Chapter 3
SOME THINGS WERE better off left in the past.
Like the young man who’d seduced a seventeen-year-old girl into bed for the first time, though he didn’t have to do much to get her there since the second she laid eyes on him everything around him blurred, leaving only a delightful premonition of what was to come. When she’d found out after she’d slept with him, that he’d be leaving for the Marine Corps her heart ached. It wasn’t love, but she had wanted to explore what it could be.
Over the years, she’d had a few visions about him. A few times the visions were mirages of combat, which always disturbed her. She couldn’t control her premonitions but she’d learned to block him from her mind.
Or maybe over the years, the connection had disappeared.
Only, he still had the same effect on her as he had thirteen years ago.
And now, he was standing behind her, probably… hopefully… staring at her ass, as she pushed open the front door to her offices.
The front two rooms were originally the family room and a bedroom when the house had been divided into two apartments.
“Welcome to the Raven Agency.” Hazel had hoped neither of her sisters would be in the office this morning, but Willow sat at her desk on the far corner of the room as she peered over her computer screen. Alexis’ desk was pushed up against the wall in the front, under the window. She’d had her ear to the phone, but when she turned, her jaw dropped open.
“I’ll have to call you back,” Alexis said, then tapped her phone, her gaze shifting between Hazel and the man next to her.
She shouldn’t have ever shown her sisters the picture.
“Is that the Brett Radcliffe?” Willow bolted upright. “As in the guy who—”
“He’s from Phoenix and he’s here to help us find Savanah,” Hazel said, hoping to diffuse the situation before it got even weirder.
Brett cleared his throat. “I’ve got a possible location to check out. My agency is gassing up the plane as we speak.”
“Great. I’ll get my go bag,” Willow said.
“You’re not going.” Hazel curled her fingers around Brett’s hard biceps as she pulled him through the office. “I need you to stay here. We’ve got two open cases, so work them. If I need you, I know how to find you.”
“Finding our sister is more important than these other cases,” Willow said, leaning back, arms folded across her chest.
Hazel let out a long breath. “I know, but we hired Phoenix for a reason and last night we decided—”
“Last night we didn’t know that Phoenix was going to send the one who got away.” Willow and her sharp tongue.
Brett coughed.
“That doesn’t matter.” Alexis had glided across the room and now stood next to Willow.
Both of them sported the famous Raven smirk.
“Besides, Hazel is right,” Alexis said. “We should stay behind in case we get a different lead.”
Hazel slowly blinked her eyes a couple of times, trying not to stare at Brett with his arched brow and amused twitch of a half-smile inching up his cheeks.
“Do we all agree then?” Hazel asked.
“Fine, I’ll stay behind, but I won’t like it,” Willow said.
Hazel tugged Brett toward the door and the stairs to the second floor, painfully aware she’d never released his arm. She could have left him in the office, but then her sisters would have given him the third degree.
Why did sisters tell each other everything?”
“That was awkward,” he said leaning against the doorjamb of her bedroom as she pulled her go bag from the closet and added a few more articles of clothing.
“How did they know my name? I distinctly remember I never told you."
“Everyone at that party knew who you were.”
“It was one of my buddy's grad party, so I suppose that makes sense.”
She focused on the bag and not the sexy man in her bedroom. Parts of that night were fuzzy, but the few hours she’d spent in his arms had been ingrained in her mind for life.
“But what I don’t understand is what your sister said about me being the one—”
She held up her hand. “I was seventeen and you and I had this weird fantasy thing going on about not knowing each other’s name.”
“I had every intention of knowing your name, only you snuck out in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again.”
“And you joined the marines. Nothing would have ever come of us anyway.”
“You don’t know that.”
She flung the bag over her shoulder. “Sure I do, because if you really wanted to know who I was, you could have used that little talent of yours and found me since we both know our skills are hypersensitive to those we’ve been intimate with.”
“Back then, I didn’t even know I had the skill.”
She breezed past him, heading back down the stairs, trying to ignore him, but failing miserably.
“I thought anytime I saw something it was either because I’d been drinking or I just had a wild imagination. It wasn’t until my first deployment that I realized I had a psychic ability, but even then, I didn’t accept it,” he said.
“Even so, we were kids and both had other things on our minds.”
“That’s true, but still. You didn’t have to sneak out on me.”
She laughed. “I can’t believe I’m even having this conversation.” Stopping at the bottom of the stairs, she turned to face him. “I hadn’t planned on sneaking out, but when I found out you’d enlisted, I just didn’t want to be that girl who gave you my picture, we’d write, and then months later one of use got the Dear John letter. Besides, I was headed to college in the fall.”
“Fair enough, but I obviously left some kind of impression for your sisters to say the things they did. I’m curious, what did you tell them?”
“You don’t want to know.” Spinning on her heels, she made a beeline for the front door. “I’ll call you two when I land.” She waved a hand flippantly at her sisters. Once outside, she sucked in a deep breath of the hot, humid Baltimore air.
