"Blaine couldn't be in two places at once. Unless, of course, one of them wasn't him."
"Why would someone bother impersonating Blaine? And how would the impersonator even get away with it if Lloyd wasn't also a copy?" She paused to frown. "And why were they both turning up at a murder scene?"
"Because the woman murdered was Kathryn Douglass, director of The Pegasus Foundation, which has strong military ties."
"That doesn't explain why Lloyd and Blaine would turn up."
"Many of the projects the foundation was involved in came from Hopeworth. Blaine was Douglass's military contact."
"But…" She hesitated, mulling over the little she'd heard or read about the foundation. "Don't they make big hardware, like fighter planes and stuff?"
"Yes. But they also work on smaller, more experimental weapons for Hopeworth. Illie and I were called in there a few days ago to investigate a break-in."
"Illie being your new partner?" Meaning he didn't have something against partners, just against her?
He hesitated. "Not by choice, I can assure you." His gaze met hers for a long moment, and she saw not only annoyance but a loneliness and a longing that was as deep as anything she'd ever felt.
If ever she needed encouragement to carry on with her crazy seduction plan that was it. The problem was how far should she push? And how soon? Given the situation—and her reassignment—it wasn't going to be easy, no matter what she decided.
Which meant that maybe she needed to seduce him sooner rather than later—and hit him hard and fast. Give him no time to think, just react.
She looked out the window and wondered if she could even do that. Wondered if she'd do nothing more than make a fool of herself. Lord, she hadn't even kissed the man, and here she was, thinking of full-blooded seduction. And she only had her hormones and his sister saying that he was interested.
While she might see loneliness and need in his eyes, it didn't actually mean that either were aimed at her.
"Sam?"
She jerked out of her thoughts and met his gaze. "What?"
He studied her again, his gaze shrewd, almost judgmental.
"I said, so what made you order that search on Blaine the other night if you felt no evil in him?"
She hesitated, but something in the way he was looking at her suggested this was a pivotal point in their relationship. That if she lied about this, she could forget about the future and whatever plans she might hold. "Because I recognized him."
"How?"
"From my dreams."
His eyebrow rose. "And what was he doing in those dreams?"
She blew out a breath, battling a sudden reluctance to talk about it. What if the dreams were fake? What if they were nothing more than images of an overactive imagination?
What if they weren't?
If she wanted to know the truth, she had to start trusting someone with her nightly journeys. Someone other than Joe, whom she might not be able to trust.
"They were training me to use gifts I don't appear to have right now."
"Hopeworth was?"
"I can't say for sure it was Hopeworth, because the dreams never included a location. It was just a room—or rather, an arena—with the scientists in an observation room above me."
"And was it just you in the dream?"
"In the training arena? Yes." She hesitated. "But I am never alone in the dreams. Joshua is always with me."
"And is Joshua this Joe Black you mentioned earlier?"