Hide and Seek - Lara Adrian Page 0,38

in their sights now, and from the other vision he and Alec shared. The one that predicted Lisa being held at gunpoint, the nose of a pistol resting at her temple.

Chilling, hideous thoughts, all of them. His gut clenched, and it took every bit of his self control to resist dragging her into his arms now, just to feel her against him, safe and sound.

He cleared his throat, needing to get a hold of himself and his thoughts. “Alec’s recurring vision is different from mine. He doesn’t see the gun cabinet or the three rifles inside. But the end result is the same.”

“Total annihilation,” Alec confirmed grimly. “My hair ignites. My skin melts away. The heat and fire leaves nothing behind. It’s a destruction that can’t be stopped.”

She looked to Duarte in question and he nodded. “The same for me.”

“My God...” Her voice was reduced to a whisper. “You’ve both been seeing this vision—living it—how many times for the past three years?”

“Hundreds, easily.” Duarte had lost count a long time ago. “I didn’t know Alec was having the same premonition until we met up again yesterday.”

“It’s possible other Phoenix members are having it, too,” Alec suggested.

“And if they are?” Lisa asked. “Maybe there’s something more to the vision. Maybe if you work with the others, there could be a way to prevent it from happening.”

Smart girl. She was just coming up to speed that moment, and she was already on the same page as Alec and him. “It’s something we need to find out, yes.”

“First we’d have to locate them,” Alec said. “And there’s no telling which of them we can trust.”

“Including my brother,” she murmured.

Neither Duarte nor Alec could deny it. It killed him to see her soft gaze on him shutter now, but he refused to reassure her with what he felt in his heart would be tender lies.

She crossed her arms over her chest in the heavy, uncertain silence that followed Kyle’s mention. Her lovely face was pinched with worry, with regret. And with fresh hurt as she looked at Duarte. “I need some time to think,” she said quietly. “I need to process... everything.”

When she turned to leave the weapons room, Duarte took a step after her. He reached for her hand, took it gently in his. “I’ll come with you. We still need to talk.”

“Please don’t.” Her head shook slowly and she withdrew from his loose hold. “Don’t come with me, John. I don’t want to talk anymore. Right now, all I need is for you to leave me alone.”

14

Although she’d told him she refused to run or hide anymore, Lisa knew that’s exactly what she was doing behind the closed door of her guest room the rest of that day and into the evening. She’d ventured out once, only to eat. To her relief, John had been off somewhere else on the property with Alec, the two of them no doubt planning and preparing their next move.

Seeing them working together, undertaking a new personal mission, kindled something warm inside her. Pride, she thought. And a sense of reassurance, that no matter how dark and dangerous they believed Phoenix’s enemies to be, no matter how grim the fiery premonition John and Alec shared, these two men would not rest until their world was set to rights.

The problem was trying to imagine that her brother could ever willingly stand on the wrong side of his friends and his former operatives in the program.

To believe that would mean she had never really known Kyle.

The same way she’d never known about his gift of precognition.

And then there was the fact that he’d been acting so strangely the last time she’d seen him. Anxious. Paranoid.

Guilty.

The word whispered in the back of her mind as she idly rotated her bracelet from him around her wrist. She never would have let the idea of Kyle’s possible duplicity form in the least, if not for her conversation with John today. Her argument with him. The one that had left a wedge between them that she wasn’t sure how to mend.

He’d hidden the truth from her. He and Alec had suspected Kyle of a terrible betrayal—they had all but condemned him—and yet John had chosen to hide that information from her.

It was as bad as a lie. And it had left her angry and hurt, feeling like a fool.

She was still nursing that emotional sting when she heard the firm rap on her guest room door.

“Lisa.” John’s deep voice sounded weary from where