God, what an idiot she was to care.
Dr. Jensen said good night and closed the bedroom door behind her, leaving Delaney alone in the master suite of the FBI safe house. Phil had arranged for her to stay under a doctor’s supervision until they figured out if she had, indeed, been drugged. In addition to Dr. Jensen, there were two highly trained guards inside with her and another two outside in case Tighe’s brother, or others in his organization, came after her.
Until they understood what she’d stumbled into, they weren’t taking any chances.
The only one she knew wouldn’t come for her was Tighe himself.
She pressed the heel of her hand tight against her chest, trying to ease the awful ache. The tears she’d held at bay all day finally got the better of her, and she sank onto the bed, letting them go. Her tears turned to sobs as she cried, grieving for a man she’d never understood and barely even known. She couldn’t regret her own actions, because she’d done what she had to do, but she could…and did…regret the outcome. She hated that Tighe had been so involved in illegal activities that he’d sacrificed his life rather than be taken in for questioning.
Lying back, tears rolling, she ached with loss. In some inexplicable way, they’d connected. She’d sensed a goodness in him, seen it in the man who’d been so intent on rescuing a little girl, he’d stumbled into the FBI’s trap. And he’d understood her, maybe better than she understood herself. He’d claimed she sought the killers out of revenge. And she did. She absolutely did. But it was more than that, she could see that now. Somewhere in the back of her head was a belief held from childhood that if she could just catch the man who’d killed her mom, she could make it all right again. She could get rid of the ache she’d lived with all these years once and for all.
But that ache was so much more than righteous retribution. It was loss and grief. Betrayal.
Loneliness.
Once the tears started, tears she hadn’t shed in years, she couldn’t stop them. She cried for Tighe, and for the mother she still missed, and for the children whose own mothers had been stolen from them by a man Delaney couldn’t catch. But mostly she cried for herself, for the loneliness that pressed in harder every day. A loneliness she hadn’t even known she felt until a handsome, mercurial, strangely gentle man made it disappear.
A man who would never touch her again.
She didn’t realize she’d fallen asleep until pain tore through her head with the force of a sledgehammer, slamming her awake with a breath-stealing gasp. She needed to call for Dr. Jensen. But before she could utter a sound, the darkness rushed up to envelop her. As the dark fog of agony stole her away, a single name screamed through her mind.
Tighe!
As Tighe stood in the war room, Delaney’s cry tore through his head. He froze.
“Stripes! What’s happening? Another vision?”
“Yes.” He grabbed for the wall as blackness stole his sight. He saw Delaney lying on a bed, still and silent, her cheeks streaked with tears. His heart clenched, that warmth in his mind that connected with her throbbed with pain. Terrible pain.
Tighe! He felt the fog circling her, swirls of black threatening her.
He reached out to her, but the suffocating darkness had her in its grasp, pulling her down.
Tighe!
Her voice was smaller, more distant. And filled with such fear. Such pain.
Delaney.
He reached for her through his mind, but she slipped through his grasp, disappearing into the dark, perilous fog.
And then she was gone.
“Tighe?” Kara’s voice broke through the fog.
The vision dissipated. He shook his head, clearing his sight as he blinked, trying to understand what he’d just seen, even as desperation to find her leaped inside him, rising side by side with a terror not his own.
Delaney’s.
What had happened? Someone was hurting her. Or some thing.
He stilled. It had almost felt as if the vision itself had turned on her.
Goddess, yes, that was exactly what had happened. The visions had been growing too much for her human mind. Too strong. She’d finally broken beneath the weight of this one and fallen into that dark for good.
Deep in his heart he feared she wouldn’t break free of it on her own.
He started for the door.
“What happened?” Lyon demanded.
“Delaney needs me. I’ve got to find her.” How? She wouldn’t have gone home. He was certain of that. He lunged from the room and strode down the hall toward the front door.
He heard her calling to him. Felt the pull of her through that accidental connection he’d formed with her when he’d tried to cloud her mind, and prayed it would be enough to follow.
