Bringing Benjy Home (Security Ops) (10 page)

She lost it in the next instant. “Please do call,” Penning said, his bottomless eyes searching hers. He grasped one of her hands in both of his in an action that should have seemed debonair. Instead, it was like being encased in ice. And then a roaring ensued in her ears, and she heard him say, as if from a great distance, “And don’t you worry. I’m a man of rather . . . intense . . . appetites myself.”

Chapter 6

Jaida’s fingers were still shaking as she attempted to fit her card into her motel door. Frustrated, she tried again, but before she could turn the knob, the door opened inward, and she nearly fell into the room.

Trey grasped her by one wrist, drew her ungently over the threshold and slammed the door behind her.

“Don’t!” She wrested her arm away and backed into the room, eyeing him warily. “Don’t touch me.” Her skin had flamed immediately under his touch. Coming so quickly upon the heels of her encounter with Penning, it was sensory overload, and she was incapable of taking much more.

“Would you mind telling me,” he said through clenched teeth, “where the hell you’ve been?”

Jaida dropped her bag and sat down on the edge of her bed. Despite the time it had taken her to change and get back to the motel, she was still undeniably shaky. Drawing a deep breath, she said, “I went to see William Penning.” She should have been terrified by the look of savagery that came over Trey’s face at her words. But after her ordeal today, he could no longer elicit fear from her. She’d just found out about real terror, from a man who possessed no soul.

His voice was a measured whisper. “You . . . did . . . what?”

She met his gaze squarely. “We needed to know for sure whether Penning was involved in Benjy’s disappearance. There was only one way to be certain. So I pretended to be a prelaw student interested in some of his cases . . .”

“Who just decided to jog over there?” he finished incredulously.

She blinked for a moment, then looked down at her brief black shorts, pink tank top and sneakers. “No, I rented a locker at the fitness center on the corner. That’s where I changed. I thought if someone followed me, it would be easier to lose him if I was wearing something else and then slipped out the back . . . .” She summoned up a shaky half smile. “Your paranoia must be catching.”

“Let me tell you about paranoia, lady,” he rasped. “Paranoia would suggest to me that you had your own reasons for meeting with Penning. Like maybe you got some juicy information last night and you were too opportunistic to pass it up. Maybe you decided to cash it in by telling Penning where his wife is and that eighteen months ago he became a father.”

“You can go straight to hell, Garrison!” Jaida said, her voice unsteady. She should have known that he would put his own spin on this, that he would credit her with the most malicious of motives. To have Trey continue to spout his suspicions of her was more than infuriating; it was downright hurtful. “I didn’t go to see Penning because I get a kick out of sadistic, twisted men. I went to find out exactly what he knew about Benjy, and only I could find that out. Not you, not anyone else you have working on this case. Me.”

“And exactly how did you do that, Swami?” he asked sarcastically. “Did Penning have a toy for you to handle so you could be visited by one of your brilliant insights?”

She was shaking with anger and with something else—residual fear and disgust from Penning’s touch. “I don’t need an object to handle when I have the person himself. All I have to do is touch someone. The way I did with you,” she reminded him recklessly. “How else would I know that you’ve been Lauren’s protector since the day she was born, and that you feel guilty because you were unable to provide for her, even though you were just a kid yourself? That you feel the same kind of guilt for Benjy’s kidnapping. Or that your friend Mac owes you his life, and there was a time when he was the only person in the whole world you thought gave a damn about you.”

He didn’t back away from her then, but his withdrawal was just as complete. He retreated into himself, shutting her out effectively, but not before she’d read his reaction to her words. She’d shocked him—that was certain—and Trey Garrison was a hard man to shock. It wasn’t an emotion she’d wanted him to regard her with, although his carefully guarded expression was a sure sight better than the fascinated horror with which some people regarded her talents.

She turned away then, suddenly on the verge of tears. The effects of the day—and of each day since she’d met him—were hurtling her to the brink of hysteria, and she had to get her equilibrium back if she wanted to be of any use in the search for Benjy. She had never been one for parlor tricks, had never used her gift to amuse friends and impress others, but she would have given anything to be able to convince him, finally.

