“You just ended up here by accident.”
He had the good grace to look uncomfortable. “Not—exactly, look, can I get in the car and talk to you? I—”
“No,” she said flatly. “I appreciate that you’re persistent, but you need to stop now. Following a federal agent is a risky business, do you understand me? So please. Look for a date at your hotel bar.”
He straightened up, obviously surprised and maybe a little bit angry; there was something in his eyes that flashed like lightning. But she hit the accelerator and left him behind, just a dim and distant figure that disappeared into the falling night.
Weird, she thought. He must have had the cab follow her from the airport, and then he’d spent the entire afternoon just…waiting. That was more extreme than she liked, no matter how attractive he was.
She impatiently shook off the memory of his eyes, his smile, and followed the road to Glendale, and the Athena Academy.
Chapter 4
Stefan Blackman stared after the glaring red taillights of Agent Rush’s car, temporarily stunned into stillness. He’d expected skepticism, but not outright dismissal—especially that kind of dismissal. Frankly, he wasn’t used to rejection. It stung. And it made him angry, too, because he had something to say, didn’t he? Something useful.
Something not at all about how lovely she was.
“Great.” He sighed and shook his head. Stuck in Phoenix, no transportation, no way to get the attention of anybody who would listen. He’d already tried to find a sympathetic officer to get to the good-looking brunette detective with the kid, but no go…. They’d taken his name and probably his photo, but they wouldn’t let him near her. Or anyone. And he wasn’t sure it was a good time to cause a scene—it would only make him look crazier.
What, then? Back to the airport? Back home? It was starting to have a powerful allure, getting the hell out of here and back to the warm, familiar cocoon of his life. He didn’t like how all this was making him feel, not at all.
Yes, that was what he was going to do. Clearly, the police didn’t need him; they had a massive presence here, and with the FBI descending, as well, surely they had more than enough leads without the admittedly not-very-specific visions of a psychic. Cops usually liked to resort to that sort of thing last, not first. And hell, there were phones, right? He could always call.
Maybe he could catch the red-eye back home….
The vision hit him with sudden, wrenching force, sending him sagging against the wooden police barricade and grabbing for support. He sensed all that distantly because this vision was even more visceral and immediate than the previous.
Still in the van. Driving. The girl was feeling the vibration through her body, facedown on the floor of the van. Muscles aching, hands and feet numbed from the tight bonds. Fear slowly receding, simply because she couldn’t continue to be afraid forever…
The girl next to her, the blonde with punk-purple streaks, had mastered her own terror and was doing something with her fingers. She was slowly, clumsily signing letters….
Stefan felt the girl try to sign back.
A hand reached down from somewhere above in the darkness and grabbed the first girl’s hair, yanking it painfully up and pulling her to her knees. She was breathing hard through her nose and trying not to cry. If her nose clogged up, she’d smother. The duct tape on her mouth wasn’t giving, no matter how she tried to work her jaw to loosen it.
“Hey,” said a rough male voice. “I told you not to move, get it? Don’t move. I can always drug you if you give me trouble. You want to avoid that, you stay still. We need one of you, not both. Either one of you gets cute, you get to watch the other one get hurt. Bad. Understood? Nod.”
The girl nodded, breathing hard. On the floor, the blonde nodded, too, eyes leaking furious tears.
The pressure on the girl’s hair released, and she overbalanced and fell hard, banging into the floor face-first. The impact stunned her, and she tasted blood, coppery and hot….
Stefan jerked out of the vision, swallowed, and could still taste the blood. He felt like vomiting. Whoever the girl was, she was controlling her fear, but it was real and immediate. Either one of you gets cute, you get to watch the other one get hurt. He hadn’t been able to sense her thoughts at all, only visuals and sensations, but that was enough. More than enough.
He still didn’t know where she was, or even if the visions were real time; it could have been something that happened hours ago, or would happen an hour into the future. No time sense to any of it. The van was dark in the interior, and the girl hadn’t been able to see….
Wait.
He realized he was still hunched over, clutching the police barricade in both hands, and forced himself to let go and straighten up. He felt sweat trickling down his face, despite the cool night breeze, and wiped his forehead with shaking hands.
As her abductor had jerked the girl up to her knees by the hair, she’d been able to get a brief glimpse out of the front window. The headlights had spilled over a dark empty road, a brilliant yellow line…
…and a road sign.
“She’s on Highway 347,” he said to himself. “She’s there now.” Because the view had still been washed with a faint tint of sunset, the far horizon not yet completely dark.
He needed to tell somebody. Anybody.
Stefan pushed through the crowd of bored reporters to the edge of the crime scene, where the uniformed officers were looking even more bored. Forensics was packing up, and the floodlights were going off. They were leaving.
No sign of the brunette detective and her girl; long gone, he guessed. Out the other side, where there were fewer reporters.
“Sir,” he said, and then louder, “Officer!”
The nearest cop, who’d been speaking with two others, turned to look at him with a dead-eyed stare. “Stay behind the tape, sir,” he said.
“I am behind the tape. I have—”
“You’re leaning over.”
“This is important, I know where they are! The girls!”
He had all their attention now, an uncomfortable weight of it. “How do you know that, sir?” “I saw them.”
“Where, sir?”
“In a van, traveling on Highway 347. I don’t know if they’re going north or south…”
“Back up, sir. How exactly did you see inside the van?”
Oh boy. “I just know, okay? I know. You need to look for them on Highway 347, and hurry. They probably won’t be there long, and those girls are in danger. They’re going to get hurt.”
He didn’t have to be a psychic to get the sense that the cops were not pleased with his explanation, although they dutifully took down all his contact information—home address, cell phone, everything