Behind him, he heard Lyon barking orders. “Hawke, Kougar, and Jag, go with him. Take two different sedans this time, in case the humans took note of the first ones.”
Lyon’s voice receded as Tighe ran out the door. What if he couldn’t find her? What if he did, and he couldn’t reach her mind?
I have to save her.
Desperation and determination wove and twined inside him, fueled and fired by a rage that was all too real. The clone already threatened Tighe’s own life. He would not let him and these evil visions destroy Delaney, too.
If they hadn’t already.
As Tighe ran for the nearest car, he feared it might be too late. Even if he managed to find her, would there be anything left of her mind to save?
Chapter Thirteen
Darkness swallowed her, swallowed everything. Sight, sound, even her sense of touch. Delaney felt nothing but the distant echoes of pain.
She had a sense that she was standing. Perhaps even walking. But where? With her hand, she reached out and touched nothing. She lifted her hand to her head, and it wasn’t there.
Panic welled up, and she shoved it down, forcing logic into the void. Not real. This isn’t real.
Her body was still lying on the bed where Dr. Jensen had left her. It was only her mind that had taken off, swept away by a vision she hadn’t seen, into a darkness she didn’t know how to escape.
The last time she’d glimpsed this darkness, Tighe had snatched her back before it could suck her in. But Tighe was dead.
Grief mixed with the panic that welled again, clawing at her mind. She struggled to escape, to find her way out of the dark, but it was as if she were trying to run with her feet set in concrete.
Lost. So lost.
Tears fell through the silent darkness as loneliness grew to gigantic proportions, a suffocating cold stamping out every thought.
The terror reared up, swallowing her whole as a single word screamed through her head again, shattering the choking silence.
Tighe!
“Turn right.”“You sure?” Hawke asked.
Tighe growled, his fingernails clenched into the palms of his hands. “Do it!”
The car turned onto a residential street in an upscale Arlington neighborhood.
“Expensive digs for an FBI agent,” Jag drawled.
“The house isn’t hers,” Tighe said. “Ten bucks says it’s acting as an FBI safe house. She’s being guarded.”
“We’ll shift and knock them out,” Hawke said. “Jag, you stay with the car.”
Jag muttered something under his breath. Tighe didn’t need to hear it to know the warrior was railing against the fates for not giving him the ability to keep his clothes on when he shifted.
“Which house?” Hawke asked.
“I’ll tell you when I know.” Tighe’s sense of Delaney had been growing steadily since they left Feral House, drawing him to her with a solid pull. His heart pounded as her terror weaved through his brain. Over and over, he heard her calling for him with a desperation, a hopelessness, that tore at his battered soul. She thought he was dead, yet knew he was her only hope.
She thought she was well and truly trapped.
“Here!” Tighe wasn’t certain how he knew she was in the single upstairs bedroom with the light still on, but he knew.
Hawke continued to drive by the house, the night’s darkness hiding the features of the men inside the car. They’d left the second sedan two streets over. If the situation went south, they’d split up and meet again elsewhere.
When they’d turned the next corner, Hawke parked along the side of the road.
“Shift,” Tighe ordered, then called to the animal who lived inside him, pushing past the tiger, straight to the smaller form of house cat. As a younger Feral, he’d had to go first to his full tiger form before he could downsize. A serious handicap he’d quickly learned to overcome.
Jag, remaining in human form, opened the car door for him, and he leaped out onto the grass, Kougar behind him, Hawke soaring into the air.
As Tighe and Kougar ran toward the house on four feet, Hawke reported back.
Two guards patrolling the grounds outside—one in back, one watching the front from the bushes in the right front corner of the house. The fence is high and looks to be solid. I’ll get the one in back.
Tighe replied. I’ll cloud the mind of the one in front and get him to open the door. Kougar and I’ll go in. Wings, you keep watch.
Will do.
Tighe ran through the yard, then slipped between the legs of the watching guard.
