The Protected Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  THE REUNITED

  “A breathless thrill ride that makes one cheer for the protagonists and root for the downfall of the evil villains.”

  —Night Owl Reviews

  “Walker’s return to her FBI psychic unit is a great read, with minor parts played by some of our old friends. The storyline is compelling, the psychic part does not strain credulity, the characters are terrific, and it even looks like there are more stories to come in this series. It doesn’t get much better than this!”

  —RT Book Reviews

  THE DEPARTED

  “[Walker] delivers an outstanding story fraught with sexual tension and a spine-tingling mystery. The Departed will keep readers turning pages faster than they think, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Walker fans will be captivated by this fast-paced story with passionate characters and a suspenseful plot that will leave their emotions bare. A well-crafted combination of paranormal, romance, and suspense, this book has everything.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “An entertaining, romantic, urban-fantasy police procedural.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “Chilling [and] heart-wrenching . . . A richly emotional and wildly imaginative story that grips the reader with genuine, vivacious characters and a sinuous, flowing plot.”

  —Fallen Angel Reviews

  THE MISSING

  “Suspense that can rip your heart open and leave you raw . . . The characters are absolutely fantastic, from the leads to the side characters.”

  —Errant Dreams Reviews

  “Walker pulls it off brilliantly . . . [She] certainly has a future in paranormal and/or romantic suspense.”

  —The Romance Reader

  “Great romantic suspense that grips the audience.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  CHAINS

  “This book is a double page-turner. The story is thrilling, and the sex just makes it better—two great reasons not to put it down until the end!”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Breathtakingly wonderful . . . Smoothly erotic . . . Utterly amazing . . . Will definitely keep your pulse racing!”

  —Errant Dreams Reviews

  “Exciting erotic romantic suspense.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  FRAGILE

  “[A] flawlessly sexy suspense novel . . . Exhilarating.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “An excellently crafted mystery and romance!”

  —Errant Dreams Reviews

  “Suspense, romance, and an ending that I can’t say anything about—because that would be a spoiler . . . I recommend reading this one.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “Intense, sexy . . . Ms. Walker has created another unforgettable . . . fast-paced, edgy tale.”

  —Fallen Angel Reviews

  HUNTER’S FALL

  “Shiloh’s books are sinfully good, wickedly sexy, and wildly imaginative!”

  —Larissa Ione, New York Times bestselling author

  HUNTER’S NEED

  “A perfect ten! . . . [A] riveting tale that I couldn’t put down and wanted to read again as soon as I finished.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  HUNTER’S SALVATION

  “One of the best tales in a series that always achieves high marks . . . An excellent thriller.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  HUNTERS: HEART AND SOUL

  “Some of the best erotic romantic fantasies on the market. Walker’s world is vibrantly alive with this pair.”

  —The Best Reviews

  HUNTING THE HUNTER

  “Action, sex, savvy writing, and characters with larger-than-life personalities that you will not soon forget are where Ms. Walker’s talents lie, and she delivered all that and more.”

  —A Romance Review

  “An exhilarating romantic fantasy filled with suspense and . . . star-crossed love . . . Action-packed.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Fast-paced and very readable . . . Titillating.”

  —The Romance Reader

  “Action-packed, with intriguing characters and a very erotic punch, Hunting the Hunter had me from page one. Thoroughly enjoyable, with a great hero and a story line you can sink your teeth into, this book is a winner.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Another promising voice is joining the paranormal genre by bringing her own take on the ever-evolving vampire myth. Walker has set up the bones of an interesting world and populated it with some intriguing characters.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Titles by Shiloh Walker

  HUNTING THE HUNTER

  HUNTERS: HEART AND SOUL

  HUNTER’S SALVATION

  HUNTER’S NEED

  HUNTER’S FALL

  HUNTER’S RISE

  THROUGH THE VEIL

  VEIL OF SHADOWS

  THE MISSING

  THE DEPARTED

  THE REUNITED

  THE PROTECTED

  FRAGILE

  BROKEN

  WRECKED

  Anthologies

  HOT SPELL

  (with Emma Holly, Lora Leigh, and Meljean Brook)

  PRIVATE PLACES

  (with Robin Schone, Claudia Dain, and Allyson James)

  HOT IN HANDCUFFS

  (with Shayla Black and Sylvia Day)

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA)

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  Copyright © 2013 by Shiloh Walker, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  BERKLEY SENSATION® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA).

