The Unwanted (A Novella of the FBI Psychics) (3 page)

Steadying herself… He didn’t know whether to be relieved or bitter. Three years they’d been together and he’d tried to get her to prepare more for the cases they’d handled, but she hadn’t once tried. She’d always jumped in, feet first and fists ready. He’d been the one to pull her back time and again, to keep her from attacking suspects and totally blowing their cases straight to hell.

Three years, and she hadn’t once shown any interest in learning some caution, some self-control. But she’d gone and done it at some point. He recognized the signs well enough. He used the techniques himself and it had saved his ass more than once when her impulses bled into him during the times they worked together. If he didn’t get grounded before linking, he got lost in her, lost in her passion, lost in her fury.

He made himself focus on the file again, blocking her out. Seven rapes reported. There were probably more. Some women who were confused, scared—or in denial. Guy had been very careful. Used a rubber, so no semen samples. Bruising, minor vaginal tears for the most part… He clenched his jaw as he read each report, fought to remain dispassionate. Fought to make himself go cold.

He knew from experience that the more he could distance himself from the crime, the more he could help the victim, especially when he was working with empaths like Destin. It was hard, though, and by the time he finished reading the reports, there was a nasty, vicious headache taking gleeful bites out of his brain matter.

Destin had already closed the file. He glanced her way but she had her eyes closed. Her chest rose and fell as she took a series of deep, steadying breaths. Without opening her eyes, she asked, “You said we fly out tomorrow. I assume once we land, we get to work immediately?”

“No time like the present,” Oz said. And then she glanced at him, that strange smile on her face once more.

They both stood, Destin moving slower than him. He glanced at her as she turned to face him, then away.

The pit of his stomach dropped out as the connection hit and he stopped in his tracks, looking back at her. Her face, like her ruthlessly short nails, was naked, devoid of any color. No makeup, nothing. Just her pretty mouth, unsmiling, her eyes cold and hard…and a scar. It ran down the left side of her face, sliver thin, about three inches long, and faded.

He lifted a hand to touch her, unaware he was doing so until his fingers brushed down the slightly ridged surface of the scar. She didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch.

Caleb didn’t let himself react, although his gut was knotted with rage and he had the insane impulse to step closer and wrap his arms around, shelter her, cuddle her close. She didn’t want that from him. Didn’t need it.

“What happened?”

She stepped out of his reach and he let his hand fall to his side, closing into a fist. The need to pound on something was strong. A brick wall, a metal file cabinet—some bastard’s face—
just show me who did it, baby…please
… He even lowered his shields enough to try and pick up some kind of flicker, but there was nothing there.

“I was careless,” she said, her voice flat.

“What happened?” he repeated.

This time, she had some kind of reaction. She cocked a brow and smirked at him. “I told you, lover…I was careless. I dove in feet-first, like I always do, and didn’t pay attention. The guy had a knife and when I barreled in, he did this.” She trailed a finger down the scar, angling her head so he could see it better. “But that wasn’t the worst. I picked up on him when I was off-duty…you know how it happens. I put the call in to Oz and she told me to wait for backup. I didn’t. He was close, very close. And he hadn’t hurt her yet. I thought I could stop it. I was wrong. He was bigger than me, stronger, determined not to get arrested. I didn’t wait for backup and because I didn’t, he got away and he killed the girl I was trying to save. Careless.”

Chapter Two

He hadn’t looked at her much since they’d checked in for their flight. And he hadn’t said a word to her the past night after she’d told him about her spectacular failure four years earlier.

Destin understood why easy enough. She had a hard time looking at herself. It had been years since Dawn Meyer’s death and she still had a hard time facing the woman she saw in the mirror every morning.

She should have saved that girl. Was supposed to save her. If she’d listened to Caleb back when he’d tried to tell her all those times that she needed to learn some modicum of control, she could have saved Dawn.

But she hadn’t learned, and because of her, a girl was dead. She’d failed the girl. Failed her unit. Almost got them all screwed.

But the worst thing was that she let a girl die. Nineteen years old. Terrified and hurt and alone, and she’d died because of Destin.

Her unit saw it differently, she knew. At least some of them. Oz had rallied around her and refused to feed her to the sharks and that was a debt Destin could never repay. There were others, too, former agents who’d refused to let some of the higher-ups turn her into the scapegoat.

They should have, though.

They should have fed her to the sharks, left her for dead…nothing would have been a suitable-enough punishment. Just
how
did she atone for not saving a girl? For costing that girl her life? She couldn’t. She didn’t.

If she’d listened to Caleb all those years ago…

You can’t always dive in feet-first, baby…sooner or later, you’ll find yourself in a mess that you can’t get out of.

He’d been worried she’d end up dead.

She only wished that had been the cost.

No wonder he wouldn’t look at her.

Even now. They’d only been waiting for the flight for thirty minutes or so—Oz had arranged to pick them up—one more debriefing, she’d told them, and then she’d ended up picking them up a good hour earlier than what was really necessary. Now they had nearly an hour to kill before their flight.

The silence was a little heavy, even for her. She glanced over at him. “You hungry?”

Caleb made an odd little
hmmm
under his breath. A man of few words. The sound could either be,
Yeah, I could eat
or
No. Shut up so we can get this over with and I can get the hell away from you
.

Destin decided it was probably the latter and she was petty enough to want to drag things out. Petty…and lonely. Damn but she’d missed him. Being close to him again, having him this near, it did the strangest things, soothed the ragged gaping hole in her heart and left her feeling a little more at peace. And it made her ache. That wound inside her that had never healed started to bleed again and she wanted to yell at him, scream at him. Beg him to come back. All of it, any of it. And there was no way she’d give in to any of those urges.

