The Taken

She was looking up at him with swimming eyes when he bent down and kissed her.

Not a long kiss. Just a short, sweet one. Very sweet, although her lips tasted of salt and tears. He felt a peculiar little contraction around his heart as he pushed back from her and gently closed the car door.

He looked over at Tierney, who was sitting exactly as he’d left her after the kiss. “Hey,” he said, and she swivelled her head towards him, looking dazed. His heart gave another of those funny kicks as he wondered for a moment whether he’d gone too far, crossed some kind of line with her. He sure hoped not. Because he suddenly knew that he’d be losing something of real importance if he had.

Then she smiled. Just that. And he knew he had crossed a line – and that there was no going back now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kathleen Creighton has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old-timers’ tales, and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today she says she is interested in everything – art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history, but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing, and now combines her two loves in romance novels. Check her out at www.kathleencreighton.com.

KATHLEEN CREIGHTON

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This book is for the brothers and sisters

I’ve never met

And who don’t know I exist.

Yet.

If the Fates allow,

I will find you…

Someday.

Prologue

In a house on the shores of a small lake, somewhere in South Carolina …

“Pounding…that’s always the first thing. Someone—my father—is banging on the door. Banging…pounding…with his fists, feet, I don’t know. Trying to break it down.”

“And…where are you?”

“I’m in a bedroom, I think. I don’t remember which one. I have the little ones with me. It’s my job to look after them when my father is having one of his…spells. I have to keep them out of his way. Keep them safe. I’ve taken them into the bedroom and I’ve locked the door, except…I don’t trust the lock, so I’ve wedged a chair under the handle, like my mom showed me. Only now I’m afraid, terrified even that won’t be enough. I can hear the wood splintering… breaking. I know it will only take a few more blows and he’ll be through. My mother is screaming…crying. I hold on to the little ones—I have my arms around them, and they’re all trembling. The twins, the little girls, are sobbing and crying, ‘Mama, Mama…’ but the boys just cry quietly.

“I hear sirens…more sirens, getting louder and louder until it seems they’re coming right into the room, and there are lots of people shouting, and all of a sudden the pounding stops. There’s a moment—several minutes— when all I hear is the little ones whimpering…and then, there’s a loud bang, so loud we—the children and I—all jump. We hold each other tighter, and there’s another bang, and we flinch again, and then there’s just confusion…voices shouting…footsteps running…glass breaking…the little ones crying…and I think I might be crying, too…”

“Oh, God…I’m sorry, Cory. It’s all right…it’s all right…I love you…I’ve got you…”

He discovered he was crying, but he also knew it was all right. He was all right. Sam, his wife, was holding him tightly, cradling his head against her breasts, and her hands were gentle as they wiped the tears from his face.

“I’m going to find them, Sam. My brothers and sisters. I have to find them.”

Samantha felt warm moisture seep between her lashes. “Of course you do.” She lifted her head and took his face between her hands and smiled fiercely at him through her tears. “We’ll find them together, Pearse,” she whispered. “We’ll find them. I promise you we will.”

Chapter 1

Portland, Oregon

Detective Wade Callahan had nothing against mind readers, or fortune-tellers, or whatever they were calling themselves nowadays. So long as they stuck to their tarot cards and beaded curtains and refrained from activities that might conceivably engage the interests of the bunko squad. As far as he was concerned, those so-called psychics had no business in a police squad room unless it was as a victim or perpetrator of a crime.

And, given the nature of their business, he figured one scenario was about as likely as the other.

They sure as hell had no business wandering around a crime scene. Particularly his crime scene.

For some reason the fact that this one happened to be a particularly attractive woman only made matters worse. What in the hell was the captain thinking? And who’d ever heard of a psychic with tousled sunshine hair and big, innocent blue eyes, freckles scattered across her rosy cheeks and pert little…

Ah, hell.

“You’re growling again,” Ed Francks said, giving him an elbow nudge in the ribs.

