Brain Storm by Cat Gilbert (detective books to read .TXT) 📖

the same time. Mac was spread out next to me, and Jonas had circled around to the south to get a different vantage point. Trinity and Mama D were back at the cabin packing up.

I glanced over at Mac, who had been pretty quiet since I’d announced my plan to kidnap Brown. Actually, they had all been pretty quiet. Killing people with your mind might be a legal gray area, but Trinity was right. There were laws on the books for kidnapping, and the penalties were pretty severe. I was dealing with a lawyer and a cop. Some things were going to be tough for them to agree to.

“You know there’s a good chance he might already be dead if what you felt last night was any indication,” Mac whispered to me now, keeping his eyes trained on the compound below. “Or we could be wrong, and Hughes isn’t the guy. Or what if he is the guy and he doesn’t lead us to Brown? Have you thought of that?”

I had to strain to hear him and wished I hadn’t. He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. A lot could go wrong, and probably would.

“If you have a better plan I’d love to hear it,” I hissed back, his last words echoing down my spine in a series of shivers that had nothing to do with the cold. He blew out a long breath in frustration, which I took as a ‘no’, and I pulled the binoculars back up, training them on the main lodge.

There were a number of rooms on the second floor of the main building with lights on. According to Mac, these were the client rooms, with the Handlers in the East wing and the Trainers having quarters on the right. A smattering of lights in the lodge flicked on and off verifying there were people inside, and they were moving about freely. I had a good view of a large room on the main floor where a card game was in progress, people laughing and drinking.

Relief surged through me. I’d been afraid that Hughes, or whoever he was working for, had taken over the facility and was holding the Clients inside. My, how the mind runs amok when you’re bordering on the edge of insanity.

We’d been near the airport in Denver when I’d picked up on what I assumed to be Caleb Brown. It was a logical place to keep him. Whether Hughes was in charge of security or not, there was no way everyone at the Agency was in on it, and he would never be able to keep Brown on site there. Near the airport, he would have his choice of warehouses and storage facilities to keep Brown stashed away in, while he waited to locate me. A private jet, a night departure and he’d be gone with no one the wiser.

But I wasn’t sure. It was all conjecture and no matter what Mac told me, I just wasn’t ready to risk everything on my ‘gut’ feeling. It was too soon for me to trust it completely.

Apparently, it was business as usual at the Agency, at least from what we could tell. Mac grunted and gestured toward the outbuilding that Hughes had gone into earlier and I swung my glasses around just in time to see a black Hummer roll to a stop in front of it. The door opened, and Hughes climbed out of the driver’s side, tossing the keys to the man who had come out to meet him. He’d been somewhere, and I was willing to bet he’d been with Brown.

“Can you make out the plate?” I asked as the Hummer pulled away, keeping my glasses trained on Hughes.

“No. Wrong angle.”

We watched as two men came out of the building and stopped to talk to Hughes. Suddenly, he turned, and seemed to look right at me. I froze, fighting the instinct to run. I knew he couldn’t see us at that distance, but something had spooked him. Had he felt us? Did he have some abilities?

The thought had my insides churning even as I tried to clear my mind. I had been able to pick up on intense emotion. What if the same was true of Hughes?

“Don’t think,” I ordered Mac, barely moving my lips. “Don’t give him anything to focus on.”

I willed myself not to panic and fought to bring the memory of the river, bright in the moonlight, to mind, letting the peaceful setting roll through me. Taking deep, slow breaths, I met Hughes’ eyes through the glasses and watched until he finally shook his head and turned away.

I dropped my glasses and slumped to the ground in relief as my muscles relaxed from their cramped state.

I heard the disgusted grunt from the bushes next to me, and I didn’t even bother to respond. I was too busy kicking myself. Why hadn’t this occurred to me before? If the bad guys, whoever they might be, were collecting people with abilities, it only made sense that they had recruited some of them into their own ranks. There was no hard and fast rule that said people with special psychic abilities had to use their talents for good instead of evil. How could I be so naive? So stupid to not even think that was a possibility? Thank heavens we knew now, before things had gone any further. The game had just changed, and if the opposition didn’t have the upper hand before, they sure did now.

