Chapter Ten

Jay knew, in the very moment Oz acted, what was happening.

Frozen in horror, she stared as Oz reached out.

Passive shields were just that—shields generally built around a child or injured psychic, completely harmless.

But just because something was harmless didn’t mean the psychic in question would see it as such.

As the energy mounted in the air, Jay knew the psychic hiding in that pit didn’t see anything passive.

She saw a threat.

Shoving her fist against her mouth to keep from crying out, she squeezed her eyes shut.

“What is she doing?” Sending the wild question to Taige, half hoping for an answer, not expecting one.

She got one.

But the answer made her want to sob.

“Killing herself,” Taige said, her voice blunt. “Trying to save somebody who is already lost.”

The psychic blast slammed into Oz with a hard blow, so hard even Taige and Jay felt the impact, like a sonic boom against their shields and Jay shuddered from it. A fine trickle of blood appeared from Taige’s nose, but she didn’t even seem aware. The men didn’t seem affected.

Oz swayed on her hands and knees.

And continued to craft shield after shield after shield.

The next psychic lob was weaker.

A broken cry, softer, came from the pit.

“Go away!”

“We’re here to help you,” Oz said, her voice thready.

There was a pause. “Help…me.” Something that might have been sense underscored into those words.

“Yeah.” Mays chuckled. “Here to help fuck you up!” His shout echoed all around.

Jay whirled around, drawing the Glock from the holster at her spine.

She lunged for him, roaring.

But it was too late.

The girl had heard him.

The clearing behind them turned into a maelstrom.

Oz was trapped inside.

“You fucking cocksucker!” Jay shoved the muzzle of the gun against the soft underside of his chin, her voice ragged, fury pulsing inside her. “You son of a bitch! Do you know what you did?”

He just stared at her, his eyes ugly. His body was rigid, tense with the need to move.

But he couldn’t.

That didn’t help.

Jay wanted him to move.

Wanted him to fight, so she could pound him bloody. “You can’t kill me,” he jeered. “FBI bitch.”

Jay bent her head, put her mouth to his ear. “Oh, silly boy. I’m not FBI…”

Oz’s scream cut through the air.

The maelstrom went silent.

A cold shudder went through Jay.

Slowly, she straightened. Staring down at Mays, she met that insolent, angry stare. Knowing what she’d find behind her, she went to stand. He started to sit, but before he made it halfway, she reversed the gun in her hand and brought it down across his temple.

Then she turned.

Oz lay in the clearing, her body broken, crumpled.

A huge branch, as thick around as Jay’s bicep, skewered her.

Jay started across the clearing.

Linc reached for her.

“It’s safe,” Taige said, her voice dull. “Oz did her job.”

Safe, Jay thought. Looking at the devastation around her, she wondered, how could they call this safe?

Oz’s eyes were dull, full of pain.

Jay caught her hand.

“Taige…”

“I’m here,” Taige said from behind Jay’s shoulder.

“Use…Jay.” Oz closed her eyes. “Empathic…link. Will help get through.” Blood trickled from her mouth. “She’ll…be okay. Just give her…time.”

She started to cough, blood flecking from her mouth. Then she looked around. “Dawson…where…?”

Jay looked up, saw Linc standing a dozen feet away. When their eyes met, he approached, reluctant, his eyes lingering on something off to the side. Not the pit. Something else. She glanced, saw the white of bone, understood.

He didn’t realize yet.

He didn’t know.

Her heart clenched.

“Yeah?” he asked, his voice harsh.

“Be…gentle with her.” Oz forced herself to smile. “She’ll need you…more than…you…”

A sigh rattled out of her.

Then Oz was gone.

Linc looked at her, his gaze lingering on her face.

Fuck.

It fell to her then.

She reached out, gently closed those insightful, silvery-blue eyes, eyes that would never again look through her and see all those secrets. Eyes that would never glitter with silent laughter or harden with unspoken threats.

Oz…gone.

It just didn’t seem right.

“Come on,” Taige said, holding out a hand. “Our job isn’t done.”

No. In a way, it was just beginning.

Jay let Taige help her up and then she turned to Linc.

She held out a hand to him. “Come.”

She stood too close.

To that pit.

He couldn’t look.

Whoever it was, he’d try not to hate him.

He understood, because somehow, somebody like Jay or Taige or even that eerie woman Oz had wound up here. And Mays had found him. Broken him. Tortured him.

