Tempted by Fate by Kate Perry

for planting thoughts to influence people’s decisions. She’d discovered the aptitude over ten years ago, the same night Morgan had become her responsibility.
    Now wasn’t the time to think about that night. Instead, she focused on the cop, imagining the thought as a seed in his mind, urging it to take root and to grow. Watching him frown, she waited for him to turn around and walk out.
    He took a step closer.
    “It didn’t work?” She blinked, taken aback, and then turned up the intensity. But the more she tried to dig the thought into the ground of his mind, the harder the dirt became, until it was impossible to penetrate.
    “What the hell?” Was it the metal around her? The distance shouldn’t have mattered.
    As she started to creep closer, keeping the hallway wall to her back, she felt something behind her. She turned right as the door to the sex club opened and one of the waitresses bumped into her.
    Distracted, she did something she hadn’t done since she was nine years old—she let her shield slip.
    Willow knew the moment the cop saw her. She felt itall the way into her soul. She turned around and met his eyes. Dark and focused.
    She shivered.
    She couldn’t be caught. The Bad Man had been here once—he’d be back again. This club was the last piece of the puzzle. Twenty years of searching led here. She was so close to her goal, and nothing—
nothing
—would stop her from achieving it.
    So she did the only thing she could do: she ran.
    Cutting through the crowd on the dance floor would get her closer to the side exit, but it’d also give her a chance to resettle
mù ch’i
around her, to block the two men from seeing her escape. “Dance floor it is.”
    The moment she stepped onto the floor, a guy grabbed her by the hips and gyrated behind her. Normally, having some random person wiggle his crotch against her ass would have pissed her off, but dancing with him gave her the opportunity to refocus herself.
    Drawing her energy around her, she pulled it in. She stepped away from the guy, who exclaimed in confusion behind her. Carefully she pushed her way through the crowd to the other side.
    The exit was five feet away, and no one stood between it and her.
    She headed right to it, reaching for the handle. But just as her hand touched it, another hand closed over hers.
    “Inspector Rick Ramirez, SFPD Homicide Unit.”
    A faint lemony scent teased her nostrils.
Tarata.
For a moment, she felt transported back to New Zealand and running free through the bushes.
    Willow shook herself. She had to concentrate here. She focused her attention to the cop.
    “I have some questions to ask you,” Ramirez said.
    Virile types responded to sex, so she unleashed a smile guaranteed to distract him from work. She ran a finger down the front of his dress shirt, stopping midway to toy with one of the buttons. “You look like you’re the type of man who already has all the answers.”
    He looked down at her hand, and his eyes narrowed. “There was a double homicide last night in Buena Vista Park. A woman fitting your description was seen leaving the scene.”
    Damn it—who’d seen her? There had been no one about. He couldn’t have seen her as she’d walked away. She’d taken care to mask herself. She hid her concern with a flirtatious tilt of her head and asked, “What’s my description?”
    His gaze was like a caress up and down her body—long and thorough. “Five-ten, thin, long blond hair.”
    “Tall, thin, and blond?” She chuckled, low and sexy, even though she was freaking out on the inside. “That could be anyone.”
    “Your hair color is distinctive. White blond.”
    Her hand started to go up to her ponytail, but she caught herself and curled it into a fist at her side. She was supposed to be disrupting his composure, not the other way around. Eyes narrowed, she turned up the heat. “Oh, I was at a scene a couple nights ago, honey, but the man with me was very much alive when I left him the next