If Eric checked back to see how she was doing one more time, she would punch him in his rugged jaw. As it stood, her burning lungs hated Shelby and wanted her to die. Maybe she had returned to the Search and Rescue team too soon. But she’d be damned if she’d give Eric the satisfaction of being right.
To be fair, it was nice that he appeared to care about her health, but she couldn’t let warm thoughts about him enter into any equation. The minute she went from prickly comebacks to soft, squishy sighs would mark the first step down a horrible, dead-end road. Not an option.
Besides, she had way too much on her plate to deal with dumb stuff like feelings.
Sadly, her father hadn’t handled the stress of the barn burning. Or the other insanity of the past few weeks, as his stroke attested. Would he recover? Who knew?
Her stomach clenched. As much as she hated to admit it, maybe Eric was right. Maybe she should be home caring for her father instead of hiking on this mountain ridge. But she needed to be here, needed to do the work that she could call her own. Needed to use her power to bring something good into this world.
Speaking of which, another stab of her stupid ability to find people nailed her in the temple, stopping her in the deep snow. It was like a hand grabbed her face and swiveled it toward the lost skier. The high peak. She groaned. Of course. Nothing simple about today’s task.
Eric glanced back over his shoulder. “Anything?”
“Nope.” Damn it, he’d better not rat her out. This was her secret to keep, damn it.
But how easy would it be to simply walk toward the victim and cut out all this . . . searching . . . in the dangerous high country? Super easy, if she wanted to out herself as a freak of nature. Until then, she’d pretend that all her finds were the result of pure luck. Selfish? Maybe. But necessary to protect her secret.
It was bad enough that Eric now knew about her gift. She understood why she had to reveal the ability in order to save Zach and Sara. But she’d spent the first twenty-eight years of her life hiding. With her secret revealed even only to Eric, she still felt exposed, raw, and vulnerable.
And Shelby Taggart did not do vulnerable. Not at all.
So instead of vulnerable, she settled for pissed off with a piquant dash of back-the-hell-away-from-me, because crappy armor was better than no armor.
As she continued hiking, a chill worked itself down her back. A sensation of someone whispering nearby, like what she’d experienced in the barn yesterday, made her whip her head around and stare across the cloudy, snowy terrain. The flat light made every feature look like a shadow. Wait. Was that a shadow? She blinked and squinted at the area around her. No. Nothing lurked out there.
The only thing out in the wilderness that should hold her interest? That victim.
Their four-person team had been hiking for an hour and were distributed up and over the ridge, spread out as far as safety allowed. No sign of the victim. Her power told her that they were going in the right direction. But the guy could be one hundred feet away next to a rock, or he could be one thousand miles away in Guadalajara. If Shelby relied solely on her gift, she might walk for days before finding people. She could home in on direction. Not distance.
Ok, then. So maybe she did need the help of the Search and Rescue team to focus her efforts.
What she didn’t need was Eric Patterson shooting her looks that bordered on pity. Or shame. She didn’t need the judgment his dark blue eyes added. Got the message, thanks.
To think that once upon a time she’d fantasized about a future with him. What little chance remained was lost when he’d figured out she was a human dowsing rod.
Actually, no. Any hope for a future with anyone had disappeared years ago when she realized that her other ability to detect emotions rendered her unable to have a relationship with any man. Thus, she had very little to offer a partner other than avoidance and distrust. How great.
Eric turned and stopped, the rest of the team converging to join him. They’d reached ten thousand feet and the thin air had slowed each rescuer down. Every breath of frigid air razored through raw lung tissue. She lifted her glove and inhaled warm air to soothe her aching throat.
Marginally better.
“All right, the features start changing up here. More nooks and crannies where the guy could hide,” Eric said. “Let’s go in teams of two. Rodney and Amanda, take the ridge and follow it for a half mile or so.”
Catching Eric’s eye, she gave him a tiny shake of the head.
Thank God the guy could take a hint, at least with respect to her ability. “On second thought, you two go low. Shelby and I will take the exposed ridge.”
“Anything from Ben?” Rodney asked.
“Checked in with him a few minutes ago. They haven’t found anything down the gully.”
Peering down the mountainside, she expected to see the tiny figures of the other team crawling over snow and rocks, but the dense cloud cover had reduced visibility down to fifty feet or so. Wind whipped over the snow, biting into her skin despite her windproof gear and reminding her how much certain parts of this job sucked.
After separating from Rodney and Amanda, Shelby and Eric trudged up the ridge.
He spun back, grabbing her arm through the coat. “You know where the victim is, don’t you?” It wasn’t a question. “Damn it, Shel. There’s a person out there.”
Yanking her arm away, she shrugged. “I found the last three victims on our missions. It’ll look weird if I find this one, too. And it’s time for someone else to get the glory.” She suppressed the urge to cough. No way would she let him see her vulnerable. “Besides, don’t you remember? I can tell direction but not distance. He could be anywhere thataway.” She flung her hand out.
“But you at least know the direction. That’s more than anyone else out here.”
