had fitted him so perfectly. He was a loner in a loner’s job. But now he had to take a partner. And he didn’t like it. A woman, at that. A soft, compassionate woman who’d mysteriously tugged feelings from his hardened heart that he thought had died long ago.

Lifting his hand, Wes rasped, “I know I’m a bastard. I’m hard on people. That’s about as close to an apology as you’re going to get from me.”

Diana relaxed slightly, her fingers loosening from their position on the granite bench. She could feel Wes wrestling with so many feelings, even see them in his eyes, if only for a split second. As a psychic, her forte was picking up on subtleties, and she was glad this once that she could ferret out such things, because they painted a less violent and aggressive picture of him.

“Fair enough,” she whispered, her voice softening in compromise. “Just tell me why you came here.”

W
es put the papers aside. “Ruth Horner is a psychic,” he began, retrieving the information from his memory. “When she was ten years old, the Psi-Lab, a top-secret branch of the federal government, tested her.”

“What do you mean, ‘tested’?”

“They tested her for her psychic skills,” Wes said. “This lab’s whole reason for being was to develop a team of psychics to use in the Cold War and any other hot spot around the world. They used psychics to ferret out top-secret information. If they could get access without putting one of our spies in danger, they did it.”

Diana grimaced. “What a terrible use of psychic gifts.”

Wes shrugged. “If you believe in that sort of stuff.”

She felt rebuffed. “Obviously, you don’t.”

“Nope.” He pointed to his eyes. “I believe in my own five senses. Beyond that, nothing is real.”

The flat statement came out hard, uncompromising. Diana curbed her reaction—one of anger. “Okay, so poor Ruth Horner was tested when she was only ten. And they used her? At that age? I think that’s terrible.”

“It’s worse than you can imagine,” Wes said. “Ruth Horner’s skills were so high on their index that they brought her to Washington, D.C., and she worked in their lab facilities five days a week.”

“How awful! What did her parents say?”

“She didn’t have any. She was an orphan.”

“Oh, dear…”

Wes smarted beneath her softly spoken words and the glistening of tears in her sympathetic brown eyes. Tears! He felt rage. He felt as if he’d been slapped in the face. “Don’t get all teary eyed over her being an orphan. She survived.”

Diana felt a huge surge of anger slam into her and she winced. She saw the fury in Wes’s eyes and stood openmouthed. Why had he taken such offense? Her mind whirled with questions about this unpredictable man.

“Horner was cared for by foster parents who approved her work for our government. Her education was excellent. She was tutored through high school and went on to get a degree in biochemistry.” He deliberately looked at the papers instead of at Diana Wolf, whose compassionate expression only made him feel angrier. “She eventually became a supervisor at the lab and responsible for a lot of new psychic tools being employed in our country’s defense.” Wes glanced up. “I don’t know exactly what she did psychically. But I was told she was very powerful. One of the best.”

Swallowing her tears, Diana came and sat down on the edge of the bench. The anger had left Wes’s face and voice, but she was still shaken by the suddenness with which he’d turned on her. Why couldn’t he feel sympathy for Ruth Horner? What was the matter with him? Maybe he was so hard-bitten he hated tears, or at the very least, disdained them. Typical Neanderthal male, she thought, her own anger rising. How dare he. Her tears, her feelings, were genuine, and he had no right to deliver verbal assaults.

Diana had to remind herself she’d never been around a mercenary—had no idea what one might be like. Her ex-husband had been in the army, so she’d had a taste of the military, all right. A very bad taste that had left her bitter. Ruth’s story haunted her, though, so she put her own feelings aside.

“Tell me more about Ruth.”

“There’s nothing more to tell—except this: she married at the age of thirty and divorced at thirty-seven. Recently, she went on a two-week vacation to Sedona, Arizona. The lab had her hotel room number in case they needed her for an emergency. When they had one and called her, she was gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes, disappeared.”

“As in kidnapped?”

“We don’t know.” Wes heard himself say “we.” It was a term he’d used often in Delta Force, where everything was approached as a team. Now he was automatically including this woman—who hadn’t even agreed to accept the mission! Disgruntled at his slip, he muttered, “That’s why they want you on this assignment. They need a psychometrist, someone who can pick up her whereabouts. The police have already checked the room and pursued the usual routes of investigation. They’ve found nothing. We were hoping you could give us something—anything—to go on.”

She nodded. “I see. And
you
don’t believe in this method of investigation?”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t believe people can have psychic gifts?”

“That’s right.”

Again, Diana felt herself up against that brutal interior wall of his. It was a defense, and she knew there were always reasons for that. Despite the anger and fear he aroused in her, she felt strangely drawn to understand the man behind the violent job. But instinctively, she realized he’d be the last person to open up and confide anything to her.

“What are your responsibilities in all of this?” she asked briskly.

“I’m basically a big guard dog, that’s all. I’ll interface with the local police and any other federal authorities, as necessary.”

“Meaning this is dangerous?”

