After a restless night’s sleep and a breakfast not worth mentioning, he paced the small room, feeling hemmed in and uncomfortable in the sweltering heat. He slapped at another mosquito, wishing for the moderate climate of Bend once more. Did Ian realize Owen never brought anyone into his home? Acquaintances and casual dates he entertained away from Bend—his true home. Ian wouldn’t understand what his presence meant to Owen, but the others in his employ would.
They’d take care of him. He hoped. He had a feeling he’d need to give Tim a raise when he returned. That’s if Ian hadn’t stolen the man blind and convinced him he’d be better off working elsewhere.
Owen grinned, glad to concentrate on his little thief and the pleasures still awaiting him.
“Owen. I’ve got him.”
Caleb’s mental call preceded the familiar thickness of psychic energy, a foreign sense of someone else rushing at him. Like a narrowed tunnel, Owen saw the target at the very end and readied himself to rush through and connect.
While Caleb held the tie, he lay down on the bed, gripped his pistol by his side, and closed his eyes, knowing he’d barricaded the door as best as he was able. The flimsy lock would do little, but the chair against it would scrape the floor if moved, alerting Owen to company.
He let himself go and focused, using a surge of disgust and anger to push him fast. He raced through the tunnel and landed in DeSanta’s essence. A clingy quagmire of powerful energy enveloped him, making it hard to breathe.
DeSanta had a potent psyche, domineering and sticky all at once.
“I’ve got him. Get out, now,” Owen sent Caleb before he forgot himself in the task at hand.
“I’m gone. Be there in twenty. Maybe less if I can.”
Caleb winked out, leaving Owen alone with the mark.
Owen didn’t want to linger, but he had to satisfy himself that he was doing the right thing. Despite all that he’d seen and studied about the man, the truth came from the knowing. On a sigh, he leeched into DeSanta’s bones and blood and thoughts. While Morvelo DeSanta enjoyed an early lunch, laughing with his henchmen about something, Owen seeped deeper. And then the memories hit him. Hard.
Feelings and visions of torture, madness, and moments of loving clarity intersected. He whipped a young boy to death while stripping the flesh off a little girl. Then he molested them in ways that made Owen want to gag. And then, a vision of DeSanta bouncing his niece on his lap, no thought of hurting her at all, just a pure, innocent love—which completely contrasted with his disgusting, baser needs.
More violence, this time meted out with a gun and a knife. A slashing pattern DeSanta particularly liked to use when making a statement to his enemies.
The visions and feelings grew in intensity, and he felt DeSanta relive them as he pushed the man to open himself. DeSanta shook his head and rose from the table. He excused himself and wandered down the marbled hallway into a large bedroom, where two small girls quivered with fear, chained to the foot of his bed like dogs.
DeSanta stared at the darker of the two. He wanted… No. Owen surged into the man’s mind. Instead of crushing DeSanta’s heart, as he’d done previously, Owen managed to turn him away, toward the bathroom, where his death would be in private and not in front of the children.
Can spare them that, at least.
DeSanta stumbled, muttering to himself and cursing his inability to focus.
Owen felt nauseous, the power of DeSanta’s sick, twisted desire making it difficult to hold control. He exerted himself once more, aware of an excruciating pain in his temple. Fuck. Not good. He didn’t have any more time to play. With the notion that he was judge, jury, and executioner and that this man had been found wanting, he brought out a mind trick that used to scare the bejesus out of him and leveled it at DeSanta—a darkness, an oppressive, putrid hatred for everything the man was.
Owen let it pour out of him, shooting DeSanta full of his own evil. A reflection of his own truth in the form of Owen’s version of hell.
DeSanta clutched his heart and stared blindly at the pristine white walls of his bathroom. He tried to cry out for help, but Owen tightened down on the man’s muscles, freezing his vocal chords.
Yes, extreme pain. Anguishing punishment, you fucking bastard. He gripped harder and jerked his mind, so that arteries tore and DeSanta’s lifeblood flooded his chest cavity, missing the heart. Internal damage no one would be able to explain, a definite turn from the invisible footprint he normally left. Yet Owen wanted to make a statement.
Still focused, he began to trace into the man’s flesh. The skin, the largest organ of the body, and Owen’s personal playground at the moment. Into DeSanta, he carved the ugly truth. Rapist. Murderer. The devil claimed his due, scored into the man’s chest and across his forehead as a warning to all.
DeSanta lay dead and bleeding while Owen stared through his dead eyes at the feet that entered the bathroom.
He heard men swear and cross themselves as DeSanta’s flesh continued to peel, talking to the evil in them as well.
And then he heard the roar of sirens and the local police Caleb must have sent to save the girls and anyone else trapped in DeSanta’s mansion. Gunfire erupted.
He continued to swim in the morass of the man’s mind, a dangerous thing, considering DeSanta now lay dead. With some effort, Owen pulled himself together and swam back through the tunnel toward himself.
He opened and blinked his dry eyes at the ceiling, slow to understand the loud noise drawing closer to the room. He gripped the pistol in his hand, not sure how much time had passed since he’d been gone.
Pounding on the door, accompanied by more gunfire, jerked him out of his stupor. Still exhausted and unable to do little more than crawl, he rolled off the bed and landed hard on the floor, away from the door.
Just in time too, because the chair against the door slid across the floor as the door was flung open. Someone emptied a machine gun into the mattress. More footsteps entered.
“Stay the fuck down,” Caleb shouted.
Grunting. The sound of fists striking flesh. Owen raised himself over the bed to see another man try to knife Caleb in the back. He raised and shot his own gun before the guy had the chance.
Caleb dropped the man he’d been holding and swung around to see his attacker crumple to the ground, his hand over the bullet in his belly. Then he turned back to Owen. “You look like shit. Son of a bitch. You’re bleeding.”
Owen wiped a shaky hand under his nose, not pleased to find it covered in dark blood. His head hurt too, from banging it on the floor when he’d fallen. He tried to get up but couldn’t. “H-how did they find us?”
Caleb scowled and hurried to help him stand. With one arm, he held Owen upright, and with the other he grabbed the duffel containing their change of clothing, some supplies, and more weapons. “I don’t know. But this shouldn’t be happening. We need to move, now.”
They’d just skirted the dresser and neared the bathroom when shots fired. A blazing pain struck Owen’s thigh.
“Shit.”
“Damn it.” Caleb yanked Owen into the water closet with him, slammed the door shut, and shoved Owen down. Then he opened the window they’d planned as an escape route and checked outside. “Clear. Come on.”
Sirens sounded from outside. Caleb climbed through the window with the duffel strapped to his back and turned to help Owen through while keeping his gun trained on the door.
Owen’s leg ached something fierce, but by concentrating, he was able to ignore the pain. A numbness crept up his leg as he worked himself over the ledge and onto the steel railing. Except the lack of feeling didn’t stop at his thigh. He shook, his reserves fading, and went to one knee. The fire escape shook.