Special Gifts Read online

The small house was ablaze with lights; the big American car was still in the snowpacked drive. Ali Reza rubbed his hands together, blowing on them to loosen the frozen muscles. Not tonight. Not yet. He still wasn’t sure how much they knew, how close they were going to get. He had to make sure that it was just that woman’s witching eyes, not a loose tongue somewhere back in Italy. A few days of watching, of anticipating. It would only make the deed sweeter.

  SAM WAS STANDING in Elizabeth Hardy’s almost empty kitchen, pouring himself a stiff glass of whiskey. The snow had started again, swirling down lightly outside her window, and he stared into the woods surrounding the place, his eyes narrowing slightly as he tried to pierce the gloom. He could hear Elizabeth’s soft voice as she spoke to Phil, a far different tone from the terrier snappishness she reserved for him. Hell, he’d done his best to encourage it. He couldn’t take any of that soft, melting charm oozing over him. He didn’t trust it. He didn’t want it. Or maybe he wanted it too much, and that was what he didn’t trust.

  Either way, it didn’t make any difference. He hadn’t been tricked by a woman since he’d been eighteen and fallen in love with a hooker in Amsterdam. And he hadn’t gotten close to a woman, emotionally close, since Amy Lee. He wasn’t about to start with someone like Elizabeth Hardy.

  He wondered how long it would take her to get up the nerve to join him in the kitchen. She’d try to send Phil, but Phil would make an excuse. He knew Phil well enough, and he already knew Elizabeth. She was scared of him. He found that odd. He wasn’t used to scaring people he didn’t mean to hurt. Maybe she knew they were on opposite sides. No, he didn’t really believe that. But there was something about him that made her angry, uneasy, frightened. And he couldn’t help wondering if it was the same thing that was bothering him.

  “You’re going to need more Scotch,” he said without turning when he felt her presence.

  “I don’t usually drink it.”

  “I do.”

  “You think you’re going to be spending more time here?” Her voice was cool, neutral, but Sam wasn’t fooled. He turned to look at her, leaning back against the counter.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you can buy your own whiskey. I can’t get rid of you, but I don’t have to welcome you.”

  He moved then, crossing the kitchen with the fluid, stalking movement he’d long ago perfected in battlefields that he’d never see again. She stood her ground, staring up at him unflinchingly, and once more he had to admire her courage, even as he cursed her stubbornness. “No,” he said softly. “I wouldn’t say you’ve welcomed me. Just be patient, Elizabeth. In a few days I’ll be gone. In the meantime, loosen up. Have a drink.”

  He took her hand in his and wrapped it around his warm glass of whiskey. He could feel the electricity prickling through her skin, but she didn’t fight his touch. His long fingers covered hers, covered the glass, and she looked up at him, startled, something flaring in her brown eyes, something dark and stormy, something he couldn’t fathom.

  “I wish I knew what was going on in that convoluted mind of yours,” he murmured.

  “No, you don’t.” Her voice was only a thread of sound, barely audible above the beating of her heart, the pounding of her pulse. “You wouldn’t want to know anything that’s in my brain.”

  “Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe I like surprises.” He was crazy, he knew it, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to kiss her again, to see if that anger went any deeper. He leaned forward, brushing his mouth over hers. She didn’t flinch, didn’t jerk away. She just stood there, staring at him, and her lips parted in unconscious invitation.

  He was about to kiss her again when Phil strode into the kitchen, oblivious to the tension between the two of them. “What’s going on here?” he demanded. “A tug of war? I’ll get you a drink if you want one, Elizabeth.”

  The glass of whiskey smashed to the floor at their feet as both of them jumped back, suddenly guilty. “Damn,” Sam said, looking around for something to wipe up the mess. “Have you always had this much trouble holding on your drinks?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Elizabeth said from her safe position on the far side of the kitchen, well out of his reach. “I’ll clean it up after you’ve gone.”

  “I’m not going,” Sam said, surprising even himself. Elizabeth turned a stricken face toward Phil, but for once he was oblivious to her desperate need. He was nodding. “That’s probably a good idea. I don’t like the idea of her being out here all alone, not with a maniac on the loose.”