“I’m hungry,” she lied, climbing to her feet. “If you want me to bring you back something, I can.”

She couldn’t eat. But she wasn’t going to keep sitting here next to him with his silence weighing down on her and his disapproval and disappointment choking the air around them.

She needed at least a short reprieve, even if it was only for five minutes while she hid in the women’s restroom or tucked inside one of the little bars that seemed to grace every airport she’d ever been in.

Actually, a bar didn’t seem like a bad destination…

Caleb got to his feet. “I guess I could eat,” he said, his voice low and smooth, the lingering hint of the South still echoing in his voice after all these years. “What are you in the mood for?”

Solitude.

“Doesn’t matter to me,” she said, shrugging and turning on her heel. She caught the handle of her carry-on and started down the main corridor. Anything would be fine, as long as she could have a drink.

Caleb didn’t know whether to be relieved or frustrated when they ended up being seated in opposite sections of the plane. Both of them were in business class—nice of Oz, that. Destin was two rows ahead of him on the opposite side of the plane and he could see the business exec trying to put the moves on her.

And then he saw the man go rigid when Destin turned to face him fully.

Fury lanced through him as he figured out what she’d done. Using that scar as a shield. Yeah, he knew there were plenty of assholes in the world who’d back off over a thing like that. Assholes, the lot of them.

It was a bare sliver of a scar and didn’t take away from her beauty, didn’t do a damn thing to detract from who she was.

But she let people decide to make that her defining characteristic.

It pissed him off.

It wasn’t anything she wore as a badge or a mark of courage…she used it to keep people away from her. She deserved better than that.

I was careless…

Her words echoed in his mind and he closed his eyes, blew out a breath. He could find out what had happened. A few phone calls, an email or two and he’d know it all. The surface details, at least. But the information he wanted was Destin’s. He knew she wasn’t going to share it with him easily.

Maybe not at all.

Guilt lodged in his gut and part of him kept wondering,
Could I have helped…

He didn’t even know. For months after he’d left Destin, he’d had to work to get his own gift back under control and it had taken him even longer to find a way to mesh with somebody other than Destin. He’d had his own screwups to deal with and those screwups were legion.

Because of those issues, it had taken more than a year before he was stable enough to work regularly in the new unit.

Now, thinking about the months that had followed his leaving, thinking back to the way she’d looked at him, and he was left wondering…had he done the right thing after all?

Chapter Three

The flight from DFW to Richmond was uneventful enough after Destin had convinced the yuppie sitting next to her that he wasn’t really interested in her. All it had taken was turning around to face him so he saw her completely.

Once she’d met his gaze, once he’d had a chance to see her scarred face, he’d decided she wasn’t really worth a quick flirtation and he’d spent most of his flight with his nose buried in an urban fantasy. She couldn’t fault his taste…she loved the author herself.

But she had given up on casual flirtations a while back. Caleb had started out as a casual flirtation and she’d tumbled head over heels into love with him, then head over heels into heartbreak when he left.

“What was with the guy on the flight?”

Destin shot Caleb a look. Surprise barely had a chance to form before it died. Of course he’d noticed. Caleb noticed everything. It was one of the things that made him excel at his chosen profession. His psychic skill might be classified as a sub-ability but he had a unique ability to filter through the shit, as Oz had once termed it, and he noticed everything, saw everything. Hell, he could probably give a written report, five pages in length, on the visual details he’d noted in Oz’s Spartan office.

“There was nothing with the guy on the flight,” she said, shrugging.

“He’d been checking you out since before we boarded. Then five seconds after he tried to talk to you, he was all but crawling inside the book.”

Destin smirked. “He saw the scar, baby. It freaks people out, haven’t you noticed?”

He didn’t say anything else and as they approached the upcoming exit, he took it, slowing down only when he had to either hit the brakes or they’d go flying off the road. She braced herself. “I see your driving hasn’t improved much.”

“Did you expect it to?”

“Not exactly, but then, you showed up in Oz’s office looking like the typical cookie-cutter Bureau boy, shiny shoes, perfect suit… I guess some part of me thought you might have gone all straitlaced.”

A faint smile curled one side of his mouth. “Yeah, that’s me, all right, Destin. Just your typical bureaucratic FBI boy. I’m a dime a dozen now.”

Like hell
, she thought.

Some part of her mind that she couldn’t turn off made her think about pushing that slate-gray suit jacket back from his shoulders. Wonderful, wide shoulders, and that suit was just a little too nice for him to look like a
cookie-cutter Bureau boy
. Especially with those shoulders.

Forget his shoulders, Destin. He walked, remember?
She shoved a hand through her hair, flicking her bangs out of her eyes. She needed to get it trimmed again. Grew too quick. Keeping it short kept her from messing with it, and she’d discovered a serious pleasure with the wash-and-go look but it was a pain in the butt getting it cut every couple of months.

“When did you cut your hair?”

She turned to look at Caleb, but he was paying an inordinate amount of attention to the road as he slowed and turned into the parking lot of the restaurant. “Couple of years ago,” she said, shifting her attention away from him as he pulled into the parking lot of a little mom-and-pop diner.

She had no idea where they were, but she knew the sort of place. The food would be plentiful, filling and cheap, the coffee would be excellent and they may or may not take credit cards.

“I take it we’re getting dinner,” she said blandly.

“We can eat at the hotel if you’d rather, but I need to get out, hit the restrooms and get some coffee at the very least.”