Chapter 12.

S tefan couldn't tell what she was thinking, and he didn't have time to find out; the FBI descended like a plague of jacketed locusts on the scene, swarmed over the place, demanded credentials and explanations from Katie and finally allowed the paramedics access to attend to Lial, who was still-barely-alive. Stefan collapsed wearily back against a rusty piece of marine junk and stared at the blood on his hands. Literal, figurative...It didn't really matter. It was all just...too much.

"Here." A female voice, but not Katie's; he looked up to see a fresh-faced young woman wearing an FBI jacket and flak vest holding out a handful of moist towelettes. "You're Stefan, right? Stefan Blackman?"

The FBI never asked about your ident.i.ty without already knowing the answer, Stefan thought. He nodded, but didn't speak. There were plenty of people in view, and a dull roar of noise and bright harsh photography flashes, but no sign of Katie.

He missed her.

"Hi. Rachel Evans," she said, and didn't offer to shake hands, but then he was still wiping his down and trying to clean the blood away. "You were-a.s.sisting Special Agent Rush?"

"She told me to wait in the car," he said.

"I see." She lowered herself into a crouch, coming to eye level with him; she was older than he'd thought at first glance, with fine lines around her china-blue eyes. It was her hair that made her look twenty, he decided. Strawberry-blond, worn long and straight, with an old-fashioned headband to hold it back from her face. She was probably closer to thirty. "May I ask why you didn't follow the agent's instructions?"

"She was-she was walking into a trap." He finished scrubbing his hands and balled up the moist cloths; Evans silently held out her hand, accepted them and sealed them in a plastic bag that she put in her pocket. Either that was out of concern for the crime scene, or she'd just collected evidence. He had no idea which.

"And you knew this how, Mr. Blackman?"

He didn't know what Katie was saying, but she probably wasn't telling them about his visions. "I saw Lial. The wounded kid. I know him."

"You know him," she repeated. "I see. In what context?"

"I'm a street magician. I meet all kinds of people. Lial's in the GD, the Gangster Disciples. I knew when I saw him here, out of his territory, there was something wrong."

Evans stared at him, unblinking. "Street magician."

This will go a lot faster if you don't repeat everything I say, he thought, but he was just able to stop himself from saying it aloud. "Like David Blaine, Criss Angel...?"

She had no idea, clearly. He usually got some kind of aha! off that, but she just continued to watch him without a flicker of expression.

"In Los Angeles."

"In and around. I spend a lot of time in Venice Beach."

That finally got a reaction; Evans took a notebook out of her pocket and made a note. About Venice Beach? Was that a hotbed of terrorists these days? "And how did you become acquainted with Special Agent Rush?" she asked.

It went downhill from there. He tried to avoid mentioning the visions, but at a certain point it was obvious he was avoiding something, and if there was one thing Evans seemed to be really good at, it was homing in on whatever he was trying to conceal. Before long the whole unlikely story was in front of her, and she'd stopped taking notes. He couldn't tell if she was just frozen in disbelief, or had decided the whole story was too far-fetched to bother doc.u.menting it.

When he was finished-and it took another hour of questioning, from Evans and then from another agent, clearly her senior-Stefan asked to make phone calls-denied-and then asked to see Katie. Also denied. Finally, word came down that Katie was on her way to see him, and for the first time he felt a surge of hope.

Until he saw her.

It was like looking at a stranger. She saw him, but she didn't see him.... It was as if everything that they'd been through in the past twenty-four hours hadn't happened at all.

As if the two of them had never met before.

"Katie," he murmured, and heard the pain in his voice. She didn't react to that at all.

"I've asked that you be released for now," she said. "They're going to investigate further to find out your links to the Gangster Disciples....

"My what?"

"...and you shouldn't leave town. I called your dad. He's coming to pick you up. Your car's being impounded. It'll be examined for forensic evidence."