Linc was going to try not to hate the kid—and he was almost certain it was somebody young down there, a teenager, maybe—because that voice he’d heard had almost sounded sane, for a brief moment before Mays had so cruelly taunted him.

Had almost sounded…not normal, exactly. More like the threads of sanity were just barely within reach.

But he also knew, with uncanny clarity, whoever it was, that person had killed. Not just Oz, but he’d seen two bodies in this clearing and he suspected at least one was Lem Clinton, missing a month now. Lem had been a hunter and an odd man, at best, wearing bright orange galoshes, a bright orange vest, regardless of whether it was hunting season or not. That bright orange was unmistakable. Even flecked with blood.

“No.” He backed away from that outstretched hand.

As she looked over to Taige, he fell into familiar routines. Now that Mays was unconscious, he helped himself to the man’s handcuffs. Stripped away the man’s weapons. Cuffed Mays to his son. Blayne started to babble. “I’m sorry, Sheriff Dawson, I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

Linc tuned him out. Just as he tuned out the low, quiet voices of Jay and Taige.

He’d just pretend he was the sheriff, doing what he knew best.

Processing a crime, because a crime had happened here.

A fucked-up crime, yes.

But a crime.

As long as he focused on the crime, he didn’t have to think…

“It’s easier this way,” Taige said, cutting Jay off. “He’ll think better once he sees her. I need her out before I bring her up.”

“Can you?” Jay gaped. “You saw what she did to Oz.”

“Oz doesn’t do what I do. She shielded. She’s doesn’t have offensive abilities.” Then Taige closed her eyes. “Didn’t. I do. Just…stay back. Okay?”

Stay back.

Stay back.

Brooding, Jay paced a small, tight circle, feeling like a caged tiger as she watched Taige work. Her heart leaped into her throat as the other woman gathered her power. There was a short, sharp scream and Jay prayed, like she’d never prayed, ready for the backlash. If this didn’t work, she’d have to drag Linc out of there, find somewhere they had a signal and put in a call to the FBI.

Surely Jones’s unit had somebody who could handle this.

Surely.

But there was no backlash and a second later, Taige looked at her, nodded. “She’s out. I’m going down.”

Jay didn’t even need to ask how because Taige pulled up a rope, something that had been neatly coiled in Oz’s bag.

The next few minutes were a blur and a buzz and she worked to rig up the rope to one of the still-standing trees outside the clearing, her heart pounding, grief ripping at her, exhilaration and terror giving her strength unlike any she’d ever known.

Soon…soon…

Taige came up first.

Then, the two of them together started to pull.

Her muscles ached.

Burned.

Pulling up an unconscious girl was so much harder than Taige, who’d been able to help bear the burden of her weight.

Time slowed to a crawl.

“Get her,” Taige said, the word coming through gritted teeth. “Hurry…she’s already waking up. She’s panicking.”

But she wasn’t watching either of them.

Her pale gray eyes were focused on Linc.

Linc, who had gone oddly still, his back to them. His hand on his weapon.

He wouldn’t watch.

He wouldn’t let himself blindly hate.

He wouldn’t attack and drag the answers out of whoever that was…

DeeDee wasn’t here.

He’d been so certain he’d find answers.

So certain.

But the two dead bodies were male.

One was Lem. The other was unidentifiable.

And DeeDee…still lost.

Hand on his weapon, he stared into the trees. Be patient…

Gentle.

Oz had told him to be gentle. He’d thought she meant with Jay. Had she meant whoever was in the pit? Could that be why he had to be gentle? To find the answers needed to bring DeeDee home and lay her to rest?

“Get her,” Taige said, her voice low and harsh.

He turned.

The first time he had seen DeeDee, a squalling infant with a head full of curls and eyes as blue as his own, he had been in love. She had owned him, from that first moment. Through his divorce with her mom, through the rocky trials of her teen years, that love had only strengthened. He could remember so many things—the gymnastics competitions, awards ceremonies, long-ass hours spent in Atlanta traffic so he could take her to a father-daughter dance.

Losing her had been like losing a limb. Maybe even his soul.

Now those blue eyes would never glare at him in defiance, would never glint in amusement or soften with joy as she discovered something new and amazing.

He felt broken inside, and Linc knew there was no fix for him. Even if he survived his quest to see those who had taken her from him pay, he would never heal. He didn’t think he wanted to.

