The Protected (Fbi Psychics) (4 page)

“Where did you move into?”

The response that leaped to mind was,
None of your damned business
. But instead of going with that, she shrugged and waved off to the east. “Westbrook Avenue, a few blocks over.”

Somebody who had never had trouble with the law, or didn’t work in law enforcement, was just going to answer that sort of question, because they automatically thought
cooperating
made everything better. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn’t. Right then, it didn’t hurt her to cooperate. Vaughnne was an old hand at dealing with law enforcement . . . from both sides. She carried a badge of her own now, but there had been a time when
she
was the one having trouble with the law. Lessons that had served her well more than once.

“Just moved into a new area and you’re out running around in the dead of night.”

She looked back at the rookie and lifted a brow. “I was told it was a safe area. Was I told wrong?”

“It’s a nice enough area,” the older cop said, subtly moving so that he stood just a bit between her and his partner. “But you can never be too careful, Ms. . . .”

“Caffee,” she said, sighing. “Vaughnne Caffee. Fine. I’ll head back home. Unless I’m in trouble for taking a damned run?”

“No.” He shook his head and smiled again. “No trouble. You understand, of course, we have to follow up on the calls we get.”

“Sure.” Without looking at the other one, she turned around and started back down the sidewalk. They watched her for a few minutes.

She took the longer route on the way back to the little house she was calling home. She still needed to get a better look at the setup where Gus and Alex lived. Figure out the best way to keep an eye on things. Although she already had a decent idea how she’d do that. The tricky thing was going to be getting it all set up.

The little house was even smaller than hers. More run-down than most of them, although she could see signs where somebody, probably Gus, was working on things.

Hard to tell in the dark, of course. The windows bothered her. Windows and doors were the most vulnerable areas of a house. Where did the boy sleep? In a room of his own?

There were no lights—

Then one flashed on and she crossed the road. Casual. Jogging across the road, waiting for that prickle feeling between her shoulder blades that would let her know she was being watched.

It never came. But as she unlocked the door and slipped inside, her breathing was coming far too erratic and her heart beat in a harsh, unsteady rhythm against her ribs. Leaning against the door, she edged to the side and peered through the narrow window, watching as a shadow moved through the house across the street.

* * *

IT
had been years since he’d slept well.

Too many years.

Usually the dreams that plagued him were full of screams, or broken cries. Desperate whispers and fears and blood and misery.

This time, though . . . well, there had been broken cries. Desperate whispers. And heat. So much of it. He’d been back in that house across the street, but this time, he’d been alone there with Vaughnne, and when she’d gone to tug her bra strap into place, he caught her hand and stopped her.

He could remember how soft her skin had felt in the dream. So very, very soft . . . it would feel like that in real life, he thought. But in the dream . . . yeah. Yeah, she’d been soft. And when he went to strip her shirt away, she’d just stood there, watching him, her eyes intent and quiet, a strange little Mona Lisa smile on that wicked, sexy mouth.

He’d tangled his hands in her hair and feasted on her mouth like it had been decades since he’d touched a woman. It had only been four years, but that was too long.

Before he had managed to get her completely naked and bury his aching dick inside her, the dream had shattered. Gus didn’t know what had woken him, but whatever it was, he was awake and he knew better than to lie in bed when his body was suddenly humming with tension.

A quick glance at the clock told him that he’d gotten two hours of sleep.

Not enough.

But it didn’t matter. He listened to the silence of the old house as he rolled silently out of the bed, his hand gripping the butt of his weapon. Back to the wall, he checked the hallway out of habit. His instincts said the house was empty, save for him and the boy. He didn’t trust them. Creeping down the hallway, he checked inside and saw that Alex was sleeping on his belly, face buried in a pillow.

Alex . . . Alex was asleep.
That
he would trust. Sighing, he sagged against the wall behind him and scrubbed a hand down his face while the adrenaline drained out of him.

Alex wouldn’t be asleep if there was any sort of threat within a hundred feet of the house. He was like a living, breathing danger meter.

“Gus?”

In the dim light, he could see Alex lift his head. Forcing himself to smile, he said, “Go to sleep, kid. It’s okay.”

Knowing the boy would sleep better if there were lights on while he was moving through the house, Gus flicked on the hallway light as he prowled around. He needed a drink, so before he did anything, he bypassed the kitchen and pulled down the bottle he kept stashed over the refrigerator. Tequila, cheap shit, but the only thing he could afford, straight, the burn of it heating his throat and then his belly as he moved through the house, checking it over once more.

