True Shot (33 page)

Charlie moved fast, rescuing Sam’s wobbling coffee cup and setting it aside before kneeling beside her chair and clasping both hands in a firm, unyielding grip.

They stiffened at the same time, and Sam saw herself through her sister’s eyes.

But what the heck is she doing in the hall, looking so . . . stricken? Like she’s lost the best friend she’s ever had. Could that be
Mac
?

Wait. Oh, hell. She’s
leaving
. She came all this way, and now she’s running again.

As Sam fell out of Charlie’s memory, she took several deep breaths to calm her racing pulse and loosen the tightness banded around her ribs. But it was only temporary. All that coiled anxiety would be back soon enough.

“You’re in love with Mac,” Charlie said, voice soft.

Sam focused on her sister’s gold-flecked eyes as realization shuddered through her. While Sam had taken a trip into Charlie’s memory, Charlie had taken a trip into Sam’s. “You’re empathic,” Sam said, her tone filled with wonder. “How? I mean . . . I didn’t think you were when I left Lake Avalon.”

Charlie sat back on her heels, keeping Sam’s hands gripped in hers, as though she feared letting go might encourage her to slip away. “Had a run-in with a cousin Mom never told us about. Maybe you met that side of the family when you found Ben Dillon?”

“No. He was estranged from them. I know next to nothing about them.”

After releasing Sam’s hands, Charlie reclaimed her spot on the sofa and picked up her coffee. “Long story short: I was touching our cousin when she died, and we think her power mingled with mine to double-charge it.”

“Wow.”

“That’s what I said. After several days of freaking out. So . . . Mac?”

Sam gave her sister a small smile. “I hope that’s okay. I know you have a history.”

“I’m just . . . aren’t you going to leave again?”

Sam winced. “It’s complicated.”

“I got that when I was in your head.”

She couldn’t quell her instant apprehension. Did Charlie know about other things? “What else did you get?”

“Nothing much,” Charlie said. “My empathy is imprecise. I get a brief flash of something, and that’s it. It can be damned confusing, but it’s better than what Alex has to deal with.”

“She’s empathic, too? No wonder Mom’s been a basket case all these years. She was surrounded by daughters who might or might not have been psychic and could have discovered her secrets at any moment.”

“Believe it or not, Mom’s got the curse. I’ve never seen her in action, but Alex got a hit off her indicating that when she was a teenager, she used her ability to con people out of money.”

“That’s what my father did,” Sam said. “He told me that his family and Mom’s family were part of a band of grifters. More than a decade before I showed up, they started to scatter. By the time I located Ben, he was among only a few left in the area that served as their home base. He said he didn’t know why Mom took off, other than he thought she was having an abortion.”

“I’ve got that piece of the puzzle,” Charlie said. “Alex flashed on Mom discovering a man right after he’d committed suicide. She’d helped con him out of a bunch of money then felt guilty and tried to return it. She was too late. She must have taken off right after that.”

“In search of a better life.” Ironic, Sam thought. That’s why
she’d
taken off fourteen years ago, determined to find someone more fit than her mother to be family. She’d headed in the completely wrong direction.

Charlie sighed. “Mom found that better life with Dad. It’s kind of romantic, when you think about it.”

Laughing softly, Sam rubbed at her eyes. “God, I was an idiot to take off like I did.”

“If Mom had told us the truth from the start, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Sam smiled. Leave it to Charlie to bottom-line it, though Sam figured her teen self would still have been determined to meet her biological father.

Leaning forward, Sam retrieved her coffee from the table and inhaled the enticing aroma. Her stomach growled, but she didn’t drink. Was it silly to worry about caffeine’s effects on an unborn child after all the drugs she’d been given?

“Are you hungry?” Charlie asked suddenly. “I haven’t had breakfast.”

“There’s food in the fridge. Mac’s boss set us up very well.”

“Simon Walker’s my boss, too. Great guy for a billionaire.”

As they walked into the kitchenette, Charlie said, “Simon saved the newspaper. Did you know that?”

“Mac told me, yes.”