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA).

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-60739-8

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Walker, Shiloh.

  The protected / Shiloh Walker.

  pages cm—(Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition.)

  ISBN 978-0-425-26443-0 (pbk.)

  1. Psychic ability—Fiction. 2. Protection—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3623.A35958P76 2013

  813'.6—dc23 2013020745

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition / September 2013

  Cover art by Tony Mauro.

  Cover design by Rita Frangie.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Contents

  PRAISE

  TITLES BY SHILOH WALKER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

>   FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Glossary

  Always to my family . . . my husband, J, and my kids. I love you so much.

  A special thank-you to azteclacy and Ann Aguirre, who helped so much with the Spanish in this book. And to Ilona Andrews for an hour-long chat . . . thanks for listening to me gripe, thanks for the advice about this series . . . thanks for being a friend.

  A special shout out to Julaine for naming Tucker’s kitty . . . hopefully, we’ll get to read more about Tucker and his cat in a later book. Julaine was kind enough to bid on the chance to name a character’s pet in Brenda Novak’s Annual Online Auction for Diabetes Research, benefiting juvenile diabetes.

  Thanks to my readers, always. You’re wonderful and I love you. Also, thanks to my editor and my agent. In my head, I always think that, but for some reason, I never actually put the words out there the way I should . . . thanks so much for what you do for me.

  ONE

  “YOU want me where?”

  Vaughnne MacMeans stared at the man in front of her and decided she really wished she’d taken more time off.

  Granted, she’d already taken three months of personal time. Then two weeks’ medical leave after the case to end all cases went to hell in Orlando, Florida. Maybe she should have made it three weeks. Her head was still so not in a good place after that last job.

  She could handle another week off, she thought. Another week. Two weeks. Three weeks. Three months. Three years.

  Because Taylor Jones just had to be shitting her.

  “Orlando,” he said again.

  “No.” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. She didn’t ever want to see that miserable, forsaken, hellhole of a city again. Just thinking about it was enough to give her nightmares. Thinking about what had happened in that dark, squalid miserable building . . . shit, sometimes she woke still feeling the despair of the women around. She wasn’t even empathic and it had gotten to her.

  Of course, a person didn’t have to be empathic to feel those vibes. That much misery was enough to screw with the head of any psychic, even if it was just to leave that cloying, dark layer of despair. She’d been caught in the middle of it, and even though they’d shut that operation down, it wasn’t enough.

  They’d shut down one slave ring. Just one.

  Who knows how many more were out there?

  “Jones, I don’t know if I can handle going back into that kind of work again,” she said reluctantly. “Not after—”

  “It’s not connected to that. It’s not about Daylin, at all.”

  Pain gripped her heart at the sound of that name. The wounds were still fresh and the pain was just as hot, just as vivid as it had been months ago. Was it ever going to fade?

  Shooting him a narrow look, she took a deep breath and shifted her attention to the wall behind him. “I don’t want to go back there, Taylor,” she said, fighting to keep her voice level. It hurt to even think about it. To think about that place, to think about those women. Most of all, it hurt to think about her sister. The girl she’d failed . . .

  “As I said, it’s not about the last case.”

  She shoved away from her desk and started to pace. An echo of a headache danced in the back of her mind, letting her know that it might not have been a bad idea to take a little more time to recover. Psychics were prone to odd, undetectable injuries sometimes, and she’d wrenched the hell out of something, although it wasn’t anything a doctor could diagnose.

  Overuse of their abilities could definitely do damage, and these headaches were murder.

  Still, she had bills to pay and an empty refrigerator, and sitting at home had been driving her insane.

  SAC—Special Agent in Charge—Taylor Jones leaned back in his seat and pinned her with a direct stare. If one was to try and find paper documentation of their unit, they’d be hard-pressed to do it. A lot of the agents knew vaguely of Jones and his odd team and there were rumors, but if one tried to look up the FBI team of psychics, they weren’t going to have a lot of luck. Technically, they didn’t really exist.

  Vaughnne still wasn’t sure just how Jones managed it, but he did.

  Just then, he was watching her, his blue eyes cool and unreadable, his face expressionless. That blank look didn’t mean anything. He could be madder than hell, he could be amused. Hell, he could have a scorching case of herpes and she wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at his face—she’d seen him facing down drug runners, child rapists, and psychopaths with a taste for human flesh with that exact same expression.

  Inscrutable bastard.

