Rapid Fire by Jessica Andersen Page B

adrenaline warned him that all was not well, but he
couldn’t see a damn thing wrong with the car.
     

“It’s the
woman,” he said aloud. “She’s what’s wrong.”
     
    Or more
accurately, his response to her was a problem. An unacceptable complication. It
was bad enough he felt the gut-punch of attraction to a woman he was looking to
beat out of a job. Worse were the flashes he’d gotten the two times they’d
touched—once at the ranch and once again just now, when they’d shaken on the
“deal” Chief Parry had ordered him to offer.
     
    He didn’t
want to babysit a suspended cop while he worked on a case the Bear Claw force
hadn’t managed to put to rest in nearly nine months’ worth of full-time task
force effort. And he sure as hell didn’t want to babysit this particular cop.
Not when touching her triggered the moments of prescience he’d fought so hard
to block.
     
    It was
ironic, really. She’d been the catalyst for him learning to block the visions.
Now she was breaking down those hard-won barriers, and she didn’t even know it.
     
    Some of
his so-called cop friends in Wagon Ridge—including Tabitha—had pressed him to
tune in on the flashes, to use them to solve cases. They’d wanted to turn him
into some sort of freaky psychic detective, a sideshow or a conversation piece.
They hadn’t understood that the visions weren’t like on TV, where some poor
schlub put his hands on a knife and instantly saw the perp’s face in glowing
Technicolor.
     
    No, it
was messier than that. More painful. Less sure. Each flash reminded him of the
days he’d spent captive in Mason Falk’s mountain stronghold, reminded him of
the drugs and the electric charges the cult leader had used to torture him. To
break him. To force him to disclose how much the High Top Bluff PD knew about
the cult’s planned attack on the town.
     
    He hadn’t
given up the names or dates, but he’d been broken nonetheless. His mind had
been injured, his link between now and then had cracked, letting something else
bleed through. Something that seemed like ESP, but felt like pain. Like death.
     
    Like
murder.
     
    Thorne
cursed and started the Interceptor, which responded with a double-throated roar
of raw power. “Not again. I’m not going back there again.”
     
    He’d
fought the flashes before. He could fight them again.
     
    He gunned
the engine and sent the dark green cruiser out of the parking garage with a
chirp of heavy-duty, high-speed tires. The violence simmered just beneath the
surface of his soul, sending a fine tracework of electricity along his skin.
Images of death and destruction crackled at the edges of his mind, and he
cursed as he swung the Interceptor out of the garage, onto the empty street. He
hit the accelerator, needing to outrun the memories—
     
    And a
figure lunged from the building and hurtled in front of his car.
     
    It was
Maya, waving her hands and shouting.
     
    “Damn
it!” Thorne stomped the brake, and when that wasn’t enough to stop the heavy
vehicle in time, he twisted the wheel and sent the car behind her, up onto the
sidewalk, then back down onto the road. The rear end shimmied and then cut
loose in a vicious skid that had him cursing and fighting the wheel.
     
    A
delivery truck rounded the corner of the city block, taking up the lane he
needed. Thorne saw the driver’s face, saw that impact was inevitable.
     
    He let
the steering wheel spin through his fingers and braced for the crunch.
     
    A
nanosecond later, the Interceptor whipped back into the right lane and slid to
a stop, barely bumping up against a navy blue mailbox as it came to rest, well
clear of the delivery truck.
     
    The
engine stalled and Thorne’s world went silent.
     
    His heart
didn’t beat. His blood didn’t flow. His chest didn’t rise. There was absolute,
chilling stillness in his head.
     
    Like
death.
     
    Then
everything came back at once. His heart rocketed in his ears and the