"Forensic evidence of what, Katie? And you know it's not my car. It's Angelo's car. He'll kill me if you take it apart."

She didn't answer him, not directly. "I know that you meant well, Stefan. I know that you intended to help me, and maybe you even believe that you did, but the end result is that those girls are missing, and I lost my chance to save them. And if I'd been on my own, this wouldn't have happened."

"Yeah," he said and got to his feet to face her. "Yeah, you're right about that. It wouldn't have happened because you wouldn't have been able to so much as trace the van out of Phoenix, much less come this close. Katie-"

"I have to go," she said. "I need to work."

She turned her back on him, and walked away. He clenched his fists, saw a red haze settle over everything, and deliberately breathed in and out until it faded. He had a gypsy temper, as well as a gypsy instinct for wandering. What the h.e.l.l was that, she needed to work? They'd been working, both of them, trusting each other, depending on each other...and now...

Now she was an FBI agent, he was some street-corner palm reader, barely a step up from a three-card-monty dealer. A palm reader with gang ties, and who the h.e.l.l knew what else they suspected. Maybe it wasn't Katie, not completely, but she was willing to let it happen to him.

She was willing to walk away.

"Katie!" he called. She kept on walking. "You really think I won't embarra.s.s you in public if I have to?"

She wheeled around and came back at him, fast. He held his ground, meeting her angry dark eyes steadily.

"You wouldn't dare," she said. Her tone was low and viciously intense.

"I don't want to," Stefan agreed, "but I'm not letting you just dump me like this. Katie, whatever happens, I want to see you. I need to see you. Remember that."

"Remember this," she snapped back. "If those girls die and I find out that you had anything, anything to do with delaying me along the way, G.o.d help you, Stefan. We're done now."

And then she was gone, and he was standing alone in a roomful of people, all of them staring at him with identical, chilly expressions that conveyed their doubts more than words could. He knew he should be worried for himself-an FBI investigation wasn't anything to shrug off-but mostly, he was just worried about Katie Rush.

She'd cut the bond between them so brutally that he wondered how, and when, she'd start to bleed.

And who'd be there for her when she did.

It was the hardest thing she'd ever done, walking away from Stefan. He'd looked so alone there, and so...disappointed in her. But surely he had to understand how she felt. Looking at him reminded her bitterly and agonizingly of the past day, of the girls on their knees, silhouetted in the doorway, of Stefan's grim determination to do whatever it took to save them.

She'd let him down. She'd let herself down. And now they were both at risk. She had to distance herself from him, and try to avoid pulling him down with her. They were going to crucify her, no question, and she fully deserved it.

Stefan...Stefan deserved to go back to his life. She'd hurt him, badly, at the end, but that was better. It was just better that he give up and go back to the beach, back to the pretty tanned girls and the uncomplicated fun they represented. He didn't belong in her world, and she definitely didn't belong in his.

Still, what she'd said to him had caught her by surprise. She'd simply meant to say whatever was necessary to push him away, but that had been...bitter. She hadn't known she was so angry until it had boiled out of her, and that had been wrong, directing it at him. Stefan had never tried to hurt her.

Two task force agents were waiting for her outside; she glanced over at the forest-green Jaguar-Angelo's car-that they were loading onto a flatbed truck for processing at the local field office. That was a waste of time, she knew, but it hadn't been prudent to argue about it. She was out on a small enough limb as it was.

Still, Stefan was right: Angelo was going to kill him about the car.

"Agent Rush," a woman said. She had long reddish hair, held back with a simple headband. It gave her an innocent look that probably played well with the men she interrogated. "Agent Evans. We're your ride to the field office. Hop in."

"I'd like to wait," Katie said.

"For what, exactly?" The female agent crossed her arms, studying Katie like a particularly interesting potential suspect.

"For word on the boat."

