Power Up 3: Whispered Words (3 page)

“Why is it I have the feeling that you already know where I stash my secret files?” She wasn’t surprised when he nodded with a sheepish grin. “
Damn it
. Okay, okay. I don’t have time to rip you a new one.” She took a deep breath and let it out, annoyed when Ian continued to watch her with a rapt expression, as if he’d never been so entertained. “The coordinates are there. I’m supposed to check in with Jack twice a day—you know about the crazy guy from the warehouse.” They’d had a group meeting right after it happened; the group always pulled together to protect their own.

“I don’t know how the guy did it, but consensus is he psychically shielded himself from the rest of us. Not even Avery saw him coming.” Ian frowned. “Our resident retrocog thinks he’s killed before, and that he’ll do it again. When Noah went to the warehouse, he got a sense of your Psycho Stan’s psychic spoor in that scene between you and those others there. Creeped him the hell out, I can tell you.” She sighed. Poor Noah. Her last assignment with the man had been hell. His ability to read the past was about as useful as hearing voices. “Personally, I’m glad not to see the past.” She thought of Avery. “Or the future. Hell, I can barely deal with the present.”

“Amen, sister.” Ian paused. “So no word yet on who those other guys were, huh?”

“No.” And the mystery wouldn’t leave her mind. Especially because she’d felt so attracted to the tall man holding her. The last place she should have felt turned on, especially with a killer tracking her every move. She hurried to clear her mind of the incident. “Ian, see if you can’t get Nathan to handle that scrap of fabric I got off the stalker again. And my shirt, the one I was wearing when he attacked me.

Have him touch that too.” If anyone could get a psychic reading from that psycho, it was Nathan.

Ian nodded. “Good idea.”

“Yeah. I thought of it on my way over. See if he can’t get some leads while I’m gone.”

“I still don’t understand why you need to leave at all.”

“Because I need a break. I’m tired,” she admitted, knowing Ian, for all his irritating qualities, wouldn’t betray her. The handsome little sneak actually liked her. “All the voices have gotten hard to hear, and lately the one that protects me plain doesn’t speak. I think I need to decompress to allow them back in. Let’s face it.

Psycho Stan has gone to ground. We can’t find him anywhere. My being gone will either force him to make a move or come after me. So make sure the team on my house is solid.”

“Jack’s overseeing that. But I’m sure he won’t mind me looking over his shoulder.” They shared a grin. “Don’t worry about a thing here, Chloe. I promise not to rearrange your files like I did the last time I helped you out.” He crossed his heart with his finger, and she wanted to break it off and shove it up his—“Seriously, so get that look off your face.” Ian stepped closer. “Go do what you have to do. I won’t tell anyone you’re weak, pathetic, and losing your mind. But if you don’t keep Jack in the loop at all times, I’m coming after you.” That was all she needed, Ian Ryder’s interference. “Yeah, yeah. Now let me get home and out of town before some other idiot psychic pries into my business.”

“I’ll miss you, darling.” Ian’s bright blue eyes filled with fake tears.

Despite her annoyance, she laughed. “You’re such an asshole.” 

“And that’s why everyone loves me. It’s my natural charm and handsome physique.” He made an impressive muscle. Yet the man couldn’t hold a candle to the buff freaks she worked with. Though Ian had once worked with the PWP at its startup, he’d somehow managed to avoid taking the gene-enhancing drugs the others had been given. He had a lean frame and the graceful hands of a painter—or master forger.

“Sure thing, Arnold. Just keep it together while I’m gone, okay? And don’t let Avery and Nathan kill each other either.”

He groaned. “Not fair. Avery’s going on nights?”

“Jack’s call, not mine.”

“They’re so hot but so unattainable. Together, they’re just freakin’ annoying.” She had her first true belly laugh of the day. “Pot calling kettle, hello? Try to stay out of trouble and have a nice holiday. I don’t know why, but you’re growing on me.” She left and closed the door, but before she reached her car, he had the last word.

In his best Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer impression, he yelled, “She thinks I’m cuuuute.”

Definitely time to hit the slopes.

So far so good. She’d had been hiking all day and night to reach the cabin. By now her car would lay buried under several feet of snow in the lot off the highway.

