Temptation in Shadows Read Free

breath, trembling. “I . . . can’t . . .”
    “Just a little further.” Sean didn’t even seem winded, the bastard. “You can do it.”
    An eternity later, he stopped and the shadows disappeared completely, revealing amber moonlight, a forest bursting with thick, lush trees and a—a car? Sure enough, he removed a leafy canopy from the frame of a two-door sedan.
    “How did you know—”
    “Just get in,” he commanded.
    She obeyed as if her feet were on fire. Now wasn’t the time to chat. No one had followed them—to her knowledge—but it was better to be safe than sorry. Except when she and Sean were inside the car, he pulled a key from his pocket and used it. And it worked, the engine roaring to life. A thousand questions seemed to rush through her mind. Only one continued to echo, though.
What. The. Hell?
    As he maneuvered out of the forest and onto a gravel road, she decided chatting couldn’t wait. “How did you know where the car was? How did you have a key for it?”
    “Lucky, I guess.”
    Ha!
Bad was the only kind of luck the two of them had had tonight. But fine. She’d tackle this another way. “How did you know that man? Bill?”
    “He was my boss.”
    “I thought Rowan Patrick was your boss.”
    Silence.
    Gabby refused to let this go. “Did Bill abduct us?”
    “No. He was a good man.”
    “Then how did he know—”
    “I don’t know! Okay? I don’t know. You and I were supposed to be taken, but Bill wasn’t supposed to be there and he sure as hell wasn’t supposed to be killed.”
    Gabby shook her head, trying to make senseof Sean’s words. “Are you psychic?” A possibility, she supposed. After all, she was proof that people with extraordinary abilities existed. “ ’Cause there’s no other way for you to have known what was and wasn’t supposed to happen back there. There’s no other way you would have known to hide a car in some random forest.”
    Silence slithered between them, and she thought he meant to ignore her. Then, he sighed, stopped the car at the side of the road, and pierced her with the darkest stare she’d ever seen.
    “I know because I’m the one who abducted you.”

CHAPTER TWO
    Three weeks earlier
     
    “This, gentlemen, is your target. Gabrielle Huit. Gabby to her friends. Twenty-seven years old, five eight, and approximately one hundred and thirty pounds.”
    Sean Walker studied the female’s photo on the wall in front of him. Thick brown hair, straight as a pin. Big brown eyes, olive skin, no freckles that he could see. She was utterly nondescript. Totally dismissible. Unless you concentrated on those eyes.
    The brown was a mix of honey and cinnamon—
I must be hungry, because damn
—and were filled with haunting pain. As a twelve-year agent for Rose Briar, an independent firm that offered a safe haven for anyone exhibiting extraordinary abilities, as well as destruction for anyone who abused those powers, Sean had seen that look enough times to know her life had not been all sunshine and candy. But she’d survived, which meant she was strong. He admired strength.
    The photo disappeared, replaced by one of Gabby walking out of a redbrick apartment building. Thatwas quickly followed by one of her strolling down a sidewalk, people and taxis meandering around her as she sipped a cup of coffee. Next she was handing a kid a few dollars. Money Gabby couldn’t spare, if the report on her bank account balance—an account she kept under a false identity—could be believed. Finally, Sean saw her in a dimmed club, a tray clutched in her hands as a man reached out to pinch her ass.
    “She’s a technopath,” Bill, his boss and the man now in charge of Rose Briar, continued.
    “A what?” Sean and fellow Rose Briar agent Rowan Patrick asked at the same time. They shared an amused glance. Though they looked nothing alike, people often accused them of being twins.
    “A technopath. She’s a human computer.” Bill’s head tilted to the side. “Well,