"Agent Rush, whatever word comes down, you're not going anywhere near that boat, and you know that already. You abused your authority in conducting this investigation without authorization. You recklessly endangered civilians. Your failure to follow procedures might have killed these girls. So you tell me again...what is it you're waiting for?" Agent Evans's blue eyes seemed much too shrewd for that young face. "Maybe you just want one last look at your personal psychic network."

Katie drilled her with a look that wiped the smile from her lips. "I want to make sure he gets picked up by his family," she said. "I d.a.m.n sure don't want him here."

"Afraid he's going to have some kind of psychic fit and tell us all about how the girls are on their way to Venus with Captain Kirk and E.T.?" Evans had concealed her contempt when interrogating Stefan; she was a professional, after all. But she didn't have to do it now, and Katie felt sick for Stefan all over again. If he'd been honest with her-and she still couldn't be one hundred percent sure of that, after his actions at the warehouse-then he didn't deserve the ridicule he was going to endure. He was telling the truth. I know it. I feel it. But she couldn't prove it, and in the end, proof was the only thing that really mattered.

And if there was any way that the task force could discredit Stefan, they would. It wasn't quite policy, but it was unwritten law.... The last thing anyone wanted was to give credence to psychics, because law enforcement would be overrun with would-be seers, mystics and frauds. Not to mention victims, and the families of victims. It would be a free-for-all.

She had no idea if he knew what he was in for, and she ached to tell him, but Agent Evans's all-too-discerning eyes were looking for anything that might be construed as unprofessional.

Wait until she finds out about the room at the truck stop. Because Katie no longer had any illusions about that; it would come out, sooner or later, and whatever credibility she had-or Stefan had-would be ruined.

But for now, all she wanted was to see Stefan safely away from all this. He'd still be at the mercy of the visions, but maybe he could find a way to cut them off, now that she wasn't driving him to continue to endure them. Maybe he could find a way to save himself.

As if she'd conjured him up like stage magic, he appeared in the doorway of the warehouse. He looked around, saw her, and for once, he didn't smile. He just looked...tired.

It could have been, some part of her insisted. You could have had something fine.

Maybe. And maybe it would have turned toxic on her, like her memories of her mother, like her first two long-term relationships.

This way, she didn't have the agony of knowing.

Stefan's father pulled up in a battered old Ford Explorer-the original model, before there was any such fad as sport-utility vehicles. Ben jumped down, charged over to his son and embraced him with unreserved relief.

Katie blinked back tears and said, "I'm ready to go."

Stefan was still watching when she got into the back of the black federal-issue sedan, and was driven away.

Katie was a.s.sured, over and over, with varying degrees of impatience, that the situation was under control. In fact, the task force had been all over tracking the ship; they'd debated intercepting it with coast guard cutters, but it had demonstrated some surprising speed, and had been joined by at least two other ships along the way...gunboats, probably.

So they tracked the ships, while preparing a tactical strike team, and Katie sat on the sidelines, answering questions, repeating her story over and over to an ever-changing array of faces, none of whom appeared sympathetic. No sign of Stefan, but then, she didn't expect they'd allow her to see him again. It was likely they'd go to him, rather than bringing him in, anyway. The last thing they wanted was to risk a reporter's interest at seeing a member of the famous Blackman clan being brought into the field office.

Eventually, they gave her a cot in a closed office and let her sleep. She barely remembered lying down before darkness swept her out and away, a tide she couldn't fight. Her last thought was more of a tactile illusion; she remembered Stefan's warmth, curled against her in their sweet, stolen hours. Remembered his voice whispering her name like a magic spell.

She woke up with a start. Her cell phone was ringing. She fumbled with it and sat up, fighting back disorientation, and checked the display.

It was flashing Low Batt.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Katie!" Stefan's voice, rubbed raw by a bad connection. "I don't care what you think, but I need to see you, talk to you, please-it's Teal. It's about-"

The battery failed, catastrophically, and took Stefan's ghostly voice with it. Katie banged it against the desk. She reached for the desk's phone, but hesitated. All calls into and out of the office would be monitored, as a matter of course, and she wasn't sure that she wanted anyone else to hear what he had to say.