“Penning doesn’t know,” she said dully. “He has no idea where Lauren is. He hasn’t a clue that Benjy even exists. And he wouldn’t care about him if he did know,” she continued in a haunted whisper. Tears filled her eyes. “He wouldn’t care about his own son.”

Trey surveyed her through narrowed eyes. She’d hit the nail square on the head with that statement. And how could she have known Penning’s feelings about children? Either she had to be the best damn actress he’d seen outside of the movies, or she was telling the truth.

The truth. If he believed her, he’d have to believe in her . . . ability, for lack of a better word. And he was too much a pragmatist for that. Life had taught him not to put his faith in others, to depend solely on himself. There was very little he did believe in in this world, and the things he put his faith in tended to be things he could see and feel and touch. Not some hookie-pookie nonsense about ESP and reading minds and such.

And yet . . . how could he explain those pieces of his personal information that she kept coming up with? If he let himself believe that they came from some inexplicable psychic ability, she suddenly posed a far greater threat to him than he’d ever before faced. He’d started building a wall of defenses when he was a child. As an adult, it was damn near impenetrable. Imagining for even a moment that she could scale that wall with only a touch was more than eerie; it was damn near frightening.

That stuff about him and Mac—only a few knew about it. Just he, Lauren, Raine and Mac himself. His mind flashed back to the moment when she’d delivered those words about Lauren and him last night. Her eyes had been covered with a metallic sheen, the deep blue dimmed. And her voice had sounded as if it were coming from someone else.

He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. “You’d better tell me the whole story,” he said hoarsely.

“Later,” she said, rubbing her arms. “After dinner.” She was only barely hanging on to what remained of her control. She couldn’t relive it now—not yet, at any rate. Not until she’d had a bit of time to recover from the psychic battering she’d taken that day.

At his frown she summoned up enough energy to glare back at him. “I haven’t eaten all day, Attila, and I’m not exactly steady on my feet here. I’m going to take a shower and get dressed. You can take me to that restaurant downstairs.” Not waiting for an answer, she turned and headed toward her bathroom. The sooner she could wash the feel of William Penning from her skin, the sooner she’d feel clean again.

Trey bent down and retrieved the bag she’d left lying on the floor. He pulled the blue dress out and held it up, surveying it. She’d obviously found time to go shopping. When he shook the bag upside down, matching blue shoes hit the carpet with muffled thumps. He thought about what she would look like in the dress, the color showcasing her pale hair and sapphire eyes. “You can wear this,” he called after her, as she was about to close the door.

She turned her head to look over her shoulder. Just the sight of the dress in his hands sent an icy prickle down her spine. “Get rid of it,” she ordered flatly. “I don’t care what you do with it. I never want to see that dress again.”

“Pardon me?” The waiter halted in the midst of Jaida’s order and stared dumbly at her.

“The surf-and-turf,” Jaida repeated patiently. “The largest order you have, please. A Chef’s salad with both Ranch and Italian dressing, a baked potato, and . . . will there be fresh bread served with the meal?”

“Yes—yes, ma’am,” the waiter stuttered, writing furiously. “There will be rolls.”

She nodded in satisfaction and handed back the menu. “Excellent.”

Trey watched the scene with a gleam in his eye. “You’re going to eat every bite of that,” he stated.

“Of course I am. Which means there won’t be any for you, so be sure you order enough for yourself.”

Raising one eyebrow, he did as he was told, and the waiter left them alone. Then he looked across the table at her. He would have much preferred seeing her in that bright-blue dress, but he’d done as she’d said and stuffed it, with the shoes, in the trash container. She’d changed into a maroon dress made out of some soft, shiny material. In ordinary circumstances he would be prepared to fully enjoy himself. He was used to dating beautiful women, but Jaida was totally unlike any of those in his acquaintance. One couldn’t call her beautiful, but she was striking, with that sheaf of startlingly blond hair and those dark-blue eyes with their intriguing gold flecks. “Do you wear contacts?” he asked abruptly.