“Wasn’t growling,” Wade growled. “Muttering. That was muttering. There’s a difference.”

“Uh-huh.” His former partner looked him over, eyebrows raised in mild rebuke. “Best get used to it, man. You heard what the captain said. She’s part of the task force from now on.” He shrugged. “Anyways, from what I hear this one could be the real deal.”

Ed Francks was a Vietnam vet who’d seen too many young lives wasted in the jungles and rice paddies of the Mekong Delta and was spending his life making up for that by teaching young police recruits how to stay alive in the urban jungles of Portland, Oregon. He was a gentle bear of a man and a tough task master of a police sergeant and one hell of a fine police officer who, in Wade’s opinion, should have been made detective long ago. And no doubt would have, if he’d wanted any part of it.

It had been a long time since Wade had been partnered with Francks, but he’d requested him for this task force because he had a fine analytical mind and more common sense than anybody else he knew, and was the person he most wanted watching his back when push came to shove. Which didn’t mean he always agreed with him.

“Yeah, well, she looks more like a damn high school cheerleader than somebody that talks to dead people,” Wade muttered. Muttered, not growled.

“That’s not what she does.” Francks had shifted unconsciously into his drill sergeant’s pose—feet planted apart, arms folded on his chest. Now he tilted his shaved head toward the woman wandering—apparently aimlessly—around the section of park playground that had been roped off with yellow crime scene tape. “You heard her at the briefing. She picks up vibes. Feels things.”

Wade made an ambiguous noise.

Francks looked over at him, black eyes reflecting sunlight in a way that turned them the color of dead ripe plums. “I don’t know. Could be something in it. The way she explained it, she says all thoughts and emotions give off electrical energy—that’s a proven fact—and it stands to reason intense emotions would give off a whole lot more energy. Like fear…rage…the kinds of things you’d expect from somebody involved in a crime, particularly a homicide. So, say there’s all this energy floating around, it seems like there might be people, certain people, that are more sensitive to it, that could maybe pick up on it. Like, you know, the way dogs can smell things we can’t.” He stiffened his stance, as if to shore up his case. “Sounds possible to me.”

Wade snorted—nothing ambiguous about it. “Come on.”

“Look, all I know is, she’s had some success working with other departments—Seattle, San Francisco, L.A.—and there was that kidnapping in Yreka last summer, she was involved with that. Hey, man, let’s face it, we’re not getting anywhere with these murders, and she lives right here in Portland. Be pretty dumb not to give her a shot, seems to me. What’ve we got to lose?”

“Credibility?” Wade said dryly. “Self-respect?”

He looked over at the woman. She was sitting in one of the swings with her head down and her hands over her face. She didn’t look so much like a cheerleader now as a little girl who’d lost her mommy.

Well, hell, he thought. I’ve got to talk to the woman sooner or later. Might as well be now.

“Play nice,” Francks called to him as he hitched his jacket more squarely on his shoulders and stepped over the curbing into the sandy playground.

Wade grunted.

Darkness…cold…so cold.

Fear…paralyzing fear…can’t think…should fight, struggle…maybe if I could scream…I am screaming! Why can’t I hear myself screaming?

Don’t hurt me! Please…don’t hurt…don’t hurt…nohurtnohurtnomorehurtpleaseplease…

Oh God… No! No…no…

Can’t be happening…not real…can’t be real!

I can’t die! Please…I don’t want to die!

I don’t understand…why are you doing this?

Why…why…why…

“Why…what?”

The voice was deep and flat, and came from somewhere outside the terror that held her in its clammy web. Tierney Doyle clung to the voice, used it like a lifeline and managed to haul herself back to corporeal reality, the tangible, tasteable, seeable world. As she struggled to focus on the tall figure of the man standing in front of her she felt the reassuring hug of the swing seat around the backs of her thighs, the warm Portland sunshine beating down on her head, the bite of the steel chains she’d gripped so hard she knew there would be red indentations and white ridges across her fingers and palms when she let go.

