Page 25 of Ace
He growled, his customary answer when he didn’t want to share and needed people to back off. But Savannah kept talking. Just because she’d made him angry didn’t mean she didn’t like him. “Gran Mere taught at a psychic symposium a couple years ago. That might be where your boss learned about her. Like Isaiah, she also lost her mother when she was quite young. In fact, she witnessed her father murder her mother and her two sisters. I don’t know if that experience caused her mind to snap and expand, or if she was born with her gift. But Gran Mere believed her power saved her life that awful night. She was the youngest, only three at the time, but—”
And there Savannah stopped. If Gran Mere had remembered the events of that night accurately, and if she hadn’t, as a small child, embellished what had actually occurred, she’d been a powerful three-year-old indeed. Scary powerful.
“She influenced her father to kill himself before he could kill her, didn’t she?” Keller asked quietly. “Was that what you were going to say? Is that what you believe happened? That a three-year-old had the powerto influence an enraged and drunken adult male to end himself?”
“I believe that some minds are strong at birth and some are not,” Savannah admitted softly, mesmerized by the white dashes and lines running down the center of the highway as all Gran Mere had told her flooded back like the bayou reclaiming the land in a storm. Unfortunately, what she believed happened begged more frightening questions. Had Gran Mere known how strong her powers were before her father killed the rest of her family? Had she manipulated her father to kill her mother and sisters? Had she known as a three-year-old that she’d never be held accountable? Had she been that powerful? Those thoughts were too mind-numbingly terrible to entertain. Gran Mere had always been wise and kind. True evil begot evil, not someone as sweet and giving as Gran Mere. The universe just didn’t work like that. Like did attract like.
“A good Christian family took her in the next day. The O’Reillys. They loved her as if she were their biological daughter. They adored her, and she adored them. They gave her everything, including what she needed to heal.”
“What? No, don’t tell me. Let me guess.” A deep sigh breathed out of Keller. “They gave her a dog. A puppy. I’m right, huh?”
“Yes, they gave her a Pitbull puppy named Shank, and they gave her love.” Savannah nodded as another circle closed. Now Keller knew why she rescued endangered animals. Because of the healing power of that first perfect puppy that saved her Gran Mere’s life.
Cats were the aloof familiars who reached out when and if they felt like it. Instead of just anyone who fed them, they claimed only specific people during their spiritual travels. Dogs, on the other hand, claimed everyone, even cruel men and women who beat, starved, and abused them. Like divine messengers sent from above, they freely forgave mankind, over and over again.
The asphalt highway had reduced to red gravel by then. They were halfway to Sanctuary. Tall pine trees rose deep and green alongside the raised roadbed, while cypress trees stood knee deep in the perpetual swamp, water glistening between their gnarled trunks.
Savannah glanced at the man at her side. “You guys call yourselves kings of heart? Really?”
Keller made a funny face like he’d just sucked the pucker off a dill pickle. “Where’d you get that idea?”
“I saw playing cards when your friend contacted me, all hearts. A queen. A joker. An ace. But the king of hearts kept whirling around the other cards like a tornado.”
Keller growled low in the back of his throat. “Had to be Tucker Chase, our director. He was beside himself when he thought Isaiah was dying. That and he’s got some cockamamie notion each of us is a playing card in his lucky Deuces Wild deck. Which is really stupid. It’s not like he’s Alice, the Bureau’s definitely not Wonderland, and I’m no soldier in the Red Queen’s army.”
Savannah would’ve laughed if she hadn’t heard what Keller didn’t say. He not only resented hissuperior, but he hadn’tseen. He had no gift ofsight.Only gut-wrenching empathy that drowned him in other’s pain and anguish.
“You felt him dying, didn’t you?” she breathed, understanding the rare type of empathy that ruled Keller now. “When Isaiah reached out to you, you felt exactly what he was feeling. That’s why you couldn’t breathe. You didn’t need a drink of water. You needed to touch him, to take his pain away even though it would’ve killed you.”
“Yeah, umm...” His Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed, and wasn’t that an attractive, masculine feature? Generally hidden from view, this man’s neck added a certain caveman appeal to the overall robust male persona. Only it seemed Keller had something stuck in his throat.
Savannah didn’t want to take her eyes off him. Long and lean, he’d slouched back in the driver’s seat, itself pushed back as far as it could go as he stretched his legs forward. Until then, the man had been driving from a relaxed, prone position. He’d loosened his tie, but taut cords now stretched up the back of his tanned, shaved neck. Keller cut a handsome, albeit troubled profile with the early afternoon sun streaming through the window at his left.
The urge to reach out and cup this tawny jungle cat’s jaw or scratch behind his ear compelled Savannah. Instead she rested her palm on his forearm. “Your gift is killing you, isn’t it?”
He nodded a short, curt answer. “Sometimes, yeah. You could say that.”
Knowing how he’d resisted her cure for Isaiah, she asked, “Will you let me help?”
“No. I’m good.” Said every stubborn man ever.
She settled for, “Then tell me about Isaiah and your boss.”
His broad chest expanded with a long, slow inhale. “They’re both around six foot. Isaiah’s a buck forty dripping wet, but Tucker’s older. Bigger. Wider. He’s a ruggedized Humvee while Isaiah’s more like a sleek sports car. Tucker’s crass. Isaiah’s polished. Suave.”
“A buck forty? What’s that mean?”
“Sorry. Means Isaiah weighs around a hundred forty pounds. He’s a lightweight, but he’s dark-haired like Tucker. Honestly, he could pass for Tuck’s baby brother. Isaiah’s smart as a whip, though. Tucker’s the boss, but Isaiah’s the real psychic genius on the team. You’d like him.”
“I already do, but that’s not what I meant. Who are they? Really. To you?”
His chin came up. “They’re just guys I work with.”
He said that as if Isaiah and Tucker were merely ships he passed in the night, but Savannah knew better. She’d seen Keller nearly collapse when his boss called earlier. This tough FBI agent might not want to work with these particular men, but it was obvious they meant more than—
BOOM!
Chapter Eleven