I was so absorbed in kicking myself, I nearly jumped out of my skin when Mac tapped my shoulder and motioned for us to pull back.

“We’re about to have company,” Mac whispered as we stowed the binoculars back in the packs. “Those two guys Hughes was talking to just took off in a jeep.”

“You think they know we’re up here?” I checked my watch. We had agreed to meet Jonas back at a clearing a little further down the mountain, and we were running ahead of time.

“No. I think he got spooked and sent them to check it out. They aren’t in a hurry, but we need to move.” He checked his stride when he saw my hesitation. “Don’t worry. He saw what we saw. He’s on the move too. I promise.”

We kept low as we wound down the backside of the mountain. We were about halfway to the clearing when Jonas slid in through the woods from our left, startling Mac.

“Good way to get shot,” Mac hissed at him. “Where’d you learn to move like that?”

“Obviously, you’ve never hunted razorbacks,” Jonas whispered back, obviously amused. “We need to cut south to head down. Those two will likely come up the same path we did.”

I heard Mac’s grunted response, as he motioned Jonas to take the lead and I cringed at the thought of the descent we had in front of us. I would have never referred to the six-inch wide animal trail we had followed up in the dark of night as a ‘path’. I could barely imagine how difficult going down without even that small benefit would be.

As we scrambled down over rocks and wound our way through the trees, my respect for Jonas ratcheted up a notch or two. It was one thing hunting the enemy through the forests and swamps. Quite another hunting a wild boar with huge tusks that could smell you coming a mile away and rip you to pieces with a toss of its head. I even knew some hunters that were putting flak jackets on their dogs to try to protect them during the hunt. Jonas moved us down the mountain at a rapid pace, as quiet and sure-footed as a mountain goat.

We were almost down to the road when he motioned us to stop. I froze in my tracks, eyes searching the forest ahead for any indication of what Jonas had seen or heard. I got nothing. Obviously, I had never hunted pig.

“Feel anything?” Mac’s voice was barely a whisper on the breeze as he moved in next to me. I didn’t, but I wasn’t sure we should be relying on my so called “feelings”. I was out of my element and personally, I was way more confident in Jonas’ talents. I watched his head slowly turn as he tracked whatever it was he was hearing, waiting for it to move away. Finally, his shoulders relaxed, and he motioned us forward again.

Ten minutes later we were at the car. Mac had backed the car off the road, into the cover of the trees when we’d arrived, not wanting the local police to come across it. Apparently, it had been hidden well enough because I could see the clear outline of the black jeep under the moonlight, sitting on the shoulder across the road, a mere 50 yards away. Mac threw the packs into the trunk, and I folded into the back seat of the Camaro, shivering both from the cold and near miss of getting caught.

It was going on 11:00 p.m. by the time we got back to the cabin. Mac and Jonas had exchanged looks, but kept quiet on the way back, picking up on my mood.

“What happened?” Trinity asked, eyeing me as I threw my pack into a corner of the room.

“Hughes knew she was there,” Jonas answered for me, causing Trinity to gasp, her eyes as wide as I’d ever seen them. “He looked right at her.”

“Well, to be totally accurate, we don’t know that he knew it was her,” Mac corrected him, “but he did suspect something was up and he sent some people to check. You can be sure he’ll send them back up in the morning to see if they can find anything during the light of day.”

He’d looked at me as he’d added the last part, making sure I got the message. Hughes would find something to indicate there’d been someone there. Whether it was crushed grass or a broken branch, he’d know someone had been lying in the bushes on the mountaintop watching the agency.

“Hold on a minute. How did he know you were there?” Trinity asked as she turned to help Mama D, who had appeared almost magically with a coffee pot in one hand and five mugs in the other. I met Mac’s eyes and motioned for him to take it.

“Hughes may have just gotten spooked. Or he could be an empath.” At her blank look, he went on. “Someone who can