psychopaths with a taste for human flesh with that exact same expression.
Inscrutable bastard.
“It’s got nothing to do with that last case,” he said again. “It’s in Orlando, yes, but it’s an easy job, mostly monitoring. It’s practically nothing more than babysitting. You can handle a babysitting job, Agent MacMeans.”
Sure she could. The problem was it was in Orlando.
Clenching her jaw, she stared at him. Babysitting. She wanted to tell him to shove it up his ass.
“Is there a reason why you can’t do this job?” he asked, watching her the way he might study a suspect before he went in to tear them apart in an interrogation.
Shit.
She was screwed.
She could either take the damn assignment. Or resign. He hadn’t said that, and she knew he wouldn’t force that on her, but she also knew she couldn’t avoid one particular area of the country, either. They were spread too thin as it was and she wasn’t much for playing the chickenshit.
Either she could work and do her damn job, or she would quit and let him make room on the team for somebody who could do the job. He danced on a razor’s edge to keep their unit going, anyway.
She’d worked too damn hard to get where she was just to walk away.
She wasn’t a quitter, damn it. Besides, it wasn’t like her particular skill set was in high demand out there, and she rather liked being able to use her abilities to do something worthwhile. Somehow she doubted any local law enforcement agency was likely to welcome a telepath into their midst. Sure. Welcome aboard, and instead of using the police radio, just screech out into our minds like a psycho banshee, MacMeans. Look forward to working with you!
Since she needed to work to live, she had to suck it up, put on her big-girl panties, and deal with this. Moving back to her desk, she sat down and crossed her legs. Absently, she started to swing her foot, one high-heeled shoe hanging off her toes. She was tempted to take it off and pummel Jones across the side of the head with it.
Orlando . . . so many nightmares. So many bad dreams. And the bitter knowledge that she hadn’t been able to save the one person who’d always mattered to her.
“You know avoiding it won’t make it any easier.”
Jerking her attention back to Jones, she stared at him. “This isn’t supposed to be easy,” she said quietly. “But what in the hell would you know about it?”
For a second, though, as she stared at him, she thought she saw something in the cool depths of his eyes.
Then he looked down and it was gone.
“Just tell me about the job, Jones. Just who am I supposed to be babysitting?”
* * *
Gus Hernandez pulled the battered, beat-up truck into the driveway of the little house he was renting. It was falling apart and instead of paying five hundred a month as the landlady had originally requested, he paid three hundred . . . and did repairs. He was good with his hands and always had been. What he didn’t know how to do, he was able to learn and he’d fixed the place up quite a bit over the past few months.
So far, he’d managed to tear up the rotting boards of the porch and replace those. He’d repainted three of the rooms. He still needed the fix the deck in back and it was an ongoing struggle to keep the yard free of weeds. If he had the money, he’d reseed it, but he didn’t. Most of the work he did was either with scrap he found cheap at his other jobs or clearance stuff at the local hardware or home improvement stores.
He still needed to get more work done around the little place, although what he wanted to do was go inside the dark, quiet house and just sit. For a few minutes, with a cold beer and do . . . nothing. He didn’t want to think, he didn’t want to talk. He wanted to do nothing. It was a luxury he hadn’t been able to indulge in for a good, long while, though, and tonight would be no different.
Although it was a bright, sunny day, he felt like he had a cloud hanging over him.
Always.
Pulling the truck into Park, he stared at the old place, studied it, made sure everything looked the way it had this morning when he’d left. He hadn’t had a single phone