Come Hell or High Desire (5 page)

Her chest was heaving, tears were spilling, and, man, how he wished he’d never asked
her. Besides his employees, he made it a point to never ask personal questions. But
with this woman, he couldn’t seem to stop.

“I’m s-so sorry. I’m not usually this emo-emotional.”

Dark rose stained those striking cheekbones. Her gift obviously terrified her. But
then, who the hell wouldn’t be afraid?

Don’t you dare touch her.
He retrieved a box of tissues from the bathroom and handed it to her. “What else
can you do?”

“You don’t think that’s freaky enough?” She blew her nose like a circus clown.

He couldn’t help but smile. “You’re not very scary. Can you dial up your powers to
find someone?”

She looked at him like he was crazy. Which was hilarious, really. This whole thing
had to be a dream. Maybe he’d eaten some bad fish yesterday. In a while he’d wake
up, go to work, and see Ann at the front desk as always.

“No. I can’t…what I mean is…I can’t call it up whenever I want. A vision, that is.
They sometimes come to me when I’m over-tired and stressed. When I’m too exhausted
to keep my protection shield at full strength.” By the end she was whispering, and
he had no idea what she was talking about.

“Protection shield,” he repeated.

She nodded at the floor.

“As in some invisible energy field that wraps around you to, what? Keep bad things
away?”

She nodded again.

“So you have object reading abilities if the object receives strong emotions by the
person who touches it, but you have visions only sometimes? Like they’re involuntary?”

She hesitated. “Ye-ah.”

She couldn’t meet his eyes. She was either snowing him or flat out petrified. He didn’t
like either possibility.

Time to go for broke.

“Someone—I don’t know who—left a note on my door this morning.” He pulled it out of
his pocket, held it up, and watched her carefully. Sloane fussed with a canister on
the countertop. All the beautiful color she’d had on her face leached to white.

“Something’s going on here, and it’s not good. This isn’t metal, but can you somehow
help me find Ann?”

Her mouth worked for a moment. “I’d rather not.”

He scrubbed a hand behind his neck, not sure if he was ready to laugh himself into
the loony bin for overreacting to Ann being uncommunicative for less than twenty-four
hours, or pound the wall in frustration over a dogging intuition that she was really
in trouble.

But he was alive today because of his gut.

He looked at Sloane, his mind choosing words his mouth refused to form. To tell her
to go. That she was full of shit, and he didn’t believe her. Couldn’t believe her.

Could he?

Yet…how far was intuition from ESP when you got right down to it?

“Please help me find Ann.”

“You don’t understand. I
can’t.
This could…hurt you.” She shivered.

“Tell me how?”

“You just have to trust me on this.”

That was the worst thing she could have said. Zack knew all about people who encouraged
others to trust them. They were the most betraying bastards on the planet.

They regarded each other in Ann’s kitchen. Suddenly, a loud crack sounded from the
condo wall expanding in the heat of the sun. Sloane flinched violently. Zack’s pulse
picked up.

He saw the instant she made her decision.

“I’m sorry!” She snagged a dish towel off the counter and sprinted to the front door
like the place was ablaze. She wrapped the towel over her hand, reached toward the
door handle…

And went to her knees.

Chapter Six

“No, no, no, no, no!”

The words had come out of Sloane’s mouth, but they seemed so far away. Reality was
slipping. Icy pressure began to scrape and claw at her skull. The landscape in her
mind grayed. She turned in a circle, looking, straining into the smoky palette. Where
was she?

A chill wind teased her hair and picked up detritus as it moved beyond her, swirling,
congealing to form a single tornado. Then two of them, three, and she lost count.
Twirling, mesmerizing, a curtain of tornadoes as far as she could see, fading, fading
into gray.

She looked up and her head swam. More gray. An endless ocean of it. She put her head
between her legs so the dizziness would ease.
Oh, sick. Don’t wanna be sick again.

The whirling winds stopped. The curtain parted. And she whimpered at the view of a
brown-haired girl’s broken body, her blood a crimson rug beneath her in a pristine
bed of snow. The girl swiveled her head until she was staring at Sloane with bulging,
bloodied eyes. She lifted swollen, rope-burned arms and in a low, hollow sound keened
a song of torment.

