Chapter Two
“No.” Oliver knew G was lying. He had to be. “Not Marcus. Why would he do something like that?” Marcus had never been anything but straightforward, honest, and everything Oliver looked for in a business partner. He’d known the man for nearly thirty years. They’d attended the same school, squired the same debs, even shared women a time or two. At the same time, on occasion.
“No,” he repeated. If Marcus had done this, Oliver couldn’t trust his own judgment.
“She has no reason to lie.” G paused and Oliver knew he was waiting for his reaction. So he didn’t give any. He waited. G shrugged. “Yes, okay, she might have reason to lie, but if she has, I don’t know what that reason is. She saw the face of her rapist and ID’d him easily enough. But did they do something to trick her? She’d have been in possession of her psi powers until he did the deed. Doing that kind of trick shouldn’t have fooled her at first.”
Traps waited for him here. Make him spell it out. Make him tell you precisely what he wants you to do. “So you want me to work with Tegan Gibbs, to verify her assertion that it was Marcus who raped her, Marcus who knew she’d lose everything along with her virginity. That he is callous enough to know he would be ripping her personality apart. You think I won’t act in the interests of one of my best friends.” His turn to pause. “You want me to betray him if he did do it.” Which he’d have no hesitation in doing. But Marcus? Fuck, no way would he rape a woman.
G nodded. “That’s about it. So are you in?” He sounded as if he was taking orders for the coffee shop.
He hated this. But for Marcus’s sake he couldn’t walk away. G was a devious bastard. “I want to meet her and talk to her.” He fixed G with what he hoped was a basilisk stare. “Of course, you know we worked together, don’t you? But we weren’t close. I asked not to work with her again.”
G moved away from the window. “You made a great team. Do it again.” He glanced at the still figure on the other side of the glass. “He marked her. Her rapist, he branded her.”
Fury rose up, a black tide Oliver fought down. Partly at the information, partly at the way G was playing him like a fucking violin. He knew that kind of information would force his hand. One last try at making G see reason. “If I do it, it’s my way. I won’t take orders from anyone. I do it the way I think it’s best. I’m not one of your agents, G. I don’t work for you.”
“I know that.” G grimaced, the corner of his mouth turning up in the parody of a smile. “Keep in touch, keep me in the loop, that’s all I ask.”
He gave in. Up to a point. “Only you, G. If I need help, I’ll ask for it.”
“I know you will.”
After the last time, he’d sworn he wouldn’t get dragged in to CAT’s affairs. And here he was again, sucker that he was.
****
Someone was watching her. When Tegan had requested the use of an iso room, she’d chosen one with the observation window. She might be depressed, but she wasn’t suicidal. She didn’t want to lose track of everything and forget to eat, something she’d done more than once over the last six months.
But she had to take this last chance. She had no idea how long she’d been in here, but it had to be hours, maybe four, maybe as much as eight. Trying and trying and getting nowhere. They’d come to find her soon, make her eat, take care of her. Fuck, but she hated that. And she hated the way cursing came so easily to her these days, but it did. She’d changed, become someone she hardly knew anymore.
Maybe she should take a holiday. At least she didn’t have to worry about money. She had enough of that to last her a few years at least. She’d never spent all the admittedly generous salary she received as a Talent working for CAT. Most of it was sitting in the bank, making more money. So she could go to the Seychelles, somewhere she could lie around and think. Somewhere she might find a willing cabana boy.
Because now she’d lost her virginity along with her powers, what was the point?
After years of fighting her sexuality, she had to learn new skills all over again. Learn how to be someone else living in the same body, looking the same way. She drew a hand over her hair, automatically tucking a few strands in the knot at the back. She used to get through a can of hairspray a week. The large economy kind, but she didn’t notice, forgot more often than not. She’d forgotten today, yesterday… What day was it, anyway?
When she pushed the chair back, it scraped along the hard white tiles of the floor. That sound had become so much a part of her adult life she’d hardly noticed it before, but with what senses she had left honed by the hours of meditation, everything came harder and sharper. She heard it and winced.
She took her time getting up. Her muscles had stiffened, locked into place, so she stretched and moved cautiously at first, easing her body back into movement. But it was partly a reluctance to return to real life, or what passed for it these days. This featureless room with its uncomfortable, basic furniture reminded her of what she’d once been, a mere six months ago. Powerful, a member of a community where she made a difference, where she was useful. Now, nothing.
Oh, G had offered her a job, but it was for services rendered in the past, not in the hope she’d be anywhere near as useful in the future. And at a reduced salary, of course. She was toying with the idea of leaving CAT, going to the outside world. Learning how to be a mortal woman in a mortal world. Mix with her own kind. Or as near as she could get, because even the weakest mortal had more psi than she did now.
