Free The Protected (Fbi Psychics) by Shiloh Walker Page B

ridiculously grateful for.
    But he’d also learned that one didn’t necessarily need psychic skill to know when it was being used. Not once you’d felt it a time or two. Or two hundred, in his case. Since they had no way of teaching Alex, years ago, Gus had made the decision to let Alex practice on him.
    But it came with rules.
    This was outside the rules.
    Alex still had his hands shoved deep in his pockets and he looked miserable. Angry. Scared. “Are you mad at me?”
    “I have no reason to be angry,” Gus said, shrugging. “You didn’t just knock me out on my butt, Alex.”
    “I tried to tell her I was sorry.”
    Closing his eyes, Gus shook his head. “You can’t. She doesn’t know what happened . . . we can’t
let
her know.”
    Alex glared at him for a long, tense moment.
    Gus held his stare and waited. Finally, the boy turned his back and stormed out of the living room, and disappeared down the hall. It wasn’t a long walk. The narrow little room he’d claimed as his own was all of four feet down the hall. It seemed like the entire house shook as he slammed the door shut. Closing his eyes, Gus rested his head against the wall.
    When is this going to end?
It wasn’t the first time he’d wondered it. It wouldn’t be the last.
    He knew there wasn’t going to be an easy answer.
    At this point, he wasn’t even expecting an answer, period.
    The boy had to be protected, and he suspected
protection
was going to be a problem for them even once Alex was no longer just a boy.
    Please . . . you must do this for me . . .
    Those words haunted him even now. He’d given his word, and he’d stand by it. With no regrets.
    But how much longer . . .
    It ends when the threat is gone.
    The knowledge didn’t improve his frame of mind. Not at all.
    * * *
    REYES lowered the phone.
    He wasn’t overly pleased with the fact that the man he had on this job had decided he’d do better if he was working it somewhere . . . else.
    It made it harder to watch him. Harder. But not impossible.
    He’d made a few phone calls about a replacement, but so far, nobody seemed quite right.
    One thing that
was
intriguing . . . the information his man had given him. That other avenue he’d mentioned. Reyes had been prepared to dismiss it as a hoax, except he didn’t think it was. That was promising. So very promising.
    “I want to go swimming.”
    The woman at his side stroked a hand down his thigh, and despite his decision to focus and make some headway on this problem, he found himself thinking about that idea himself. Her lovely body, cutting through the water. He could join her. Send his men away from the pool. Not too far, of course. Just far enough away to leave them in privacy.
    But he really did need to move forward—
    A slim hand slid up and cupped his balls. “Come on,” she murmured. Leaning in, she pressed her lips to his cheek. “I’ll be bad for you again.”
    He leaned back, thoughts of work not just forgotten, but
gone
. Like they’d never existed. “Will you, my dear?”
    “Hmmm . . .”
    * * *
    BENT over the computer, Esteban watched as his carefully worded message went live. He’d just gotten off the phone with the boss, and he knew he didn’t have too much time left. He’d heard the impatience in the man’s voice. He was down to weeks now. Maybe even days. Something had to happen, and soon.
    This was his best chance . . . a harebrained scheme. His best chance at survival. Maybe he should just end it now.
    Once more, he read through the message, his heart slamming hard against his ribs. He’d spent hours on those words. Hours. And he’d thought it through for an entire day before he even sat down to put pen to paper, tucked inside a hotel in the miserable hell that was known as Miami.
Away
from the boss. Where he might be able to lose himself if he had to.
    He’d torn up more than a dozen drafts of the message, carefully burning each shred down to ash. Nothing to trace back to