She pressed a hand to her aching head and tried to think. According to her watch, it was just a little after six at night; the task force should have had their tactical response well underway by now, she thought. Katie stood, wincing at the ache in her muscles but most especially in her bruised and probably still cracked ribs, and tried some tentative stretches to avoid hobbling like an old woman in front of her peers.

When she opened the office door, she heard the shouting. That was deeply troubling. Shouting just did not happen, not in the FBI offices, and this sounded just one or two Marines short of a full-scale war.

She followed the uproar down the hall to the open door of a situation room, where Rachel Evans stood toe-to-toe with a burly senior agent-one who probably remembered the Hoover days-and was engaging in a full-volume frank exchange. Katie leaned against the wall, eyebrows raised, and folded her arms. She edged closer to one of the youngest field agents, who looked on with the fascination of the uninvolved.

"What's going on?" she asked. He barely glanced at her, just enough to verify her badge was valid, and then riveted his gaze back on the main event.

"Evans is getting reamed," he said. "Tactical a.s.sault just reported in. The gunboats fought back, major ordnance, and there were casualties."

Oh G.o.d. "The girls?"

"No," he said. "No girls...o...b..ard. There was some monkey business with the tracking system, they lost contact with the boats for about half an hour, but n.o.body thought there was anything to worry about because they were still on the projected course and speed when telemetry came back. Now they think there was a seaplane that landed, picked up the girls, and took off."

"Took off for where?" Katie asked.

He shrugged. "n.o.body's saying. That's why Evans is getting reamed. It was her operation."

Katie honestly wanted to feel sorry for her, but the image of Evans sneering at Stefan stood in the way. What goes around...

She pushed away from the wall, yawned, and said, "Hey, is there coffee?"

The agent nodded next door. Katie strolled that direction, looked back, and found that n.o.body was watching her. Why would they be? She wasn't a suspect; at worst, she was a screw-up who'd be thrown out of the FBI for conduct unbecoming, and they had other things to worry about, namely the mess that had just landed on the FBI's doorstep.

She picked up a disposable cup of coffee and kept walking, took the elevator downstairs, and calmly left the building.

The Los Angeles evening was cool and dry, and she sipped coffee while she walked a block to where a cabbie sat behind the wheel, reading his paper.

"Where to, lady?" he asked and looked at her in the rearview mirror. If he found anything odd about her-her generally ragged appearance, the bruises, the still-fresh cuts on her cheek-he shrugged it off.

She gave him the address of Stefan's family hacienda.

Stefan was lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling and trying not to think too much about anything, when his mother delivered him a gin and tonic and words of advice. "You should get cleaned up," she said and planted a kiss on his forehead. "You look like h.e.l.l, peanut." His mother had come home just after he'd been retrieved from the debacle at the port; she'd arrived in a rush, clearly knowing there was something wrong even if she hadn't foreseen the specifics. That was one thing about his childhood that had been maddening: Mom always knew. Good, bad, indifferent, Mom always knew about his day before he did.

"In a while," he said. He accepted the G and T-she made great G and T-and sipped it while his mother perched in an armchair a few feet away. She'd changed from her pantsuit to a multicolored silk caftan, very Sunset Boulevard with her turban. He sometimes thought she dressed like that just to play up the stereotypes.

"You'll want to do it now," his mom said, inspecting the front page of the evening newspaper. She tsk-tsked over the state of the city section, then turned toward the national news. That rated two separate clucks of her tongue.

"Why?" He sipped. Fire and ice, the perfect combination. Stefan didn't often imbibe-alcohol interfered with reflexes, and reflexes were his life's blood-but today seemed like it deserved to be an exception.

"Because your friend is coming," his mother said calmly, and raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows at the look on his face. "Yes. That one."

"Mom, she's at the FBI field office. She's not-"