  “It’s got nothing to do with that last case,” he said again. “It’s in Orlando, yes, but it’s an easy job, mostly monitoring. It’s practically nothing more than babysitting. You can handle a babysitting job, Agent MacMeans.”

  Sure she could. The problem was it was in Orlando.

  Clenching her jaw, she stared at him. Babysitting. She wanted to tell him to shove it up his ass.

  “Just who am I supposed to monitor?” she asked.

  “A kid, for the most part. There’s an adult male who lives there. My intel is that the kid has a gift, although I’m not sure what. I need them watched, because there are people after them.”

  Vaughnne ran her tongue across her teeth. “Your intel.” That was vague as hell. “And just who are these two? Good guys? Bad guys?”

  “Well, as I said, one of them is a child. We don’t generally term children as the bad guy. Beyond that?” He smiled. “I’ll give you the info you need once you’re in place.”

  “I still haven’t agreed to go,” she pointed out.

  “Is there a reason why you can’t?” he asked, watching her the way he might study a suspect before he went in to tear them apart in an interrogation.

  Shit.

  She was screwed.

  She could either take the damn assignment. Or resign. He hadn’t said that, and she knew he wouldn’t force that on her, but she also knew she couldn’t avoid one particular area of the country, either. They were spread too thin as it was, and she wasn’t much for playing the chicken shit.

  Either she could work and do her job, or she could quit and let him make room on the team for somebody who could do the job. He danced on a razor’s edge to keep their unit going, anyway.

  But she’d worked too damn hard to get where she was just to walk away.

  And she wasn’t a quitter. Besides, it wasn’t like her particular skill set was in high demand out there, and she rather liked being able to use them to do something worthwhile. Somehow she doubted any local law enforcement agency was likely to welcome a telepath into their midst. Sure. Welcome aboard, and instead of using the police radio, just screech out into our minds like a psycho banshee, MacMeans. Look forward to working with you!

  Since she needed to work to live, she had to suck it up, put on her big-girl panties and deal with this. Moving back to her desk, she sat down and crossed her legs. Absently, she started to swing her foot, one heeled shoe hanging off her toes. She was tempted to take it off and pummel Jones across the side of the head with it.

  Orlando . . . so many nightmares. So many bad dreams. And the bitter knowledge that she hadn’t been able to save the one person who’d always mattered to her.

  “You know avoiding it won’t make it any easier.”

  Jerking her attention back to Jones, she stared at him. “This isn’t supposed to be easy,” she said quietly. “But what in the hell would you know about it?”

  For a second, though, a
s she stared at him, she thought she saw something in the cool depths of his eyes.

  Then he looked down and it was gone.

  “Just tell me about the job, Jones. I need more than just ‘a kid’ and ‘an adult male.’”

  * * *

  GUS Hernandez pulled the battered, beat-up truck into the driveway of the little house he was renting. It was falling apart, and instead of paying five hundred a month as the landlady had originally requested, he paid three hundred . . . and did repairs. He was good with his hands and always had been. What he didn’t know how to do, he was able to learn, and he’d fixed the place up quite a bit over the past few months.

  So far, he’d managed to tear up the rotting boards of the porch and replace those. He’d repainted three of the rooms. He still needed to fix the deck in back, and it was an ongoing struggle to keep the yard free of weeds. If he had the money, he’d reseed it, but he didn’t. Most of the work he did was using either scrap he found cheap at his other jobs or clearance stuff at the local hardware or home improvement stores.

  He still needed to get more work done around the little place, although what he wanted to do was go inside the dark, quiet house and just sit. For a few minutes, with a cold beer and do . . . nothing. He didn’t want to think, he didn’t want to talk. He wanted to do nothing. It was a luxury he hadn’t been able to indulge in for a good, long while, though, and tonight would be no different.

  Although it was a bright, sunny day, he felt like he had a cloud hanging over him.

  Always.

  Pulling the truck into park, he stared at the old place, studied it, made sure everything looked the way it had this morning when he’d left. He hadn’t had a single phone call. Not one. So that was good.

  It had taken more charm than he generally cared to exert these days, but he’d managed to convince the lady living across the street to give him a call if she saw anything, and that woman? Old Mrs. Werner was nosy. If anybody had been snooping around, more than likely she’d notice something.

  It didn’t let him breathe any easier, though.

  He didn’t think he’d ever breathe easy again.

  Please . . . you must do this for me . . .