Dark Legacy (4 page)

“She has nothing to do with me.” The doorknob dug into Maddie’s back. She crossed her arms and refused to feel trapped. Refused to let her mind see her hunky psychiatrist and his cozy office bursting into flames while she ran screaming from her twin’s nightmares. “Sa…Sarah’s problems, whatever they were, have been gone from my life for years.”

With a slow blink, Jarred set the red file aside.

“Is avoiding your family history and the twin no one knows you have worth sacrificing your career for?” he asked.

A silly family prophecy,
her mother had called what Maddie and Sarah had found. A bunch of nonsense written by a long-dead aunt who was burned at the stake during Salem’s witch trials. The women in their family were overly sensitive to their surroundings, that’s all. Overly aware of emotions and how they affected the world. Of what people were feeling.
A bunch of nonsense, really…Forget what you saw. Promise me you’ll forget all of it…

Except it was inside Maddie now. The darkness trickling out, no matter how hard she resisted. Phyllis had lost her husband and one of her daughters. She’d been slowly losing touch with reality since Maddie was a child. Sarah had gone completely insane. And now Maddie’s mind was slipping…

“My sister’s gone,” she repeated, the sound of a storming wind roaring through her mind. She turned and got the stupid door to open. “Sarah has nothing to do with my world now, and you’re damn straight I’ll do whatever it takes to keep it that way.”

Temple was losing it
.

Jarred watched Maddie from across the frantic ER and wished Yates’s report to the hospital board had been wrong. But wishing in Jarred’s line of work did as much good as bashing your head against a wall and hoping it wouldn’t hurt. When a nurse brushed past Maddie and the waif-thin resident bit her lip to hold herself together, his jaw clenched.

She’s a liability the hospital can’t carry any longer,
the administration had concluded. And on paper they were
right. But that hadn’t stopped Jarred from battling into this mess on Maddie’s behalf, even though he had nothing to offer professionally beyond what Yates had done. Nothing but months of watching Maddie’s every move, while telling himself that a casual relationship was all he wanted. It was all he’d wanted with any woman since his marriage ended.

Jarred realized he was rubbing the sore throat he’d had since their session and stopped.
More than casual
wasn’t something he’d done well since he was a child—hence his divorce from a woman he still considered a good friend. And Maddie had made it abundantly clear for months that whatever they’d started during their few dates was off. Period. Just when she’d clearly needed the kind of professional help he could give her.

Coincidence? The scientist in Jarred didn’t believe in coincidences. Maddie looked utterly exhausted. Three months ago she’d reluctantly admitted to having strange dreams. Nightmares she wouldn’t discuss. She’d even told him a time or two, before she stopped talking to him altogether, that unexplained things were happening. To the point that he’d wondered if sleep deprivation was messing with her short-term memory. After that, she’d shut Jarred out of whatever was troubling her. Right before she was put on an administrative plan that required weekly analysis of her condition.

He should have walked away and been glad to have dodged a bullet.

But Jarred hadn’t known how to let go. Not of Maddie or the way being with her, even with her growing problems, had made him feel. Like he could breathe deeper. Relax into who he was. It had been the same, even during their disastrous meeting that morning.

She’s the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen.

Caramel brown hair. Pale skin. Petite. All curves and intelligence and inner fire. She was a vulnerable pocket Venus he couldn’t tear his gaze away from. The compulsion to be near her, to talk with her and hear her voice in return, never let up. Watching her work was a turn-on all its own. Maddie Temple, all twenty-six years of her, was the purest healer he’d ever known.

Pain spread across her face while she fought to diagnose her patient. Jarred’s own heart beat faster.

“He’s bleeding out…” she whispered. She cleared her throat. Glared behind her. Found no one there. “Get a surgical consult over here!”

Everyone but Jarred ignored the striking picture she made working over the groaning man. She smoothed shaking fingers across her unconscious patient’s forehead. Jarred’s skin tingled in the same spot. ER staff swarmed around him, immersed in saving the rest of the family of four that had been cut from the aftermath of SUV-vs.-semi. Naturally, the semi had won. The mother and children were most critical. The father, triaged as stable, was the least of everyone’s concern.

Everyone but Maddie.

