The Protected Read online

  Blocking the echo of a woman’s voice out of his head, he pushed the door open. Before he climbed out, though, he reached below the seat and took out the one thing he never went anywhere without.

  The butt of the Sig Sauer P250 fit solidly in his hand. He checked it out of habit and then looked over in the passenger seat. A solemn pair of eyes looked back at him. “Come on.”

  The boy sighed and slid out of the car. “Do we have to do this every day?”

  He’d asked the same question yesterday. He’d asked it the day before. He’d keep asking it, Gus knew. It would only get worse, because the boy wasn’t exactly a child anymore, and that rebelliousness that always crept out during those years between child and adult was getting ever closer.

  Still, there were things in life that didn’t care that Alex wanted some freedom. Things that didn’t care that the boy just wanted to live a normal life.

  Gus’s job was to make sure the boy lived. Period. Staring into a pair of eyes eerily like his own, he said quietly, “Alex.”

  That was all he said. Alex’s lids drooped and his skinny shoulders slumped, but he climbed out of the truck, plodding around to stand next to Gus and stare up at the old house.

  Alex grumbled under his breath. Gus ignored him as he looked around, eyes never resting in one place. Before he shut the door, he grabbed a bag from the back and slung it over his left shoulder and then pulled out his denim jacket, draped it over his arm and hand to hide the Sig Sauer.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “Nope.”

  “There’s nobody here,” Alex said, his voice sullen, bordering on rude. He mumbled something else and Gus stopped, looked back at him. The anger in the boy was getting worse, flaring closer to the surface today than it ever had.

  “We’ve talked about this, Alex,” he said quietly. “You want to be angry with me, you got a right. But remember what we talked about.”

  Gus didn’t blame him. The kid had every right to be pissed. Gus wasn’t a twelve-year-old kid who’d had his entire life uprooted and he was pissed.

  “This is so fucking stupid,” Alex snapped.

  Stopping in his tracks, Gus turned around and stared at Alex. “Watch your mouth,” he said. “Your mother raised you better than that.”

  Alex sneered. “Yeah, she raised me better but she’s dead—”

  The boy’s voice cracked. And as the anger faded away into agony, Gus reached out, hooked his hand over Alex’s neck. “Yeah. She’s dead. But she wanted you safe. And you’ll be safe, Alex. Now come on . . .”

  You must promise me . . .

  A hard, shuddering breath escaped Alex, but then he pulled away, looking at Gus with glittering eyes. The tears he wouldn’t shed still shone in his eyes until he blinked them away. “I told you, there’s nobody here.”

  “Yeah. I heard you. We’re checking anyway.”

  * * *

  TWENTY minutes later, while Alex oversaw their dinner of macaroni and hot dogs, Gus stood at the sink, trying unsuccessfully to scrub the engine grease from his hands. He’d worked eight hours at the construction site, then picked up a hundred bucks helping one of the guys from the site do some work on his car. He was filthy, he was tired, and he was hot. He wanted to plunge his head under the cool stream of water coming from the faucet, but he just kept scrubbing at the grease on his hands.

  The phone rang just when he’d decided to give up. Hurriedly rinsing his hands, he grabbed it and spied Elsie Werner’s number. The sweet, incorrigibly nosy lady from across the street. “Hello, Elsie . . . need me to come clean out the pipes again?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, the one in the bathroom is running rather slow,” she said.

  Gus would swear she clogged them up just so he would come over and she could ogle his ass. He’d had plenty of women ogling his ass in his lifetime. It wasn’t a new experience and he’d used it to his advantage more than once. But to his knowledge, most of them weren’t old enough to be his great-grandmother.

  Still, the lady was kind. She’d made more than a few meals for him and Alex once she figured out neither of them could do anything more complicated than pizza, burgers and fries, macaroni and cheese, or hot dogs. If she had her way, she would have taught them both to cook.

  But Gus was intent on keeping his distance. Very intent. Letting a sweet old lady teach him or the kid how to cook wasn’t the way to keep a cool distance. It wouldn’t help either him or the kid, and in the long run, it could harm her. He had enough blood on his hands.

