He deftly added the vegetables to the rice and took the plates she handed him to serve the meal on. "My talents come in handy on missions when we need to hide from the enemy."
"But not so handy tracking serial killers," Tansy observed.
He nodded. "I'm good at working puzzles out, and once I'm pointed in the right direction, I'll find him, but I need a little help."
Tansy's heart jumped. She could never allow him to lull her into a false sense of security. "I'm sorry that help can't be me, Kadan, but it can't be. I know you've got all the ugly little details of my hospitalization. They couldn't take away all those voices, the victims-or the killers. Do you have any idea what it's like to hear screams and feel someone's desperate last thoughts all the time, and I mean all the time? To know the mind of a killer intimately? The delicious perverted pleasure he gets out of carving someone up, or burying them alive?" The door in her mind creaked ominously and whispers grew. She took a deep breath, controlled herself, and slammed it shut. "You're already bringing those days back and I haven't even tried to help you."
"I can keep most of the psychic spill from targeting you."
She turned her head and removed her glasses, looking him straight in the eye. "No, you can't, not and have me track him. I'd need to feel him, get inside his mind to do what you're asking. You and I both know you can't take it out of my head once it's there."
Kadan hated that she was right. And he hated it more that she drew on gloves. She had touched him and hadn't felt anything, he'd protected her, but she didn't trust him and for a good reason-truthfully, she couldn't. He had to bring her back with him. There were days when his job sucked, and this was one of them.
"Sit down and let's eat. You can tell me about that cat. She's out there watching us now, I can feel her staring at us."
Tansy took the plate he handed her, careful, even with the gloves, to keep from touching him. "She's curious about you. She probably hasn't seen anyone else in months. And her den is close. She's due to give birth anytime." Excitement flashed in her voice. "I'm hoping to get some great shots. If I'm lucky, she might change her mind and use the cave I've set up in to film the event, although so far she's been ignoring it."
"Why don't you persuade her?"
"I can't do that."
"You stopped her from attacking. If she'd wanted to do it, she could have done some major damage to you, but she didn't," he pointed out. "You have to have some control over her."
Tansy sank down onto a log and indicated that he could have the one chair she'd brought. "Maybe, but it's not really like that. I have an affinity with animals, I've always had it. But I don't really talk to them, not telepathically."
"Are you certain?"
She chewed on her lower lip. He liked that lower lip and found himself staring as her small teeth tugged at it.
"I 'push' a little to get them to do what I want, but it's not a conscious thing." She took a bite of the stir-fry. The man could cook. "Not bad."
"Self-preservation."
His eyes crinkled around the edges, tiny lines showing that he squinted a lot. His long lashes were thick and dark, and helped to cover the expression in his dark blue eyes.
"I've never been afraid of animals," Tansy said. "I've always liked being around them. I can touch them and not find myself somewhere else."
"What does that mean?" Kadan's low voice slid into her mind like soft butter. "Finding yourself somewhere else? What does that mean?"
Her expression closed down immediately and she shrugged. "When I touch objects, the world narrows and I'm in a tunnel, like an alternate world. Everything bends and curves and the energy is there, preserved for me like a recording, only I'm in it, feeling everything that is happening, no matter what it is." She looked him in the eye again. "All of it. Everything. If you are cheating on your wife and feel guilty, I'm there with you. If you're worried about a sick child, or paying your house payment, I'm feeling that fear right along with you."
"If that person is in love…"
"Then I am too."
Kadan forced his gaze away from the unconscious plea in her unusually colored eyes. Knots gathered in his gut, hard and tight, giving him hell for doing his job. He believed in what he was doing or he wouldn't have come looking for her. The vicious murders had to be stopped. And if they weren't-if the faceless names above them continued to believe that the GhostWalkers were responsible for the murders, they would never risk the controversial program ever seeing the light of day. Kadan had no illusions about their lives. The GhostWalkers-he and his friends-were expendable. Worse, they were something the government would want to sweep under the carpet like dirty laundry. They'd be sent out on a suicide mission, or quietly eliminated.
He swore under his breath and kept his gaze fixed on the surrounding forest, studying the trees and brush as if each piece of foliage intrigued him. Truthfully, all he saw was that look in her eyes.
"Why the bullshit about not having your talent anymore?"
Tansy sighed. "It's complicated. I can't actually do that work anymore. I can't separate the emotions and voices, so I'm not lying when I say I don't have the talent. Once the word went out that I had a climbing accident, I was left alone for the most part. My father handles all the calls coming in, and I think now enough time has passed that most people have forgotten me." She waited until he looked at her. "I wish you would."
"Forget you?"
She nodded, willing him to just walk away and pretend he'd never seen her.
A prickle of awareness slid down his spine, and he reacted instantly, an automatic reflex, diving for her, driving her off of the log, backward, his hands pulling her smaller body into his to protect her as he took them over the small ledge to roll down the slope. He registered the crack of the bullet shattering the tree behind his head where he'd been sitting, followed by the boom of the rifle. She went with him, keeping her body tight against his so they rolled smoothly. The rocks and brush had to hurt as she went over them, but she kept silent.
Coming to a halt, he signaled her to stay low and to scoot back into the heavier timber and brush behind them. She didn't ask questions, but stayed on her belly, easing her body backward, searching with her toes for a purchase in the dirt to help drag her into concealment. Kadan backed up with her, sliding into the brush as if he were born there, drawing a gun from his boot and slipping it into her hand in one smooth motion.
Do you know how to use this?
She blinked at him, but she shouldn't have been shocked. The moment he felt the danger, he had connected with her, so that she felt it too. His entry into her mind had been as smooth as him drawing the gun and putting it into her hand. She nodded her reassurance. They were both telepathic, and somehow that made her feel less alone-less apart from everyone. She'd never actually met another human being with psychic powers.
Stay to cover. I'm going hunting.
She didn't want Kadan to leave her. He seemed solid and safe, and exuded absolute confidence. I'm guessing that's not some random hunter poaching.
Not with that rifle. You stay to cover.
He was already moving away from her, and it took every ounce of self-control she had to keep from reaching out and holding on to him.
You'll be safe, Kadan reassured her with implacable confidence. He had no other choice but to succeed. That was a sniper, and he'd tracked Kadan to this place, which meant someone very high up didn't want Kadan to succeed in solving the murders. Not that he was all that surprised; someone had wanted the GhostWalkers program gone and everyone involved dead from the beginning-and that someone worked at the White House. The GhostWalkers had been unable to pin down just whom the threat was coming from, so there was no chance to eliminate him, but if Kadan got out of this alive, they'd be one step closer to solving the puzzle. Not too many people knew he'd been sent out.