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

name?”
    “Ava. Ava Sebastian.”
    More silence greeted him. One second turned into five. Five into twenty. “Yes. Ava. I don’t know her well, but she is a friend of Kami’s. Kami is, was, Channing’s stepsister.”
    “Thank you.” The woman had secrets, but she’d told the truth about that much. And as far as he knew she could be the threat Agent Burgess had hinted at when he had stopped by a few days earlier. H would keep her close until he knew more about the compelling brunette.
    “Dr. H?” Max’s voice stopped him from hanging up.
    “Yes?”
    “Were you working with Channing on the diagnostic contacts?”
    Channing had chosen to keep the details of their experiment quiet. The one time H had gone to Channing’s lab he’d recognized a lab tech as Jefferson, a man he’d been in captivity with. Only Jefferson had joined forces with their captors and turned spy.
    When he had voiced his suspicions, Channing had become even more resolute that the details be protected. Max seemed to know details. He couldn’t be the only one.
    Damn it. Who had he been talking to? “Yes.”
    “Had he successfully…?”
    Shit. H's heartbeat hastened. He was going to have to choose between the truth or a lie. The lie would fester in his gut, swelling into a softball-sized pustule of self-loathing. The truth could get Max killed.
    “Never mind.”
    “Maxwell…” He didn’t know Max, but could picture the man behind a large mahogany desk shaking his downcast head. Asking more questions seemed cruel, but he needed to know.
    “Forget I asked. Channing had his reasons for keeping details about his research private. I’m going to trust you to make the right decisions about whatever you know. Just be careful. I doubt either of us is without talking walls.”
    Max hung up with neither of them saying anything more. H rubbed his right eye and pulled in a few steadying breaths. His lab was completely secure, but Max’s remark about talking walls nagged. He needed more information.
    It seems to me you didn’t take that line of questioning as far as you could have. I wonder why.
    Ms. Sebastian’s taunt from earlier came back to him. Max had let the conversation drop and, like on the questionnaire, H hadn’t pushed that extra step. Had his decision kept him from learning as much as he could have?
    Shedding the doubts and suppositions lingering from the call, H settled in to work through some of the questionnaires before the youth control group arrived. His mind wouldn’t release thoughts of Ava Sebastian.
    Her insights about him had been dead center. A laser, accurate bulls-eye into his psyche.
    Did she have empathic abilities, or was it more? The longer he was free of Eston White the stronger his mental shields of protection grew. He was well blocked, but he wasn’t the only powerful empath Eston White had trained. There was the possibility she was powerful enough to shield herself and read him.
    He couldn’t get a clear read off her, aside from what he’d been taught to notice, but something was off. Something that had nothing to do with the outrageous red—and surprisingly conservative—dress hugging her slight curves, or the tattoo he’d glimpsed a hint of when the slit in the dress had raised high enough to tease. The woman knew how to use her sexuality to her advantage.
    Damn if he didn’t want to see more. To risk the danger.
    Every time he’d lowered one of his guards and reached across the room for an impression of her, he’d been met with a yawning span of nothing. No light. No dark. No good. No evil. A gray slate.
    Intelligence shone in her eyes, a brown so pale it was more like camel tan with shoots of army green radiating off the darker outer ring. She utilized every weapon. From long, slender legs—a particular appreciation he never indulged in—to a flash of her flirty smile and a flick of her long hair.
    She’d worn no jewelry and her bag had been a functional messenger-type bag rather than the