“My track record is too good to be coincidence. Sorry, but I will not be the one to find him today. If necessary, I’ll use my power and then nudge the other team.”
That strong mouth pressed into a hard line. Then he crossed his arms. Uh oh. “Quit the stupid martyr complex. That guy could be hurt. You’re playing with his life.”
Guilt warred with the need to keep her power secret, which then warred with the driving urge to find the skier. “You know what? Screw you and your judgment, Eric.” Jabbing him in the upper chest, she registered the hard muscle under the gear. Whatever.
“Oh, so now you’ll use your power only if it’s convenient?”
The intensity of his retort turned her vision red. Damn it. “Convenient? Give me a break. You were the guy who got mad when Garrison forced me to use my ability to find Zach and Sara.” It had been worth it. Garrison’s son and girlfriend would have died that night if Shelby hadn’t helped.
“Good point.” He puffed out air. Damn him for smelling like cloves . . . and healthy male.
She needed to stay in the friend zone.
“Look, I just want to help our victim out there before he dies,” he said.
“And I don’t?”
Even with his eyes hidden behind the sunglasses, his stare bored into her until she squirmed. “That’s not what I’m saying.” He clamped his firm jaw shut.
“So . . . what, then? You want me go deeper and check to see if he’s alive?” She tapped her head. The new trick she had discovered when Garrison’s son and girlfriend had gone missing? Using her power to enter the head of the person she tracked. Feeling everything that the person felt —good and bad. Determining how close to death the person was. What a great party trick.
Eric knew about this ability, too. He’d been with her when she had last used it. When she tapped into that extra power, her vision had blurred and then she passed out cold from the effort. No one knew what would happen if she tried that trick again. Did the side effects get better or worse over time? Would she get brain damage? Seizures? A tumor? Who knew?
“No, I don’t,” he yelled over an icy gust of wind. “It will hurt you to get into the person’s head.”
Huh. So now he cared? She shoved that revelation way down and far, far away, because no way did she have the emotional energy to sort through those implications.
They had a job to do. “Okay, then let’s get going.” A cough burst out again, until she forced it to stop, making her ribs ache.
“Damn it, Shelby, you’re—”
“Awesome? A freaking genius?” she offered with a big grin that she straight up did not feel.
His face displayed a remarkable array of contortions, and she flinched at the wall of emotions flying out from him. He raised his hands to his head, like he wanted to rip his helmet off and stomp it to death. A muscle moved under the stubble. Then he blanked his expression and crushed any feelings he had into a tight ball of professionalism.
Good job. Push it down. She should know—she was the expert in suppressing feelings.
With a puff of vapor, he gritted out, “We’ll walk in parallel to Amanda and Rodney. But we need for them to move quickly. We’re leaving in another hour. Safety first, correct?” He raised his hard chin.
That jaw was at such a perfect angle, her hand itched to punch it.
See? He knew how that smug comment irritated her. She unclenched her hand. Fine. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a response.
“Sounds good to me,” she tossed back.
She reached out for the victim again to reassess direction and got ice-picked again in the skull. Whenever she or any of her siblings used their gifts, it caused headaches. Not being alone in experiencing that side effect didn’t make it okay. Her head still hurt like blazes.
They trudged in silence that was broken only by periodic check-ins on the radio and whooshes of wind. The wind whipped the snow and swirled the clouds around them, reducing visibility even more. With no reason to actually search because of her direction finder, Shelby and Eric stayed upslope of the other team. Damn Eric, carrying seventy pounds of gear on his back like it was no big deal. Show-off.
At least he had stopped turning to check on her. Good.
Only, it wasn’t good, was it?
She struggled to pull air into her icy, aching lungs and forced her burning legs to keep moving. What did she want? Attention or no attention from Eric?
Did it matter? The reason he kept an eye on her most likely had to do with her boneheaded brothers making him promise to look after her or something equally Neanderthal. Like she was the baby sister or something. Even her twin, Kerr, only fifteen minutes older, lorded his seniority over her every chance he got.
Pausing to let her wheezing subside, she relaxed her shoulders and shut her eyes. There—that light background connection she shared with Kerr continued. The only time it had stopped was after he had been injured and almost died two years ago when he was fighting in Afghanistan. The broken contact had made her physically ill.
She squinted ahead.
Great. Eric had all but disappeared in the low cloud cover.
A strange sensation slithered through her arms and legs. Even though they weren’t asleep, she shook them. How weird.
Also weird? How she couldn’t resist the urge to check back over her shoulder, like her mind knew that someone was there. Behind some rocks? Was that a shadow? Who could tell with the thick clouds?
A tendril of burning sulfur air singed her nose. She swatted at her face. Before she could figure out where it had come from, the sensation was gone.
Rubbing her neck against whatever climbed up there, she double-timed it in Eric’s tracks to catch up.
She panted and wheezed in the thin air. If the other team didn’t find the skier, then Shelby would do it herself. Secret or no secret, no way would she leave someone out here when she had the power to save a life.