“No, it’s a low-risk mission. The Psi-Lab suspects Ruth’s been kidnapped. They used their own people to try and find her, but they had no success. They’ve already contacted other governmental agencies to start looking for her, through local as well as federal intervention. All they want from you is for you to pick up any vibrations—to try to get a
feel
for what might have happened.”

She heard the derision, the disbelief in his voice that she might actually be capable of such a thing. She sighed. It would not be enjoyable working with this man.

“Perseus is offering you a large sum of money for your services,” Wes admitted. He took a check from his briefcase and handed it to her.

Diana slowly held out her hand and took the crisp check. Ten thousand dollars! She gulped. To her, it was a tremendous amount of money—money that could be used to help her mother, who was always destitute because she gave everything away to those less fortunate than herself.

“This—this is a lot of money….”

Wes saw her wrestling with surprise and shock over the amount. “I guess they think you’re pretty good.” Damn! He’d insulted her again. Where was all this anger coming from? And why was he focusing it on her? Angry with himself, he glanced up to see how much damage he’d done with that comment.

“Look,” he growled, getting up and stuffing the information file back into the briefcase, “this is probably going to be, at the most, a two-day mission.” You won’t have to work with me very long. Ten thousand bucks for two days’ work isn’t a bad trade-off for having to work with a bastard like me, is it?”

She glared at him. “I was going to do this for nothing, Mr. McDonald, because I felt sorry for Ruth Horner. You have nothing to do with it.”

Wes nodded. Okay, he’d had that coming. He was surprised at how well she handled her own anger. Maybe he could learn a thing or two from her after all. “My boss is used to paying for what he gets, so keep the money and let me make the flight arrangements. All right?”

Diana hesitated. “I can’t tell my mother where I’m going?”

“Sure, just don’t tell her what you’ll be doing.”

She smiled a little. “You don’t know my mother, Mr. McDonald.”

“Oh?”

“Walk With Wolves is my mother’s name. She is a very well known medicine woman here on the reservation, and very much loved by our people. She reads minds as easily as you and I communicate with our mouths. Even if I don’t tell her, she’ll know.”

He snorted. “Come on!”

Diana’s smile broadened, but the look in her eyes was one of challenge. “You don’t believe me?” she taunted.

“No.”

“Good. You make the travel arrangements, then meet me at four-thirty, when I get off work. I’ll take you home to meet my mother, and you can see for yourself.”

“What’s to stop you from making a phone call to her in the meantime?”

Diana hated his snideness, his way of expecting the worst. “That does it! We’re going home right now,” she retorted angrily. “You’re so negative! So distrustful!”

Wes grinned just a tad. She was beautiful when she got angry, he’d give her that. Her eyes gleamed with a golden light of challenge, her full lips pursed and her cheeks turned rosy. “Okay, let’s go meet Mama,” he said, his tone still cynical.

“Be sure to follow me back to my office—to make sure I don’t try to call her,” Diana jeered.

“I intend to do just that,” he said silkily, falling into step at her side.

* * *

On the way home, Diana had Wes stop at the grocery and buy several bags of groceries.

“Why are we doing this?” he demanded at the checkout counter.

“Because it’s bad etiquette to visit a medicine person’s home without a gift.”

“Groceries?”

Diana nodded and watched him slip several twenties from his billfold. “That’s right. Mother gives the food away to those who need it.”

“Oh…”

“You thought it was for her?”

“Sure.”

“Just like a white man. You have no conception of true generosity of spirit.”

He slanted a glance down at her. “You have spunk, I’ll give you that.”

“I don’t care what you think of me,” Diana said in a low, warning tone, “but you’d best not be rude to my mother, or I’ll be in your face in a split second.”

Wes grinned fully. He believed her. Picking up the grocery sacks, he said, “Let’s go.”

Diana felt shaky with anger, with the urge to slap his rugged face. Even his smile was twisted, as if he was in some kind of internal pain only he knew about. And that underlying pain was what stopped her from really wanting to slap him. Somehow, Wes McDonald was a beaten dog, and she’d never kick a hurt animal, no matter how many times it snapped or bit at her.

* * *

Wes was impressed with the beauty of the reservation as they drove deeper and deeper into the foothills crowned by the magnificent Smoky Mountains. The dirt road they drove paralleled another creek, and he wondered if there were some nice, fat brown trout in there just waiting to be someone’s dinner. Soon the road narrowed, and they came into a hollow, a small meadow ringed on three sides by rounded hills aflame with autumn colors. At the far end of the yellow meadow stood a small log cabin surrounded by a white picket fence. A profusion of red geraniums graced its border.

Wes realized the log cabin was very old and in need of a vast amount of repair—beginning with its rusted tin roof. But the yard was neatly kept, the picket fence freshly painted and recently washed clothes hung on an outdoor clothesline. Obviously, this medicine woman didn’t have a dryer.

“What does a medicine person do?” he asked as he slowed the car for a big rut in the dirt road.

“My mother is a healer. She has gifts that have been passed down through our family for six generations. People from the reservation come to her if they’re ailing. She knows the ceremonies, the songs and herbs, so she’s able to help most of them. The ones she can’t, she sends to the hospital.”