Time to stop feeling sorry for herself. She’d given it a shot, but she had to accept she had nothing left of what she’d been. It had happened. Time to move on.
Closing the door of the iso room behind her felt a lot like closing the door on her life.
“Miss Gibbs.”
She smiled at G. Of course it would be him waiting for her. She’d insisted on the “Miss,” perversely accepting that difference and the constant reminder of her virginal state. Well, that was gone, too. “Ms.”
G showed no reaction. “If you wish. I’ll have the records amended.”
“No need. People move between the two pretty seamlessly. I’m moving as of today. And in any case, you usually call me Tegan.”
G smiled. “Point taken.” He turned to one side, his big body as nimble as a dancer’s. “Could you come into my office for a moment, please? I won’t keep you long. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
It hurt that she couldn’t discover who he meant with a harmless projection, but she showed nothing outwardly and passed by him, head tilted a little higher than before. She was learning, and she would continue to learn. And cope.
Everything was different. Even climbing the stairs to G’s office and walking the short length of hallway. So alone, she couldn’t sense anyone unless she saw or heard them, couldn’t allow the consciousness of people to flit through her mind, gauging their moods, preparing to meet them. All gone.
So it came as a shock to find waiting for them the one man who had seriously broken through her control in the last few years. There he stood, pale eyes shadowed. She hadn’t realized how unreadable he was before. He’d thrust his hands into the pockets of his beautifully tailored charcoal-colored suit. He wore his hair cropped into a style that followed the shape of his head, but long enough to give her dreams of touching it. Just like before. He watched her with a seemingly impassive stare, but she knew underneath beat the wild, untamed heart of a vampire. He just covered it up better than most of them, that was all.
One time, one kiss, one unforgettable opportunity. Sorcerers often pretended to be the partner of one or more of the males on assignment. It put off their enemies and ensured the bodyguard—that was usually his function—could stay close. So it was almost routine when she worked with Oliver. Except it didn’t turn out that way. They’d burned up all week and on the last day, with the mission accomplished, he caught her close and kissed her.
A real, honest-to-goodness grown-up kiss. She didn’t know which had shocked her most—his acting on his urges or her wholehearted response, almost as if they’d done it before.
He’d released her fast, put the distance of the room between them, and she’d laughed it off, said a kiss wasn’t about to make her come. But it had, oh fuck, it had. She’d felt as if she were burning up from the inside, and she knew, from the climactic sensation building inside her, if she didn’t do something, she’d orgasm. From a kiss.
The sensation swept up on her, and she knew, from the heat in her cheeks, she’d blushed.
In all the time she’d been alive, she hadn’t blushed. Ever. Flushed with heat, excitement, exercise, but not blushed. Just by being in the presence of a handsome man. No, a diabolically sexy, passionate man.
No doubt she’d meet more in the course of her new life. But it didn’t feel like that now. There weren’t many Oliver Derringtons in the world.
So she gave a slight smile, ignored her flush, and inclined her head as regally as she could manage. “My lord.”
He rewarded her with a smile as infinitesimal as her own. And as an English peer, he could do arrogant like no other person. Especially since he’d been one for a hundred years or more. He didn’t reply immediately but took his hands out of his pockets and came alert, pushing away from G’s heavy partner’s desk and crossing the room to her. Without taking his eyes from hers, he reached for her hand, took it, and lifted it to his lips. “A delight to see you again, Ms. Gibbs.” Somehow he’d known what she’d had to spell out to the normally perceptive G. She wasn’t a “Miss” anymore, in any sense but marital status.
The touch of his lips on the back of her hand, the old-fashioned but perfectly acceptable gesture, sent a thrill up her arm and through her body, enlivening her in a way she wasn’t used to. Didn’t know how to cope with. But she didn’t have to. He released her hand and stood tall, about six inches away from her. “G wants us to work one more case.”
Light dawned. Again, instinctively her mind reached for his, to try to gauge his mood. Nothing.
And then she felt a touch, a mind against hers and she reached for it, like a woman dying of thirst. But it was gone. Except she knew that touch. He’d stroked her, reached for her mentally, and then realized just how careful people had been around her. They’d kept their minds withdrawn. Left her alone. Even her colleagues and family, other sorcerers of varying powers, hadn’t done this. But he had, almost as if he couldn’t help himself.
Before he’d withdrawn. She wanted to beg him to do it again, but she mustn’t. This man would take everything and walk away. She’d seen it. Or had she? Was that an instinct, something left to her after all? What did they call it? Ah, yes, woman’s intuition. Another word for the remnants of psi. So it couldn’t possibly have happened. Nobody was going to leap out of the woodwork and yell, “Surprise!” before giving her the powers back that she’d lost.