There are no coincidences. Her mother’s voice boomed between her ears.
Hazel had been raised with the understanding that the universe often dictated the direction of a person’s life. That even a chance meeting with a stranger in passing on the street could be an event that would change your life forever.
Fate brought people together.
However, people often thumbed their nose at fate.
This was neither of those things.
She climbed into his SUV, tossing her bag into the backseat, and stared out the window. Thankfully, Brett didn’t say a single word as he navigated the streets of Baltimore heading to wherever the Phoenix Agency kept their plane. It took about twenty minutes to get to the hanger and another fifteen to board the plane, which was quite impressive with its leather seats and private crew.
Sitting across from Brett while he went through her files, she allowed herself to admire the man he’d become, at least physically anyway. He looked thicker and filled out in all the right places. A scar curved the side of his face from the corner of his eye, down across his cheek, ending near his ear. She wondered what other battle scars his body may have endured.
The plane jetted off down the runway, and minutes later they were thirty-thousand feet in the air, heading to a small private runway just south of Lake George.
“The Gyeon’s came to you because they said their son went missing?”
Well no shit, Sherlock. “He was a grad student at Hopkins, living in an apartment not far from my house with four other students, only none of them knew each other.”
“Which is odd.”
“Not really. Not in this city. Students rent these rooms and avoid the common areas in the house and focus on getting through school. Their friends are those in their program or people they work with. Makes it easy to get good grades that way.”
“So, we have no idea how long he’s actually been missing other than his attendance record, which is iffy, and when his parents contacted you.”
“Are you going somewhere with this? Because we’ve been over it and you've read all the files.” Every PI, cop, special operator, whoever, has their own way of examining a case and going over evidence, or lack thereof, but Brett’s approach was not only repetitive, it was annoying.
“According to your report, Savanah was to meet the father’s siblings, but she hadn’t given you or your sisters a location. During takeoff, I remote viewed the son’s room and it’s empty. No bed. No dresser. Nothing.”
“What? We were just there the other day. How can that be? Are you sure?” She bit down on her lower lip, remembering how much Savanah hated her viewing to be challenged. Granted, any view could be off, depending on various factors, but generally speaking, it was much more precise than premonitions.
He nodded. “I also decided to try to view the parents' place, but when I got to the building, they were nowhere to be found and the apartment looked as though no one was living there.”
“Well fuck,” she muttered. Nothing worse than being psychic and being snowed. “So, what are you thinking?”
“When I was viewing the SEAL team in South Korea, Gyeon’s name was brought up more than once, but I got the impression that the team expected to meet Gyeon in North Korea as one of their contacts.”
The plane bounced and rattled as it flew through some unexpected turbulence. Hazel gripped the seats. Flying had never been her favorite thing to do, only a necessary evil to get from point A to point B.
“What if they needed a viewer to get him there? Be his translator?”
“Great minds think alike.”
“Wonder why on earth they chose Lake George to do that?” she asked.
“Could be the location is somewhat remote in some areas. Or maybe family ties. But we should have your sisters look into it.”
Before she could respond, the windows of the airplane fogged over, then melted into a puddle of gleaming crystal. Lightning bolts flashed in her mind, illuminating moving pictures. Gun fire. Her own image ducking behind an old orange pickup truck. The faint whisper of voices muffled by an explosion. The walls of the plane turned a fiery orange as Brett appeared, the scar on his face ripped open and blood oozed out.
She clutched the arm rests as the vision slowly evaporated. Blinking, Brett’s real face came into focus. He knelt in front of her and she realized she’d been holding his wrists and not the seat.
“What’d you see?” he asked with a soft tone, his thumbs rubbing the tops of her hands, reminding her of every caress he’d given her that one night long ago.
“Gun fire, an explosion, and this…” she traced a finger across his raised scare. “…was split open and bleeding.” Normally she didn’t like to be so blunt about her visions since they could mean so many different things, but in this case, she figured it best he knew everything since they could be walking into some kind of trap and his background in combat could come in handy.
“That would suck since the plastic surgeon did such a bang-up job of fixing it.”
She laughed, her fingers still flowing over the jagged edges of tortured skin, her eyes locked in his seductive gaze. Seconds ticked by and all she could see were rich blue pools of heaven reminding her of his arms wrapped around her like warm cocoon.
“For the record, I tried to find out who you were until the day I left for boot-camp.”
She shouldn’t care, just because he was her first, it didn’t mean anything. People put too much stock in sex, as if the act itself tied two people together forever. He might have been her first, and her first one night stand, but she’d had a few of those since then and they certainly had no lasting effect on her.
Frankly, they were forgettable.
Right now, she wanted her first to be forgettable.
“Let’s focus on my vision, because I’m hoping if we break it down, we can prevent it from happening.”