The Unwanted (A Novella of the FBI Psychics) Read Online Free

than him. He glanced at her as she turned to face him, then away.
    The pit of his stomach dropped out as the connection hit and he stopped in his tracks, looking back at her. Her face, like her ruthlessly short nails, was naked, devoid of any color. No makeup, nothing. Just her pretty mouth, unsmiling, her eyes cold and hard…and a scar. It ran down the left side of her face, sliver thin, about three inches long, and faded.
    He lifted a hand to touch her, unaware he was doing so until his fingers brushed down the slightly ridged surface of the scar. She didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch.
    Caleb didn’t let himself react, although his gut was knotted with rage and he had the insane impulse to step closer and wrap his arms around, shelter her, cuddle her close. She didn’t want that from him. Didn’t need it.
    “What happened?”
    She stepped out of his reach and he let his hand fall to his side, closing into a fist. The need to pound on something was strong. A brick wall, a metal file cabinet—some bastard’s face— just show me who did it, baby…please … He even lowered his shields enough to try and pick up some kind of flicker, but there was nothing there.
    “I was careless,” she said, her voice flat.
    “What happened?” he repeated.
    This time, she had some kind of reaction. She cocked a brow and smirked at him. “I told you, lover…I was careless. I dove in feet-first, like I always do, and didn’t pay attention. The guy had a knife and when I barreled in, he did this.” She trailed a finger down the scar, angling her head so he could see it better. “But that wasn’t the worst. I picked up on him when I was off-duty…you know how it happens. I put the call in to Oz and she told me to wait for backup. I didn’t. He was close, very close. And he hadn’t hurt her yet. I thought I could stop it. I was wrong. He was bigger than me, stronger, determined not to get arrested. I didn’t wait for backup and because I didn’t, he got away and he killed the girl I was trying to save. Careless.”

Chapter Two
    He hadn’t looked at her much since they’d checked in for their flight. And he hadn’t said a word to her the past night after she’d told him about her spectacular failure four years earlier.
    Destin understood why easy enough. She had a hard time looking at herself. It had been years since Dawn Meyer’s death and she still had a hard time facing the woman she saw in the mirror every morning.
    She should have saved that girl. Was supposed to save her. If she’d listened to Caleb back when he’d tried to tell her all those times that she needed to learn some modicum of control, she could have saved Dawn.
    But she hadn’t learned, and because of her, a girl was dead. She’d failed the girl. Failed her unit. Almost got them all screwed.
    But the worst thing was that she let a girl die. Nineteen years old. Terrified and hurt and alone, and she’d died because of Destin.
    Her unit saw it differently, she knew. At least some of them. Oz had rallied around her and refused to feed her to the sharks and that was a debt Destin could never repay. There were others, too, former agents who’d refused to let some of the higher-ups turn her into the scapegoat.
    They should have, though.
    They should have fed her to the sharks, left her for dead…nothing would have been a suitable-enough punishment. Just how did she atone for not saving a girl? For costing that girl her life? She couldn’t. She didn’t.
    If she’d listened to Caleb all those years ago…
    You can’t always dive in feet-first, baby…sooner or later, you’ll find yourself in a mess that you can’t get out of.
    He’d been worried she’d end up dead.
    She only wished that had been the cost.
    No wonder he wouldn’t look at her.
    Even now. They’d only been waiting for the flight for thirty minutes or so—Oz had arranged to pick them up—one more debriefing, she’d told them, and then she’d ended up picking them up a good hour