The Innocent: FBI Psychics, Book 2 (16 page)

Safe, Jay thought. Looking at the devastation around her, she wondered, how could they call this safe?

Oz’s eyes were dull, full of pain.

Jay caught her hand.

“Taige…”

“I’m here,” Taige said from behind Jay’s shoulder.

“Use…Jay.” Oz closed her eyes. “Empathic…link. Will help get through.” Blood trickled from her mouth. “She’ll…be okay. Just give her…time.”

She started to cough, blood flecking from her mouth. Then she looked around. “Dawson…where…?”

Jay looked up, saw Linc standing a dozen feet away. When their eyes met, he approached, reluctant, his eyes lingering on something off to the side. Not the pit. Something else. She glanced, saw the white of bone, understood.

He didn’t realize yet.

He didn’t know.

Her heart clenched.

“Yeah?” he asked, his voice harsh.

“Be…gentle with her.” Oz forced herself to smile. “She’ll need you…more than…you…”

A sigh rattled out of her.

Then Oz was gone.

Linc looked at her, his gaze lingering on her face.

Fuck.

It fell to her then.

She reached out, gently closed those insightful, silvery-blue eyes, eyes that would never again look through her and see all those secrets. Eyes that would never glitter with silent laughter or harden with unspoken threats.

Oz…gone.

It just didn’t seem right.

“Come on,” Taige said, holding out a hand. “Our job isn’t done.”

No. In a way, it was just beginning.

Jay let Taige help her up and then she turned to Linc.

She held out a hand to him. “Come.”

She stood too close.

To that pit.

He couldn’t look.

Whoever it was, he’d try not to hate him.

He understood, because somehow, somebody like Jay or Taige or even that eerie woman Oz had wound up here. And Mays had found him. Broken him. Tortured him.

Linc was going to try not to hate the kid—and he was almost certain it was somebody young down there, a teenager, maybe—because that voice he’d heard had almost sounded sane, for a brief moment before Mays had so cruelly taunted him.

Had almost sounded…not normal, exactly. More like the threads of sanity were just barely within reach.

But he also knew, with uncanny clarity, whoever it was, that person had killed. Not just Oz, but he’d seen two bodies in this clearing and he suspected at least one was Lem Clinton, missing a month now. Lem had been a hunter and an odd man, at best, wearing bright orange galoshes, a bright orange vest, regardless of whether it was hunting season or not. That bright orange was unmistakable. Even flecked with blood.

“No.” He backed away from that outstretched hand.

As she looked over to Taige, he fell into familiar routines. Now that Mays was unconscious, he helped himself to the man’s handcuffs. Stripped away the man’s weapons. Cuffed Mays to his son. Blayne started to babble. “I’m sorry, Sheriff Dawson, I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

Linc tuned him out. Just as he tuned out the low, quiet voices of Jay and Taige.

He’d just pretend he was the sheriff, doing what he knew best.

Processing a crime, because a crime had happened here.

A fucked-up crime, yes.

But a crime.

As long as he focused on the crime, he didn’t have to think…

“It’s easier this way,” Taige said, cutting Jay off. “He’ll think better once he sees her. I need her
out
before I bring her up.”

“Can you?” Jay gaped. “You saw what she did to Oz.”

“Oz doesn’t do what I do. She shielded. She’s doesn’t have offensive abilities.” Then Taige closed her eyes. “Didn’t. I do. Just…stay back. Okay?”

Stay back.

Stay back.

Brooding, Jay paced a small, tight circle, feeling like a caged tiger as she watched Taige work. Her heart leaped into her throat as the other woman gathered her power. There was a short, sharp scream and Jay prayed, like she’d never prayed, ready for the backlash. If this didn’t work, she’d have to drag Linc out of there, find somewhere they had a signal and put in a call to the FBI.

Surely Jones’s unit had somebody who could handle this.

Surely.

But there was no backlash and a second later, Taige looked at her, nodded. “She’s out. I’m going down.”

Jay didn’t even need to ask how because Taige pulled up a rope, something that had been neatly coiled in Oz’s bag.

The next few minutes were a blur and a buzz and she worked to rig up the rope to one of the still-standing trees outside the clearing, her heart pounding, grief ripping at her, exhilaration and terror giving her strength unlike any she’d ever known.

Soon…soon…

Taige came up first.

Then, the two of them together started to pull.

Her muscles ached.

Burned.

Pulling up an unconscious girl was so much harder than Taige, who’d been able to help bear the burden of her weight.

Time slowed to a crawl.

“Get her,” Taige said, the word coming through gritted teeth. “Hurry…she’s already waking up. She’s panicking.”

But she wasn’t watching either of them.

Her pale gray eyes were focused on Linc.

Linc, who had gone oddly still, his back to them. His hand on his weapon.

He wouldn’t watch.

He wouldn’t let himself blindly hate.

He wouldn’t attack and drag the answers out of whoever that was…

DeeDee wasn’t here.

He’d been so certain he’d find answers.

So certain.

But the two dead bodies were male.

One was Lem. The other was unidentifiable.

And DeeDee…still lost.

Hand on his weapon, he stared into the trees.
Be patient…

Gentle.

Oz had told him to be gentle. He’d thought she meant with Jay. Had she meant whoever was in the pit? Could that be why he had to be gentle? To find the answers needed to bring DeeDee home and lay her to rest?

