Chapter 32
After Griff ended the morning meeting,
which had lasted about forty-five minutes, Maleah had taken a walk
around the property, something she often did to clear her head.
Derek had insisted on going with her, and after Griff told her that
no one left the house alone, she reluctantly agreed to let Derek
tag along. Much to her surprise, he had not insisted on
conversation, which was the last thing she had wanted or needed.
What she had needed was time alone, but apparently unless she
secluded herself in her room, that wasn’t an option anytime in the
near future. And being a girl who loved the outdoors, the thought
of spending the rest of the day cooped up inside would have made
her agree to having Genghis Khan as her companion.
Her life had suddenly, in the past
couple of weeks, become extremely complicated. For most of her
adult life, she had been able to enjoy a certain amount of peace
and privacy in her personal life, which counter-balanced her
exciting and often dangerous job as a Powell agent. But both her
personal life and professional life were at risk. Until the Copycat
Carver was caught, no Powell agent or family member was completely
safe. It wasn’t enough that she had to worry about her own life,
but she lived in fear for her family. Then to make the situation
worse, teaming up with Derek again had created an unexpected
problem, one she wasn’t sure how to handle. Somehow, someway, the
impossible had happened.
She had fallen in love with Derek
Lawrence.
Derek Lawrence, the rich, spoiled,
pampered, womanizing playboy she had disliked from the moment they
met.
But that was just it—the real Derek was
a different man entirely. Oh, he was rich, a millionaire many times
over, and he did have a reputation with the ladies that he couldn’t
deny. But he was not spoiled or pampered and his playboy image had
been greatly exaggerated, probably by Derek himself.
He had allowed her to see a side of him
that she suspected not many even knew existed. Few people would
believe that the debonair, sophisticated Southern charmer’s
youthful past included a nefarious secret.
By the end of her long walk—with
Derek—she had come to the conclusion that she could handle only one
major problem at a time. She’d just have to put her feelings for
Derek on the back burner. Being in love was a foreign concept to
her. She had spent her entire life trying to avoid repeating the
mistake she had made with Noah—becoming involved in a committed
relationship that could lead to marriage.
After lunch, which she and Derek had
shared with Nic, Griff, Sanders, and Barbara Jean, she had returned
to the Powell Agency office there at Griffin’s Rest. With the bulk
of the agency’s employees working day and night on the Copycat
Carver case and with reports pouring in from various legal and
illegal contacts the world over, the staff at their Knoxville
headquarters was suffering from information overload. Add to that
the fact that only a handful of agents were privy to the most
sensitive information and that meant piles of reports were waiting
to be read, studied, and digested. Everyone except Barbara Jean had
worked all afternoon and until well past seven. They had taken a
long overdue break only when Barbara Jean had summoned all of them
to the dining room for dinner. The group had eaten in relative
silence, their conversation limited to their compliments to the
chef, Barbara Jean, on the delicious meal. She had smiled, said
thank you, and had been gracious enough not to point out that no
one had eaten very much. Afterward, Sanders had helped with cleanup
and then he and Barbara Jean had bid everyone goodnight shortly
after nine o’clock. Nic finally persuaded Griff to call it a night
around 10:00 P.M., and Maleah had sensed
from the way they’d been looking at each other, they wouldn’t be
going to sleep anytime soon.
Alone in the living room with Derek,
she shifted the file folders in her lap into a neat pile and laid
them aside on the sofa cushion beside her. She glanced at Derek,
who seemed absorbed in a crossword puzzle he had ripped out of
today’s copy of the Knoxville News Sentinel.
As if he had sensed her staring at him, he glanced up from the
newspaper and smiled at her.
“Alone at last,” he said
jokingly.
“So it would seem.” She returned his
smile.
“I could fix us a drink,” he suggested.
“Or we could raid the kitchen for another piece of BJ’s pecan
pie.”
“I shouldn’t have eaten the first
piece.” Maleah patted her hips. “I think they’re an inch wider
already.”
Derek rose to his feet, dropped the
folded newspaper in the chair, and came straight toward her. Before
she realized his intention, he leaned over her and placed his open
palms on either side of her hips.
“They’re wider by a quarter of an inch
at most,” he told her, barely managing not to laugh.
All the while faking a frown, she
swatted at his hands until he lifted them off the cushions and away
from her hips. He dropped down on the sofa beside her and rested
his head on the back cushion.
