The Unwanted (A Novella of the FBI Psychics) by Shiloh Walker Page A

cut from the same cloth.
    Except it had stayed that way, just that way, for the entire time they were together. If he tried to take things deeper, she pulled away. If he tried to get her to open up to him, she closed down.
    When he’d told her he was leaving, she hadn’t said a word.
    She’d just sat by and watched him pack and she never said a thing.
    When he walked out the door, she said nothing. Like it didn’t matter. Like they didn’t matter. He had been dying inside, all but ready to beg for her to give him something. Anything.
    But it hadn’t ever happened.
    And that was just the misery on the personal front. It didn’t even tap into what was screwed up with them, hell, with Destin, period , and she wasn’t going to open up about that because she wouldn’t admit there was a problem.
    Problems…shit.
    Turning away from the closed door, he ground the heels of his hands against his eye sockets. They had problems, all right. Destin barely slept without nightmares and her nightmares bled over into him because of how tightly they’d been connected.
    Sometimes he could be five hundred miles away working with another psychic and he’d still have the nightmares. He’d even have his shields up and she’d find a way to pull him in. Yeah, he had solid shields—he had to develop them just to keep her gift from driving him insane, but while he’d been able to keep her from reading him , he’d never been as skilled at keeping her emotions on the outside. At keeping the two of them untangled. They’d been so twisted up in each other sometimes he forgot where he existed and where she began.
    There had been times when the line between reality and her nightmares had started to dissolve and he’d told her they needed to find a way to fix it.
    But she hadn’t seen a problem. Told him there wasn’t anything to fix. He was the one with the problem.
    But Caleb had never been assaulted.
    Destin had…although she hid from it.
    It was where her gift had come from.
    He knew it, even if she wouldn’t acknowledge it.
    When he’d tried to press her, to get her to see that there were problems, things they didn’t understand affecting their connection, it had only gotten worse.
    Physically for him, and for her. Whether it had been brought on by stress or something else, he didn’t know. But he’d started suffering from headaches that almost pushed him into blackouts. Nights passed where he didn’t sleep at all and he knew she wasn’t faring any better.
    Then that case…
    The door opened. Turning around, he found himself staring at a stranger. Cool-eyed, remote and her face void of expression, Destin stared at him. Her hair was damp and she was dressed in jeans, a skinny-strapped tank top and a pair of beat-up running shoes. She had a weapon strapped into place and a jacket slung over her arm.
    She eyed him with disdain. “You plan on doing this job wearing those clothes around the campus all day?”
    Caleb looked down and realized he was still wearing his workout gear.
    Shit, how much time had he spent staring at the door and thinking about the end of them? Thinking about what she’d said?
    “No.” He cleared his throat and turned away. “Just give me fifteen minutes.”

Chapter Six
    “I haven’t ever seen any place where people run so much.” Destin watched yet another runner cut around them, heading up the winding streets that made up much of the area around the University of Virginia.
    “They run because there’s no place to park. Driving isn’t an option,” Caleb said blandly.
    She grimaced. It sounded laughable, but it might almost be true. Twenty minutes trying to find a parking space. “We’re calling a cab from here on out,” she said, following the ebb and flow of people.
    A police car slowed just ahead as students thronged around one of the crosswalks. “Campus police,” she murmured.
    “Yeah. The place has its own police department. So far, they haven’t found anything.”
    She gave him a