She looked up, startled. “No. I have perfect vision.”

Her words struck him oddly, and he was reminded again of the other “vision” she was expecting him to believe in. “How about your family? Your parents? Did you inherit your sight from them?”

She caught the nuance in his voice, the tinge of taunting, and stifled a sigh. “No, my mother doesn’t share my gift.” She gave him a brittle smile. “She thinks I’m a freak. Just as you do. As for my father, I never knew him. But something tells me that Bobby Earl West was a pretty simple country boy. His talents, I’m told, lay in other directions.”

Her candid response had him feeling vaguely ashamed for the remark he’d made earlier. But not ashamed enough to change the subject. He wanted to know more about her, and he wanted to hear it from her. All at once he was interested in just what it was that made Jaida West tick. “You don’t get along with your mother?” he asked carefully.

She considered the question. “We have nothing in common. We don’t think the same way, and we don’t consider the same things important.” Mary Lee—or Marilee, as she’d called herself for years—had shown interest in her daughter only sporadically. The one thing Jaida had ever done that had earned her approval was embarking on her concert tours. But once she’d decided to return to Granny’s home and focus on songwriting, her mother’s short-term attention had faded.

“It must have been difficult being a teenager with a mother who didn’t understand you,” he prodded.

“I lived with Granny for most of my life. We’re kindred spirits,” she said with a secret smile. She saw no reason to tell him about Granny Logan’s gift, the one that had had her aware of Trey’s imminent arrival a week before he’d shown up at the cabin.

“So what is your fee for the—” He seemed to search for the appropriate word. “Help . . . you provide? We never discussed it, but it should be settled before long.”

Before long. She considered the words dully. He was taking care to be more diplomatic than usual, treating her to some of the practiced charm he was capable of. In fact, it wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine that they were on a date, that he was taking care to entertain her, to draw her out about herself. He would do so with an accomplished finesse, while sharing little of himself. She wondered if his women ever realized how little he gave back in return.

The waiter put her salad down in front of her, and she picked up her fork and stabbed fiercely at the lettuce. This wasn’t a date, and she wasn’t one of his women. He was just soothing her nerves, waiting until the perfect time to broach his favorite subject—that of her return home. She’d do well to remember his agenda and to stick to her own. Because no matter how thick he laid on the charm, she wasn’t boarding a plane back to Arkansas.

She answered his question belatedly. “I don’t charge a fee. Just expenses.”

He frowned. “What do you mean you don’t charge a fee? How do you live?”

By dressing up in red and hanging out on the street corners, she wanted to tell him. He so clearly wished to hear something that would be in keeping with the picture he’d already drawn of her character. “I don’t need the money. I have a job.” She took a moment to savor his surprise before adding, “I’m a songwriter.”

He didn’t have to ask how lucrative her job was. She didn’t exactly live in the lap of luxury. She must live with her grandmother because she couldn’t afford to live elsewhere. But if she didn’t have money, why didn’t she charge people for using her “ability” to help them? Or was that just a line to throw him off?

“Have you written anything I might have heard?” he asked.

Jaida studied him. Something told her that her soft-rock ballads of heartache and simple pleasures wouldn’t be to his taste. “I don’t know. What do you like to listen to when you’re relaxing?”

“Classical pieces, usually. Some opera.”

Opera. That figured. “Then I think it’s safe to say you’ve probably never heard any of my songs,” she said dryly. She could see what it was costing him to keep from asking the questions he really wanted answered, the ones dealing with her encounter with William Penning. But he was respecting her wishes for once. In fact, he was treating her almost cautiously.

The waiter came back then and cleared away their dishes to make room for the steaming entrees he then set in front of them. Trey seemed amused by the sidelong looks he sent Jaida’s way. “John Hopkins is currently studying her metabolism,” he said in an undertone to the waiter. With one more glance in her direction, the man scurried away.

“Very funny.” She wrinkled her nose at him but didn’t let his words bother her. The day the pounds started to show up she supposed she’d need to make drastic changes in her eating habits. But right now she appeared to burn calories by merely breathing.