She touched a toe to the depression in the sand beneath the swing dug by small, pushing feet, making the swing rotate slightly as she looked up, up, up, past the slightly rumpled tan slacks, the darker brown sport jacket with the Portland P.D. detective’s badge pinned to the pocket, the unbuttoned shirt collar and the hard, square jaw wearing a hint of five o’clock shadow, though it was not yet noon. On up to eyes the color of mountain lakes under cloudless skies, with lashes any woman would die for.

“What?” she said vaguely as she met the look of cold appraisal in those deep-blue eyes. This she recognized—she’d seen that look often enough before. A skeptic, obviously, like so many in his line of work.

“Are you all right? You looked like you were about to pass out.” It wasn’t an expression of sympathy; his mouth hadn’t softened, though there was a pleat of frown lines between his dark brows.

Skepticism, but compassion, too. Nice, even though he doesn’t look it.

She tried to produce a smile, but it was too soon. Too soon. “I’m fine,” she murmured, and mentally added a determined, I will be.

She rose from the swing but kept one hand tightly on the chain, uncertain of her legs. She brushed at the seat of her pants and nodded in a way that took in the sandy playground, the children’s play equipment incongruously painted in happy primary colors, and the people—not children, but grown-ups, dressed in muted shades of gray and tan and brown—moving purposefully among them. Like sparrows, she thought, foraging in a bed of flowers. “It gets to me sometimes, that’s all.”

“Yeah, crime scenes can be tough,” the detective said, slipping a pair of sunglasses from his inside jacket pocket and putting them on. “Especially on civilians.”

She glanced up at him, and this time she did smile. “You’re not a believer in…what I do.”

His eyebrows lifted in mock surprise. “Wow, you are a mind reader.”

“I read emotions, not minds.”

And he watched her eyes change, an effect so unmistakable it startled him, but which he couldn’t have described to save his life. A veil…a shadow…and yet, neither of those. Somehow, though they continued to gaze into his, her eyes seemed to be looking at something else, something only she could see. He wanted to tell her to stop whatever it was she was doing. She was creeping him out. But before he could open his mouth, she spoke again, in a hoarse almost-whisper.

“He tortured her…tied her here—” she gestured toward the swing that hung limp and empty next to the one she clung to “—so her feet wouldn’t touch the ground. He cut her, burned her…” And as she spoke the words in a breathy undertone her hand wandered here and there over her body, showing him where.

A strange prickling sensation washed over his skin. He felt his stomach go cold. How could she know that? No one outside the task force knows that—no one. And it wasn’t covered in the briefing this morning, either.

“Who told you that?” he demanded, his voice raw with anger. But she didn’t seem to hear him.

“He covered her mouth with something—tape, I think—so she couldn’t scream. Couldn’t—” She let go of the chain suddenly and gripped his arm instead. He felt the cold of her hand through the layers of his shirt and jacket. The veil—whatever it was—was gone from her eyes and they focused on him again. “Please—I need to get away from it. From here. This place. Do you mind?”

“Sure,” he said, “why not? Where do you want to go?”

He had to hand it to her—she was good. Damn good. The hand on his arm actually felt like it needed his support, and he could see tiny beads of sweat scattered across her forehead and the bridge of her freckled nose. He could hear the faint shudder of her uneven breathing. And even with her tousled head of sunshot red-gold curls just inches from his shoulder, he realized he hadn’t thought of cheerleaders since she’d first looked into his eyes.

“I don’t care, just—” She nodded toward the parking lot, crowded now with law enforcement and crime scene vehicles of all shapes and sizes. The news media, thank God, had been restricted to the park perimeter by manned police barricades. “Just anywhere. I need some distance. From where it happened.”

“Sure. Whatever you say.” Annoyance made him tight-lipped and shorter with her than he should have been, though the annoyance was with himself for beginning to believe, even for a moment, that there might be something to her flimflam. And for not being smooth enough to think of a way to rid his arm of the oddly disturbing weight of her hand without seeming churlish.