“You’re tired, aren’t you?” she
said.
He glanced at her. “Yeah. You are, too.
It’s been a long day.”
“We should probably go upstairs and try
to get some sleep,” Maleah said. “But I swear I’m so wired I can’t
imagine being able to sleep right now.”
“I know what you mean. It’s been a
pretty intense day, starting with this morning’s top secret
meeting. Griff’s wound so tight, he’s on the verge of snapping. His
drinking binge last night didn’t solve anything for him and it sure
didn’t take the edge off.”
“I’m worried about Nic. I’ve never seen
her so scared. I honestly think she’s afraid she’s going to lose
Griff, that somehow their marriage is going to
implode.”
“When a husband and wife keep secrets
from each other, it puts a major strain on their
marriage.”
“I agree,” Maleah said. “And the not
knowing causes as much damage, if not more, than sharing the secret
would. In theory, of course. With what’s happening now, a killer
targeting the Powell Agency, finding and stopping the killer has to
take priority over everything else in Nic and Griff’s
life.”
Derek pivoted his head so that he faced
her. “In your life and mine, too.”
She nodded. “Finding Anthony Linden has
to be our top priority.”
“You know, I think I have Anthony
Linden figured out, at least as much as I can with the info I have
and by gauging his personality by other professional killers I’ve
studied. They all have certain characteristics in common. You’d be
surprised at how much a hired assassin has in common with a Special
Forces soldier, although society sees one as immoral and the other
as a hero.”
“Despite any similarities, there is a
difference though, isn’t there?”
“For some, yes,” Derek said. “The fine
line that separates the two—villain and hero—is the reason he
kills. That and the emotion or lack of emotion involved. Some men
enjoy killing. Others hate it, even after it becomes easy to
kill.”
“The way it did for you?”
“Yeah, the way it did for me.” He
reached out and twined a tendril of her hair around his finger.
“Did I ever tell you that I like blonds?”
“You like brunettes and redheads,
too.”
“You’re right, I do, but I’m partial to
one particular blond.”
She allowed him to pull her toward him
by gently tugging on her hair. When they were face to face, only a
few inches separating them, she asked, “Is she anyone I know, this
particular blond?”
“All you have to do is look in a
mirror.”
Her breath caught in her
throat.
“Do you have any idea how much I want
to kiss you?” he asked.
“Yes.” She knew because she wanted that
kiss every bit as much as he did. Maybe more. After all, she was in
love with him, but she had no reason to believe that he felt the
same way. For Derek, this was probably a flirtation that he hoped
would lead to sex.
Derek released her hair, leaned forward
enough so that their mouths touched, and whispered against her
lips, “I swear to God, I won’t ever hurt you. I’d cut off my right
arm first.”
Excitement and anticipation ignited
inside her and spread through her like a wildfire when he kissed
her. Aggressive yet gentle, he took her mouth, but otherwise didn’t
touch her. She returned the kiss eagerly, wanting him and needing
so much more.
The urge to touch him became
overwhelming. She lifted her arms and draped them around his neck
as she deepened the kiss. Taking his cue from her, Derek delved his
tongue inside her mouth as he eased his hands beneath her and
lifted her up and onto his lap. With their mouths fused together
and their bodies straining for closer contact, she clung to him. He
roamed his hands over her back and hips while she forked her
fingers through the long, thick hair at the nape of his
neck.
When they finally came up for air, both
breathing hard, their gazes connecting, Derek smiled and then
glanced at her throat and the expanse of flesh exposed by the
V-shaped neckline of her blouse.
“We have on too many clothes for what I
have in mind,” he told her.
She nodded. “Your room or
mine?”
He chuckled. “Whichever is the
closest.”
“Mine,” she said.
He stood, taking her up with him, still
holding her in his arms.
“We’ll get there faster if you put me
down and let me walk.”
He eased her slowly to her feet, her
body sliding along his, arousing them both even more. She grabbed
his hand and yanked him along with her as she raced out of the
living room, down the hall and up the stairs.
Shiloh Whitman often wondered why Dr.
Meng had accepted her as a student and wondered if the others saw
her as a wannabe psychic. After all, how valuable would she ever be
as anything other than a sideshow amusement? She didn’t possess the
gift of clairvoyance or channeling or precognition or psychometry
or telepathy. All she had was the ability to sense psychic energy
and entities and to see the aura around a person.