She had enough food and clothing to last her a few days, and she knew from experience the cabin would be stocked with canned goods. Chloe felt bad about reserving, then canceling at the last minute, but the snowfall made the excuse a plausible one. No way to trace her whereabouts.

The cabin was the ideal place in which to lose herself, to give herself space, and to help find her voice again. Accessible only via a hiking trail, it served hard-core hikers and campers. Parking as far away as she had along the highway, no one would guess it might be her destination. What crazy idiot would walk twenty miles in the snow to reach a cabin they hadn’t even reserved? She’d be lucky if the cabin had a generator to power electricity.

An owl hooted overhead. The quiet soothed the worries she’d been carrying for far too long. Not much stirred under the dark sky. The unfettered moonlight and beaming stars overhead made her think of fairy tales and universal mysteries as she neared the marker that signaled the rise to the cabin that lay snug in the woods.

She wondered about her voices, why she had them, how they could be so precise. She’d heard them ever since her sixth birthday. Dry, dispassionate orders that told her all manner of things. Who liked who, which neighbor had stolen a car, cheated on his wife, or had gambling debts. Odd facts about things she had little interest in. Sometimes the information led to an arrest, sometimes it just entertained her. She’d find a missing engagement ring. Point out who stole a book from the corner store, or what kid had secretly been bullying others.

As she grew older, another voice became more distinctive. It told her what to do, who to trust, secrets that helped her avoid danger. All of the advice from her voice, from
him
, helped her to advance in life, stay safe, and be a better person. She tuned into him more than any of the other voices, although why she thought of it as a man’s voice, she couldn’t say. The voice could as well have belonged to a woman. It had no gender, no inflection. The voice simply was, and it always took care of
her.

It bothered her more than she wanted to admit that she’d lost that intimate tie to the psychic plane. No matter how often she reached out to him, she heard nothing.

The pack on her back felt ten pounds heavier as night turned into early morning. Yet she trudged forward step-by-step. Jack had been right. She’d needed the exercise. Though tired, she felt worlds better than she had the past week. Her ribs no longer pained her, and the exertion awakened her fuzzy brain.

As dawn approached the horizon, she saw it. The hazy outline of a rooftop past a scraggle of branches and pines blanketing the forest floor amidst the snow.

To her dismay, smoke curled from the chimney. She hadn’t thought for one second someone might have intruded into her space. Hell, yesterday morning the rental Web site had showed the place still empty. What the hell?

Could it be her stalker had beaten her out here? Chloe shook her head. There was no way the man could have followed her trail. No one had sensed or seen him, and the team had done its best to use all their resources to scry for him. Still, it paid to be cautious. She carefully concealed her pack at the edge of the tree line and withdrew her pistol from the front pocket.

Then she approached the cabin. She made her way to the eastern side, where she could peer through a window into the kitchen at the back of the house.

Firelight flickered against a pot of something steaming on the stove. Past the kitchen, she noted a long arm strewn over the back of a couch. The arm belonged to a man with short dark hair. She couldn’t make out his features or his height, just the back of his head and a long arm encased in a sweater.

She shivered. Before she could decide what to do next, something cold and hard pressed against her temple. Damn. A pistol. She held her breath. The voices had been right. It was too late to find them now.

“Easy, sweetheart. Drop the gun.” Joshua didn’t relent until she dropped her weapon in the snow. He clearly had size on her, but he’d made it a habit never to underestimate anyone. In his experience, the female of the species was much more lethal than the male. He took a step back. “Hands up. Now turn around. Slowly.” The small woman bundled in a polar vest, gloves, jeans, boots, and a skull cap all dusted in snow could have passed for Frosty’s wife before she turned around.

When Josh got a good look at her face, the blood rushed from his head.

Absolutely beautiful. Not a pale cream or a dark brown, her cheeks looked caramel in color, flushed with cold and no doubt anger that she’d been caught. Long black hair trailed over her shoulders and contrasted with the light blue-gray eyes of a woman who could have owned any man she wanted. Full lips, a slender nose, and a stubborn chin completed the picture of seduction personified.

“Well?” Her husky voice shot a bolt of lust straight to his cock.