  “If it is a maniac,” Sam muttered.

  “Besides, I trust your judgment. You always had a sixth sense about these things. I’d go with your instincts faster than I would with hard facts anytime. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were a psychic.” He laughed at his own joke.

  Sam could feel the curiosity in Elizabeth’s eyes, and he cursed Phil’s voluble tongue. “Sure, Phil,” he drawled. “I do tarot readings on the side, too.”

  “There’s really no need for you to stay,” Elizabeth said hurriedly. “I’m going straight to bed. I’ll lock all the doors and windows.”

  “Locked doors didn’t keep Mary Nelson safe,” Phil reminded her. “They didn’t keep Sam out last night.”

  “I’m not in any danger. Believe me, I’d know.”

  “Would you?” Sam countered.

  She leaned back against the wall and shut her eyes, and he could see pale mauve shadows surrounding them. She looked white and thin and frail, and he had the sudden, completely irrational urge to take her in his arms. That wasn’t what he wanted in life. A woman to take care of. He didn’t want any sort of woman at all, at least not on any permanent basis, and Elizabeth Hardy was a permanent sort of person.

  “I don’t know,” she said after a moment, her voice weak. “At this point I’m so tired I don’t know anything.”

  “Then go to bed,” Phil said, putting one burly arm around her and pushing her toward the living room, herding her past Sam’s tense body. “I’ll go out for pizza, we’ll finish your Scotch and Sam can bed down on the sofa again. I’ll be back tomorrow before you even wake up.”

  “I don’t . . .” she began to protest, but Sam cut her off, coolly, efficiently.

  “You needn’t worry I’m going to jump your bones, Elizabeth,” he said. “I can control my raging animal lusts if you can control yours.”

  She ignored him, as he deserved to be ignored, he thought, and headed toward her bedroom.

  “What the hell’s your problem, man?” Phil demanded. “Can’t you get off her case for a few hours? She’s just trying to help, and you’re treating her like a criminal. This isn’t like you. You never used to be so vindictive. So downright cruel.”

  “You’re really that certain she’s bona fide? That she’s not a mole planted here two years ago, waiting for her mission to go into effect?”

  “I learned long ago never to be certain of anything,” Phil said flatly. “But I trust her. As much as I can trust anyone.”

  “That’s not good enough for me, and you know it. Trust the wrong person and you’ll end up with a knife in your throat.”

  “Like Amy Lee.”

  “Like Amy Lee,” he agreed, his voice brutal.

  “Just lay off Elizabeth, will you? You don’t have to believe her, but for God’s sake stop baiting her. It’s giving me an ulcer.”

  Sam laughed. “In deference to your stomach, then,” he agreed. “Maybe you’d better give up pizza and Scotch.”

  “I’d rather give up listening to you two bicker. Behave yourself, Oliver. Or I might have to teach you some manners.”

  “You and who else? No anchovies on the pizza.”

  “Yes, sir, Colonel Oliver. Anything else?”

  “Don’t buy any more Scotch. I think I’d better not let my brain get fuzzy.”

  Phil’s round face grew deadly serious. “You really think there’s a problem here? Danger? Why?”

  Sam hesitated for a moment, t
hen gave the easiest answer. “Instinct Phil. I can feel it in my bones, and my bones don’t let me down.”

  “And you call Elizabeth ridiculous,” Phil tried to scoff, but the humor had gone from his eyes. “Do you want me to call in some help?”

  “You think I can’t handle anything that comes up?”

  “Pardon me. I forgot you were superagent,” Phil drawled. “I’ll be back in an hour. Keep away from Elizabeth, willya? She needs a break.”

  “Sure thing. No anchovies.”

  “On your half,” Phil agreed.

  ELIZABETH SNUGGLED down under the electric blanket, closing her eyes in exhaustion. She could hear him moving around in her living room, hear the muffled sound of his voice which ether meant he was using his phone or talking to himself. She did it know option was worse. He was probably checking up on her again, she thought muzzily. He wouldn’t find out anything interesting. To all observers she’d lived an ordinary enough life, with family, friends, even a fiancé.

