LITMIR.BIZ

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why you were born with this power. Maybe this is it. Your answer. Maybe this is why. To save your family. Your people. There’s not much that could be bigger, more important, than that.

      Is there?”

      He stared at her. And he could barely believe that he was letting her talk him into it. Because she had a point. He had always wondered why. He’d always known he had this power for a reason, a big reason, and he’d been searching for it all his life.

      Maybe this was it. And if there was any chance it was, then he couldn’t very well turn his back on it, now could he?

      He lowered his eyes, released all his breath at once, swallowed hard and whispered, “All right. All right, I’ll … I’m in.”

      “Good.” He heard the smile in Rhiannon’s voice, felt his sister’s arms close around him in a relieved hug.

      “We’re going to have to get out of the city,” Rhiannon announced, moving quickly toward the nearest window, her cat at her heels. “We need someplace with privacy for these experiments. We’ll leave as soon as possible.”

      “But, Rhiannon,” James said, lifting his head. “What about Lucy Lanfair?”

      “Lucy … oh, the professor? Obviously we’re going to have to take her with us. We’ll pick her up on the way.” She glanced out the window. “But not tonight. It’s nearly dawn. I must rest. I suggest you do the same.”

      Lucy opened her eyes and felt an odd, moist breeze on her face. Almost as if she were outside. She’d been sleeping very soundly and wondered what on earth had awakened her. Something had. And she was nowhere near ready to get up, not after …

      No, she wouldn’t think about that. She needed to pull up the covers, roll onto her other side and …

      Where were the covers?

      Wait, where was the mattress? The bed? All she felt was sand and very finely ground pebbles.

      Her eyes popped open, and the first thing they focused on was the giant orange curve of the sun, just beginning to rise over a distant horizon. She was … outdoors. On the shore of the ocean. She was grasping handfuls of sand and shells in search of blankets.

      Waves whispered soothing sounds as they whooshed up over the sand, then burbled back out again. The wind smelled like seaweed and brine. She brushed off her hand, rubbing it against her shirt, then paused, because she was wearing clothes. A pair of jeans that were a size too big, and a white button-down shirt. A man’s shirt, she thought. Sitting up, she pushed a hand through her hair, which felt vaguely like a rat’s nest, and tried to remember how she’d ended up here. The last thing she remembered …

      They’d fed her. She had supposed that was a plus, even if the food was tepid and sticky, and almost certainly prepared by peeling back the plastic and nuking for five minutes on high. Meat loaf with gravy, soupy mashed potatoes, green beans that tasted the way she thought paint would taste and some kind of cherry dessert that was so tart it made her pucker. About two tablespoons of each, whether she needed it or not.

      Famished, she’d wolfed the food down so fast there hadn’t been time to ponder the taste overly much. A blessing in itself.

      Or not. Because she didn’t remember anything else. Nothing at all. Apparently they had tranquilized her with something. It hadn’t hit her with the potency of the first injection, in the ambulance, and it didn’t have her spilling her guts on any subject they broached, like the one they must have given her just before starting their interrogation. And she didn’t have any doubt that was exactly what it had been. An interrogation by some secret government agency that wanted to know how much she knew about the murders of Lester Folsom and Will Waters.

      Only that wasn’t what they’d questioned her about, was it? They’d seemed far more interested in what she knew about her angel. Her savior. That beautiful man who’d saved her.

      Or had it all been some kind of a dream?

      Maybe. Or maybe not. She couldn’t be sure, because she didn’t know anything for sure anymore. Except that there was someone walking toward her now, along the sand. Walking at a brisk but unhurried pace. She blinked, but her eyes were so unfocused that it was as if she were peering through a dirty window. She squinted, thought she saw a baby-blue car on the side of the road, some distance beyond him, then shifted her focus right back to him again. Yes, him. Definitely male, tall. And as he drew nearer there was something …

      It was him!

      She scrambled to her feet, forgetting all about the lingering effects of whatever dope they’d used to season her food. Unconsciously, she pushed one hand through her hair, even as she backed up a step, wobbled, then caught her balance again. Her brain was still foggy, her equilibrium off-kilter. Should she stand there, waiting, or run away? She didn’t know whether she was afraid of this guy or not. She didn’t know anything about him, except that he’d been leaning over her after she’d been shot down on the street outside Studio Three. And that she’d felt as if she knew him from somewhere. And that it had seemed as if he had … helped her. Healed her. Saved her.

      On the one hand, if he’d helped her then, maybe he wanted to help her now, too.

      On the other, if he were involved in any of that violence that had unfolded back there last night—God, had it only been last night?—then she wanted no part of him.

      He stopped walking, maybe sensing her distress as she stood there with one hand trying to hold her wild tangles of hair to the back of her head and the other arm wrapped around her own waist, as if she could somehow protect her vital organs simply by covering them with a forearm.

      He wore a tan, short-sleeved shirt with the top several buttons undone, khaki trousers, rolled up a little, and his feet were bare and sinking into the sand. Bare feet. That made him seem less scary, somehow.

      “It’s all right, Lucy. It’s me. I’m the one who helped you, after—”

      “I remember.”

      He tipped his head to one side. “You look as if you’ve had a rough night.”

      She blinked. “Rough? I witnessed a double execution, ran for my life, was shot in the back and somehow yanked from the brink of death by whatever magic it is you wield,” she said, and the words came pouring out, faster and faster. “Then I was kidnapped, drugged, held prisoner, questioned, drugged again. And now I wake up in the middle of nowhere in clothes that aren’t my own, and I don’t even have my purse or a hairbrush or—” Her throat closed off and her face pulled itself into an embarrassing grimace as tears strained to break through whatever invisible barrier had held them back so far.

      And then they escaped, just as her knees weakened and her entire body went lax, as if there was simply no more fight left in her. She sank to her knees in the warming sand, her head falling forward.

      But before she could collapse entirely, he was there. He caught her beneath the shoulders, his arms powerful and strong, holding her upright, and then … And then he pulled her gently to her feet and closer to him. So close that her body rested against his warm, solid chest. So close that she could inhale him, feel him all around her.

      “You’re freezing,” he muttered into her hair, and those iron arms tightened just a little to hold her against his warmth. Just enough. She absorbed his heat and his strength as if he were feeding her very soul. And maybe he was. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Lucy. I have you now. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you again, I promise.”

      She shook her head against his chest. “Who are you, that you should even care?”

      “What the hell did they do to you?” His voice wavered a little as he dodged her question. “How did you escape?”

      “I di-di-didn’t,” she managed in between chest-wrenching sobs.

      “I’ll ask you to explain that … but later. I think right now you need a warm, soft bed and a decent meal.”

      “I need to go

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