Hickory dickory dock,

Her blood is on the rock.

The clock struck one,

The girl came down.

Hickory dickory dock.

The girl’s unearthly voice, childlike in pitch, but empty, empty, empty, echoing with
a sea of sadness, tore into Sloane. She rocked on her knees, trying to block the noise
with her hands, but the sound was coming from within.

A shadow coiled up in the midst of the grizzly vision, a new soundless tornado sweeping
up the snow, defiling it, and then expelling it over the mangled body in a blanket
of darkness. The swirling winds swallowed the gruesome scene, creating a new murky
backdrop for what was to come.

Sloane panted on her knees in Ann’s foyer, reaching out with her hand until the gray
swallowed her arm up to her elbow. She blinked back sweat as it rolled into her eyes.
Maybe she’d start laughing now and never stop.

Sloane, come back
.

Through the disorder of her mind, she heard it. A deep rumbling like thunder after
a lightning bolt, spearing light into the shadows. She extended her hand in front
of her, wiggling her fingers. The gray had eased back. She whipped her head around,
honing in on a chink of light through the gloom. Slowly, as though dragging her arm
through quicksand, her hand strained toward that light. She braced for a new nightmare
and—

Touched the sun.

Heat settled in her bones, unclamped her muscles, and traveled in fiery waves through
each sinew, cell, and capillary until the warmth scorched away every last trace of
darkness inside her. She was weightless, adrift on a current of positive, white energy.
It had never been like this. She’d stay here forever.

Dammit, Sloane, get back here!

God.
It has to be God.
Only God could swear in a voice like that. His bass timbre vibrated along the white
currents, slid into her body, and pushed roots into her very soul, filling her with
a peace like she’d never known. Warm bands came around her, gathering her to the source
of the light, and oh, surely this was Heaven. She pressed nearer that heat, wanting
to simply be absorbed into the warmth, but—

The light had substance. And a heartbeat. And smelled vaguely of woods and…

Soap?

Her eyes gradually cleared, and she soon realized the heartbeat was coming from beneath
her cheek, which rested on a black T-shirt, which covered a rock-hard chest.

Zack
.

Her head popped up so fast it bumped into his chin. His eyes, a turbulent green, held
hers for a second before he guided her head back down to rest against his chest once
more. He kept his hand under the curtain of her hair, using the pad of his thumb to
softly brush the side of her neck. Up and down, that warm thumb slipped across her
skin.
It’s okay. You’re okay. Safe. I won’t let anyone mess with you,
that thumb told her. His arms, too. She inhaled deeply, trying to match his steady
breathing.

Lord
. She was attached to him. Like literally Saran-Wrapped around his body. Even her
legs were scissored intimately between his. She should be mortified, but she wasn’t.
She felt…

Content.

She wanted to sneak a look at him again, but was afraid he’d be able to read her naked
emotions. He felt so good, his chest solid and warm beneath her cheek. And he wasn’t
doing that awkward back pat that people who were uncomfortable about being in others’
personal space did. One arm wrapped around her waist and the other braced her back,
his palm sliding across her upper shoulder and then against the nape of her neck in
a motion meant to soothe.

She inhaled and took him into her lungs, her body, her mind. She wanted to stay like
that for hours, to be held so tenderly, almost possessively, by someone who knew—if
not understood—what she—

“Oh!” She drew back from his arms so suddenly she clipped her head against his chin
again. “Sorry! Oh my gosh, do you know what just happened here?”

“You saw something bad,” he said.

“A bad vision, yes, the start of one anyway, which was rolling into another one, but
then— You touched me, right? When I was reaching for the door handle?”

He smoothed her eyebrow with his thumb. “How do you stand it?”

“Did you touch me or not?”

“I did.”

Her mind spun as she processed this information. Was it possible that he was some
sort of psychic anchor for her? She’d read about that once, but had dismissed the
idea as farfetched because even her mother, renowned psychic that she was, didn’t
have any such thing.

Or person.

“That’s never happened to me before,” she said.

“And what exactly was
that
?”

“I didn’t even touch the door handle, but as I got closer, a huge wave of negative
energy blew through me, and as scared as I was when I was about to leave, I didn’t
think to put up my shield.”