As broken as he was, the last thing he needed to do was give his heart to anybody. That was why he had cut ties with Jay. That was why he should have sent her from him.

Now, as he turned, listening to those strained, low voices, he told himself he wouldn’t do anything to make Jay pull back more. He could be calm, could control himself. He could do that because she was trying to help. Trying so badly to help. Just then, she was hauling somebody up from that hellish pit and Taige reached out, caught the person who’d been trapped down there.

He should go over, he thought dully. Help.

But all he could think was that this person had been there when DeeDee…

No. He wouldn’t let himself think it through. Not yet.

He would stay here, safe, away from them. So that when Jay left, he didn’t tarnish her memories of him even more.

A harsh, keening sound escaped the thin, dirty bundle of bones. Unwittingly, he glanced over, watched as he…

No. A woman, he realized. Half naked, but he saw the strap of a bra, the curve of breast.

A woman.

They’d left a woman down there. Pity stirred inside his heart and he swallowed as the woman lifted her head, stared at him from under her lashes.

She looked at him with no recognition.

She looked at him with panic.

She looked at him in dazed confusion.

She looked at him with DeeDee’s eyes.

Reality slid sideways, for just one minute, and hope turned everything painful and shining and so very, very vivid.

He lunged for her.

“Fuck.” It came from one of the women, and then Jay rushed and cut him off. “Don’t,” she said, her hands gripping his arms. He snarled and went to shove her back.

DeeDee…that was all he could think.

DeeDee…

He came within ten feet and then something struck him full-force in the chest and sent him flying back. He never saw what it was, but it hit him with the force of a Mack truck and he hurtled back, smashing into a tree some fifteen feet away. The solid trunk of the oak was the only thing that kept him from flying even farther through the air, and he slid to the ground with a groan, darkness crowding in around him. For a few seconds, pain grabbed him, held him. And he couldn't even think.

“Shit.”

“That about sums it up,” Taige said, her voice grim and her eyes as cold as ice.

Taige and Jay stood in a careful perimeter around the girl. Jay had put her gun away, but she realized she might have to use it.

Please, God. Don’t make me do that…

It was the worst thing she could think of. This girl, broken by what had been done to her, was reacting out of an awful fear and an even worse panic. But the sheer, unadulterated power of her mind would be more than the two of them could control if they didn’t do something fast.

They needed her unconscious. Taige had hit her with enough force to send her into next week, but she’d somehow roused herself as they pulled her to the top. Instinct, Jay suspected. The same instinct that had kept her alive for all this time. She feared everything.

Jay could feel that fear and it practically laid her low.

“Ideas?” she asked Taige.

Taige’s mouth flattened to a thin, narrow line and she gave a simple shake of her head, then flicked her eyes to the right, where Linc had gone flying.

He was struggling to get to his feet now, watching them with something between shock, hope and horror. He was figuring it out. She hoped he was smart enough to stay where he was.

Jay took a deep breath and then looked back at the girl, crouched on the ground, shaking and looking around. She seemed more animal than human, and the chaos of her emotions clouded rational thinking.

Emotions.

Jay knew emotions.

Maybe that was the way to get in. The girl had known nothing but fear for so long. She had to tap into the part of her beyond emotion.

Easing her shields down, she let herself…feel. It wasn’t the same as reaching out on a psychic level. You could go fishing with a pole, or you could cast a net and hope. Jay was casting a net. And praying, hoping like hell.

“You wanted out,” she said, keeping her voice soft. “You prayed for it. Hoped. Then you gave up and just hoped you would die.”

There was no response to her words and the girl’s raging fear didn’t alter.

She continued to talk. She didn’t try to move closer. “You remember your name? It’s DeeDee. They had you for two months. You had to be very strong to survive that. You have to keep holding now…don’t give up now that you’re out…”

Time crawled by. Jay didn’t even know what she spoke of, only that she kept her voice low and soothing.

Linc stayed on the outside. Taige didn’t move. And Jay spoke…endlessly.

Abruptly, the girl’s eyes locked on Jay’s face and then she just sagged to the ground, her fingers curling into the soil as she clung for dear life.

As she started to sob, Jay moved in.

Taige tensed.

Jay shot her a warning look, careful not to let anything she felt or saw slip past her shields.

Taige relaxed, although her eyes remained wary.

