The Departed Read Free Page B

get to see eleven, or twelve…never go to the prom, never get her first kiss.
    Richelle stopped by the closet and Dez halted a few feet away. She looked by Richelle to the front room and then glanced over her shoulder to Taylor. He eased around her, the bulky bulletproof vest he wore breaking the smooth, perfect line of his suit.
    He stopped just a breath away from Richelle and his eyes, flat and hard, stared down the hallway, watching, waiting.
    With him watching her back, Dez laid a hand on the doorknob.
    Slowly, oh, so slowly, she turned it.
    * * *
     
    OUT front, the rest of the team waited.
    With Taylor in the house with Dez, Special Agent Joss Crawford was in charge and, unlike Jones, he didn’t believe in keeping a polished veneer that never showed any sign of emotion.
    So when the message came up on his phone, he didn’t bother suppressing the urge to swear. No, it ripped out of him in a long, ugly torrent and then he looked over and pinned Colby with a stare. “You were wrong, Mathis. Lincoln found a child and she’s alive.”
    * * *
     
    TAYLOR suspected some manner of psychic ability was more common than people thought.
    He didn’t have any classifiable skill—wasn’t telekinetic the way some of his people were and he couldn’t talk to the departed, as Dez liked to call them. Nor could he home in on the trail of a kidnapped child the way one of his sometimes contract employees, Taige Morgan, did.
    He recognized the gifted, though. It was how he’d lured so many of them to his unit. He recognized them—that was his gift, so to speak, that and knowing how to bring them inside, get them to work for him.
    While he wasn’t getting any of those vibes from this house, he wasn’t the least bit surprised when the bastard they’d been sitting on came roaring around the corner, like he’d been somehow alerted to their presence.
    Instinct. It wasn’t that far removed from some level of psychic skill, and this pervert’s sick needs were about to land him in the worst sort of hell.
    His name was Edward Mitchell; he liked to pick up pretty little girls just shy of puberty, rape them, and dump their bodies in the James River; and he wasn’t going to go down easy.
    They’d almost made it to the back door and Taylor even had a believable story concocted to explain why they were in the house to begin with—they did have a warrant, but they hadn’t bothered to explain that when he’d picked the lock on the back door. They’d had reason to believe there was a child in danger in this house and Dez was carrying that child in her arms now.
    But as Taylor went to open the door for her, Edward came rushing down the hall, huffing and puffing, his pale, pasty skin gleaming with sweat and his eyes half wild.
    “No!” he screeched.
    And he raised a gun.
    Taylor raised his own and fired, but the bastard managed to get a shot off. And as the sick fuck fell, lifeless, to the floor, Taylor turned. And the first thing he saw as he turned was the brilliant, dark wash of red staining the side of Dez’s neck.
    * * *
     
    THE night passed in a haze of bloody memories, the wail of sirens and the bright, blinding lights of the emergency room.
    They tried to keep him out in the waiting room.
    But either the blood they saw in his eyes, the badge, or the gun he didn’t bother to keep concealed convinced the medical staff that trying to keep him out was going to waste precious time.
    Judging by the amount of blood Dez had lost, he didn’t know how much time she had.
    The child was already at the local children’s hospital, alive…and that was all he knew. For the first time, he’d turned over the reins to another, allowing Crawford to take command while he stayed with Dez. God—Dez.
    She couldn’t die.
    Not like this. Fuck, she couldn’t die. Not Dez.
    Although he knew her, too well.
    She’d be okay with going down knowing she’d helped save a child, and that was what she’d done. The girl was alive…because Dez had