Not going to happen. Ever.
“What were you doing in the iso room?”
Again, direct. Others, even G, had given her a lot of leeway since her…since she’d been raped. But this man had more at stake. Perhaps he resented being here because she’d accused his best friend. But she couldn’t help what she’d seen at that last, horrific moment. The face of Marcus Schofield looming over her before the final, painful thrust that ended the only life she’d known.
So she answered him directly. “I learned meditation techniques as part of my training. I was using it to try to sense something.” She shrugged and forced a wry grin. “Nothing. If I’d found something, I could have worked with it, built it a little. But no.” She felt her smile turn into a grimace. “It’s gone.”
She couldn’t interpret the expression on his face. Her psi had been such that she never had to concern herself with body language, only picking up the rudiments of the skill. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “If it’s gone, it’s gone.”
“What will you do now?”
She glanced away to where G was watching, his face impassive. It was always like that, but in the past, she’d been able to reach beyond and touch the outer layer of his mind, the layer most Talents kept open as a courtesy. Without realizing it almost, Talents operated on that level, as if the simple empathy they used instinctively enhanced and refined their other senses. But she couldn’t do that anymore. Never again.
That helped her the most. The denial of her Talents, the constant self-reminder they had gone, the denial of hope. Because with hope came despair, and she wasn’t going back to that place again.
“G has offered me a job here. I plan to take it while I think, but I want to start again. Somewhere else, doing something else. I had dreams when I was a child, before they realized the extent of my gifts.” For some reason she balked at calling them Talents. “I might pursue some of them. I always enjoyed travel. Perhaps I’ll find something to do with that.”
“Not an agent anymore?” G seemed genuinely disappointed, or maybe that was what he wanted her to think. “You have skills that have nothing to do with Talents.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. But I’ve earned some time off.”
G took a step forward, but she stood her ground, silently defying him. He’d been good to her, acceded to her wishes, but perhaps he had this ambition in mind all along. To keep her as a useful worker, a grunt, a drone. Of course he did, although he’d never phrase it in those terms. And strangely, she felt comforted. Maybe she could be some use, after all. “We need you, Tegan. This is an important time for Talents. Vital. We have new enemies and new challenges to face.” She knew that. Talents had only emerged into the full light of publicity recently and society was still working through the ramifications. “I need every Talent, every family member, everyone who understands to work for us. Otherwise, they’ll drive us into the ground, treat us as a minority group, to push aside and forget, except for the occasional tut of sympathy.”
A low growl reminded her, as if she needed reminding, how close Oliver was standing to her. “And I don’t think Talents should work together as a homogeneous group. We are as different as the people around us. Nobody labels me.”
“They already have,” she said softly. “You’re an earl, a successful businessman, a millionaire.” She emphasized each noun, like an accusatory thump of her fist on an imaginary table.
“Several times over,” he said with a wry grin, not in a vain way but in a matter-of-fact statement. “Billionaire, actually. If a Talent lives for over a hundred years and doesn’t accumulate some wealth, they’re either doing it to make a point or they’re idiots who wouldn’t know a penny if it hit them in the face. I always knew when I was about to ‘die,’ so I could prepare for it. Avoid shocking death duties, break the entail so that I can will the property to myself. We all did it.”
“All earls are vampires?” She’d never thought about that before, never bothered to ask.
He lifted his hand, and it passed a whisper away from her face, in a near-gesture she found incredibly moving. He probably didn’t mean it that way. “No. Just some. The same as accountants or architects.” He glanced at G, smiling. “Or spies.”
G grunted his assent. “Most of them have come out.” That was an unspoken criticism of Oliver. Of both of them, really, because as an active agent, she’d remained hidden to most people. But she wasn’t famous, wasn’t well known as Oliver was, so people tended not to question her.
So G was putting the pressure on, holding Oliver to ransom in a way she couldn’t fathom. She didn’t mistake him. She’d seen him in action in full vampire form, tossing attackers like they were confetti, terrifying her with his intensity. That was the thing about vampires. They were always on all the time, even during the day when they lost their vampire powers. Only telepathy remained of their Talents. But Oliver was badass in human form, too. Just in a different way.
What did G have on him? Curiosity ate her away, and she tried to work out a strategy for discovering what and how G had roped him in, because there was no denying Oliver Derrington, friend and business colleague, would be a decided asset to the hunt for their quarry. And from the amount of tension in the atmosphere, that he didn’t want to be here.