“Get her,” Taige said, her voice low and harsh.

He turned.

The first time he had seen DeeDee, a squalling infant with a head full of curls and eyes as blue as his own, he had been in love. She had owned him, from that first moment. Through his divorce with her mom, through the rocky trials of her teen years, that love had only strengthened. He could remember so many things—the gymnastics competitions, awards ceremonies, long-ass hours spent in Atlanta traffic so he could take her to a father-daughter dance.

Losing her had been like losing a limb. Maybe even his soul.

Now those blue eyes would never glare at him in defiance, would never glint in amusement or soften with joy as she discovered something new and amazing.

He felt broken inside, and Linc knew there was no fix for him. Even if he survived his quest to see those who had taken her from him pay, he would never heal. He didn’t think he wanted to.

As broken as he was, the last thing he needed to do was give his heart to anybody. That was why he had cut ties with Jay. That was why he should have sent her from him.

Now, as he turned, listening to those strained, low voices, he told himself he wouldn’t do anything to make Jay pull back more. He could be calm, could control himself. He could do that because she was trying to help. Trying so badly to help. Just then, she was hauling somebody up from that hellish pit and Taige reached out, caught the person who’d been trapped down there.

He should go over, he thought dully. Help.

But all he could think was that this person had been there when DeeDee…

No
. He wouldn’t let himself think it through. Not yet.

He would stay here, safe, away from them. So that when Jay left, he didn’t tarnish her memories of him even more.

A harsh, keening sound escaped the thin, dirty bundle of bones. Unwittingly, he glanced over, watched as he…

No. A woman, he realized. Half naked, but he saw the strap of a bra, the curve of breast.

A woman.

They’d left a woman down there. Pity stirred inside his heart and he swallowed as the woman lifted her head, stared at him from under her lashes.

She looked at him with no recognition.

She looked at him with panic.

She looked at him in dazed confusion.

She looked at him with DeeDee’s eyes.

Reality slid sideways, for just one minute, and hope turned everything painful and shining and so very, very vivid.

He lunged for her.

“Fuck.” It came from one of the women, and then Jay rushed and cut him off. “Don’t,” she said, her hands gripping his arms. He snarled and went to shove her back.

DeeDee…that was all he could think.

DeeDee…

He came within ten feet and then something struck him full-force in the chest and sent him flying back. He never saw what it was, but it hit him with the force of a Mack truck and he hurtled back, smashing into a tree some fifteen feet away. The solid trunk of the oak was the only thing that kept him from flying even farther through the air, and he slid to the ground with a groan, darkness crowding in around him. For a few seconds, pain grabbed him, held him. And he couldn't even think.

“Shit.”

“That about sums it up,” Taige said, her voice grim and her eyes as cold as ice.

Taige and Jay stood in a careful perimeter around the girl. Jay had put her gun away, but she realized she might have to use it.

Please, God. Don’t make me do that
…

It was the worst thing she could think of. This girl, broken by what had been done to her, was reacting out of an awful fear and an even worse panic. But the sheer, unadulterated power of her mind would be more than the two of them could control if they didn’t do something fast.

They needed her unconscious. Taige had hit her with enough force to send her into next week, but she’d somehow roused herself as they pulled her to the top. Instinct, Jay suspected. The same instinct that had kept her alive for all this time. She feared
everything
.

Jay could feel that fear and it practically laid her low.

“Ideas?”
she asked Taige.

Taige’s mouth flattened to a thin, narrow line and she gave a simple shake of her head, then flicked her eyes to the right, where Linc had gone flying.

He was struggling to get to his feet now, watching them with something between shock, hope and horror. He was figuring it out. She hoped he was smart enough to stay where he was.

Jay took a deep breath and then looked back at the girl, crouched on the ground, shaking and looking around. She seemed more animal than human, and the chaos of her emotions clouded rational thinking.

Emotions.

Jay knew emotions.

Maybe that was the way to get in. The girl had known nothing but fear for so long. She had to tap into the part of her beyond emotion.

Easing her shields down, she let herself…feel. It wasn’t the same as reaching out on a psychic level. You could go fishing with a pole, or you could cast a net and hope. Jay was casting a net. And praying, hoping like hell.

“You wanted out,” she said, keeping her voice soft. “You prayed for it. Hoped. Then you gave up and just hoped you would die.”

There was no response to her words and the girl’s raging fear didn’t alter.

She continued to talk. She didn’t try to move closer. “You remember your name? It’s DeeDee. They had you for two months. You had to be very strong to survive that. You have to keep holding now…don’t give up now that you’re out…”

Time crawled by. Jay didn’t even know what she spoke of, only that she kept her voice low and soothing.

Linc stayed on the outside. Taige didn’t move. And Jay spoke…endlessly.

Abruptly, the girl’s eyes locked on Jay’s face and then she just sagged to the ground, her fingers curling into the soil as she clung for dear life.

As she started to sob, Jay moved in.

Taige tensed.

Jay shot her a warning look, careful not to let anything she felt or saw slip past her shields.

Taige relaxed, although her eyes remained wary.

Creeping across the ground, Jay sank down beside the girl, touched her arm.

DeeDee continued to shiver, to shake.

But she didn’t move.

None of that awful power slipped out of her.

Jay suspected it might be because it couldn’t.

DeeDee had drained herself.