“Beat it.” The man picked him up with his foot and tossed him half a dozen yards.
Damned human. Tighe came around behind him noisily, ensuring that the guard knew the movement behind him was a cat. Then he shifted and grabbed the man’s neck before he knew what was happening. The moment the guard hit the ground, Tighe took control of his thoughts.
“You need to use the bathroom. When I tell you to, go into the house. Two cats will try to come in with you. You must let them in. Don’t allow anyone to stop them. Once inside the house, you’ll go into the bathroom and close the door, pull down your pants, then curl up on the floor and go to sleep.”
The bastard’s career would be over when they caught him, literally, with his pants down. But he deserved it for kicking a cat.
Tighe? Hawke’s voice broke into his thoughts. My guard’s out. I’m flying up to the roof to keep watch.
Good. Meet me beside the front porch, Kougar. We’re going in.
“Wake, human, and do as I told you.” As the guard rose to his feet, Tighe changed back into his cat form and raced for the front door.
The guard pulled out his phone. “I’ve got to take a crap. Change places with me.”
Tighe trotted beside the human, leaping onto the front porch as the guard knocked on the door with a quick, light rhythm. As planned, the door opened and the two cats slipped inside.
“Hey!” The inside guard tried to stop their entry, but the one under Tighe’s control blocked the swing of his foot.
“Leave them alone. They’re not bothering anything.”
Get control of things down here, Tighe told Kougar. I’ve got to find Delaney.
The Feral didn’t answer, but Tighe didn’t expect him to. He dashed for the stairs and the source of the terror clawing at his brain. The closer he got to her, the stronger the darkness swirled at the edges of his consciousness. And the stronger he felt her desperation. She was fighting her fate, as was her nature, but without help she was lost in there. And she knew it.
Her door was closed, which meant he was going to have to shift to reach her. The prudent thing to do was search out the rest of the upstairs first, to make sure he wasn’t surprised again. But his need to reach her was too strong.
Tighe shifted in the empty hallway, but as he reached for the doorknob, he heard the click of a gun.
“Freeze! Hands in the air.” A small, round woman with graying hair appeared at the other end of the hall, aiming a gun at his head. “Intruder!” she shouted.
Shit. This is so not happening. He needed to get to Delaney and he needed to reach her now.
He heard a short scuffle on the lower floor, then silence as a cat ran up the stairs. Kougar.
The woman was already talking into a phone. “It’s him.” She paused. “Agreed.”
Tighe lifted his hands into the air, holding perfectly still. He could take another bullet if he had to, but he’d just as soon not. Not when Delaney needed him.
“I thought they’d shot you,” the woman said conversationally.
Tighe didn’t bother to answer as Kougar scooted past her, then shifted. The woman seemed to sense the change, but she was too slow turning around. Kougar jammed his thumb into the hollow at the base of her ear, stripping her gun from her hand as she went down.
Tighe grabbed for the door that separated him from Delaney. He found her exactly as he’d seen her in his vision, still and silent, her cheeks stained with tears.
“Delaney.” He fell onto the bed beside her and reached for her hand. Like ice. “D, I’m coming for you. I’m not going to leave you in there. But you have to trust me this time. Trust me.”
Raw terror pressed in around her, squeezing her mind until Delaney thought her brain would crumble beneath the weight. Her existence had narrowed down to this darkness, this place void of everything she’d ever known. This miserable pit of echoing pain and suffocating fear.
How long could she stay sane like this? Maybe it was better if she didn’t. Better to lose herself somewhere else. Anywhere else.
Delaney.
A voice whispered from the darkness. A deep voice she’d longed to hear so badly she’d started to create it for herself. Maybe that insanity would come quicker than she’d thought.
Delaney.
Tighe’s voice. But Tighe was dead.
Trust me.
How many times had he asked her to do that? But she hadn’t. Not fully. She couldn’t. Not when she knew he was one of the bad guys.
Tighe?