Page 1 of Ace
Chapter One
There was something in the stuffy, filtered office air that afternoon. Something unsettling and unseen. Something dark. The moment Special Agent Keller Boniface returned from meeting with the District’s police chief about a prostitution ring that crossed state borders, he felt a sinister presence tap, tap, tapping at his double-reinforced psychic perimeter. From the get go, he’d developed a hands-off boundary to protect his inner self from prying by his new associates, aka the not so subtle geniuses of the Bureau’s only psychic team, Deuces Wild.
A relentless migraine commenced throbbing deep in the muscles at the base of his skull at the mere thought of the stupid moniker. Keller willed the pain away as if he truly possessed that kind of power. How he wished. He would’ve willed himself away from this team months ago.
Keller didn’t like his new assignment, plain didn’t want it. Until Candace-the-Psycho Bratton murdered her father-in-law, Chester Bratton, aka the father of one of her two kids, Keller’s life had been on track. He’d been in control and able to hide his unique brand of empathy. He’d lived as close to a normal life as any empath could. Off the radar and out of sight.
It’d taken years to learn how, but he’d kept his head down and he’d worked hard, racked up enough trust to be deemed reliable, earned more than enough awards, garnered only the right recognition to be considered indispensable. A team player. One of the guys.
Not anymore.
Since the fateful day he’d seen, as in psychically seen, Candace stabbing her father-in-law and lover, Chester, to death, well, now the proverbial lid was off. Because Special Agents Isaiah Zaroyin and Tate Higgins had been in that abandoned garage near the Navy yards that day, too. They’d seen the same vision and were savvy enough to know who and what Keller was. His days of normalcy evaporated, and now everyone in the Bureau knew Keller was different. Weird. An empath who saw things most people couldn’t. Everything Keller never wanted to be. Everything he’d hidden from the world.
But like the obedient civil servant he was and would always be, FBI Special Agent Keller Boniface now boldly stared at his new boss, the bombastic and most pretentious man alive. Tucker Chase, Supervisory Special Agent and Director of the FBI’s one and only Psychic Team that he himself had named Deuces Wild.Like anyone cared what Chase called his team of misfits. Jesus Christ, look at them. All busy little bees tapping out reports Tucker probably didn’t even know how to read.
The last rays of spring sunlight faded from the panoramic view of this tenth floor open office. Normally Keller wouldn’t have noticed, but the way it had faded from yellow to gold to orange, now red, seemed prophetic in a backward kind of way. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight…
It’d been a damned long time since he’d known one second of sailor’s delight. Rolling his neck, Keller strived for patience to endure this forsaken group of wannabes.Former SEAL, huh?
Tucker cocked his head as if…
Damn, maybe he really can read my mind.
Tucker’s head canted to the other side, as if...
Shut the fuck up,Keller commanded himself.Hecanhear you. Stop. Thinking.
Even that earned him one of Chase’s infamous smirks.
Guess he heard that, too.
Which explained why Ky Winchester and his sidekick, Eden, chuckled as if they’d shared a private joke. Because they probably had, and no doubt that joke was Keller.
Well, har dee, har, har.
“No, it wasn’t. Honest,” Eden piped up, her pretty green eyes bright against her creamy complexion. Blonde, forever smiling, and one of those terminally cheerful morning people, Eden could read mostpeople’s minds, as well as influence their decisions. The story was that from her kitchen in Virginia, USA, she’d‘heard’Ky’s psychic plea to die from a prison cell a world away in Afghanistan, where he’d been tortured for days. She was the psychic who’d then influenced the big bruiser of a Marine in the cell next to Ky’s to escape and help him.
It was USMC Lee Hart who’d saved a few other American soldiers that night, but it was Eden who’d truly saved Ky. He was blind back then, his face beaten and unrecognizable, his will to live gone. Lee might’ve given him the knife to defend himself, but Eden gave Ky what he’d needed to live. She gave him hope. Yeah, that was Eden Winchester for you, terminally hopeful.
But she was talking too fast now, tripping over her words. “Ky made a funny face, that’s all, Keller. He does this thing with his nose, and then he… Oh, my gosh.” Her eyes grew wide when she realizedshe toohad mentally eavesdropped. She slapped a hand over her mouth but chuckled through her long, slender fingers. Her shoulders scrunched, making her even more adorable. Damn, she was pretty. “Oops, you’re right. I’m sorry. But Keller, you might as well get used to us. We are psychics, after all. It isn’t easy tonotlisten.”
Even Ky’s face split with a big, cheesy grin. “Yeah, big guy, mellow out. We’re on your side, you know.”
Keller kept his big Ranger mouth shut. Why shouldn’t Ky be happy? He had Eden to go home to. Keller had shit to go home to.
But apparently Tucker had something to say. He nodded to Keller, then at his office.
Keller followed, certain he was on his way off thisteam, which would suit him fine.
“Sit,” Tucker ordered the moment he cleared his door.
Keller took the chair nearest the exit, his eyes straight forward, his butt ready to be reamed.
“At ease, damn it. You’re not Army anymore.”
“Why not? You’re still Navy,” Keller said as evenly as he could manage without sarcasm. The sooner Tucker fired him, the better. He could get back to his carefully controlled life, and if he was lucky, another position within the Bureau. “Don’t you guys always say,‘Once a SEAL, always a SEAL?’Well, I’m still a Ranger.”So back off.
“Shut the door,” Tucker ordered.
