The Innocent: FBI Psychics, Book 2 (7 page)

“I live close to eight miles from here. Our vehicles were impounded. If you hurry, you can have your pal find you a place to stay.”

She slid him a sidelong look. “That’s why I caught up with you. After two years of talking, I figured you could hook me up with a bed for the night.” She risked it. Sliding her hand down his arm, twined their fingers. “I was kind of hoping it might be your bed, even though you did up and dump me.”

A harsh sigh escaped him. But he didn’t pull away. “You know about my daughter… Jay, I’m not in a good place right now. I’m sorry I was an ass, but I can’t handle a relationship when I’m…”

He stopped. Just stopped in the middle of the road and stared at nothing.

She eased herself in front of him and reached up, touched his cheek. Even with the gloves, she wouldn’t have risked this with most people. Accidental brushes of the skin, his chest bumping against hers. Or worse, he might lean in and kiss her, and those casual contacts were something she could never take for granted. She’d never been able to risk it.

So she’d thought. But she touched him. More, she let herself lean in, press her lips to his. That light contact stole the breath from her lungs, but not for the reasons she would have expected.

All she felt was a hot, hungry little buzz.

And grief.

Her own, not his.

He was hurting and it broke her heart.

“I never knew you had a daughter,” she said quietly.

“I never knew you were with the Feds,” he said sourly. “I guess we’re even.”

She laughed a little. “Maybe. Although I’m not with them anymore. I’m…well, sort of freelance. I
am
with a private security firm. It’s just not the kind you’d typically expect. I do troubleshooting, bodyguard detail, investigative work. Whatever is needed.”

His eyes searched her face. “But you were FBI.”

“I was.” She held her breath, wondered if he would ask. He’d recognized Taige. She was almost famous, in her own way. Would he connect those dots?

But all he did was reach up and push his fingers through her hair.

“You up for an eight-mile walk or you want to call them to pick us up?” he asked.

Nearly an hour later, she was tucked up inside a house that would have looked at home on some grand Hollywood production.

Well, at least in her mind.

But no, this was Linc’s home. He
lived
here.

If Scarlett O’Hara had swept out the door, her hand pressed to her breast as she cried out for her darling Ashley, Jay wouldn’t have been surprised. But as Linc had led them into the house, it remained silent. Despite the lateness of the hour, something about that silence disturbed Jay.

It was an almost haunting silence, and even now, she couldn’t help but think there was something wrong.

Every other place she’d been in town had felt…
off
. Dark, dismal. Unnaturally so.

This place felt muffled.

She wanted to talk to Taige and asked if she felt the same, but she didn’t have the chance.

Linc had guided the couple to a room, showed them a connecting bath and, to Jay’s wide-eyed surprise, a little kitchenette. Apparently the man was loaded. She’d suspected he had money, and despite the urge, she hadn’t done a background check on him. She might have, but her gut hadn’t given her any “off” vibes about him and she’d already been deceiving him. Why invade his privacy?

Now some part of her wished she’d poked around a little. She might have been a little more prepared for what was going on.

After he’d tucked Taige and Cullen into their rooms—their own
rooms
, geez—he’d taken Jay’s hand and led her to what she guessed she could call a different wing of the house.

She wasn’t sure what to expect.

Linc had been oddly silent since her call to Taige.

There was a feel to him that had her heart already silently weeping.

“I guess I should have told you about my daughter,” he said, his rough voice shattering the silence like a hammer against glass.

She lowered her lashes, staring down at her clasped hands. She’d donned her gloves, wished she could take them off, but doing that here would be suicide. The weird, muffled sensation bothered her even more than if she’d sensed the dying screams of a missing child. Fucked-up shit, there. “I guess I could have told you a little more about my job,” she finally said, shrugging and looking up to meet his eyes. Amazing eyes. Too pretty for a man, but damned if she didn’t like to look at him.

He was no longer looking at her, though.

While she’d been staring at her hands, he’d picked up a framed picture from the scuffed oak coffee table. He held it in his massive hands and, if she wasn’t mistaken, those hands trembled. Just a little.

Slowly, she rose and went to him, sitting down next to him.

He lifted his head and the awful expression in his eyes tore her heart right open. She wouldn’t be surprised to see it bleeding on the floor in front of her. Swallowing the knot that had lodged in her throat, she reached for the picture. Through those gloves, she felt the buzz.

Yeah, the house was muffled. But some of the things
within
the house were still throwing off echoes.

This one caught her by throat.

A girl had held this, stared at the picture, then thrown it on the floor, smashed it.

The glass was still broken. Jay could see the girl’s picture, but Linc’s face was obscured by the shattered glass. You could see his arm, slung around her shoulder, and the smile on the girl’s face was a happy one.

“She disappeared,” he said, his voice raw. “We had a fight…a bad one. There’s a—fuck, he’s a punk. Entitled little thug, thinks he can do whatever, have whatever. But he’s a charming bastard and girls love him. My daughter was having trouble at her school and my ex-wife thought maybe she’d do better in a small town. I didn’t want her to come. I love my daughter, but this town…”

Linc closed his eyes, shook his head. “Sometimes this place deserves its name. I told Shanelle it wasn’t a good move, but she had this big job offer going on too. Didn’t want to take DeeDee to Memphis—said she needed a slower pace of life, small town. Community. I don’t…” He pressed the tips of his fingers to his eyes and swore under his breath. “If it was any town other than this one, I would have agreed. It would have been a good move. I was the county sheriff, though. Surely I could keep my daughter safe. She’d been here nine months, was doing okay. Then she started hanging out with that fuck Blayne. She tried to leave for a date with him and I said no. Told her I’d lock her in her room if I had to. She snuck out of the house that night. I never saw her again.”