  “I’ll come by later tonight,” he said. “Although I don’t know if I can fix it tonight. I may need to go to the store for the drain cleaner.”

  “Well, that can wait. I wasn’t calling about that, Gus. We have a new neighbor moving in . . . did you see?”

  The skin on the back of his neck prickled.

  Lifting his head, he looked to the front of the house. “A neighbor, huh?”

  “Yes. A pretty girl. The moving van pulled up not long after you arrived. I was thinking about inviting her for dinner . . . maybe you and the boy can join us?”

  He relaxed only a tiny bit. They were less likely to send a woman after him. But still, he had to see her. Would have to let Alex see her—shit. And it had to be done tonight.

  “I don’t think dinner will work, Elsie,” he said. “I’m pretty worn out at the end of the day and I’m lousy company. But I’ll be sure to introduce myself when I see her.”

  “Well . . . now is a good time.” He could almost hear the smile in her voice. “She’s out front unloading boxes, Gus. Alone. I’d go help her, but . . .”

  The wheedle in her voice was anything but subtle. Gus hung up the phone and looked over at Alex.

  If anybody would recognize trouble, it would be the boy. There wouldn’t be immediate danger, either. Nobody would want to risk the kid being hurt. They’d try to take Alex alive and Alex would know from a mile away if there was any sort of threat. A fact that, sadly, Gus knew from experience.

  He hated it, but he already knew the best course of action. They had problems looking for them, and if they’d found them, it was best to know now, so they could leave.

  Alex looked up at him, his eyes solemn.

  “It’s okay,” the boy said softly.

  “We need to make sure.”

  The boy’s hand shook as he stirred the mac and cheese. But then he nodded.

  TWO

  IT should be a damn crime to look that good.

  Vaughnne almost swallowed her tongue when she caught her first good look at her target. Well, one of them.

  Wow.

  Her libido, dormant for the past couple of years, suddenly rumbled to life, and as she stared at the man coming across the street, she couldn’t help but think . . . Come to mama, pretty boy . . . pretty, pretty, pretty boy . . .

  According to the information Jones had given her, he was going by the name Gus Hernandez.

  It wasn’t his real name, though. She’d just about bet on that—Gus Hernandez wasn’t too common, but there was Augusto and Gustavo . . . pair those names with Hernandez and you might as well be looking for John Smith.

  Whoever he was, though . . . he was a fine, fine piece of work.

  Leaning back on the porch, she braced her hands on the concrete behind her and pretended to be absorbed in the study of her flip-flops. One thing about this job . . . she could work in flip-flops and shorts. Much better than the skirts and heels, or slacks and heels, she generally wore when she was in D.C. Not that she spent a lot of time in the office, but she wasn’t exactly running at full speed just yet and she knew it.

  Office work would be her mainstay for the next few weeks if she wasn’t doing the babysitting job. Until she could focus her gift for longer than five minutes without a splitting headache, she was useless in the field.

  This, though, this was doable. She didn’t need to actively use her telepathy to use her instincts and that was a lot easier on the gray matter. And even though she h
ated Orlando, the uniform here was a lot better.

  So she’d just enjoy the uniform, and enjoy the view . . . and pretend she was somewhere else.

  The view was fine. Damn fine. Excellent shoulders. Long, loose-hipped gait. Behind her shades, she studied him, black hair tucked under a battered hat, a pair of cheap sunglasses that shielded his gaze from her. He wore a threadbare T-shirt and jeans so worn, they were practically white at the seams. Damn, he wore those jeans well, too.

  Because the view was making her throat go dry, she reached for the bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade at her side and took a long drag off it as she shifted her attention to the other things. Like the backpack he was still carrying. Like the boy.

  Her other target.

  Two males and both of them were too damned pretty. Family, they had to be, although Jones’s information on them was sketchy.

  The boy is gifted. I think the man is protecting him. They are in trouble. Keep an eye on them.

  Yeah, not a lot to go on.