Creeping across the ground, Jay sank down beside the girl, touched her arm.

DeeDee continued to shiver, to shake.

But she didn’t move.

None of that awful power slipped out of her.

Jay suspected it might be because it couldn’t.

DeeDee had drained herself.

Unloaded herself on Oz, and what little had remained, she’d used on her father.

It was going to take her a while to rebuild her strength.

That wasn’t a bad thing, considering they were dealing with the psychic equivalent of Hurricane Katrina.

He didn’t dare approach.

Linc stood where he was, frozen in place, while his mind worked to accept what, deep inside, he already knew.

It wasn’t until he heard the far-off but familiar noise behind him that he did anything.

Somebody was coming up the trail.

There were two people who knew about his daughter.

For reasons he couldn’t explain, he knew that the threat wasn’t Taige Morgan, or Jay, the woman who held his daughter’s head in her lap while DeeDee sobbed.

In a silent move, he placed himself behind Mays, gun drawn.

It was Mays’s sudden gasp that caught Taige’s attention and she was on her feet in the next breath, her own weapon, a sleek Sig Sauer P250. Her stance was steady, a two-handed grip that told Linc she knew how to use that weapon, and would. What puzzled him was the fact that she even bothered. Why didn’t she just pull that Jedi mind shit or whatever she did?

Didn’t matter. Linc pressed the muzzle of his gun to the sweet, soft spot at the base of Mays’s skull. “Get ready to die,” he said quietly.

Blayne was sobbing next to him.

“Always knew you was a coward. Ready to shoot an unarmed man in the back.”

If it would protect his daughter, he’d shoot a thousand men.

But it wouldn’t take a thousand. It would only take the one.

“You knew she was here,” he said. “All along.”

“She’s a fucking freak of nature,” Mays spat out. “And a killer. She killed Lem. I found him here, guts ripped out, and she was sitting down there babbling about how she kilt him. And then Royce Byrnes too. We brought him out here—he used to teach at the school, science shit, thought he could help us figure out how she was doing this, but she crushed his neck. Any time somebody got close, she killed them. We had to throw the food in because we knew we’d be next.”

Mays shot a dirty look over his shoulder, his movement limited. “You go on, you coward. Always knew you were too chicken shit to face me man to man.”

“You’d have to be a man for me to take you out like a man,” Linc said. He started to pull on the trigger. Next to him, Blayne lunged, using his body to shove his father out of the way.

“No!” the boy sobbed.

Linc swore, jerking the gun up, glaring at the boy.

“You…” Tears leaked out of his eyes. “You can’t. It’s my fault. I brought her out here. She ran away from me. Fell down there. I was…I would have hurt her. It’s my fault. I…” His eyes wheeled around in his head and he gasped, all but choking as he searched for the words. “I would have told somebody but I started having nightmares. It was like she was whispering to me. All the time. I started thinking I was going crazy. Maybe I didn’t do what I thought I did and none of it really happened. I came out here, to see if she was really here. And she…”

He stared at the pit blindly. “It was like she picked me up. Threw me. But she was still stuck down there.” Blayne looked back at Linc, his eyes wide, desperate. “I was so scared. I ran. Told my dad and he didn’t believe me. I brought him out here and she did the same thing to him. She didn’t throw him as far…maybe cuz she was tired, or he’s bigger. We haven’t gone close since. The…the others, I think they went too close. She…she…”

Blayne just ran out of steam and Linc bent down, grabbed the front of his shirt, hauled him up. “You’re not helping your case, son.” He spun around and slammed the boy against the tree, dragging Mays along. “You left my daughter down there. Alone. It’s been two months. Why is she even still alive?”

“I…” Blayne’s eyes were wide, stark on Linc’s face. “I brought her water. Food. I had to throw it in because when you get close, she hurts you. But I didn’t want her to starve.”

“You just wanted her to stay trapped.”

Blayne’s head hung low. “No. I just didn’t know how to get her out.” The nervous glance he sent his father had every last hair on the back of Linc’s neck standing on end.

“What?” Linc growled, shaking the boy.

Blayne went white.

“You’ll tell me now, son,” Linc said. “Or this starts all over again.”

“Dawson, you need to dial it back.” Taige’s voice was low and deadly.

He whipped his head to stare at her.

And just past her shoulder, he saw his daughter.

Her gaze was locked on them.

Or, more importantly, the Mays men, standing so very closely.