The buzz in the back of Jay’s brain grew louder. Inside her glove, her fingers itched. Burned.

Something was tugging at her.

She could help.

She didn’t know how.

She didn’t know what she was going to find.

But she could help.

“What…” She licked her lips, painfully aware of how heavy her heart had started to pound, how the blood was roaring in her veins. “What came up in the investigation?”

Linc curled his lip. “Not
shit
. Everywhere I turn, there’s a dead end, and she was last seen inside of town, but are the cops there investigating? Hell, no. One girl said she
did
see DeeDee with Blayne but the next day, when I went back to talk to her, she was lying, I know she was lying, but she says she was confused. She’d seen them on a different night. Then I traced the phone records and there are calls from the Mays household to her cellphone.”

“Mays.” Jay said it flatly, remembering the police chief, his name foul on her tongue.

“Yeah.” Linc shot her a dark look. “It’s his son.”

“She was last seen with the chief of police’s son.” She blinked, her expression coolly blank.

“Yes. And nobody has shit to say about it.”

Jay dragged her hands down her face, shaking her head. “I’m at a loss for words. Why aren’t you the sheriff anymore, Linc?”

“Because I quit.” Linc surged up out the seat and moved around the coffee table to pace the length of the room. “Shit came up that I was
planting
evidence, trying to implicate the chief’s son. All this crap that I was shooting for his job, never mind that I already had one. The only other officer I had on staff at the time went to the town council and claimed he’d seen me do it. The fucking coward apologized a month later, crying his heart out about how Mays had told him he’d tell his wife how he’d been cheating on her and it would ruin his marriage if he didn’t lie his ass off.” Linc started to laugh, an ugly raw sound that echoed through the room and tore ragged chunks out of Jay’s heart. “The bitch of it was…Leigh already knew. She filed for divorce two weeks after I quit.”

“You let them chase you out.”

He turned, his eyes flashing at her. “No. I
walked
out, because after all the time I put in, as much as I tried to make things better here, people folded for that scumbag. That boy he’s raising is suspected of
three
rapes, and I finally had one of the girls convinced they needed to press charges, but right before it went to trial, the girl’s parents balked. I had the evidence. It just disappears. The fucker sits there, ignores real crimes, and the two officers he has will haul people in because they defended themselves, but he’ll ignore it when a girl is getting raped over at the bar, or when my…” His voice broke.

Jay said nothing as he lapsed into silence, his chest rising and falling as he took a couple of slow, steady breaths.

She sat there, waiting until he was ready to speak again.

“He does nothing,” Linc finally said. “His son hurt three girls and he probably kidnapped my daughter, and nothing happens to that sick little fuck.”

“You’re certain he had something to do with her disappearance.”

“She was last seen with him. Her cellphone case was found in his bedroom. But all the evidence is gone, no fucking telling who took it or what was done with it, and nobody will talk.” Linc turned and stared out the window. “My little girl is gone.”

Jay stripped off her gloves.

That very moment, the door opened.

Taige stood there. “Jay, wait—”

But she’d already grabbed the picture.

Her skin prickled.

Heat washed over her and then a rush of cold, just seconds before darkness swarmed around and then it sucked her in. Time, space, everything fell away and then, she was elsewhere. She was somebody else.

Or that was how it felt. Seconds later, her conscious defenses kicked in and she shoved the connection off to the side. This wasn’t
really
happening.

She knew that.

It was something that was already done and over.

Over…but not finished.

It would never be finished, because the pain still lingered.

“You are not going out with that boy, am I understood?”

She spun around and swung out, hitting her father square in the nose—the exact way he’d taught her to hit. Blood spurted. But he didn’t let her go. Even when she shouted, “Let me go! I hate you. Do you hear me? I hate you.”

She had to be with Blayne. She had to. He was the only one who didn’t make her feel—

“—breathe, Jay. Come on. Breathe.”

That voice cut through the miasma of fear and worry and guilt and grief. It threatened to swamp her and she sucked in a breath, only to gag a little as bile rushed up her throat.

A rush of voices swarmed around her and that voice rose again. “Shit, would you get back? Give her some air?”

Taige, Jay thought dumbly.

That was Taige.

“What the hell is wrong with her?”

Hands touched her and she flinched away. “Don’t touch,” she slurred out, forcing the words through her dry throat. “Don’t…”

“It’s okay,” Taige said, her voice soft. “I’m locked down. My guy is a null. We need to get you on the couch. You hit the floor. Come on, Jay.”

Something wet ran down her face and she reached up.

A hand caught her wrist and she jerked back before she realized it was Taige. She felt nothing from the woman’s touch. Okay. That was safe. Inanely, she thought of elementary school.
Good touch, bad touch
. All touches were bad for her, it seemed. She felt too much—even the slightest one could bring agony. Very few brought anything pleasurable.

“You ready to move?”

Cracking one eye open, she found herself staring at Taige and then she nodded. She started to sit up and Taige helped her. The room spun around and she felt that sticky wet on her face, looked down, saw the red splattered all over her shirt. “I hit my head,” she said stupidly.

“Yeah. A gash about an inch long.”

Feeling the heavy pressure of somebody’s stare, she looked up, saw Linc standing just a few feet away and his eyes were a blank, careful mask. He looked at Taige, his eyes lingering on her before his gaze slid toward Jay.

Fuck.