  She shivered, huddling down further in the bed. Her family was dead now, starting with her parents when she was only seven, her rigid aunt and uncle a few years later, and dear old Granny Mellon, the oldest, and the last to go. Her friends had scattered, and no one even knew where she’d gone after Alan died. She’d disappeared, unable to accept their sympathy, their offers of help, their curiosity. Unable to accept the fact that Alan had died, and she could have stopped it from happening.

  It wouldn’t happen again. She wouldn’t care for someone so much that it clouded her visions, made her distrust the twisted talent that had been thrust upon her, unasked. As soon as this current mess was cleared up, as soon as Sam Oliver left and went back to Washington, she’d pull her defenses back around her and not let anyone near again. In the meantime she’d survive the newly awakened awareness by ignoring it. And she would hope they found Mary Nelson, or the answer to her disappearance, soon.

  Before Sam Oliver kissed her again. Before she made the mistake of kissing him back.

  Chapter 5

  ELIZABETH HARDY’S house was too damn small, Sam decided at three forty-five in the morning. Her couch was too short for anyone of reasonable height, which included his own six feet three inches; her walls were too thin, making him uncomfortably aware of her soft, even breathing, of the nightmares that came and went, leaving her still sound asleep. And she only had one bathroom.

  He’d rather share a bed with a woman than a bathroom, he decided, for want of something better to think about at that hour of the morning. Beds were to be expected. But sharing the same sink, the same bathtub, hell, even the same soap, made him feel uneasy. Intimate. And he wasn’t about to get intimate with anyone, particularly a lost soul like Elizabeth Hardy.

  He was crazy to be here. Phil had a very comfortable guest room, now that his family had left him, complete with queen-size bed, flannel sheets and all the Johnny Walker he could allow himself. He would even have his own bathroom, although it had been decorated in shades of pink by Phil’s teenage daughters. There was absolutely no reason to think Elizabeth would be in any danger. If she disappeared, if her body turned up, slashed and brutalized the way everybody but Mary Nelson’s had, it would be a coincidence that would send alarm bells ringing in every self-respecting cop’s head in the Rockies. It would be a stupid blunder, and the people he suspected he was up against were neither stupid nor prone to making mistakes.

  Therefore, Elizabeth was safe. Therefore, there was no need for him to be thrashing about on a short sofa, thinking about someone he couldn’t have and didn’t want. He shouldn’t be worried that she had gone to bed without eating when she was far too skinny already. Tomorrow morning he’d force-feed her if he had to. If he was going to believe in her gifts, and he supposed that right now he was, then she’d need to take better care of herself. She wouldn’t be able to find a murder scene if she fainted from hunger.

  Phil was right. The bickering was getting them nowhere. The problem was, if he didn’t fight with her he might soften. And that was something he didn’t dare do. He was a tough man, a hard man, without a sentimental bone in his body. He wasn’t about to get suckered by a pair of lost brown eyes and a vulnerable, sweet mouth.

  An early start the next morning, and the hell with whether he’d slept or not. He’d feed Ms. Hardy, get her out on the road, and they wouldn’t stop until they found that mysterious cabin with the bloody shoe. He’d almost memorized the sound of her soft, eerie voice on the tape as she went through her hocus-pocus. If anything could convince him, it was that tape.

  Sleep, he ordered himself. You won’t get anything accomplished if you don’t get at least a couple of hours’ sleep. And, like a good career soldier, he promptly obeyed his own order, shutting out the thought of Elizabeth Hardy sound asleep in the other room.

  BY THREE-THIRTY the next day Elizabeth Hardy was ready to cry. She knew she wouldn’t actually do it—she hadn’t cried in more than two years. Not since she’d stood on the banks of the rain-swollen Potomac and watched them bring Alan’s body to the shore. She’d seen him drown. Seen him struggle in the chilly, bone-numbing depths, calling out for help. She’d seen it days before it had happened, and she’d shut it away, refusing to face it, just as she’d been refusing to face any of her nightmare visions for the past two years. She’d learned that day that hiding from something didn’t keep you safe. And she would go to her grave knowing that if she’d been brave enough to face it, to tell the man she loved, the man she was going to marry, that she’d seen his death, then maybe he wouldn’t have kept jogging along the river path, maybe he wouldn’t even have noticed the dog being swept downstream in the heavy current. Maybe he would have had enough sense to go for help, instead of trying to save it himself.

