Riding the Storm (11 page)

Mostly,
the handful of parameteorologists worldwide were employed by small, private
weather companies, as she had been, but she no longer worked in that capacity,
and mundane investigations were no longer her responsibility. Her job with ACRO
gave her more freedom, and more interesting assignments.

Like
Remy. Sure, she hadn't wanted this job, but she also hadn't thought there was a
chance in hell he had any real connection with the weather. Or that he'd be so
hot.

"Well,
now," he murmured in a deep, dark voice as he twisted around to face her
and hold her with his equally dark gaze, "isn't it interesting that you're
here."

She
swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. "Remy, the weather in this area
is legendary. People have reported storms that never showed up in official
reports. Two tornadoes have flattened parts of this county, but satellite
photos show clear skies. Hail has torn apart vehicles in the streets but left
houses unscathed. Hail in the shape of crucifixes fell near a brothel."
His eyes flickered with something—amusement? Regret? She couldn't tell. But she
had thrown him off track.

"This
is prime property for a parameteorologist. And now," she said, leaning so
close to him that their noses nearly touched, "I'm beginning to think it's
no coincidence that you grew up here."

God,
she should be an actress. Maybe Devlin really had known what he was doing when
he gave her this assignment, one she never should have had, because the agency
had an entire department designated to making first contact and determining
whether or not the subject would be an asset to ACRO.

Unfortunately,
as Dev had said, as ACRO's only parameteorologist, she alone was qualified to
deal with Remy.

"Well?
You got anything to say?"

A
muscle in his jaw jumped, and his lips pressed into a thin, grim line. "I
don't know what you want, Haley. Just because you got me off doesn't mean I
have to engage in post-fuck chat. So back off."

Haley
sighed. Dev had been wrong. Very wrong. Because parameteorologist or not, she
was in no way qualified to deal with Remy Begnaud.

Sometimes,
Devlin O'Malley was sure he could see light flicker through his sightless eyes.
For just a second, usually when he first woke and his lids opened, more out of
habit than choice, he was convinced the steady stream of pure white light he
saw was real.

Once
his body began to move, he realized it was part desperation, part gift and,
finally, part warning. Step away from the light and all that bullshit. Which
was why he hated mornings. And naps. They left him disoriented. Scattered.

In
his haste to wake his own ass up from an impromptu one, he knocked several
objects off his desk. From the sounds, he assumed his coffee mug and the glass
ashtray were the most recent victims.

That
was all right—the ashtray reminded him that he'd quit smoking, and he didn't
like having to quit anything. Everyone needed a vice, but smoking had hindered
his five mile a day running habit, so it had to go. And ten years later, he
still missed it.

"Devlin,
are you all right in there?" Marlena West, his personal assistant, asked
through the slightly opened door of his office.

"Fine,"
he said. "I'm fine, Marlena." He stood, still a little unsteady,
tilted his head from side to side to give his neck a stretch, the ache
reminding him that working straight through the night wasn't the best idea.

"Creed
just checked in. He met up with Annika, and they're making progress," she
said.

"Good.
Make sure he can always get through to me."

"And
Haley's off-line since an hour ago, and she's not transmitting."

He
raked his fingers through his hair and sighed as he heard Marlena walk away
from the doorway. He needed a shower and shave—and then he'd change into the
same unassuming black BDUs all the ACRO operatives wore on the compound.

The
surrounding neighbors in the Catskill area of New York thought they were a
private security firm, hired by wealthy companies all over the world. It
explained the helo pads, the private jets and the men and women in BDUs seen
around town, and for the most part they were accepted without question. The
townspeople actually felt safer having the ACRO employees around, and Dev felt
safer having moved the compound to a more out-of-the-way area than near
Syracuse.

Winters
here were tough; the amount of snow the area received made it difficult for him
to deploy his agents, but it was even tougher getting in. And even though his
special ability operatives boasted that they could take on just about anyone,
anywhere, anytime, Dev liked being able to provide them with a small measure of
security.

He'd
taken over as ACRO's chief somewhat reluctantly, but once inside he was fully
committed to protecting his operatives. And recruiting new ones.

Recruitment
was the biggest fight he had with the old guard at ACRO. The veterans, mainly
psychics who'd been here since the company's inception and who'd worked under
his parents, didn't appreciate anyone with a military background telling them
what to do. They were against actively pulling in new members, especially those
with so-called uncontrollable abilities.

Dev
came from a different place, preferred to call their newer agents
Special
Ability Operatives
. They were facing a new enemy, a far more dangerous one
than another country's government. Itor Corp used methods for collecting their
operatives and treating them like specimens that turned Dev's stomach and made
him more determined than ever to offer safe haven to Special Ability types in
return for their helping to keep safe the world at large.

Speaking
of safe, he hoped Haley was making headway on her current assignment. His
investigators had discovered Remy's favorite flavor of ice cream, but not one
of ACRO's psychics had been able to determine whether or not the former SEAL
could actually control the weather. They were able to figure out that the
weather controlled Remy, though, and Dev knew the man was going to need help no
matter what. The sooner Haley got him back to the compound, the better. Itor
had been running neck and neck with ACRO when it came to approaching potential
agents and had recently stolen a few right out from under Dev's Convincers. He
couldn't afford to lose another Special Ability, for ACRO's sake, and for
Remy's.

Merging
old and new had not been easy, would never be seamless, but things were running
more smoothly now. All the operatives could agree on one thing—they'd never let
the enemy win on their watch.