As Sam opened a cupboard and reached for bagels, Charlie whipped open the fridge and peered inside. “Did he also tell you Simon had to swoop in after I defied Dad and single-handedly killed the paper by writing a big story about a crooked advertiser?”

Sam arched her brows. “Nope. Didn’t mention that.”

Charlie smiled. “God, he was pissed. Mac, I mean. He’d just become managing editor. Dad, believe it or not, was proud of me.”

Sam paused, hands full of bagels and eyes filling with tears. “I miss him, Charlie. I miss Dad. I hope he can forgive me.”

“Forgive you for what? You went looking for answers. You didn’t become a journalist like Alex and I did, but you still went looking for the truth. I bet you stand for truth and justice as vehemently as Alex and I do, just in a different way. It’s kind of in our DNA.”

Sam didn’t respond for a long moment while she liberated the bagels from their packaging and popped one into the toaster. She didn’t tell her sister that she didn’t know anymore what she stood for. She’d
thought
she worked on the side of truth and justice, but Flinn Ford could have manipulated every aspect of her life for the past fourteen years, rather than just the part where he’d blackmailed her into working for him. And drugged her. And used her. And killed her best friend.

Sam shook the distressing thoughts from her head—she’d deal with all of that soon enough—and watched Charlie pry the lid off a tub of whipped cream cheese.

“Should we yell at the guys to come get something?” Sam asked as she got a knife out of the drawer.

“Nah, I’ve never known Noah to go hungry. If he wants something, he’ll come looking. Mac, too.” Charlie started slathering a healthy glob of cream cheese on half of an untoasted bagel. “You know what I miss?”

Sam smiled at the warmth that infused her as she and her sister shared something as mundane as bagel prep. “What?”

“Those omelets you used to make. The ones with the ham and onions and peppers? I haven’t had an omelet that good since you left. Do you still make those?”

Sam shook her head. “It’s been a long time.”

“Do you cook at all like you used to? I swear I haven’t eaten a decent meal in fourteen years.”

“I gave that up when I left.”

“We need to work on that, then. It’s just not right to let talent like that go to waste.”

Sam swallowed against the renewed tightness of emotion. Charlie talked as though all would be well again. And Sam knew it wouldn’t.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

F
linn sat in the corner booth of Mama Mo’s in downtown Lake Avalon. The diner buzzed with the activity of morning customers as they washed down biscuits and gravy, ham and eggs, bacon and hash browns with copious amounts of coffee and chatter. The Florida sun blazed through the clean windows, casting in sharp relief the differences in the customers. Where the visitors, in shorts and T-shirts, smiled and laughed and planned their excursions for the day, the workday crowd, most in business casual, paged through the newspaper or talked self-importantly on cell phones.

Flinn’s own phone chirped, and he pulled it out of his inside jacket pocket. There’d better damn well be some good fucking news coming his way.

“Nat,” he said in greeting.

“Good morning, sir.”

“What’ve you got for me?” He wasn’t in the mood for chitchat after the restless night he’d had.

“Got a hit on some guests at the Hotel Sandpiper in St. Petersburg.”

He paused to smile. Natalie had disappointed him by admiring Toby’s intellect over his own, but Flinn had a forgiving nature, especially when he got what he wanted. “Tell me.”

“Simon Walker, CEO of Walker Media, is a regular at the Sandpiper. He also owns the newspaper in Lake Avalon.”

Flinn nodded, a renewed eagerness spurting adrenaline into his bloodstream. “Where both Hunter and Charlie work.”

“I called Mr. Walker’s assistant and posed as the Sandpiper’s customer relations manager checking on whether Mr. Walker required anything special for his visit. She said she’d already confirmed that his special requests had been taken care of.”

“Special requests?”

“Yes. He asked for some new clothing and other items, for both men and women, to be delivered to his suite.” Natalie paused. “There’s more.” She had a smile in her voice.

“Please continue.”

“According to business news reports online, Mr. Walker is in Denver for a media conference this week. He’s giving the keynote address this evening.”

Flinn began to grin. “It sounds as though we’ve found our wayward operative, Nat.”

“I’m e-mailing you directions from Lake Avalon to the Sandpiper as we speak. It’s about a three-hour drive, depending on traffic.”