Alex slept in the narrow little room he’d claimed for his own. It wasn’t intended for a bedroom, but neither of them worried about that. The cot in there wasn’t exactly what Gus wanted for him, but what Alex needed the most was to feel safe and he’d sleep better someplace closest to Gus, someplace where nobody could come in through the windows.

If they came in through the windows where Gus slept, they would have an unpleasant surprise, he thought. So very unpleasant.

Pausing by the open entryway, he watched as Alex rolled onto his side, hugging a pillow against him.
You’re safe, Alex
, Gus thought. And for as long as he breathed, Gus would do every damn thing he could to
keep
the boy safe.

Every damn thing. He’d make any sacrifice. Give up anything and everything. It didn’t matter what rivers he had to cross, what mountains he had to climb, what dragons he had to slay. The boy had lost enough. Gus’s job was to keep him from losing anything else.

Knowing the boy wouldn’t stay asleep if he remained there brooding, Gus took his tequila and slid outside to sit on the front porch.

Across the street, Vaughnne’s house was dark.

She’d be asleep, he thought. She’d been so tired with dark circles under her eyes and exhaustion in every line of her body when they left.

Stop thinking about her
. He had no room in his life for that. Not for anything.

The only thing he had room for was the boy.

Alex was his focus, and that was the way it had to be.

THREE

T
HE
cookies smelled too damned good.

Vaughnne helped herself to two of them as they cooled, and she knew if she didn’t get them out of there, she would eat more of them. Which meant she’d have to tack another mile onto her run when she hit the pavement later that day.

But with the scent of chocolate, both white and dark, filling the air, and her belly still demanding another cookie, she almost gave in.

If Gus didn’t leave the old lady’s house next door soon, she
would
give in.

It was turning into a bitch, keeping an eye on him. She’d set up exterior cameras over the past few nights, planted around his property, but not on it. He was too . . . cautious. Yeah, that was it. Jones still wasn’t having any luck turning up information on either of them, and that in itself was a puzzle, but the guy was so cautious. So watchful. He held himself in a way that normal people didn’t. Like he was ready to fight, ready to run, ready to react to any damn thing.

If she planted cameras on his property, she knew he’d find them in a heartbeat.

Still, around the perimeter, a few here and there, and they weren’t exactly watching
him
. They were watching for anybody that might be trying to
get
to him. A nice 360 view of the place. Ideally, she’d wanted one inside the house, but she was reconsidering that plan every time she saw him.

Tipping him off that somebody was watching him just wasn’t going to go over well.

Sighing, she checked the window again. The truck was still in front of the house, and nope, he still hadn’t left the house next door.

She’d been biding her time, watching the house at night and getting by on catnaps during the day because she couldn’t rest as heavily at night as she’d like to. She was on edge, sleeping with one eye open, and this was so
not
the ideal way to get all the way back up to full speed.

Babysitting, my ass
, she thought, grabbing a cookie and nipping another bite. She’d like to take the entire plate and dump them over Taylor Jones’s head.

The cookies were her way in.

But if Gus didn’t get home soon . . .

Her phone rang.

It was an unknown number and that wasn’t a surprise. Picking it up, she continued to stare outside, keeping her body positioned so nobody could see her. “Hello?”

“Mac.”

Jones didn’t introduce himself, but he didn’t need to.

“Figures.” She took another bite of cookie, but the explosion of chocolate on her tongue didn’t help.

“How are things going?”

“Quiet as the proverbial grave,” she admitted. “Nothing happens. At all. They get up. They leave. I watch them while he works . . . he keeps the kid with him and nothing happens there. They come back. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of anybody. Have you learned anything new about them?”

“Some. Get me some better visuals on the man and I can do more. I have my suspicions, but I need clearer images to confirm. He moves like a man who knows how to avoid being caught on camera, and for the facial recognition software to work, we actually need to see his
face
.”

“So . . .” She drew the word out. “You have nothing really to tell me.”

“I have some things I
could
tell you; I’m just electing not to until I confirm the information. Just be careful.”

“Wonderful. Be careful. Information noted.” She grunted, shifting to stare down the street, watching for them. Any minute now and they’d be at the house. She thought. She hoped. “Just what had you sending me down here anyway?”

“I listened to somebody I trust,” Jones said simply. “I trust my sources, Mac. In our line of work, we have to.”