  But Alan had been like that. Never thinking of himself, always thinking of others. From a drowning puppy to a lost waif of a female, he’d taken them all under his wing, protecting, encouraging, loving. And he’d died for it.

  She shook her head, trying to shake loose the memory, trying to shake free some of her damnable talents, but they seemed firmly entrenched and unwilling to cooperate. She usually kept thoughts of Alan to the quiet hours of the early morning, when the nightmares woke her up. How many times had she relived those awful moments, the moments she’d seen only in her dreams? And how many times had she watched her parents burn to death in their old farmhouse, screaming for help, with no one to save them, and no one to believe their five-year-old daughter on a visit to her grandmother’s house in Raleigh?

  Phil and Sam Oliver were over by the edge of the road, talking in quiet voices. She looked at them through the hovering darkness, wishing, just wishing, this was over. But after a day of driving, wandering around the foothills of the majestic Rockies, they hadn’t gotten any closer than they had the evening before, and Mary Nelson’s murder site seemed impossibly out of reach. Sam Oliver seemed planted in Colorado forever.

  A wind had come up, riffling through Elizabeth’s tightly coiled hair, whispering down the collar of her coat. She stood apart from the men, hands in her pockets, listening, waiting, for something, anything. Where are you, Mary Nelson? her mind called. There was no answer but the cold north wind.

  She didn’t notice Phil climbing into the driver’s seat of the big Chrysler. She didn’t notice Sam’s approach, until he blocked her vision, shutting out the dark threat of the mountains behind him. “We may as well go back now,” he said, his voice flat. “Another day wasted.”

  She didn’t move. “Maybe your entire time here is wasted. Maybe I’m just a neurotic spinster with hysterical dreams. Maybe the Colorado Slasher is just an ordinary serial killer, with no connection to terrorists and state secrets. Maybe you should fly back to Washington.”

  “I live in Virginia. Didn’t your hookie-pookie elves tell you that much?” His voice was a mocking drawl, but for once the hard edge was missing. He reached up, and before she could move away he pulled her collar close about her face, buttoning the top button. He wasn
’t wearing gloves, and his fingers were cool against her chilly skin. It made no sense that she felt burned.

  It made no sense that she didn’t pull away from his touch, or that he didn’t release her. They stood there for a moment, both bemused, and the visions she’d been calling came now, unbidden. But they had nothing to do with Mary Nelson.

  They were on a bed. She, Elizabeth Hardy, probably the only twenty-nine-year-old virgin in the United States, was lying on a bed with Sam Oliver. She was wearing a red dress; he was wearing a pair of jeans and nothing more, and his hands were strong and tanned against the bright crimson that spilled around them. The emotions came, hot and immediate, burning in the pit of her stomach, burning between her legs, and she jerked her eyes up to stare, astonished, into his hot, intense gaze. And then she pulled away, just as he released her, and stumbled toward the car, scrambling into the back seat and pulling the door shut behind her.

  “You okay?” Phil questioned from the driver’s seat.

  “Of course.” Her voice was low and hurried as she contemplated the impossible. It was almost as if he’d read her mind, shared her vision, the blinding, unfamiliar surge of passion that had swamped her. But he couldn’t have.

  The door beside her opened, and Sam climbed in. Mistake number five hundred and twenty-seven, she thought. She should have gotten in the passenger seat beside Phil and locked the door. She hadn’t, because she didn’t like the idea of Sam’s eyes boring into the vulnerable nape of her neck. But the weight of his big, strong body beside her, the sound of his breathing, the warmth of his flesh, was much, much worse.

  “So I get to be the chauffeur?” Phil demanded lightly. “I want some company.”

  “Drive,” Sam said, his eyes not moving from Elizabeth’s face. “We have work to do.”

  She could see Phil’s worried expression in the rearview mirror, but there was nothing she could do. Nothing he could do. Sam Oliver wasn’t going to hurt her, and the more fuss anyone made, the worse it would be.

  “Okay,” Phil said, starting the car and pulling onto the road. “But no necking.”