“So, what happened? Where the hell did you go?”

That was apt.
Yes, Hell.
Sloane-style. But she couldn’t tell him that. “Uh, usually, as a vision grabs me,
I’m a passive conduit, helpless to stop the flow of images until the vision ends.
I can’t wake myself up or push it away. I’m stuck. But just now…” She paused and looked
down at the hardwood floor.

She’d never shared her failed attempt at working with law enforcement to find Abigail,
a missing five-year-old. Not even with her parents, as much as they had tried to get
her to open up about it. But how do you explain something you couldn’t control—something
that seemed to be a Pandora ’s Box of tragedy?

Did the visions make bad things happen? Or would they happen whether she saw them
or not?

A cause and effect question she’d wrestled with for years and still didn’t know the
answer to.

Better to keep it locked down. Locked away.

Just in case.

She looked at the front door, her eyes fixing on the door handle not three feet away.
A new wave of fear froze her muscles. Zack squeezed her shoulder, bringing her eyes
to his.

“I’m good for secrets,” he whispered.

Oh Lord, she believed him. She didn’t know why. She’d only met him a few hours ago,
but after all he’d seen of her, he was still here. And it seemed as though he believed
her, too.

But her fear was stronger than her trust.

Stop it.
Here she was worried about herself when Heaven only knew where Ann was. She slowly
stood, feeling a chill on her skin where he’d been touching her. She watched as he
unfolded his long legs and stood next to her. Then it hit her.

He’d gone to the floor with her. Taken her in his arms to comfort her. Hadn’t moved,
pushed her away, or acted uncomfortable with her drama.

God
.

“I…I need a second.” She turned toward the bathroom before he had a chance to reply,
and it was all she could do not to run like a four-year-old on the verge of peeing
herself.

Inside, she locked the door and rested against the heavy wood for several long moments.
Going to the sink, her skin came alive as the water sluiced between her fingers. She
cupped her hands and drank, then methodically dried her face.

Where was this road going to lead? What was she still doing here? And where was Ann?
Every supersensory cell in her body told her that wretched front door held secrets.

But could she go there? Would it give any clues as to Ann’s whereabouts?

More important, could she live with herself if she did nothing to try to help?

It feels different with Zack.
Somehow the experience was…buffered?

She combed at her tangled hair with her fingers and opened the bathroom door to find
him standing there.

“You okay now?” The concern in his eyes made a lump settle in her throat. She tried
and failed to smile.

Ann was missing, and something was definitely wrong. Plus, she couldn’t find the crystal
rhino, so Timothy Benjamin would probably never back her foundation—out of spite,
if nothing else. And it could be months if not years before she could secure another
sponsor. Add to that, she’d blown her cover with this man who had so many contacts
in town. If he wanted to, he could completely discredit her. Her business could be
devastated.

Worst of all, her psychic sensitivities seemed to be growing.

Total. Nightmare.

But…

But
.

She could still recover from all of that as long as she kept the most important secret.

She looked at Zack and wondered what might have happened if they’d met under different
circumstances.

But it wasn’t to be. His concern was for Ann, whose very life—not merely her reputation,
nor her career—was in the balance.

It’s different with him.

Try me,
his eyes seemed to say.

It wouldn’t jeopardize her secret. The two situations were unrelated.

So be it.

She wrapped her arms around herself and prayed for a cast iron stomach. “I need to
go back to the door.”

Chapter Seven

Zack used the side of his index finger to bring Sloane’s chin up. “We’ll do this together,
okay?”

His whisper was a steadying caress over her skin. Locked in the profound green of
his eyes, she felt—for the first time in her twenty-five years—that maybe, with him
there to anchor her, she might put her psychic gift to use without such debilitating
consequences.

She rubbed her arms, established her protection shield, and led the way back to Ann’s
foyer, where she stopped before the door. A tremor passed through her, and she started
again when Zack’s warm, tough palm swallowed her own.

He looked as surprised as she felt. “I won’t let go, if that’s what you want.”

