It had gone quite well, Turner thought. He might have not exhibited true paranormal abilities, but he hadn’t failed the tests either. Kian had been impressed and so had Amanda.

On the drive home, Bridget had been preoccupied and hadn’t said much. She’d listened to him recounting the various tests and his success or lack thereof. The rest of the time she’d seemed deep in thought.

“Would you like me to make you a drink?” he asked as they entered the apartment.

She plopped on the couch, kicked her shoes off, and tucked her feet under her. “Yes, please. It’s time for dinner, but I’m not hungry yet. Are you?”

“Not really.”

Bridget smiled and patted her belly. “Lunch at Gino’s is enough for the entire day. The portions are huge. I think I’m good until tomorrow morning.”

“Yeah, me too.” Turner mixed Bridget’s new favorite cocktail, the one Syssi had introduced her to, and poured himself a scotch. “Here you go.” He handed her the drink and sat on the couch next to her.

She untucked her feet from under her and put them in his lap.

That was his cue to start massaging. His woman loved her foot rubs.

“I was thinking,” Bridget started. “The tests results are inconclusive. Your impressive powers of observation and your training notwithstanding, I’ve noticed that sometimes you answered before even seeing the card, and you were right.”

Turner sighed. “It’s neither here nor there. I don’t even know why Kian insisted on the testing. You said yourself that not all Dormants have paranormal abilities.”

She shrugged. “Kian wants to explore every avenue before committing to a course of action. He doesn’t like uncertainty and strives to minimize the guesswork before making a decision. It’s like you and mysteries. You won’t rest until they are solved, and those that are unsolvable bother the heck out of you.”

Interesting. Maybe he had more in common with Kian than he’d suspected.

Turner switched to Bridget’s other foot, concentrating his efforts on her toes and watching with satisfaction as her eyes rolled back in her head. Hey, he might have invented a new interrogation technique. It seemed foot massages were the perfect way to get information out of a woman. “The other indicator you mentioned, affinity, how do you measure that?”

“I can’t. It’s subjective. The best we can do is to expose a suspected Dormant to as many immortals as we can and see how they respond. Usually, Dormants and immortals feel at home with each other. They feel like they belong to the same tribe.”

“Is that why you’ve been dragging me to the café to meet people?”

She chuckled. “No, I just wanted you to socialize. You need someone to push you out of your comfort zone. Even if you’re a Dormant, people won’t feel an affinity toward you because you act too standoffish. You need to smile more and not look like you’re suffering when I drag you into conversations.”

“You make me sound like an ogre.”

She patted his arm. “Not an ogre, more like a secret agent—an aloof 007 type.”

“I lack certain qualities that make James Bond sexy. He is a suave and charming womanizer. I’m not.”

“You are suave.”

“Thanks to a makeover by Brian.”

“I want to meet that guy. He sounds fascinating.”

Turner tensed. “You said that about me.”

“Oh, Victor.” She laughed and leaned to kiss his cheek. “You are the most fascinating man I know. You’re incomparable. But you made Brian sound so interesting, and I’m curious. I haven’t met any of your people other than Alice.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Wasn’t going to happen.

By her doubtful expression, Bridget was onto him. “Right. When?”

“I don’t know. My staff are officially on vacation. All but one of my cases are closed, and even that one is in the wrapping up stage.”

It was a reminder that his time was running out. As soon as that last case was closed, he was supposed to go forward with the induction.

Bridget was still trying to convince him to restart the chemo instead of attempting transition first, but she wasn’t as adamant about it as she’d been before. He had a feeling she was doing so to postpone the inevitable and gain a little more time with him.

The thing was, his resolve wasn’t as strong as it used to be either. Being with Bridget was too good to give up, and he was tempted to employ some delaying tactics of his own.

On his part, he’d used the open jobs as an excuse, dragging things out that could have been finalized a long time ago. Resuming the chemo, though, was out of the question. It robbed him of his vitality and his sex drive, and that was not how he wanted to spend his last days with Bridget.

If he died during his transition, he wanted her to remember him as he was now, strong, sharp, and virile. In that regard, nothing had changed. He still refused to be subjected to a prolonged convalescence. It was a full on or a full off.

“I want you to think back, Victor.” Bridget pulled her foot out of his hands and tucked it under her bottom. “I’m sure you can remember an instance or two where you acted on instinct and succeeded not because of your careful planning but because of some hidden variable. Everyone has those moments in their lives. Even people who have absolutely no abilities.”

He took another swig of his drink. “There is something, but it’s more nothing than something. I don’t want you to get hung up on it.”

“Just tell me.”

“I have a method.” He chuckled. “Well. Of course, I do. I’m a very methodical fellow.”

“Go on.”

“After I’m done with assembling all the components, and all the small bits and pieces of information are arranged to my satisfaction, I sleep on it before finalizing my plan. Usually, I wake up in the morning with the plan fully formed and ready in my head. All I have to do is write it down. Naturally, I rework it several more times until I’m satisfied that there is no way to improve anything, but that first draft is generated by what I call my subconscious autopilot. I don’t think there is anything magical about it. The brain keeps working while we are asleep, and without outside stimuli it focuses on the last input it got, which in my case are the mission details.”

“What do you see when you wake up in the morning? Is it a typed up page? A map? What?”

“In my dreams, the mission unfolds from beginning to end, and when I wake up, I remember everything. It’s like I’m watching a movie.”

“Does everything work out exactly according to the dream?”

“Yes. I even know who is going to make it and who is not. I always hope to be wrong about those who do not, but unfortunately, I’m always right.”

Bridget straightened her back and leaned toward him. “That’s not analytical thinking, Victor. This is precognition. Otherwise, not everything would’ve worked out exactly like in your dreams. It’s impossible. You must realize that it’s not logical to think you can deduce the outcome. I can accept you foreseeing several outcomes with one of them materializing, that is reasonable, but you dream only one scenario, right?”

He nodded. “But it doesn’t work this way with anything else in my life.”

“That’s because you don’t spend every waking moment thinking about those other things. Even paranormal ability needs a proper neural pathway to manifest. To make an analogy, the ones you utilize for mission planning are the size of freeways, while everything else travels through narrow dirt roads.”

“You mean that if I want to win the lottery, all I need is to think about it all day long, then go to sleep and dream about the winning numbers?”

She smiled. “Did you try?”

“When I was young and foolish.” He lifted a finger. “Once.”

“You should try it again. Maybe this time it will work.”

Turner took Bridget’s hand and kissed the back of it. “There are more important things at stake than winning the lottery. If I go to sleep and dream of what I need to do to transition successfully, that would be worth the leap of faith.”