They walked, slowly. He had the interrogator’s knack of patient waiting, and in due time it paid off. She began to talk, in a voice that seemed completely normal, nothing like the hoarse half whisper of a few minutes ago. She had a nice voice, he had to admit, with an almost musical lilt to it. Out of the blue he found himself wondering if she did sing, or play an instrument of some kind.

“I don’t know if I’ve been able to pick up much—anything that will help you identify the killer, that is. She didn’t know him. She was so afraid, at first. Later, she just wanted to know—she just kept asking Why? That was what was in her mind when she… At the end.”

Wade let out a breath, shook his head. He couldn’t believe what he was about to ask. “What about him? The killer? Pick up any vibes from him?”

There was a long pause before she answered, and this time while he waited he allowed himself to look down at her, thinking—hoping—he might get some kind of clue to what made her tick. He didn’t, of course, but what he did get was an unexpected kick right square in the libido. Damn, but she was pretty, even with a little watermark frown marring the creamy perfection of her forehead.

She jerked a look up at him, as if she’d—damn it, he wasn’t going to believe she’d read his mind.

But he saw a pink tinge in her cheeks before she looked away again.

“Yes,” she said finally, with a small frustrated shake of her head, “but it’s all confused. Muddled. I can’t make sense of it. He’s…he was in a terrible hurry, for one thing. And distracted, almost, as if his mind wasn’t entirely on her—this victim. That really doesn’t seem right, does it?”

He stopped walking, mentally gritting his teeth at the thought of what he was going to say next, and turned to face her. “Okay, how about this? Don’t try to make sense of it. Just tell me what you saw. Uh, felt. Whatever.”

She nodded, touched the fingertips of both hands to her lips and closed her eyes. “Fear. That’s what he feels. He’s afraid, like a child is afraid. And in a hurry. He must hurry…finish this. He wants it over with. He’s not enjoying it. But he has to do it. Has to. He isn’t seeing her. Or—he sees her, but she’s all mixed up with…others. Other faces. I can’t—”

“Other faces? His other victims, you mean?”

“I don’t know…some of them, maybe. Yes, definitely some. But others…” She shook her head, opened her eyes and aimed them at him, and instinctively he threw up his emotional defenses to block against the pain and confusion he saw in them. “I don’t remember seeing any of them at the briefing this morning.”

“Could be more victims we haven’t found yet…” He heard himself say the words, musing, half to himself, and couldn’t believe it. His mind flashed a silent blasphemy.

She’d started walking again, but now she stopped and looked at him. “Uniforms. He’s…I think he’s afraid of uniforms.”

Wade almost laughed, but snorted instead. Talk about obvious. Once again he’d almost bought it, whatever it was she was selling. “Cops, you mean? Well, he damn well better be,” he said in the even tone he employed when he was on the verge of losing his temper. “Because we’re going to nail this creep’s ass.”

Hopefully, he thought, before he kills anyone else.

Tierney stared at him, frowning a little.

Uniforms…cops…? No, that’s not…it’s something… something… Wait…I can’t…

But it was gone, the emotions dissolving in her consciousness like smoke in the wind.

She studied the detective’s profile, noting the narrowing of the eyes behind the dark glasses, the tension in the jaw. He was struggling with his disbelief, fighting hard to hold on to it. She didn’t have to have The Gift to deduce that. But other than that…

I can’t read him. He’s shielding himself from me—which is proof he does believe, even if he doesn’t know it yet.

Okay, except for that one moment, that blast of pure lust. He hadn’t quite been able to shield that—few men could. She was used to that sort of response from men, but she didn’t think she’d ever get over being embarrassed by it.

