Obsession Untamed (Feral Warriors #2)(25)

“Don’t you? I think you do, brown eyes.” He glanced at her again. “I was the one having the visions until you came along.”

She stared at him, the hair rising on the back of her neck. “What do you mean?”

He turned back to the road. “My twin and I have a psychic connection I don’t entirely understand. When he first started killing, I was the one seeing the murders. I was the one watching those terrified faces as he went for their throats. Through his eyes, I saw the death of that blonde in the basement of the Potomac Side Apartments. A couple of minutes later, I saw him attack you. I thought he’d killed you as he had her.”

No way. Her mind rebelled, yet she stared at him, her attention riveted.

He glanced at her and met her gaze. “But my next vision wasn’t of death. It was of you staring at yourself in the bathroom mirror at work. You wondered out loud why you were being forced to watch him kill others. One of your coworkers found you leaning on the sink, white as a ghost, and called your name. That’s how I knew who you were.”

Her head rang like a gong struck too hard. Yet everything he said was true. Everything correlated exactly with the events as she knew them.

“You think I’ve come between you and your twin.”

“I know you have, though I’m not sure how. Something must have happened when he attacked you and didn’t kill you. You’ve disrupted our connection. Now when he murders, I sometimes see you watching the murder, and I sometimes get tiny glimpses of it myself. But so far, the only time I’ve seen the whole thing since you got involved is the one time I held on to you while you got the vision.”

She blinked. “In your house just now. You saw it instead of me, didn’t you? You knew he was in the Lincoln Memorial killing those people.”

“Yes.” Tighe released a harsh sigh. “But I didn’t get there in time to catch him.”

“Because something attacked you.” She pressed her palms against the roof of the car. “Is this for real, Tighe? Is this all happening, or am I seriously losing my grip on my sanity?”

He reached over and gently squeezed her knee. “I’d like to tell you you’re losing it. Or it’s all a dream, or something equally inane. But you’re not, brown eyes. You’re perfectly sane. You’ve just gotten in the middle of things you shouldn’t have.” He nodded toward her window. “Keep your eyes peeled, Agent Randall. We may have missed him, but he could still be around here preparing to feed off someone else.”

Delaney nodded, letting his words sink in. She wasn’t insane, at least. Which was definitely something. Unfortunately, the deeper she got into this, the more convinced she became she was going to be lucky to get out of it alive.

She needed to trust her instincts and her instincts were screaming at her to trust him, to hold on to him and not let him go. Every instinct she possessed warned her that Tighe was her only chance of survival.

Tighe glanced at Delaney as he had every few minutes for the past couple of hours as they drove through the night streets of D.C. The woman drew him like a cat to cream, even in the dark where he could only glimpse her face in shadow. There was a depth to her that intrigued him. Alternating layers of strength and softness. Of fury and pain.

He was pretty sure he knew where the pain came from, but he wanted to know the whole story. He found himself wanting to know everything about her.

“Was your mother a cop, brown eyes?”

She turned toward him as the lights of a passing cab lit her face.

“No. Why?”

“I saw your expression when you saw the dead cop. I thought maybe you’d known her. Or that she reminded you of your mom.”

Delaney sighed and tilted her head back against the seat as if exhaustion pulled at her. “I saw her wedding ring. I’d be willing to bet she had kids. My mom wasn’t a cop, but I was eleven when I lost her. I hate the thought of any other kid going through that.”

“Tell me what happened. I heard you tell the cat in your apartment that a scumbag caught her on a bike path.” He wasn’t sure she’d open up to him, but they’d been traveling together in a comfortable silence for a while now. He found he wanted to understand her better.

“He raped her. Murdered her, while I was at school. I don’t know any more than that. They never found the killer.”

“I’m sorry you lost her.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Not so long. And you live with it every day of your life, don’t you? It’s why you became a federal agent. To catch the killers like the one who killed your mother. Maybe to catch him.”

She turned back to him. Then slowly looked away. “Maybe I am a little obsessed,” she said softly. “But, blast it, Tighe, people like that need to be stopped.” She swung back to look at him. “How dare he steal her life? And not just hers. Mine. He took everything from me that day. Everything.”

Tighe slid his hand over her shoulder and gave a squeeze. “Just don’t devote so much of your life to revenge that you forget to live it.”

“It’s not revenge.”

“What is it, brown eyes?”

“It’s…a calling. I hate the killers. All of them.” She groaned. “It is revenge, isn’t it? Every time there’s a murder, I wonder if it’s the same guy. If maybe this time I’ll get him.”