“And what did your source say?” She rubbed the back of her neck, irritated. He usually wasn’t so closemouthed about these things. None of them liked operating in the dark, he knew that.

A moment of silence passed, and then Jones sighed. “There was very little my source
could
say. Just that the boy was going to have trouble . . . and we didn’t want anything bad happening to him. I think there are things I’m not being told, but I’ve learned to trust this person.”

“So we’re taking a lot of things on blind faith here.” She rubbed her temple, going back to watching the house while her gut twisted round and round.

“Do
you
think my source was wrong?” he asked. “If you think we’re off base and there’s nothing wrong, fine. I’ll call you back.”

“Shit, I hate you sometimes,” she said. “No, your source isn’t off base. The kid has a gift that’s waiting to explode, and they both have trouble written all over them.”

“What else can you tell me?”

She made a face. “That’s
my
line. You’re supposed to be the one with the info here, boss, but you won’t tell me shit. The guy . . .” She paused, blew out a breath. “The guy isn’t your average Joe, if you get what I’m saying. Military, cop. Something. He watches things. Sees things. He’s got moves on him, if you know what I mean.”

Jones was silent.

She twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “And the kid . . . shit, Jones. Did you know what you were sending me into?”

“I told you the boy was gifted.”

She snorted. “Gifted doesn’t touch it. He makes my teeth hurt, he’s so strong. If anybody with the wrong sort of mind grabbed him, Jones?” Shaking her head, she sighed. “And he’s got no idea how strong he is, how much he’s casting it out there, either. It’s like nobody ever worked with him to tone it down.”

“Not everybody has somebody around to teach them,” Jones said softly. “You didn’t.”

“Yeah, but I learned fast how to shut things down.” It was that or just suffer more for it. “What about the guy? The kid calls him his dad, but he’s not.”

“How can you tell?”

“I just can.” Some of the others in the unit could read that sort of thing. Read the mind and read the lies. Read the emotions and
feel
the lie. Vaughnne couldn’t. She had to rely on the more mundane abilities, and she’d brushed them up as much as could be expected. When people lied, there were just tiny little cues.

Vaughnne had learned to look for them.

The boy, as skilled as he was at it, all but
screamed
“liar” to her. He’d probably convince just about everybody else, including teachers, neighbors, and friends. Probably even a lot of law enforcement, if they had a reason to talk to him. It wasn’t even that stupid shit that people
thought
you might see when talking to a liar. He had no problem meeting her gaze, and there wasn’t any of the constant fidgeting some people thought you’d see when talking to somebody who was hiding the truth. And he
was
a fidgeter. She’d seen that much when they were moving. He had a problem being still, which was normal for a kid. But when she asked him anything remotely personal, he went oddly still.

And he
lied
 . . . like a dog. With easy, polite smiles and practiced, natural responses, he lied. And he did it all while looking her right in the eye.

Gus was harder, though. If she didn’t know better, she’d almost believe everything he told her. That bothered her, because she didn’t like it when she couldn’t see through somebody’s story. And it was just a story.

They weren’t a dad and a son just trying to make it on their own after the mom decided she’d rather go out and party than help raise a kid.

Not an unusual story. She’d heard it before, had seen it, but that wasn’t the case here.

“I think you’re probably right, by the way,” Jones said, interrupting her mental train of thought and successfully derailing it. “About the man. I believe he does have a background we’d find interesting . . . and that’s after we get through the false layers that I’m just now uncovering. I can’t confirm until I get better images of him, but I don’t think I’m wrong. Also, I’m just about certain he’s not the dad.”

Spying a familiar form striding down the sidewalk next door, Vaughnne edged back from the window. “I’m surprised you don’t have everything from their social security numbers to their shoe sizes already.”

“I was hoping you’d fill me in on the shoe sizes. Because that’s so important to the case,” Jones replied, his voice neutral.

So very neutral, it took her a second to realize what had just happened. “Oh, shit, Jones. I don’t believe it, but I think you might have just made a joke.”

“I don’t joke. They removed my sense of humor when I took the job.” She heard him pause, speak to somebody, and then he was back on the phone. “I have to go. I’ll stay in touch, Mac.”

The line went dead and she went in, cleared it from her list of recent calls before sliding the phone back into her pocket. Standing in the middle of the living room, she continued to stare out the window. She’d bought a wispy set of curtains for a reason. If the blinds weren’t drawn, she could see through them just fine, and since the lights were off, unless somebody was looking right at her, they wouldn’t be able to see her easily. Considering the white-hot brightness of the sun, it would be pretty damn hard to make her out, standing in her darkened living room.

