Damned. Lisa Childs
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His thoughts were more likely to upset Irina—if she could tap into them the way she had before.
“Is she the woman you’re trying to find?” the psychiatrist asked.
The man brushed a hand through his short black hair, in which the fluorescent lights picked up glints nearly as blue as his eyes. Irina forced herself to meet his gaze, expecting the burning hatred that had scorched her in the alley. But her vision dimmed, his face disappearing into the blackness that enveloped her. Only little sparks of blue relieved the dark.
His voice a raspy whisper, he lied to the doctor. “No.” But his mind called out to her. Irina?
Her heart lurched with the shock of recognition of another kind. This wasn’t the man who’d chased her from the alley. He was the man who’d made her consider leaving it in the first place, calling her name, telling her to believe.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The psychiatrist answered for him, “This is Ty McIntyre, a police officer.”
Suspended police officer. She heard his silent amendment to the doctor’s claim. More than that, her stomach muscles tightened with the pain and pride that omission, even silent, cost him.
“You don’t recognize him?” the psychiatrist asked Irina. “He isn’t the man you claim is trying to kill you?”
Oh God, the bastard has already found her!
Fear raised goose bumps on Irina’s skin, but was it her fear or his? Irina shook her head. “No.”
He was not the man she’d claimed was trying to kill her, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t just as dangerous—or maybe even more dangerous. Her connection with him was so strong, his thoughts so compelling that she had risked leaving her hiding place of the past few months. With the killer, she had only his actions to fear; with this man, she had her own to fear. She struggled to break the connection between them, fighting her way out of the darkness.
Yet the connection remained. The anger tightening the muscles in his stomach twisted hers into knots. Tension radiated from him as he stared at her.
She shifted against the mattress, unnerved by his intent scrutiny and her own inexplicable reaction to it. Her pulse quickened, her breath grew shallow and heat licked at her stomach.
The young psychiatrist cleared her throat. “Well, then…” she prompted the man as she pulled open the door again. “Since she isn’t who you’re looking for…”
“Who is she?” he asked as if Irina weren’t in the room, as if he weren’t staring directly into her eyes.
Irina lifted her chin, pride stinging at the way he’d dismissed her. But at least her pride had returned; she’d buried it for a long time under months of dirt and delusions. The voices hadn’t been the delusion. Thinking herself crazy had been the delusion.
“Jane Doe, for now,” the woman answered Ty McIntyre. “Until we learn her true identity.”
Irina opened her mouth to tell him not the name she’d been given at birth but the one she’d been called the past twenty years. That was her legal identity but not her true one. But his anger coursed through her veins, burning her with its intensity. She didn’t dare trust him. Too many people had died already. She didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.
The faint echoes of old screams reverberated inside her head. She closed her eyes, refusing to relive the gruesome memories.
“Jane Doe,” McIntyre repeated in a murmur, but in her mind, he shouted, Irina Cooper. Irina Cooper.
Since he knew who she was, why didn’t he tell the psychiatrist? He must have a reason for keeping her identity secret. Irina wished she could read his intentions toward her in his thoughts. But she couldn’t, and fear quickened her pulse. Like the man from the alley, Ty McIntyre would hurt her if she wasn’t careful.
She intended to be very careful.
“I’m tired,” she claimed. “You can both leave.” But she couldn’t see if they complied. Black enveloped her, broken only by sparks of blue, the same dark blue as his eyes.
I have to get her out of here before he finds her!
That was his last thought, flitting through her mind, before wood snapped against wood as the door closed behind him and the doctor. Not that distance made Irina’s ability to read minds any weaker. She could be miles away and the connection just as strong as if she stood face-to-face. But usually those people had some relationship to her, like her mother, her sisters or other people who’d meant something to her. Except for the killer. And this man, Ty McIntyre, who might not want to kill her but whose connection with her was stronger than any other.
She tugged at her wrist again, but the restraint refused to give. All her struggle and she’d only worked the fabric-and-Velcro strap a tiny bit looser.
She had to find a way to free herself and get the hell out of here. Because she knew if she didn’t get out of the hospital soon, she would probably wind up in the morgue. If there was even anything left of her to examine…
The strangest sensation washed over Ty, lifting the hair on the nape of his neck. He glanced around the hallway, but the young doctor had left him. No one else stood in the wide corridor. Two nurses worked the station at the end, one on the phone, the other checking charts. Neither of them was the least bit aware of his presence. So no one watched him, yet that sensation persisted, prickling the skin between his shoulder blades as if someone’s gaze bored into him.
He checked the doors along the hall. They were all shut tight in the jambs, leaving no space through which someone could peer out. Maybe his instincts had gotten rusty since his suspension—maybe that was why Roarke had escaped him not once but twice. Roarke wouldn’t beat him again. The maniac would have to kill Ty before he’d get to Irina.
Irina…
His stomach muscles tightened as he relived his brief encounter with her. He should have been prepared for her appearance. She had the delicately featured face, the curly hair and the big Gypsy eyes, exactly as her oldest sister had described her. Yet she hadn’t looked as lost as Elena’s visions had led him to believe she’d look.
Despite the sedative the doctor had said she’d been administered, awareness had sparkled in Irina’s dark eyes. Briefly. Then she’d gotten a strange unfocused expression on her face, as if she’d suddenly gone blind. And that was when his skin had first begun to prickle as if someone were closer to him than they’d ever been. Her sisters each had a supernatural gift—or curse, as they’d first called their abilities. Did Irina have some special ability, too?
The police officer who’d brought her here after she ran screaming into traffic had called her a wacko. Ty had found her through his old contacts and his constant monitoring of his police radio. She’d been right here in Barrett, living on the streets he’d searched over and over again for her. According to his old friend, she was either drugged out of her mind or stark-raving mad, blathering hysterically about reading a killer’s mind. Even though the psychiatrist hadn’t admitted it, he could tell she thought Irina was delusional, too.
But Ty knew she spoke the truth, at least about the killer; he wasn’t sure about the mind-reading part. At the moment, her ability, whatever it was or wasn’t, didn’t matter. All that mattered was Donovan Roarke’s determination to kill her.
Ty glanced at the preoccupied women at the nurses’ station, then again at the empty corridor. Despite the lock on the door separating the psychiatric ward from the rest of the hospital and the locks on the individual rooms, someone clever, with the right connections, could get to Irina pretty easily. She wasn’t safe here. He had to get her out.
He could do it the right way—get Elena and Ariel down here to identify and claim their sister. But they hadn’t seen her in twenty years. To verify the connection between the sisters, they’d have to take a DNA test, then wait for the results. Confirmation