Illicit Intuitions: Sensory Ops, Book 3 Read Free Page A

asked him not to. She understood his desire to distance himself from their family name, but she wanted to hold tight to it. If he took an alias, she would have to as well in order to stay with him.
    The idea of being without his sister wasn’t acceptable. To keep her with him, but to put a layer of distance between them, he instead took the name Dr. H. He wouldn’t be as hidden as he might have preferred, but it hadn’t taken long to realize a delight in taunting Eston White.
    They had robbed him of his childhood. They would not rob him of the last of his family.
    “You want that woman,” Dana repeated. “Like a love bug in lust.”
    He laughed. “I want to know what she’s hiding. She’s the second person to mention Channing to me.”
    Dana crossed to him and knelt, resting her hands on his knees. “I’m with you in the trust department. It’s hard.”
    Hard was mild given what they’d been through.
    “But, H, looking for deception in everyone we meet isn’t what we’re about.”
    She pushed up and kissed his cheek, likely softening a coming lecture on freedom meaning nothing without someone to share it with—not that she’d found someone.
    Rather than lecture, Dana moved toward the hall. “Check her out, but I think this is one of those times you’re going to have to rely on your intuition.”
    Which didn’t help. He couldn’t read Ava, and it bothered him. His intuition insisted he’d already misstepped.
    A movement in the trees lining the parking lot outside caught his attention. He lowered a shield he kept mentally erected to protect himself from reading too much from others. Filtering through his emotions, Dana’s, and those that lingered from study applicants, he sensed the area. An instant later a rocket of hatred blasted him with breath-robbing violence.
    Fuck. His shield shuttered back into place. Only one empath could project a violent enough hatred to penetrate walls.
    Janus, and by extension of association, General Scott were back. The need for answers multiplied exponentially.
    H headed to his office and called Channing’s company, Sirrahmax.
    “This is Maxwell Truman.”
    “Yeah, Maxwell.” H grabbed the receiver from the cradle to disengage the speaker.   “This is Dr. H. I consulted with Channing on an experiment.”
    “I’m sorry. Channing is…” Maxwell’s voice wavered as he trailed off.
    “I know. I’m sorry for your loss.” He’d known Channing well enough to know Maxwell was Max, Channing’s life and business partner. Max’s pain rang clearly enough through the line for H to be grateful he couldn’t read people over the phone. “I respected Channing and wish I could’ve made it to the memorial.”
    He wasn’t afraid of meeting new people or dealing with society, but he didn’t allow people to get to know him. Attending the memorial of a murdered friend… He avoided funerals because of the emotions. Grief was the worst feeling he’d ever absorbed from another person. Multiply one person’s grief by ten or twenty or fifty and it could easily paralyze him. Or shatter his mind.
    A fact he’d had pushed on him shortly before gaining freedom.
    “Thank you.” Maxwell sounded a little stronger. “I don’t recall him mentioning you.”
    Channing always said Max was the business-minded one who preferred the travel and wheeling-and-dealing to spending time behind the desk or in a lab. Impatience for the mundane was likely the cause, was hopefully the cause, of the darkness leaching into his voice when he spoke again. “I believe you worked off-site.”
    “Primarily, yes.” Without Channing’s willingness to respect his need to work out of his lab in his own building, they wouldn’t have collaborated. Their work would have fallen into enemy hands. Eston White’s hands.
    “I had a woman come to me today,” H started. “She claimed to hear about me from Channing.” Max remained silent. Waiting. “I wonder if you have heard of her.”
    “What’s her