Gus and the kid were standing in front of the house. To anybody else, it might look like they were talking. Gus had the backpack slung over his left shoulder, a jacket draped over his right hand. Weapon hand, she thought. Something skittered along her senses and she knew, as sure as she was standing there, they were not talking.

Alex stood there, while Gus looked down at him. And the boy looked up at the house. Just watching, kind of like she was watching him.

Then, the next thing he did had her rubbing her temple as the headache flared.

Psychic energy flared, crackled. And it wasn’t until the mad energy faded that the tension she sensed in both man and boy eased. Once it passed, the two of them headed into the house.

“What kind of trouble are you two in?” she muttered.

Then she glanced over at the plate of cookies she’d put together. She needed to reach out to them, try to get some sort of relationship with the kid going, but everything in her screamed
caution, caution, caution
—

It was just a plate of cookies.

They could take the cookies or not, invite her inside or not.

It might take more than one or two visits to get in the door, and she was more than aware of that fact. She knew she’d have to take her time getting closer to the boy and
that
was the easier part of the job.

The scary part . . .

Her heart jumped into her throat as she thought about the other thing she needed to do. She slid a hand into her pocket, touched the microscopic little camera, and sighed. She really did need to get eyes on the inside and
not
just because it would be nice to be able to do more than catnap at night. Her instincts were good, damn good, and they’d kept her alive, sane, and healthy for a long, long time—part of the reason she made a good
babysitter
, she figured, but part of a
babysitting
job . . . or bodyguard job? Knowing where in the hell the body was. Watching the damn body. Hard to do if she was catching up on sleep. No matter how badly she needed it.

The lack of solid sleep wasn’t going to help her get back to fighting form any quicker, that was certain.

She went to pick up the cookies and then she stopped. Although Vaughnne absolutely wanted to kick herself in the ass, she headed to the bathroom. She wasn’t vain. Back when she would have been learning all that shit about hair and makeup, she’d been struggling just to scrape by after her parents had kicked her out on her ass.

Once she’d managed to haul herself out of the hole where she’d found herself, she’d then been busy busting her ass to get up to speed, because she’d figured out just what she
wanted
to do. What she
needed
to do. It had been right about the time she read about a psychic in the newspaper.

Taige Branch. Taige Morgan now. But Vaughnne had figured out then and there, she wasn’t alone. So she’d hitchhiked and walked and made her way down to Alabama, determined to talk to the woman who had been helping others out. She hadn’t ever gotten to talk to Taige that day, but she had talked to somebody else.

Taylor Jones, who had been playing guard dog at the hospital where Taige was hospitalized. Apparently that happened a lot with her. Taylor had taken one look at her and told her she wasn’t ready.

He was right. She hadn’t been. Getting her GED, college, all of that shit had eaten up more of her time. But for the past six years, she’d been a part of his unit. She finally had a place where she belonged, and she’d worked damn hard to get here. Not much time to worry about some of the vanities that came with being a girl, not much time to worry about hair, makeup, any of that shit.

But she knew when a guy was interested and she’d seen the look in Gus’s eyes more than once the other day. Flipping the light, she stared at her reflection for a long moment. A black woman with a hell of a lot of hair, a hell of a lot of attitude, and grim eyes stared back at her.

“You are
not
going to be charming anybody’s pants off with that look on your face, honey.” Blowing out a breath, she skimmed a hand back over her hair, but there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot to do with it. She planned on washing it that night, but unless she wanted to delay everything else she had to do until she had it washed and taken care of, then she’d just have to leave her hair as it was for now.

Maybe she should have gotten it plaited or something before she came down here, but it was too late to worry about it right now.

Resting her hands on the cool porcelain of the sink, she tried to see herself the way he might. Pretty enough, but nothing to write home about. The freckles were something she’d hated for her entire life, odd, dark little dots that danced across her nose and cheeks. She didn’t mind her mouth, though. Or her eyes.

She had a unique face, if nothing else, which wasn’t always good considering the life she lived. Sometimes she needed to blend, and Vaughnne’s looks didn’t lead to
blending
. Neither did her attitude. When she bothered with makeup, she played up the mouth and the eyes, but she didn’t think it was a good idea to go for the makeup just then. Anything that might make
their
instincts sound an alarm was going to cause problems.