Jarred had officially blocked off twenty minutes for a fresh glimpse of Temple’s dysfunctional interaction with the trauma staff. He’d blown that estimate an hour ago. Noticeably freaked by the crisis rocking at full tilt around her, Maddie had stuck by the father’s side. Her connection to the man seemed to grow with each gentle touch. Another nurse bumped into Maddie on the way to fetch type-specific platelets for the smaller of the two little girls. Maddie ignored the contact this time. She said something near her patient’s ear. The father’s agitation quieted. Jarred edged closer, needing to hear. The man’s next groan sent Temple’s right hand to his belly, palpitat
ing. The fingers of her left aligned with pressure points on the man’s face.

Jarred sensed her attention draw inward. He could feel her next shudder. When she swayed, he reached to pull her away from the patient, her distress becoming his own.

“I need a surgical consult,” she yelled. “Now!”

Dr. Britton shoved past Jarred.

“Temple?” The ER attending sighed. “What the hell are you doing? This patient’s stable, and I need you—”

“He’s bleeding out,” Maddie insisted.

“Listen, you little nutcase.” Britton’s scowl was understandable. For months, Maddie hadn’t been up for diagnosing a hangnail, let alone an advanced MVA trauma. “Yell at me in my ER again, and I’ll—”

“You’ll what, Doctor?” Jarred didn’t remember edging between them, but he and Britton were nose to nose.

Maddie was shaking behind him. No longer absorbed in her patient, she was falling apart. Shielding her from her boss’s impatience wouldn’t fly for long, but it felt right to Jarred.

Too right.

“Fuck off, Keith.” Britton squared off. “I have three patients crashing because this asshole decided to have one too many beers with his lunch. I don’t need you and wonder kid here”—he nodded to where Maddie was cowering behind Jarred—“demanding that I hold her hand while she hides in the corner.”

“Then leave the hand-holding to me, and do your job. This
asshole
has internal injuries.”

“Really?” Britton—six-five, lab coat and khakis covered in blood—squinted over Jarred’s shoulder. “Another feeling of yours, Temple? And your diagnosis is based on what this time, voodoo? Your patient’s alcohol haze saved
his sorry hide. Too bad I can’t say the same for his family. I don’t have the time for this.”

Britton pivoted to leave.

“What about a lawsuit?” Jarred challenged. “You got time for that? Because that’s what’s coming when it turns out you’ve let a man die instead of treating his injuries.”

For reasons Jarred didn’t have time to analyze, he knew Maddie was right. He’d just watched her diagnose a patient with nothing more than touch and intuition, but he was certain her instincts were dead-on.

“Fine.” Britton dragged Maddie to the injured man’s side. “What?” he demanded. “He’s bleeding out where?”

Maddie’s arm twisted in his grasp. Her complexion paled to paper white.

“Let her go,” Jarred said from her other side, careful not to touch her.

She’d found a tenuous balance while focused on the father, but her composure was shattering. She gasped, struggling against Britton’s hold. She’d be black and blue.

The air around them seemed to thicken. The skin along Jarred’s arms and neck prickled as her agitation grew. Just like during their session that morning when the once mild-mannered intern’s anger had boiled over because he’d confronted her with the existence of a twin she pretended she didn’t have.

What the fuck was going on?

“Dr. Britton!” Jarred warned. “Let her go, now!”

Pain swamped Maddie from Britton’s grip. Then he was pulled away, and Jarred was there…God…hovering…too close…the world around them flushing violent red. Destroying the healing white she’d found in her patient.

It had never been this bad before. The shaking and confusion after she read a patient’s condition. The darkness closing in—the way it did in her twin’s demented nightmares. Only now, Jarred’s fear for her was part of the mix. His shock flaming through her mind, then her body. And Britton’s anger, harsh and confusing and impossible to shut out.

She shouldn’t be able to feel either of them. Not on her own. That only happened to Sarah.

This was wrong.

Not her.

Not possible…None of this should be possible.

Jarred and Britton were still arguing. Their words, their thoughts, made no sense through the frigid nightmare Maddie was slipping into. Maddie’s fingers grazed her patient’s arm. Warmth shot through the contact, softening the jagged chill and anchoring her to here and now. Then her relief sparked to agony. She gasped in a moment of blinding clarity.