Probably she was just tired. Crime scenes always did that to her. The intensity of emotions—the pain, the fear, the rage and regret—sapped her energy the way a bout of the flu would, leaving her wobbly and light-headed. Utterly drained. She wanted—needed—to renew her soul. Maybe go up to the Rose Garden, to feed on the pure joy and simple beauty there. Or to the empty quiet, the complete absence of emotion that was her home so often these days…

The step was there unexpectedly, the step down from the curbing that separated the sidewalk from the parking lot. She didn’t see it, wasn’t ready for it, and it jarred the left side of her body all the way to her jaw. She stumbled and lurched forward, bracing for a humiliating fall. And instead felt a hand close hard around her upper arm.

At the same instant her mind felt the sting of profound emotional turmoil, like a slap in the face. It was a sense of loneliness and frustration and loss, and also of empty spaces, as if pieces of the man were missing, simply not there. It unnerved her, in that one brief moment before it was gone, and its going left her feeling oddly bereft and at the same time awed, as if she’d happened to catch a glimpse, just one silvery flash, of some extraordinarily rare and elusive creature.

“Are you all right?”

The detective was looking at her with that compassionate frown again, and she realized she had caught hold of his forearm and was clinging to it like a sapling in a hurricane. Lord only knew what he must have thought—that she’d injured something, sprained an ankle, probably.

She hastily let go of his arm and said, “Yes—yes, I’m fine—thank you—” her voice made jerky by the brushes and tugs she was making to her hair and clothing, setting herself to rights. “I didn’t see that step. I’m sorry.”

“No problem.” His voice was the cop’s, flat, devoid of all expression. So were his eyes, as he went on looking at her in that narrowed-down way cops have that can make even the most innocent of citizens feel guilty as sin. “Sure you’re okay?”

“Yes. Really. I just…I think I’d like to go home now, if there’s nothing else you…” He shook his head, and she drew a sharp quick breath of profound relief. “I’m going to need a ride, though—I came in a squad car. I’m sorry to bother you, but is there someone you could ask…?”

“I’ll take you. Where do you live?”

“Oh, but you—I’m sure you must be very busy. I don’t want—”

“It’s no problem. I’m heading back to the shop anyway. Nothing more I can do here.” He took a firmer grip on her arm and steered her to the left, away from the media trucks and waiting cameras.

He couldn’t have said why he was doing this, not with any truthfulness. He told himself he wanted to ask her some questions, find out more about her and her so-called impressions. Never entertained the thought there could be any other reason for spending another minute in the woman’s company.

She seems so vulnerable. Is it an act? I’m a cop, I should be able to tell. But I can’t. What is it she feels when she looks at me? Does she know about—

But those thoughts he pushed firmly out of his mind and slammed and locked the door to make sure they stayed out.

Okay, so she’s one hell of an attractive woman. And I’m a guy. Guys like attractive women, so why should I be any different?

Yeah, but she’s not my type, he told himself, kicking that thought out the door, as well. He wasn’t exactly sure what his type was, except for one thing: he liked his women sexy and fun and without complications. And while this one could probably pass muster on the first requirement, he had real doubts about the second. And as for number three, well…he was pretty sure complicated didn’t even begin to describe her.

Neither of them spoke again until they were settled in the front seats of his unmarked gray sedan. She—what was her name? Started with a T. Terry? Tracy? No—something unusual. Damn.

“Where to, Miss…” He let it hang just long enough.

“It’s Doyle. But please call me Tierney.” She glanced at him as she clicked her seat belt into place, and he wondered once more if she’d read his mind and taken pity on him. But she didn’t read minds…or claimed she didn’t. “Or even Tee,” she added, “if you wish. Some people do.” Her half smile told him she knew the chances of him doing likewise were slim.

Which was maybe why he said, out of pure contrariness, “Okay, Miss Tee it is, then. I’m Wade, by the way. Wade Callahan.” He turned in his seat to offer his hand. Did it out of long habit, then kicked himself for hesitating, for having second thoughts. For wondering whether it was “safe” to touch her, or if physical contact might open up some kind of psychic channel between them. Kicked himself all the more for even thinking those thoughts, knowing it meant he had to believe at least some of what she claimed to be able to do might be real.