Powerhouse. Rebecca York
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had enough money to retire comfortably, they’d accepted a gig out of Denver. After completing that assignment successfully, more jobs had rolled their way. The former city boys had adapted to working in the wide-open spaces of the west.
Too bad it was cold as a witch’s lips out here.
“Turn up the heat again,” Campbell said.
Savage reached for the control and cranked up the blower. As warm air flooded the car, Campbell sighed.
“This is a bitch of an assignment.”
“The pay is good.”
“But I don’t like the way we’re communicating with the guy who hired us.”
“Advanced technology.” Savage pulled out his BlackBerry and looked at the screen. There was nothing new. There had been nothing new for the past few hours.
“Does he think we’re going to sit here all night?”
“I expect so.”
Savage reached into the back seat and retrieved the bag of food they’d picked up at a fast-food restaurant in Yuma. Turning on a small flashlight, he directed the beam into the bag, then pulled out a wrapped hamburger that had gone cold hours ago. With a grimace he set it on his lap, then reached for the thermos of coffee that he’d stuffed into the door pocket.
“You’re gonna have to get out and pee,” Campbell cautioned, the idea of unzipping his fly in this weather making him shiver.
His partner gave him a knowing look. “Yeah. And eventually so will you—if we’re gonna be here all night.”
Savage craned his neck toward the ranch road. “I say they’re not going anywhere until at least the morning.”
“And your point is?”
“We could get a room in that town we passed and come back in the morning.”
“You want to take a chance on losing them?”
Savage considered the question. He didn’t know much about the man who had hired them, but he suspected that failure would be bad for their health.
With a sigh, he settled down in his seat for a long night in the cold.
BESIDE Matt, Shelley made a low sound. “This isn’t doing any good.”
He glanced over at her and saw that her hands were clasped tightly in her lap. It looked as though she was trying desperately to hold herself together, and he didn’t blame her.
“Give me a little more time,” he muttered.
“Okay.”
Shelley leaned back and closed her eyes, and he knew she must be exhausted. She’d left Boulder early, then gotten caught in the storm, then come staggering up the road in snow up to her knees. He wanted to reach out and wrap her in his arms, but the rigid line of her jaw told him she didn’t want comfort. She wanted results, although she didn’t need to sit here while he tried to get them.
“Do you want to go to bed?”
Her eyes snapped open again. “No! I want to stay here in case you find something.”
He didn’t try to send her away again, because he knew that as long as he was sitting here, she was going to stay. She’d come to him for help, and he’d thought he could at least give them a start on the Web. He’d gone down a long list of sites, but he was losing faith in his ability to find anything. At least on this particular topic.
Still, he wasn’t going to give up. Not while Shelley was sitting next to him, counting on him.
The Google entries were getting repetitive. He’d seen a lot of them before, but as he scrolled down, he spotted a new one that looked interesting. It wasn’t from any organization. Instead it belonged to a man named Jack Maddox who was trying to find his missing brother, Jared.
Could this be the break he’d been looking for?
Matt clicked on the URL and waited with a sense of anticipation while the site loaded. Scrolling down, he saw something that made him gasp—a picture of an eight-pointed star.
Chapter Four
“What is it?” Shelley asked, her voice urgent.
Matt couldn’t speak. As he stared at the image of the star on the screen, dark visions swam in his mind, memories that had never been accessible to him. Seeing that eight-pointed symbol had been like a mental door opening. Suddenly he knew where he had been when he’d been kidnapped all those years ago.
Beside him, Shelley turned in her seat and clamped slender fingers onto his arm. “Matt, what is it?”
With a hand he couldn’t quite hold steady, he pointed to the strange-looking star.
“That.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure. A symbol. As soon as I saw it, something leaped into my mind.”
“Something like what?” she demanded.
The memory had been sharp and painful—and disturbing. If he told her, was she going to freak out like she had when he’d admitted his secret talent?
She wasn’t giving him a choice. Tightening her hold on him, she demanded, “You have to tell me! You can’t hold anything back because you think it’s going to frighten me—or disturb me.”
“I’m the one who’s freaking out,” he managed. “I told you that the time when I was kidnapped was a total blank. It was, but when I saw that star, I remembered … things.”
“Bad things?” she asked in a strained voice.
“Yeah.” He swallowed hard, wondering how he was going to say the next part. “A holding cell. There were bright lights over my head. They kept me awake. I’m sure there was a camera high up on the wall. I was alone. And scared.”
She made a low sound. “That’s when you were twelve?”
“Yes.” Now that he’d told her that much, he found he needed to say the rest of it aloud—to make sure he wasn’t making it up. “There was a narrow bed in the cell. Men would come in and take me down the hall to a … I don’t know. It was like a doctor’s office, I guess. They gave me all kinds of physical exams.”
He gulped. “And they strapped me down and stuck needles into my back. Then into my arm.”
She gasped. “Oh Lord. That must have been so awful. Do … do you think the same people have Trevor?”
“I don’t know.” I hope not, he silently added, knowing that she was probably thinking the same thing.
It was all he could do to stop himself from shaking. He wanted to be alone, to deal with this in private, but Shelley was sitting beside him, and he couldn’t duck away from her. Not now.
“Why did they let you go?”
“I … I think I used my power to … give them a push. I mean, I put the suggestion into their minds, and they took me home.”
“And you didn’t have the power to do that—before they captured you?”
“Not hardly.”
“So what they did to you—with those shots and all—caused it?”
“I think that must be true.”
She ran a shaky hand through her hair as she took that in, then made a strangled exclamation. “Will … Trevor … be able to do that?” “I don’t know!”
“If he could, they’d let him go.” “We hope.”
She stared at him for a long moment, and he forced himself not to look away. Finally, she turned back to