Page 15 of Preying Game

Chapter 6

“Alice,” Jonah shouted. Something had happened. Something bad.

She’d said the guy knew she was awake. And what? He was angry? He was going to hurt her? He was hurting her now.

Jonah called her name into the darkness.

He had to get back there. Or was he wrong? Maybe, under the circumstances, trying to reconnect was worse than leaving her alone. And maybe he couldn’t do it by himself anyway. Not if Alice was blocking him. Or unconscious or something else bad.

He didn’t know.

But he couldn’t do nothing.

Trying to calm the frantic pounding of his heart, he struggled to reach out to her again. Now it was like there was no substance to grab onto. She was gone.

For twenty panicked minutes, he kept trying to get to her again. By the time he knew it wasn’t going to work, his body was dripping with sweat, and his blood pressure was probably in the stratosphere.

Heaving himself up, he pulled on running shoes and shorts, pounded down the steps, and stepped into the chilly night air. He started running, as hard and as fast as he could, striving to empty his consciousness of everything but the pounding of his feet and the breath gasping in and out of his lungs. He had never pushed himself so hard. When he was reduced to staggering, he turned and made his slow way back to the old garage.

Inside, he dragged himself up the steps, took a hot shower, then flopped into bed where he slept like a drugged mental patient, too exhausted to let his mind keep churning.

He woke with a start a few hours later, remembering everything and ordering himself not to go crazy again. Turning his head, he looked out the window and saw the gray light that comes before the sun is up.

He’d tried to reach out to her in a panic and failed.

Was there any use trying again?

“Don’t force the connection,” he ordered himself. “Picture her instead.”

This early, she would still be lying in bed—if the guy hadn’t dragged her off somewhere.

Gritting his teeth to slash away that last thought, he went back to picturing Alice. He dressed her in a modest nightgown and imagined she was in a small, whitewashed room, her eyes closed, her blond hair tousled on the pillow.

Once he had gotten that far, he allowed himself to hope for more. If her mind was closed to him, what if he could make a different connection?

He knew that Grant had been able to join Jenny in her bedroom when she’d been abducted. Not with his body but in a sort of spectral form—the next step after contacting her telepathically. At first he’d had no real substance in the room where she was being held, a ghost only she could see. But he was able to make himself more solid, and finally it was like he was really there.

Of course, Grant had had a big advantage. He’d known Jenny a lot better than Jonah knew Alice. Probably he’d already made love with her, Jonah thought with a pang, which would give him a strong physical link. Plus, he knew her location because he’d had a tracker on her car and been able to drive within a few miles of the estate where she was being held. Outside the grounds, he met with Decorah agents who had rented a house where he could lie in bed and reach out to her.

That was before Jonah had joined Decorah Security. But Grant had told him about the experience when he’d helped Jonah learn to use his psychic talent.

Now the whole idea sounded impossible. He never would have considered it in a million years, unless he knew someone who’d already done it. Luckily he had Grant’s success to use as a model.

Jonah might not have the advantages of knowing Alice’s location or having been intimate with her. But he was as desperate to contact her as Grant had been with Jenny.

He gathered up a fist full of sheet and squeezed it in his hand.

Was he crazy enough to think he could do something so outside the realm of normal human experience?

Yes. Because his conversations with Alice fell into the same category. And what did he have to lose by trying?

He laughed and unclenched the sheet. If he really thought he could go where she was, maybe he should put on some clothes.

He got up and pulled on a pair of comfortably soft, faded jeans over his boxers and got back into bed. When he was ready, he took a deep breath and let it out, then squeezed his eyes shut, feeling his muscles tense.

“Stop it,” he muttered to himself. “Tension isn’t going to help. Loosen up.”

He made a conscious effort to relax and went back to picturing Alice lying in her cell.

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