  The boy was already every bit as pretty as the guy walking next to him, although he couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen. He’d break hearts when he was grown, she suspected. His name was Alex, and he had the angriest, saddest eyes she’d seen on a kid in a long, long while. They were a pale, misty sort of gray—set against his dusky skin, those eyes packed even more of a punch.

  Yeah. He was going to break hearts, she thought. And she had a feeling he’d be breaking hers before this job was out. Babysit. What in the hell was going on here?

  That gaze of his was a punch right to her heart. One that might shatter it, because while she couldn’t read emotions worth shit, she knew what fear looked like. The boy was ripe with it. He had so much fear inside, it hurt to look at him. So much cynicism, she figured she probably would have looked idealistic.

  And even without lowering her shields, she felt the wide-open power of his mind.

  Damn.

  That kid was practically a lighthouse on the shore in the middle of a raging storm.

  All it would take was the wrong person looking for him . . .

  Gifted. Gifted, my ass, she thought sourly. A gift like that would be more like a curse for a good, long while. He didn’t need a babysitter. What he needed was a bodyguard and a teacher. She might be able to handle the bodyguard job as long as there was nothing major going on, but she wasn’t equipped to teach a kid like that.

  Mr. Gus Hernandez pushed his battered cap back and gave her a sleepy smile. “Hi there,” he said.

  Okay. If the boy’s eyes ripped at her, the man’s eyes were going to put her on her knees, but for all the wrong reasons. Wow. If she’d thought the kid’s eyes packed a punch . . . again, wow.

  This guy’s gaze was enough to put her out for the count. The color of the mists that hovered over the river in the morning, that was what his eyes made her think of, a surreal shade of gray and so unbelievably beautiful, shockingly pale against the warmth of his olive-colored skin. But it wasn’t just the unnatural beauty of those eyes . . . the kid had that.

  The man, though, he had a look in his eyes that made her throat go dry.

  Sleepy and sexy, like he’d just tumbled out of bed but he’d be more than happy to tumble right back in. Since he was looking at her, the idea was probably to think that he was going to tumble into bed with her, but she knew better.

  That look was practiced. Way too practiced and she knew it. Still, it was a good look, and she might as well enjoy it. His smile, too. She was a little disturbed to realize that smile of his was making her feel all warm and tingly down in parts that were not supposed to be an issue, considering she was on a job.

  He knew what effect he had, too. She could tell. It wasn’t arrogance or anything, but he knew. Hmmm. A player? That was a harder puzzle, but she’d figured it out.

  He was playing at something, but what was it? That was the question, indeed.

  Taking another sip from her bottle, she tipped it at him. “Hey, back.”

  The boy shot her a look from under his lashes and lowered his head. As he shoved his hands into his pockets, she felt it. A ripple of his gift, rolling across her.

  She didn’t react.

  He was young, and unless he’d encountered a lot of psychics, it was unlikely he’d recognize one if she wasn’t using her ability. Which she didn’t plan to do. Keeping her own thoughts tucked back behind a blank shield, she projected an air of boredom, exhaustion, and because he probably was used to it, she thought a few rather female thoughts about the overall hotness of the long, sexy piece of work standing across from her.

  The kid blushed and darted a look at the long, sexy piece of work before he mumbled, “. . . help you move stuff.”

  Vaughnne reached up and rubbed her ear. “I’m sorry?”

  “I think my kid is saying we wanted to see if you needed help.”

  Those tingling parts started tingling again and she leaned forward, arms crossed over her chest, at the smile he shot her way. Then he glanced over at the boy. “Right, Alex?”

  The kid lifted his head, and for a long, long moment, all he did was stare at her.

  Seconds ticked away, and Vaughnne would have sworn she heard her heart beating, could have sworn she felt their hearts beating as the boy took her measure. And somehow, she suspected if that kid didn’t like what he saw, there were going to be problems.

  She was prepared for that.

  Very prepared, although not quite in the way anybody would think.

  But finally, the boy gave her a nervous smile and ducked his head again, and that odd, tight tension faded away. “Yeah. You . . .” He licked his lips and looked over at the man who claimed to be his father before darting her a look. “You got lots of stuff and no help. We don’t mind.”