When she was a child, her siblings and
cousins had laughed at her when she told them they had different
colored lights shining around them. And her parents had scolded
her, telling her to stop lying or people would think she was crazy.
She had always been a misfit, the one thing she did have in common
with the others, especially with Meredith. A sympathetic friend in
college had told her she should find someone to help her figure out
what was wrong with her. And oddly enough less than a year later,
Dr. Meng actually found her, quite by accident, in of all places a
bookstore in New York City.
Looking back now, she realized that if
Dr. Meng hadn’t taken her back to London with her, she wouldn’t
have survived. She had been on the verge of suicide, her life
meaningless.
Shiloh had never been happy and never
expected to be. There was an emptiness inside her that couldn’t be
filled. But she lived a productive life by keeping busy, studying,
practicing, and assisting Dr. Meng in any way
possible.
Lately, she had begun to feel an
inexplicable restlessness and deliberately stayed away from the
other students, not wanting anyone to probe inside her
mind.
Tonight the peculiar restlessness had
grown worse, so much so that she felt as if she were on the verge
of climbing the walls in her room. Feeling trapped, smothered by
the confinement, she knew she had to find a way to go outside, to
breathe the night air, to look up at the stars, to escape from that
overpowering sense of imprisonment.
But Dr. Meng had warned them not to go
anywhere outside the sanctuary alone, to go in pairs and always
with one of the guards.
If she slipped out the back way, who
would see her?
What if one of the
others realizes you’ve gone outside alone?
That wouldn’t happen. One of Dr. Meng’s
strictest rules was that none of her students could use their gifts
to invade the privacy of another.
Hurriedly changing from her pajamas and
house slippers into a jogging suit and running shoes, Shiloh
prepared for her escape.
I can’t kill
her.
I won’t do
it.
But he’s given you no
choice.
You must take a life in
order to save a life.
Do what you must do. Do
it quickly. She doesn’t have to suffer. Make it as painless as
possible.
You mustn’t let
yourself hesitate at the last minute. Once she sees your face, once
she can identity you, you will have no choice.
There she is. See her.
She’s all alone, as if she’s waiting for you.
Slipping away had been much easier than
Shiloh had thought it would be. Perhaps because she had been
keeping to herself so much lately, no one really cared where she
was or what she was doing. And although the guards roamed the
grounds day and night, she had been able to avoid them without a
problem. And even the two agents staying at the sanctuary, Ms.
Allen and Mr. Redmond, had no idea she wasn’t sound asleep in her
bed. After all, they assumed that all of Dr. Meng’s protégés would
request permission to leave and then be given an
escort.
She promised herself that she wouldn’t
stay outside for very long, only long enough to clear her head and
relieve the nagging restlessness keeping her on edge. Even with the
bright moonlight, darkness filled the night, and only the security
lights around the sanctuary kept the hovering black shadows at
bay.
As she followed the clear path along
the lake, one used by residents and guests alike for morning and
evening jogs and leisurely walks, she paused occasionally to look
out over the river. A feeling of calm began growing inside her and
ever so gradually the restlessness that had forced her out into the
night subsided, leaving her in peace.
She heard footsteps behind her. Had one
of the guards seen her? Or had one of the others followed
her?
Shiloh turned and stared into the
darkness. “Hello. Is anyone there?”
Silence.
It must have been a nocturnal animal
scurrying through the underbrush or perhaps it had been nothing
more than the wind. She turned around, breathed in the fresh night
air and looked at the moonlight dancing on the water.
Odd how bright the
moonlight is. Shimmering. Intense. And very
white.
Mesmerized by the unnatural radiance of
light, she moved closer to the water’s edge. Fixated on the glow,
she gasped as she realized what she saw was not moonlight, but the
reflection of her own aura. Transcendent. Spiritual.
Non-physical.
A white aura often signified a new
undesignated energy in a person’s aura. Or it was a harbinger
of—
There it was again. The same noise she
had heard earlier. Footsteps directly behind her.
She turned, sighed heavily, and said,
“It’s you. I thought I heard someone. Have you been following
me?”
“Yes.”
Even in the darkness, Shiloh saw the
other person’s aura, heavy swirls of gray and black smoke, dirty,
muddy colors indicating dark thoughts and fear and negative energy.
And in that moment, seconds before her life ended, Shiloh
understood why her aura had been such an intensely bright
white.
A glowing white aura was also a
harbinger of death.