“So you want us to work together on Marcus Schofield?” She could say his name without a qualm now. After all, it was just a name.
G grunted. “He could do it without you. I still think this is a mistake, to let you go back to work.”
She gave voice to one of the things niggling her that she’d never said aloud before. She’d had too many other things to cope with, but now that she was stronger, could look a man in the eye without bursting into shaming tears, she’d say it. “Why? Why don’t you want me in the field? Even without my powers, I’m a trained agent. I’ve done all the self-defense courses. I’m experienced. You have mortal operatives. So why aren’t you sending me to do the job I trained for?” She stood, hands propped on hips, defying him.
G regarded her for a minute in silence. Then he opened his mouth having, presumably, marshaled his thoughts. “Because you don’t have that asset that meant everything. If an assignment arrived where I could use you over another agent, I’d do it. Finally, it’s arrived. You have certain advantages over anyone else.”
“So because I’m the only one, you’re letting me do it? Because usually, anyone else is better than me?” Helplessness and anger warred within her, but anger won because she let it.
He didn’t reply, and he knew she couldn’t read him, the bastard.
And then she felt it again, that gentle insinuation, the connection with someone else that she’d missed so very much. It didn’t feel like the senses she’d lost, not like the powers she’d used so effortlessly. This was milder, softer. But she knew who it was. Oliver had known, and he linked them, let her feel G’s feelings, and had done it without compunction. Or compassion, as it turned out.
She sensed tragedy and guilt. G felt guilty that she’d suffered this loss. But it hadn’t been his fault. The operation had gone badly wrong fast. As if someone knew what she’d do next and waited for her. But that couldn’t be possible. Only another Talent could have blocked her in that way, and there weren’t any on their target team. None that she knew about, anyway.
She turned her head, met those pale, perceptive eyes, and felt for the first time in six months a telepathic message. You got there.
Yes. Her reply came so easily she could almost believe her senses had returned. But they hadn’t. She could use them as long as he lent them to her. A lock of hair fell into her eyes, and she brushed it aside, for once not bothering to tuck it neatly away, just shoving it behind her ear. Something inside her eased, like an elastic band released slowly instead of the snapping she’d half expected. Since she couldn’t see any point hiding her conclusion, she voiced it aloud. “There was a traitor in the team.”
G sighed and raised his gaze to the ceiling. “Not necessarily in the team. The operation wasn’t top secret and the team had access to onsite reports.”
“But the researchers were on the team,” she said. Like other security organizations, G assigned a discrete team to each operation. While a researcher in-house might be working on several projects at once, those projects never overlapped and the researchers were as rigorously investigated as everyone else in CAT. “We didn’t use anyone outside.”
“What was the operation?” Oliver asked. “I don’t think I knew about this one.”
“You were engaged elsewhere,” G told him. “I did think of asking you to help, but the Oxford business took a little longer than I thought.”
Oliver’s mouth tightened. “So it did. And I do have a life outside CAT.”
“That as well.” G strode behind his desk and touched the pad on his laptop to activate the screen. He turned it so they could see. Oliver glanced at it, and then at G, who shrugged. “And there was that. One of your companies was peripherally involved. But we didn’t consider you a risk, and your company pulled out soon after. It was a financial scam, meant to finance a laboratory just outside London. We discovered and closed the lab down, and this was a loose end, found when we analyzed the hard drives we confiscated there.”
Oliver stared at the screen once more. “Yes, sure, I remember that business. My CEO smelled a rat. She wasn’t sure what, but she said something didn’t feel right, so we pulled out. And we were right. The company closed. I didn’t know it was anything to do with the labs.” He looked up again, and his eyes blazed with anger. “And I didn’t know Marcus Schofield was involved.”
“He was.” G didn’t move, his very stillness adding to the growing tension in the room. She couldn’t read either of them. She had to concentrate, but both men were still, their stances not revealing their mood or what this meant. Except that Marcus was a friend of Oliver’s, and G hadn’t told him. Did the men have some kind of history, deeper than that? She waited, hardly daring to move in case she distracted them. G sighed once more and shook his head ruefully. “We thought he was involved like you. Peripherally. He had a stake in the company, but nothing major. In fact, none of the shareholders were major ones. Not a tidy business, but it needed sorting out. So we engaged a sorcerer to read them, fast, and then get out of there.”
“Tegan.”
“Tegan.” Neither man looked in her direction. Yes, the job had been fairly straightforward. Find the shareholders, covertly read them, pass over to the next one. Only one of them had gone wrong, and she’d stumbled on more than she thought. A link to another laboratory, another place where Talents were tortured in the name of science. Illegal, but it hadn’t stopped them. The organizers had dug themselves further underground and mingled with more unsavory characters. The rapidity with which it had happened indicated they’d prepared for the day when society at large knew about Talents. But Tegan hadn’t shared that theory with anyone else, and she wasn’t about to get all touchy-feely with either man in this room and voice her suspicions.