“Nat, you make me proud.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Where’s Marco? I want him to accompany me.”

“He’s helping with the setup of the medical facility you requested. He and Dr. Ames secured an abandoned veterinary clinic in a Lake Avalon neighborhood that flooded last summer. They assembled a team of workers and hope to have it ready late this afternoon.”

“More excellent news. Give him a call and have him pick me up at my hotel in an hour.”

“Will do, sir.”

“This is all going to be over very soon, Nat. Do I have to tell you how relieved I am?”

“I can tell by the tone of your voice. Good luck, sir.”

“No wishes of luck needed. That’s how confident I am.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

S
am and Charlie refreshed their coffee and took their bagels back into the sitting area. For several moments, neither spoke as they ate, the silence companionable now that the ice between them had thawed. Eventually, though, Sam couldn’t stand it anymore and tried again to get Charlie to tell her about their sister.

“So . . . Alex?”

Charlie finished chewing and swallowed, her eyes darkening with anxiety. “It’s bad for her, Sam. Really bad.” Her hand shook as she paused to sip coffee, as though she needed the extra time to gird herself. When she spoke again, her voice was low. “After she got shot, she coded in the ER, and they had to zap her a couple of times. We think the electric shock supercharged her empathy. So when she touches someone, not only does she relive something traumatic that happened to that person in the past, but she sometimes gets stuck in the moment.”

“She gets stuck?”

Charlie nodded. “The flash lasts until the event ends naturally or something happens to knock her out of it.”

Sam didn’t know of any of her fellow operatives who experienced that particular problem. She herself never had.

“A few months ago,” Charlie went on, “a serial killer focused on her. Psycho bastard put her through absolute hell. Every time he touched her, she flashed on some of the sick shit he’d done and some that had been done to him. We almost lost her all over again. She hasn’t been the same since.”

Sam pressed her lips together to suppress nausea and grief. Poor Alex. The last time she’d seen her kid sister, she hadn’t even been aware of boys yet, completely focused on anything warm and furry and in need of love. The thought of all that sweet innocence corrupted by a psychopath . . . it was unfathomable. And heartbreaking.

“Flash fatigue for her is a bitch,” Charlie said.

“Flash fatigue?”

“Don’t know about you, but both our brains seem to have a limit on how often we can flash during a particular window of time. Too many flashes, and everything goes haywire. Beta blockers and tranquilizers help line things out when they get intense. That doesn’t happen with you?”

“It has a more scientific name in my world. Synaptic deficit syndrome. SDS. Which is really just a fancy way of explaining why I get a nasty headache after too many empathic hits.”

“SDS sounds way more intimidating than flash fatigue. And kind of like a sexually transmitted disease.”

Sam laughed. “Yeah, it does.” The humor didn’t last long, though, as she thought about Alex. She couldn’t imagine getting stuck in another person’s horrific flashback. Just the few moments she’d spent in Jake Baldwin’s head had been enough to make her violently ill. He’d been the sickest bastard she’d encountered in her spy life, and she’d landed in his head only once. To do that repeatedly and not be able to escape at will . . . God. She shut her eyes and lowered her head. She needed to get a grip, damn it. She couldn’t lose it now, when every choice she made in the next few hours would mean the difference between life and death for the people she loved.

Sam raised her head, determined to be strong. She had no choice. “I assume Alex has tried to find a way to control her empathy.”

“We’ve tried everything,” Charlie said. “Meditating calms her down but doesn’t prevent flashes from hitting her. She’s had some success with drugs, but she hates those because they make her fuzzy. She still takes them for work, because being a photographer and all, she has to shake hands a lot. But the drugs don’t completely stop the flashes. They just mute them. And as long as she keeps the drugs in her system, she doesn’t get stuck, which is the main thing, I guess.” She paused, and her eyes filled with tears. “Sometimes I fear that one of these flashes is going to kill her. When she encounters someone who’s been injured, it’s like she experiences a kind of empathic stigmata. Whatever injury the other person sustained happens to Alex. She’s gotten black eyes, burns, stab wounds. It’s—” She stopped. “This doesn’t surprise you.”