Jarred jerked at her side as if he’d felt it, too. He turned shocked eyes toward her.

“What the hell was that?”

“He’s bleeding from his spleen,” she croaked, needing him to believe her. “Please…”

Jarred blinked down at her. His expression shifted from surprise to a touch of awe.

He grabbed the lapels of Britton’s lab coat and hauled the man closer to the exam table. “Don’t just stand there,” he insisted.

Pain was swamping Maddie. Her patient’s pain. A father’s staggering flood of confusion and desperation. Growing weaker by the second.

My wife and daughters. Save them!

“Get off me!” Britton fought Jarred’s hold.

My fault…
The patient’s head shook side to side. Death called to Maddie from his injuries. Menacing. Triumphant.
…all my fault. Let me go…

Let him go…
Sarah’s voice taunted.
You’re too chicken to help him. Coward. Go ahead. Let the man die. Give up on being a doctor. Just like you gave up on being my sister…

“No!”

Maddie snatched up the portable ultrasound. She shouldered in front of both men and prepped the patient’s abdomen with gel. Explored for all of five seconds before she had it.

“There!”

The distorted image on the monitor shimmered as white misted the edges of her vision. The lesion along the man’s spleen was a deadly shadow. A fatal rupture if it wasn’t treated immediately. An injury there was no denying Maddie had felt, then seen with her mind. Long before the diagnostic equipment had revealed it to the men standing beside her.

“Shit!” Britton knocked her aside. “Bellamy,” he yelled to the doctor who’d triaged the father. “Get your butt over here!”

The senior resident was laboring over the ten-year-old girl whose heart had stopped at point of impact. He and other staff poured into the tiny alcove. Maddie stumbled away, shivering, while the father’s stats dropped. Alarms sounded. There was a shout for plasma. Orders for IVs. Adrenaline. The fight was on.

The trauma team’s determination to cheat death whipped at Maddie. In the hallway outside, her hands covering her ears, she tried to block out her patient’s silent pleas and the memory of her own father begging for Sarah’s salvation.

People’s thoughts. Their feelings. Their everything. From before. From now. Things that were still to come. Angry. Dark. Freezing dark. Building. Spinning inside her, until she clutched her stomach.

The reality of what she’d just done sunk in. The insanity of it. How was any of this possible? Her patient’s injuries had…talked to her. Her
patient
had talked to her, and his mind was still screaming. Fury and fear and pleading she couldn’t ignore. Just like Sarah hadn’t been able to.

“Oh, my God!”

She would have collapsed, but Jarred’s hands were there to support her.

“Get away from me.” Nausea burned the back of her throat. Sarah’s demented laughter seared the frazzled corners of Maddie’s mind. “I…I’m going to be sick.”

“You’re making a mistake if you think another program lead could have achieved better results,” Richard said to the scientists assembled for a center directors meeting.

It was the bluff of Richard’s life.

Clearly, another psychic was manipulating Sarah’s mind. Running shadow simulations. Possibly piggybacking them onto Richard’s. Likely someone sitting around the conference table. Richard settled deeper into his chair and focused on not looking as if he were attempting to read everyone there. Not that he expected to discover much from a mind strong enough to challenge his control over Sarah.

“Kayla Lawrence’s dream responses,” he continued, “were on target until—”

“—until her mind regained control from Alpha, and she nearly blew her head off in her sleep.” Chansley Whittiker’s pointed, ratlike nose was flushed at the tip. “With a dream-planted weapon there are no records of you designing into our prototype’s programming. You’ve insisted on projecting nonlethal dream symbols. You’ve preached keeping a clean dichotomy between your alpha testing work, and the weapons programming our client wants at beta stage.”

“Controlling the host’s responses is difficult enough
when Sarah’s embedding everyday objects and tasks into Lawrence’s subconscious,” Richard explained. First, tasks like Sarah directing Kayla Lawrence to take a different way to work each day. To eat red meat for lunch when Lawrence was a diehard vegetarian. Then increasingly disturbing variations to test the limits of the host’s mind. But nothing homicidal or suicidal. “Adding violent variations would—”