Especially not now. Anything could turn the mood in this room and break something she sensed had been around for a long time. Maybe longer than her, considering both men were Talents and older than dirt. Older than her, anyway.
“She was supposed to attend a private dinner,” G said. “Her target and his wife, her escort, who was a shape-shifting dragon, and another couple. She went to the hotel, but her escort didn’t show. Not surprising, since they’d ambushed him.” G paused and bit his lip. “He’s still in hospital, and he’s leaving CAT when he recovers.”
She knew what had happened, what G wasn’t saying. She owed this retribution for him, too.
G went on, his voice turning deadly calm. Not a good sign. “Two men waited for Tegan in that room. They captured her, and one of them, a Talent, raped her mind while the other raped her body. All very cold.”
She couldn’t keep quiet any more. “Except at the end. When he did it. The last voice I heard in my head was his, the last face, before his friend knocked me unconscious was his. I won’t forget. I can’t.”
Ever. That was her problem. Although she didn’t have the dreams as much as she had at first, it didn’t mean that he wasn’t locked into her mind. His face, his voice.
“What happened to the Talent?” Oliver asked. “The traitor?”
“He’s dead. Once the backup team realized it had gone wrong, they sent a strike team in. The rapist had left, but the Talent remained, probably waiting for transport to take Tegan to a lab or holding place. Maybe he planned to kill her, since they’d incapacitated her.”
“They didn’t intend me to live,” Tegan said. Slowly, Oliver turned away from the computer screen so he could look at her. He held her gaze, and again she felt his presence in her mind, soothing and reassuring, with that edge of disturbing attraction she refused to ignore. It held her steady, stopped her from breaking up. “They stopped me calling for help, took all they wanted from my mind, and then stopped me contacting anyone for help.” She said it, because someone had to. “By raping me.” The shock had traumatized her, but if she’d had control of her psi, she’d still have cried for help. Probably killed the man raping her, if he hadn’t done it so fast, before her numbed mind had realized what he was up to. “They drugged me, so my reactions were slow.”
Something broke inside her, the first time she’d really lost it since the rape. Snapped like the band she’d used to hold her heart in check or the hymen that had turned out to be so fragile. Or the way that the savage orgasm that had ripped through her a few minutes later had smashed her psi Talents. “What does it matter, anyway? What does it fucking matter? Work with us or not, Derrington. We’re going after him. G knows that if he doesn’t include me in the operation, I’ll do it anyway.” Without regard to her own safety, because after all, what did she have left except revenge? “So what’s it to be?”
Oliver stared at her, with the same intensity he’d used to study the screen a moment ago. She stood, fists clenched, chin up, defying him. She wanted an end to this, and she wanted it now. Now. “He’s had six months. He doesn’t get any longer.”
Oliver drew a breath, the sound fierce in the quiet room. “I’m in.”
“If you are, you follow orders,” G said.
“If I am, it’s on my own terms, you know that,” Oliver said, not taking his intense stare away from her, keeping his mind steady in hers.
That was when she realized she couldn’t block him, couldn’t lock him out. All she could do was ask him to leave if she didn’t want him. How could she build a psi barrier if she had no psi? Shit, this was worse than she’d thought, and she hadn’t imagined it could get much worse.
“If I do,” Oliver continued implacably, “I act on my own judgment. I’ll promise to keep you informed and to give your agents a chance to work with us. But I need the discretion to act as I think fit. Nobody knows Schofield better than I do, not even his parents. I’ve been in his mind, which is more than they have. And I want him.” He drew breath, as if to say something else, but then clamped his mouth shut.
G rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I don’t know why I bother, sometimes. Okay, Derrington, but you keep me informed at all times. I won’t pass any information on without informing you first. But if you don’t progress, you let me know and we do it another way.”
Oliver grinned. “That will do for a start.” The men shook on it as if she had nothing to do with it.
“A boys’ club?”
Immediately, she became the center of attention of this particular boys’ club. The one with a large, dark-haired, dark-eyed man and a tall, elegant, blue-eyed man, both with more presence than could be considered fair to most other men.
Tegan gritted her teeth and faced them. “Do I get to shake on it?”
“If you like.” Oliver strolled to her, hand outstretched, but to her surprise, she felt a note of sympathy in her mind and soft apology in his eyes. “I’m on edge today. I think you can guess why.”
What could she do but accept his apology?