Dev
had had his own demons to deal with during these years—as a teenager, he'd been
haunted by a spirit who glided too finely along the line of good and evil. He'd
long suspected that this same spirit, who'd mysteriously released him from its
grasp when he'd entered the Air Force, had something to do with his C-130 crash
and subsequent blindness.

His
loss of sight, which was never medically explained, had gone on too long to be
termed hysterical blindness. But the blindness had brought out his gift of
second sight, and learning CRV—Controlled Remote Viewing—made popular by
Stargate in the 1970's, brought that gift to a whole different level.

And
now he suspected a mole, right here, among the operatives who'd sworn to love,
honor and protect the world with ACRO's help. A betrayal that punched him in
the gut every time he thought about it. The consequences of not finding the
leak would be disastrous; the methods he would need to use to ensure success,
doubly so. But now wasn't the time to think about that—not until he got a
report from Creed and Annika.

He
closed his eyes—again, habit—and began his normal routine of CRV. When he
wasn't distracted, or exhausted, he could move through the compound easily,
department by department, like he had some kind of security system in his
brain.

He
put his hands over his ears, something many operatives in the Paranormal
Division did when things got too overwhelming—it was a useless attempt to block
out the voices, but the pressure did take away some of the pain.

Sometimes,
in all the combined chaos of the ACRO environment embedded into his brain, he
thought he could hear his parents' voices too. But that was always a fake-out.

He
didn't doubt that his parents' spirits surrounded him—the old guard wouldn't
bullshit him about that, especially not Samantha Hawkins, one of ACRO's most
well-respected psychologists and mediums. She'd been speaking to the dead, or
them to her, since she was three years old.

She'd
told him that his mom and dad were around him, most but not all the time, but
they never said anything. Whether their silence was for better or for worse
wasn't Sam's place to say.

He
opened his eyes again on instinct, because Marlena stood in the doorway. He
pictured her the way she felt under his touch—tall, slim, long hair reaching
halfway down her back. His palms itched, fingers flexing along the soft brown
leather arms of his chair before he motioned with a slight nod for her to come
forward.

"You're
tense," she whispered, running a cool hand along the back of his neck. He
bent his head forward, let his face rest against her breasts to allow her hands
greater access to his shoulders and back.

Since
the accident ten long years ago, every other sense he had was more
sensitive—almost too much. The line between pleasure and pain seemed to blur,
especially when he was touched.

"
The
Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away
, "the old chaplain had told him.
Stood over his hospital bed and tried that whole
there's-a-reason-for-everything crap. Until Dev had proven to the guy that,
while his eyesight was gone, there was nothing wrong with his fist.

The
chaplain hadn't come back to see him for his entire stay in the hospital.

"Stop
thinking, Dev," Marlena urged, and he sat back, lids closed, and let her
unbutton his pants.

Stopping
thinking was something he had to will himself to do. In fact, the ability to
shut down the brain and just enjoy was becoming harder these days than ever.
The old adage that the other senses strengthen when one was cut off was doubly
true in his case. And lately his so-called powers had been increasing.
Shifting. Doubling. He could determine the wind and weather forecasts from the
pressure of the air on his skin and from the way the air smelled, could grasp
the emotion in any room, coming off any person, from the second he came in
close proximity. He could hear things that he shouldn't and his need to touch
was constant, almost obsessive—to feel sensation beneath his fingertips was
like the bridge between heaven and hell.

Marlena's
mouth slid over his cock, demanding that he pay full attention to what she was
doing, and he groaned. Sometimes Marlena got him maybe a little too much. She
knew he could never love her. His heart was elsewhere, with someone who spoke
to him in ways no one else had ever been able to.

His
balls tightened, her fingers dug into his hips. His orgasms were as close as he
was ever going to get to flying solo again. He accepted that, but would never
come to peace with it. He'd give anything to replace his second sight with his
original way of seeing the world. No matter how much he mourned his loss of
vision, the pain never went away.

Stop
thinking, Dev. Stop fucking thinking.

Remy
was pretty sure he knew what Haley wanted from him. And he was even surer that
she wasn't going to get it. Maybe she could base her meteorological theories on
a blow job, but he wasn't about to let himself become a sex toy for science.

Part
of the problem was that he wasn't sure how he could answer her, even if he
wanted to. His weather draw had been going on for so long, he was no longer sure
where the weather ended and he began.

He
stood, swore, raked his fingers through his hair. He needed out of this place,
dammit. And a beer wouldn't hurt either.

"How
long have you been here?" he asked her over his shoulder as he headed to
the kitchen, even though he already knew the answer.

"I
moved in the day before yesterday," she said.

Forty-eight
hours ago—a day after his father had called, begging for help. Forty-eight
hours ago, the urges started, stronger than they'd ever been, pulling him toward
a woman who didn't appear to be scared of those urges.

None
of this was coincidence. But he'd known that from the second he'd spotted
Haley's tattoo.

He
grabbed a beer and slammed the fridge door shut with enough force to rattle the
cupboards. The bottle cap came off with a hiss, and then he flung it across the
room in a smooth motion by flipping it between his thumb and forefinger, and
took a long pull.

When
he looked back at her, she was still sitting on the couch, wearing a loosely
buttoned denim shirt. She'd showered and her hair was dry, free of twigs and
leaves, loose and wild around her shoulders. He knew firsthand it was the
softest thing he'd ever touched, and she hadn't bothered to style it or fix
herself up the way most of the women he'd known had—like they were embarrassed
to let him see who they really were.