Yeah, she had killer looks. He couldn’t quite peg her ethnicity. Black, Hispanic, Indian? A mix? Hell, he didn’t much care. She’d perked his interest enough that he wanted to peel her like a banana and see what lay under the layers of clothing. But the shock of what felt almost like recognition unnerved him. She had the same height as that woman Xavier had rescued the other night from the warehouse, but his sense of familiarity went beyond that. He’d tried more than once to see into his own future, but lately he caught nothing. His attempt now showed him more of the same.
Shit.

He leaned down and grabbed her pistol from the snow. After making sure the safety was engaged, he tucked the gun in the back of his jeans.

“You first.” He nodded to the front of the house with his weapon, a handy .45 that could and had blown holes through flesh and bone.

She made no sudden moves and kept her hands where he could see them, on either side of her head. Not one flinch or tremble from the steady woman—a sign she most likely had experience with dangerous situations. She walked with graceful steps, even through the white powder accumulating on the ground. When she reached the front porch, she stopped.

“Up the steps and through the door.” He still didn’t understand why he hadn’t seen this coming. His foresight had never failed to alert him to any threat. An advanced sense of self-preservation, his foresight protected him and his brother, usually without fail. Yet a woman with a gun had spied on them through their own goddamn kitchen window.

Glancing over her shoulder at him, she narrowed her eyes but didn’t speak.

She faced forward and paused to stomp the snow off her boots. A thoughtful intruder. How nice.

As they entered, Xavier added his two cents from the couch. “Nice catch. And yeah, I told you so.”

“Shut up.” It took real patience to ignore the urge to belt his brother, and he didn’t understand why. Normally easygoing where his twin had a hair-trigger temper, lately he’d been off his game. He glanced at the woman, wondering what she thought.

She looked from Xavier to him and back. She blinked but remained quiet. He could imagine her surprise. Identical twins, he and Xavier looked enough alike to be the same person. Down to the fingerprints, not one physical difference had ever been documented between them. His parents couldn’t even tell them apart.

Both dark-haired and dark-eyed, they had several inches on the woman. While their younger brothers took after their father and had the size and strength of grizzlies, he and Xavier inched just over six feet. They had less brawn than speed but enough muscle to get the job done. While the rest of the Cannon family took great pleasure in knocking the enemy down, he and his twin outsmarted, outflanked, and outraced them every time.

“Doublemint gum,” the woman muttered and blinked. “This is so not good.”

“What?”

“Josh, put the gun down.” Xavier waved at him. “Introduce me.”

“I would if I knew her name.” He snorted and tucked the gun away. Then he urged the woman face-first against the wall. “Spread ’em, honey. I’m sure you know the drill.”

“Dick.”

Xavier chuckled.

Josh sighed. After unzipping her coat, he ran his hands over her from top to bottom, careful to remain professional when he really wanted to cup the full breasts straining beneath her now open jacket. Holy shit, this was one fine, pissed-off woman.

She shifted under his hands. “You done yet? Or did you want to bend me over to make sure I don’t have anything stashed up my ass?”

“I’m sure we can think of a better way to make sure you’re clean, honey.” An echo of lust spilled through him at Xavier’s words.

“Back off. We don’t know who she is,”
he sent his brother telepathically.

Xavier answered back,
“I know her
. We
know her.”

“Then why can’t I see it? Have you spoken with her?”
Only with one special woman had Xavier ever been able to mindspeak in that same way he did with Josh

“No. But I’m sure it’s her. Bring her closer.”
Josh rose from his crouch and put a hand on her arm to turn her around. She exploded in a flurry of punches and kicks that impressed the hell out of him. He didn’t want to hurt her, so he didn’t fight back as he could have. Then she shot past him, the couch, and his brother before they could so much as catch a breath. Several doors slammed in her wake.

“Damn, she’s fast.” Xavier rose from the floor, where the small woman had shoved him when she’d vaulted over the couch. “Good thing the windows are locked down, eh? I’ll take the back, just in case.”

“Whatever.” Annoyed because their intruder had interrupted some well-deserved rest, he hunted her down with brisk efficiency. He and Xavier worked in tandem. One took backup, the other point, and they moved together. In minutes he’d unlocked the master bedroom door and the bathroom, where she’d locked herself in.