“Ouch.” He clasped her hand in his. To his pleasure, she didn’t tug it away.
“Yeah. Life was hard growing up. Especially because my mom is mixed, black and white. My dad’s Latino, and my brother looked white. I mean, Wonder Bread white. We were like a rainbow family living in a neighborhood where being different could get you killed in the blink of an eye.”
“And you heard voices.”
She sighed. “Talk about different.” She looked at him, her eyes searching. “But the voices guided me. They helped me refocus.”
“Yeah? How old were you when you first started hearing them?”
“Around six or so. But you guys… I didn’t start hearing you until I hit my teens.”
“Thank Josh. He’d see odd flashes of the future and would tell me. I remember that first time. It was weird. I just knew I had to pass on the info to you. Josh and I talk together all the time. But you’re the only other person I can communicate with like that. Without talking out loud.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And in all the time I’ve been talking to you through the years, there was little emotion involved. Like you were this girl but a disembodied person. I didn’t connect with more than your voice, and when I’d hear you ask me stuff, you were muffled, flat, kind of lifeless.”
“Josh’s visions? Did he ever see me?”
“No.” Josh answered for himself as he joined them. He sat down behind them on the couch and stared into the fire. “I only ever saw what Xavier described. A kind of faceless person. My visions would show me the people and places around you but not always with clarity. I mean, I know Jack Keiser, the PWP, and a few of your friends. But I don’t know how many of them are working here in Bend.”
“Do you see other futures? Not just about me?”
“Only those that help me and Xavier.”
Xavier nodded. “Like a heightened self-awareness. Josh usually sees futures that have to do with ours. Except since the accident—”
“Not an accident. Werlin bombed us on purpose.”
“Since the bombing, we’ve both been off our game. But we know it’s only a matter of time before Werlin tries to take us out.” She blinked. “As in, kill you?”
“Yep.” Xavier liked that her hand squeezed his. “So you aren’t in the safest place you could be right now.”
“Yeah, well, neither are you. That guy I met in the warehouse was there to kill me.”
“I know,” he and Josh said at the same time.
Chloe nodded. “He’s going to come after me again. I can feel it.” Josh frowned. “But I can’t see it. I don’t doubt you’re right. When I knocked into him, I could feel the crazy bleeding off him. But he was too fast for me. Plus, I was more concerned about you than him that night. I’m sorry to say he ran away from me.”
“Maybe. But you distracted him.” She bit her lip, and Xavier wanted to take the flesh and soothe it with his tongue. “Thanks.” Josh looked at her. “You’re welcome.” The heat in his gaze was impossible to ignore, but then he blinked and banked it.
The dumb-ass needed Chloe. Xavier could feel it. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time Josh had gotten laid. But it wasn’t simply for the sex. Josh needed the intimacy. He needed to feel a part of more than just Xavier. Sometimes it felt as if Xavier had the responsibility of tying his twin to the rest of society. And it got tiring to constantly reel him in.
Chloe could ground them. Both of them.
“What?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“Why are you looking at me that way?”
Xavier cleared his throat. “I, ah, lost my train of thought. Damn, Chloe. You’re pretty.”
She blushed.
He wanted to kiss the blush away. “Sorry. So, how about a game of cards?”
“Cards?”
“Yeah. Do you know how to play cribbage?”
Josh groaned. “Come on. Not that again.”
To Chloe, Xavier said, “He’s just tired of losing. And since we have no television and he’s not into books…”
“No television?” She frowned. “There was one up here the last time I visited.”
“Yeah, back in June. When the weather turned cold, we took it out. Didn’t want it to freeze up without anyone here.”
Josh uttered a long-drawn-out sigh. “I love the outdoors, but I could really go for some sci-fi.”
“Me too.”
Better and better. Chloe liked science fiction?
As she and Josh started a debate about the merits of alien movies versus shows about monstrous alligators, Xavier started devising ways to throw the two of them together. It wouldn’t be hard. There was only so much room in the cabin, but he didn’t want to rush Chloe or scare Josh off. He had to play this one carefully.
“I’ll get the cards.” As he set up the game, the two of them continued to argue.
So far so good.
Josh didn’t know how much more of this he could take. Two days was too much, in his opinion. Knowing Chloe was theirs, the one who’d completed their odd psychic circle for the past fifteen-plus years, still shocked the hell out of him. He’d never in his life thought they’d find her. Not that he and Xavier had actively looked.
They had enough on their plate with the job.
Cannon—the name of their family and the family business—catered to those in need. Since their father had inherited a sizable trust from his parents years before Josh had been born, and their mother was hell on wheels when it came to investing, they’d never wanted for money. But the Cannons had a driving need to help the community. Raised from the get-go to serve others, Josh and his siblings used their special gifts to make the world a better place.
How the hell his father got them into so many scrapes still boggled the mind, but at this point, Josh accepted his father’s need to right wrongs. To hear his dad tell it, Mike Cannon heard his own special voice. And with it, he’d made a lot of underground contacts throughout the world that helped his team do the job.
They’d done work for the government, for foreign governments, and for the old man in town threatened with a foreclosure on his property when land barons jeopardized his livelihood. No matter how big or small, they took the jobs that felt right. And God help them, but their little brother Kyle had inherited their dad’s gift as well.
But of all the jobs they’d done, the Werlins had been particularly upsetting.
Otis Werlin and his hick kinfolk had done their best to level a town. Lawlessness had haunted the poor people of Lenton, Idaho, until Josh, Xavier, and Dana, their older sister, had put a stop to it. Fortunately, Dana had disappeared on her next mission before Werlin had set off the bomb that had rocked his and Xavier’s world.
The bastard.
Now the man had a score to settle. With several sons and cousins dead, a dozen others in federal custody and on the run from the police, Werlin had nothing left to lose as he came after Xavier and Josh. Which made Chloe’s presence a real hindrance.
He didn’t like thinking about her in harm’s way.
He stared at the ceiling as the fire crackled, the nighttime more a bother than a welcome relief from Chloe. He’d been hard for two days straight, and Xavier’s lust wasn’t helping. Then the idiot kept sleeping next to her, all innocent like, as if Josh couldn’t feel how much Xavier wanted to fuck her.
God, he wanted to fuck her. Not nice and slow, but fast and hard. To come inside her while Xavier took her ass. To own that mouth while his brother spent in her pussy.
He groaned and tried to think about anything else. The Werlins, his family, hell, Chloe’s file. The woman had more male friends than his brother had bad ideas.