She’d blubber like a moron if she opened her mouth so she nodded, then focused on
the door handle, using the golden color to build a flower in her mind. As the edges
of the petals unfurled, the perimeter of her vision glittered in a million silver
sprays of light, heavy with waves of negativity. She took in Zack’s calm face, twined
her fingers more solidly with his, and reached for the door handle with her free hand.

Darkness swept around her so suddenly she faltered. Wind slapped at her and she slipped
down, whirling, spinning away into a whirlpool of stygian clouds shuddering with malevolence.
The clouds were alive, pulsing with lightning, reverberating with thunder, raising
goose bumps all over her body.

Zack!
She scanned the darkness for his light anchor but her cry boomeranged against the
tornadic winds. Then she was sucked through the storm’s eye into the murkiness on
the other side, a ragdoll tossed in a tug of war between rogue winds.

Ssseee meee
.

Heart pounding in her throat, she pushed at the hair whipping her face and looked
up. Could that have been him? Where was he?

Panic bloomed in her chest. She squeezed her eyelids shut and imagined Zack’s face,
his eyes—the green reaching out to save her. Her heartbeat grew louder, drowning out
the fury of the storm around her. She called out for him again and felt a moment of
zero gravity at the wind’s sudden calm.

Her breath whooshed out as she landed in a crouch in a midnight forest filled with
mist, night sounds, and moving shadows. Dank earth and stagnant water clogged her
nostrils with tangy scents of death and decay. She straightened as gasps and groans
spilled from the shadows.

This isn’t real. Not real. Sooo not real
.

She saw an opening between the shadows and ran deeper into the forest. She ran, underbrush
tearing at her shins and tree limbs scraping her cheeks until her legs and chest burned.
Calm down. Calm. Down.
She had to stay focused or she’d lose all control.

Sloane
.

Zack’s voice rolled through her—composed, centered—ripping her from the grip of hysteria
so suddenly she tripped over a fallen log and slid into a dusky bower of wildflowers.
She reared up, brushing leaves from her hair to squint through the darkness. She rubbed
a hand over the wild beating of her heart and looked around.

There!

A tiny pinprick of light above her. But it seemed so hopelessly far away. She inhaled
deliberately, then let the breath out slowly, each subsequent exhale murmuring Zack’s
name, a mantra to release the disturbing images.

Immediately, the forest floor gave way, dropping her once more into a silent void,
a blackout so complete she couldn’t see her hands in front of her face. She struggled
to her feet, panning out with her fingers to find substance, but encountered only
cobwebs that snagged in her hair, stuck on her clothes, and caught at her skin. She
heard a squeak, then something cool feathered against her cheek. Her system flooded
with adrenaline. She spun in a circle, alone in the eclipse.

Sloane. I’m here. Stay with me
.

Panting, she looked up. The pinprick of light had become a stream of energy, pulsing
white directly above her head. The vise around her chest loosened slightly, and she
reached out for the light with her mind, drawing it to her. Sweat poured down her
temples and between her breasts. Her arms quivered. In her head, a buzzing began.

That’s it. You’re doing fine
.

The closer she came to the light, the louder the buzzing grew until it filled every
corner of her mind, amplifying until she thought her skull would rupture. She tried
to stymie the noise, squinting, focusing on the light.
No good!
The buzzing vibrated down her spinal cord and rippled across her skin like a league
of beetles. Her hands raked at her skin to try to dislodge the phantom bugs and the
light slipped.
No!

She couldn’t breathe.
No air!

Come on, Sloane! Beat it!

His presence dimmed the buzzing to a low drone. Enough to gather herself for one last
desperate jump. Her thigh muscles shook as she squatted, then leapt toward the light.
Dozens of bony fingers grabbed at her ankles. She kicked with her legs as her arms
gathered the light to her body.

Suddenly, a pulse of warmth flooded her brain, flashed down her torso, and singed
the demons clutching her bloody ankles. Their screams faded into oblivion along with
the buzzing, leaving her momentarily dazed in the too loud silence. She felt weightless,
floating on a current of heat, the light so brilliant against her eyelids she brought
an arm up to shield her eyes. She counted to ten and then back to zero.

Holy.

Holy, holy, holy
crap
.

