A solid enough plan, but even she could tell that Andrew was headed in the opposite direction from their hotel. Back to the hotel apparently involved complicated evasive maneuvers, another piece in the overall puzzle of the new Andrew.
Carmen had taught him first aid. Zola and Walker had taught him how to fight. Alec… The Devil himself might prefer not to ponder Alec’s skill set, which had always seemed geared more toward covert ops than private investigation. They were surrounded by dozens of supernaturals with unique skills, and Andrew had been collecting them like a kid with Cracker Jack toys.
That isn’t who I am, Kat. Why I train.
Not to be a hero. She couldn’t imagine any other reason. So ask, dumbass. Just ask.
“Andrew—”
“Check your seatbelt and stay low in your seat.”
The words were calm. Composed. The faint buzz of background nervousness that she’d barely noticed faded until the SUV was a quiet pool of emotional silence. Not the terrifying blankness from before, but a studied focus that reminded her of Alec at his most calculating.
It scared her enough to obey without question. She tugged her seatbelt until it pulled tight across her chest, and hunched down for good measure. “What’s going on?”
“Someone’s following us.” He’d realigned the rearview mirror earlier, but she’d thought nothing of it.
Now, he seemed to be watching the road and the mirror simultaneously. “Tried to shake them, but they’re persistent.”
Fear made her skin prickle. Kat curled her hand around the door handle and fought not to twist and look behind them. “This is why you made me pack everything up and bring it with us, isn’t it? Because you knew we might not be able to go back.”
“Looks like Andy and Kate Normanson had to leave town on the spur of the moment.” He tightened his hands around the steering wheel. “Do you need to go anyplace in particular?”
There was only one thing she could say for sure. “Not back to Birmingham. We can’t lead them to Ben and Lia.”
“Someplace no one else knows, then.”
Her brain wouldn’t settle long enough to think. “How do you think they found us? Ben’s IDs are always flawless.”
“Maybe we were followed. From Mobile, even, and they’ve been waiting for us to lead them to the box.” He glanced over at her. “Better warn your friend.”
Ben’s line rang five times before sending her to voicemail, so Kat left a brief message, then powered her phone off, just in case someone was using the GPS to track them. “Maybe we need to go back to New Orleans and regroup. We’ve got resources there. And backup.”
Andrew nodded. “How long will it take from here? Seven or eight hours?”
She reached for her phone before she remembered it was off. “If we go back the way we came? Yeah, I think so. Maybe a little longer?”
He hadn’t sped up or made any turns, and now he looked at her, his face tense. “There’s still some morning traffic left on the interstate. I’m going to try again to lose our tail. If I can’t, it could get rough.”
“If you can’t…” Kat drew in a breath. Let it out. Trusted him. “There’s something I could try. It’s dangerous…but I’m a human, Andrew. My survival probability for a high-speed chase isn’t as high as yours.”
“If I can’t pull this off, it’ll be time to break out whatever we can use.”
This proved to be waiting until they’d reached a crowded part of the interstate. Andrew maneuvered the SUV in between two trucks while Kat focused her attention on reinforcing her shields. Brick by brick, piece by piece. She’d had two good nights of sleep since the burnout, but it would take one more before she would be at full strength again.
All the better for this. No matter how much she’d trained with Callum, the idea of unleashing her empathy as a weapon made her queasy.
Not as queasy as the idea of a broken neck, though. She clutched at the door handle until her knuckles turned white as Andrew signaled for the next off-ramp. The wheels of the SUV were seconds from touching it when he whipped back across traffic, cutting off a red pickup that laid on its horn until they were in the far lane.
She didn’t dare look around. “Did it work?”
It took him a minute to answer. “I think maybe so.”
Kat blew out a relieved sigh and released her death grip on the handle, one finger at a time. “So where’d you learn defensive driving? Is someone in New Orleans giving Car Chase 101 lessons?”
“That?” He laughed, the sound only mildly shaky. “I learned that from your cousin.”
“Derek? Damn, I would have guessed Mackenzie. Have you ever been in a car with her when she’s late? I’m surprised she hasn’t had to take out a second mortgage on her dance studio to pay all the tickets.”
“I should teach her how to flirt her way out of those.”
Kat almost choked. “The officers of New Orleans love you lots, huh?”
“Sure, they—” The mirror drew his gaze again. “God damn it.”
Relief melted away. Terror took its place. Her stomach twisted into a tense knot, and she ignored it and tried to keep her voice steady. “Before I can do anything about it, we need to get to a place where there aren’t so many other cars.”
“Hold on.” He jerked across the lanes again, his jaw tight with concentration, and took the next exit, tires squealing on the ramp as it circled around. “How remote?”
“The fewer people, the less chance that I’ll hurt a bystander.”
“I’ll try.” The intersection was clear, so he ran a red light, though several horns blared in protest.
“Damn it, I wish I knew this town.”
Kat twisted just enough to peek behind them. A dark car with tinted windows darted through the red light, almost sideswiping a station wagon. “I’m going to try to read them. Get a sense of what they’re feeling.” How big a threat they were.
“Go for it, but keep hanging on.”
Some of Callum’s lessons she’d excelled at. Burnout, synesthesia, building shields that could withstand the pressure of a thousand frantic hearts. This one, though… Well, strength came with its own drawbacks.
Callum could pick out people in a crowd and touch their auras with the precision of a sniper. Kat felt more like a grenade, sending shrapnel flying in every direction. Trying to narrow the scope of her gift was difficult enough under calm, stationary conditions. In a high-speed car chase, there was no way to narrow her reading to the car behind them.
Still, she’d endured worse. Kat closed her eyes and opened herself, fighting to keep the gap in her shielding focused on their pursuers. It didn’t work, of course. Andrew was a quiet knot of tension at her side. They zipped past someone who echoed shock and outrage so sharp it tasted metallic.
Two distinct sets of emotions filtered through. One, fierce concentration cut through with satisfaction and determination. The other, ruthless, unabashed pleasure.
Déjà vu made her dizzy. For one terrifying moment she wasn’t in the SUV. She was in her old office, watching a shapeshifter pound a fist into Andrew’s stomach over and over while ruthless pleasure drowned her.
“Kat?” Andrew took his hand off the wheel for a moment, dropping it to her knee for a little shake.
“Kat!”
His fingers burned. The heat skittered up her skin, flames licking over her, struggling to find a way past the ice living inside her. Andrew was fire and passion and animal instinct, but nothing could eclipse the desperate need to protect.
Protect. It resonated with the darkest places inside her. Tiny, weak girl, fragile psychic playing with the big bad shifters. They could break her body into a thousand pieces, but they’d have to get to her first.