In the next moment, the trees parted behind them.

Jay didn’t know if the problem had gotten better or worse.

The skin along the back of her neck crawled.

She had thought DeeDee had completely drained herself.

Psychics could hit burnout and, considering how she’d been running herself on full throttle for so long, DeeDee should be running to flame out at any second. It wouldn’t surprise Jay if she hit rock bottom and was never able to so much as foresee a rainstorm.

But just then, none of that mattered.

Her gaze had locked on the Mays and that was the only thing that mattered.

It didn’t matter that Taylor Jones—Taige’s boss—and the cavalry had just pushed through the trees and it didn’t matter that Linc had lowered his gun.

It only mattered that DeeDee had focused on the men who had hurt her and in that moment, she was a locked, loaded weapon, ready to strike.

“Taige.”

“I can’t help.” Taige’s face was a mask of stone. “I’m about on empty. I’m about burned out from keeping everything under control earlier and I’m still…” Her eyes flicked toward DeeDee and then Mays. “One wrong move and this all goes to hell. I’m about done.”

Jay didn’t bother looking at the agents who stood there, watching with unreadable eyes, taking everything in.

With her heart hitching in her throat, she focused on DeeDee. “You need to pull it in, baby,” Jay said. “I know you want to hurt him and I understand. But you’ve already lost control and it’s time to start learning how to throttle it in.”

DeeDee just stared. It was like a cobra’s stare, fixed on prey and nothing else mattered.

No sign of anything else.

“DeeDee, if you hurt him, can you stop it after that? Look at who is standing next to him.” She willed the girl to see, willed the girl to feel something more than the pain. She dropped the shields she carried around her and let herself feel.

The girl’s lids flickered.

“It’s your dad. He’s lived and breathed for nothing else since you were born. Do you want to hurt him?”

DeeDee opened her mouth.

The words that came out were low and raspy, barely even human. “They hurt me.”

And she turned her head, focused on Jay. Jay fumbled for her shields, got them up just in time in time to catch what the girl had to show her without it tearing into her with jagged hooks.

The boy had raped her.

Fury and rage ripped Jay apart, even though she’d suspected. DeeDee had meted out her own form of justice, because she had shoved every bit of suffering she’d felt into the boy’s mind. No wonder he was so remorseful. Now he felt as she had felt.

Now he suffered as she had.

But the boy’s father…

Mays was unable to feel remorse. He lacked the ability because he didn’t care.

And when she’d reached out to touch his mind, she’d picked up on the most vile thoughts. He’d realized, too, what she was doing, and he’d taunted her. Pushed despicable images into her head. Raped her mentally, broke her that way. Every vile thought, every sickening fantasy he’d had, he’d let her be party to.

The problem was, though, he’d fucked himself.

DeeDee was too young, too inexperienced to realize the difference.

He hadn’t been showing her just fantasy.

“Yes,” Jay said, her voice trembling. “He hurt you. And he hurt others.”

“I know that. We can’t stop him.”

Jay looked over at him, and then at Taylor Jones. He inclined his head questioningly. “Yes, we can. I know a guy who can pretty much stop him in his tracks…and more, he can send his ass to jail.”

Those words didn’t matter, though.

What mattered was Mays looking at her, his lip curled, a sly look on his face.

“Son of a bitch,” somebody next to Jones whispered. Jay didn’t look to see who it was.

She reached out to DeeDee, but at that moment, it didn’t matter.

DeeDee went to her knees, screaming. “No, no, no!”

Taige snarled, her face ashen. She staggered, blood trickling from her nose.

Mays gasped, his head arching back.

And then there was a crack.

Taige hit the ground.

Jones and his men rushed forward.

One of the agents swore, glaring at the girl curled up on the ground. “Damn it! You can’t do that shit when there is another psychic linked with—”

“Shut up!” Jay snarled. She put herself between DeeDee and the unit from the Bureau. All that mattered now was protecting the girl. Taige was breathing, slow, even breaths, but she was breathing. She’d be okay, Jay knew in her gut.

DeeDee, though…

Linc appeared in front of her.

His face was stark, his eyes pure hell.

As he went to his knees, one hand reaching out, Jay shook her head. “Not yet,” she said softly. “We have to get her mind protected first.”

“I thought I was…what did you call it?”

“A null.” She smiled weakly. “You are. But your daughter is…unique.”