  Don’t mind, huh?

  Yeah. She was sure they didn’t. They didn’t mind so much, and if that kid had so much as whispered one bad word about her, she had a feeling she would have had to unload on the two of them just to keep the sexy piece of work from doing . . . whatever he had planned.

  Uncurling from the bench, she let her bottle swing from her left hand as she sauntered off. “Sure. I wouldn’t mind a hand, I reckon.” She laid it on thick with the drawl and kept her smile wide and friendly. “My name’s Vaughnne.”

  They’d decided it would be best to keep things close to the truth with this one, and as the boy flicked her another glance, she felt that odd ripple again. Yeah. Good call. He smiled again and then glanced over at the man with him. “Alex,” the boy said.

  It was weird, the vibe between them, but she’d already figured it out. The kid’s gift . . . the gift inside him, it was so strong, he almost glowed with it. Considering there was some sort of danger chasing them, it seemed the man had made the hard, but wise choice to use the kid’s instincts.

  And there was something after them. Only reason why that kid would be so afraid, she figured. Not an easy choice to make. But death, danger . . . plenty of other things were far less pleasant and a lot less easy.

  “Nice to meet you, Alex,” she said, still keeping her thoughts tucked behind that surface shield of nice and normal. He held out his hand, and once more, that power . . . as their skin touched, she shielded down as tight as she could.

  His hand fell away and he looked over at the man, another smile.

  Signals. She didn’t know what they were communicating with those signals, but they were doing it.

  “Gus.” The man nodded and gave her another one of those lazy smiles as he adjusted his cap. “So, how much more have you got to move in, Vaughnne?”

  She heaved out a sigh. “Too damn much.”

  * * *

  HE’D known beautiful women.

  He’d known women so beautiful, they made the eye all but hurt to look at them.

  The woman standing in front of him wasn’t one of them.

  But there was . . . something about her, and Gus realized he couldn’t look away from her.

  A fine sheen
of perspiration gleamed along the warm brown of her skin, and unlike a lot of the women he’d known, it didn’t seem to faze her. Her nose was sprinkled with a few freckles, shades darker than that warm brown, and her eyes, liquid gold, held his with a frank, unblinking stare as she nodded toward the moving van.

  “Vaughnne,” he murmured absently, turning the name over as he studied her.

  Alex had read her. They had a system; it worked. He hated it, hated having to rely on the kid like that, but Gus wasn’t going to risk the boy’s safety when he had a tool that was just undeniable, either.

  Alex didn’t offer his name to anybody that set his internal warning off, and he’d not only offered her his name, he’d let her touch him. Alex let very few people touch him.

  So she had to be safe enough. Maybe that was why he felt his heartbeat kick up a few notches. It had been . . .

  Please. You must do this for me.

  As the voice roused from the depths of his memory, he shoved everything else to the back of his mind. It didn’t matter if she was safe. Alex wasn’t.

  A slim black brow arched and she cocked her head. A bright red bandanna was wrapped around her head, and underneath, thick, crazy black curls fell in long spirals almost halfway down her back. “If we’re going to do this, Gus,” she said lazily, lifting a bottle to her lips, “let’s do it. I dunno about you, but I’m worn out.”

  She took a drink from the bottle, and he had the damnedest desire to pull the bottle away, and take a drink . . . from her. It was a disgusting thing she was drinking, but he suspected he wouldn’t mind a bit, tasting it on her lips, tasting her. Before the temptation settled too deep in his mind, he turned around and studied the various boxes littering the little front yard. “If you want, you can tell Alex where you want the boxes. You and I can work on the bigger stuff.”

  He glanced back at her just in time to see her finishing off the lemonade, and he watched as a bead of sweat rolled down the soft brown of her neck. Desire, vicious and painful, twisted inside him. He needed to get laid.

  Vaughnne lowered the bottle and then tossed it into a little bin off to the side of the yard. It was a good twenty feet away and it landed squarely inside. “Nice shot.”