Her vision self sat up and took stock of her body. No bloody ankles, ripped shins,
torn clothes, or Bride of Frankenstein hair. Not even any queasiness. Instead, a low
pulse of power thrummed in her veins. More remarkably, she was in control—not of the
secrets the door might ultimately reveal, but of herself. Her sanity.

That was new.

Because of Zack.

He’d pulled her through the gauntlet. The dark scary place she always had to tread
to bring forth a vision. Her pulse drummed steady, nerves and excitement bringing
her to her feet in the panorama of white. Zack’s white light. Her heart constricted
thinking of him. He hadn’t left her. He’d talked to her. Kept her with him. She would
thank him. So many ways she could do that.

Later
.

She looked around, wondering what to do next.

Okay, Ann. Don’t you dare make me come all this way for nothing
.

Concentrating, she brought up an image of Ann’s face. Ebony hair framing her pixie-like
features, the upturned nose. So beautiful, so kind, so impossibly shy.

Sloane filled her mind with positive thoughts, letting her genuine affection for Ann
guide whatever vision needed to come forth. Soft as a gentle rain, vocalizations began
filtering through her consciousness. She squinted, trying to place the muffled sounds.
The pitches sounded angry, but curiously the negativity didn’t overwhelm her.

As she approached the image of Ann, her face began to waver, blurring like waves from
a heat mirage until the cameo dissolved completely, leaving behind a gray-blue mist,
a curtain of secrets.

This is it.
Beyond that mist were the answers they needed.

Sloane braced herself, gathered light to her until it was a living thing hammering
inside her, and stepped into the fog.

Echoes of anguish, fear, and desperation throbbed in the silence, push-pulling at
her, yet she identified the emotions only on an intellectual level. Moving faster
now, she parted the curtain of gray mist and found herself—

In Ann’s foyer. In a different time.

Late in the evening, lightning putting on an awesome display through the windows.
An expensive Tiffany lamp glowing in gorgeous reds, oranges, and golds on the table
next to the door. A show house room, but the aura, oh so wrong. A desperate pall seemed
woven into the fabric of the home. Sloane jerked when Ann’s voice broke through the
silence.

Please, please stay. We have to talk.
The man with her is tall, movie-star handsome in an old-fashioned way. Trim and dapper.
So appealing. Until Sloane looks in his eyes. They spill over with rage and disgust.
Thunder shakes the walls of the house in time with his reply.
Not now.

Sloane felt Ann’s shock before the image short-circuited and immediately picked up
in an explosion of pain. Sloane moaned, clutching the side of her head, the coppery
taste of blood filling her mouth.

Zack!

Here. I’m here. I won’t leave you
.

In the vision, Ann’s foyer filled with shadows and frequent pulses of lightning through
the front windows. Shards of glass from the lamp lay in a hundred pieces across the
hardwood floor. An upturned bowl of rose potpourri drifted pungently through the humid
air. Sickeningly sweet.

Sloane panned in every direction trying to locate Ann and her attacker.
There.
Ann lay in darkness, curled on the floor, thin shoulders quaking with the strength
of her sobs. Her sadness pulled at Sloane, so insistent even through Zack’s anchor
that she felt compelled to lie down next to her and take her into her arms.

But it was only a vision of what had been.

Ann was no longer there.

Sloane breathed through the vision, focusing all her senses on the man. He was still
there, swamping the room with rancor. She waited for the next pulse of lightning,
her muscles cramping with motionlessness. When she saw his face again, she would need
to remember every line, every mole, every scar, so they could find him.

When electricity sliced through the air, his back was to the window, his face in shadows.
A shiver rocked her frame as he spoke.
It had better be gone by the time I come back.

He moved, the light shifted, and she saw his face.
Trim, dapper, movie-star handsome. Older than Ann.

Then he vanished, and the vision winked out, replaced by a new picture of Ann. Time
had passed. She had changed her clothes and fixed her make-up. She was composed, but
at the touch of her fine-boned fingers on the door handle, Sloane registered a sorrow
more profound than when she’d been a crumbled heap on the floor.

Ann said something over her shoulder Sloane couldn’t hear. Then she grabbed her purse
and stepped through the front door into the smothering night.

No, Ann! Please, please stay home tonight
.

But of course she didn’t hear.

And then the world went black. The door handle had reached the end of its memory.