At the Clearest Sensation Page 4
Her gut still roiled as she thought through the morning’s fiasco. Fury mixed with nausea and she almost needed to get off the toilet so that she could barf in it.
“His sailboat?” Michelle sat down on the edge of the jacuzzi tub, close enough that only a toilet brush stood between them.
“I went sailing with him on his boat last night. It’s a class of boat called a Dragon.”
“How did you know him?”
“I didn’t.”
“You went sailing with a total stranger last night? Are you nuts?” Michelle’s raised voice echoed off the hard tile.
Isobel didn’t even know anymore. She’d felt safe and…free. It had been such a relief to just be herself for a few hours.
“You think I didn’t check?” She tapped her heart because that’s where she felt emotions when she did choose to use her talent. Perhaps it was placed there by a young girl’s imagination, but the sensation had stuck.
Michelle knew the gesture and calmed down a bit. “Okay, so not nuts, just wildly incautious.”
Isobel had checked his emotions last night.
And she’d felt him last night but couldn’t today. In her experience that was impossible; no one could hide from her empathic gift. Yet Devlin had.
Or had he?
She had reached out to see if he felt avarice or lust.
And sensed…nothing.
Not just the lack of the negative or threatening emotions that she’d been checking for, but literally nothing.
Isobel felt a small shiver at the risk she’d taken by not being more careful.
“I can’t feel him.”
“Maybe he left.”
Isobel shook her head. That wasn’t the point, but she didn’t think so. Downstairs was still within her sensing range. She opened to the rest of the team and felt…curiosity. That wasn’t definitive, but it would fit if he was still here.
Michelle’s eyes glazed over for a moment as if she was concentrating on something else—a sure sign she was communicating telepathically with Ricardo—then shook her head.
“No, my hubby says he’s still here. You really can’t feel him?”
Isobel shook her head.
Michelle grabbed her arm. “Maybe he’s one of the gifted like the rest of us. Has the ability to block emotions just like you can sense them.” Her eyes glazed out again.
“What now?”
“I told Ricardo to not let him leave.”
Isobel wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
Devlin sat again beside Jennie. He knew that if he didn’t do that, two things were going to happen.
Isobel’s entourage—he hadn’t bothered trying to remember their names—was going to start trying to take him apart, like a frog pinned to a high school dissection tray. And if they did, the second thing was going to happen: he was going to beat the shit out of a couple of them, walk out of here, and never come back.
Something else was obvious to him on Belle’s side of the coin.
He couldn’t miss the beeline that the redhead had made after her when Isobel left the room. These weren’t just her sycophants like he’d seen so many other Hollywood types drag along in their wakes. They were her friends. And they were all set to smother the woman with their love and friendship until it drowned her.
He couldn’t believe she was living with these people!
Christ, no wonder she’d been perched out at the end of the dock last night, willing to throw herself onto a stranger’s sailboat.
They made him feel protective.
Well, that sure as shit wasn’t any version of himself he recognized. No matter what Isobel said, the White Knight was a total miscasting. The best fit for him was the Black Knight, who took what a woman had to offer and didn’t complain when she told him to get gone before the break of day.
Yet here he sat on his ass, working through the script with Jennie, while Isobel was being cornered by her “friends.”
“’Scuse me for a moment, Jennie,” he stopped her in mid-explanation of the hidden motivations of the male hero and how that was intended to play off an image she hadn’t quite found yet.
Devlin breezed by her people. Two were back to cleaning the breakfast dishes and the other three were doing their best to appear nonchalant as they sat on a sofa and fat armchair. They were also sitting in seats with their backs to the view of the lake. Dead giveaway that you’re not ever so casual, dudes. They were keeping an eye on him and he was getting pretty sick of that as well.
Devlin headed up the stairs. Open doors to four bedrooms and one bath.
A set of steps leading upward to the rooftop deck he’d seen these people lounging on last night.
No, that didn’t feel right. The woman had been going somewhere to hide, not to expand. Up there she’d be seeking freedom, like on the sailboat. Right now…?
The master bedroom was easy to pick out by the big bed and extra chairs. Houseboats, even monsters like this one, put a premium on space. This was definitely the master. The first closed door led to a closet that was entirely too orderly in his opinion, including last night’s sundress.
Bingo!
Second closed door was probably the bathroom.
He knocked.
“Go away! We’re busy.” High voice of the redhead, not the sultry low-and-sexy of Isobel.
He shoved into the room.
Shit!
Isobel looked most of the way to miserable, redhead hovering close beside her.
He stepped in and went to close the door behind him, but it hit something hard.
Devlin turned to see the slender guy who shared Isobel’s Latina coloring standing close behind him. Christ but the guy moved fast. And dead quiet. Devlin hadn’t heard a thing.
“Bug off.”
The guy simply eyed him.
He was a couple inches shorter. Devlin had done his time as a street kid and could see by the guy’s stance that he was a skilled brawler, but it was still tempting to try. However getting Isobel’s bathroom all bloody wasn’t going to help anything.
He turned back to the redhead.
“You, too. Outta here.”
“Go to hell, Mr. Sailboat Man.”
He turned back to the guy behind him. “Are you gonna remove her or am I?”
The guy studied him for a long moment before gazing over his shoulder.
“No!” The redhead protested. “No!... I don’t care what you—”
Like he was hearing only half an argument. Very weird.
Then she unleashed a lethal string of curses. Or they would be lethal if they weren’t so mild. Apparently the woman didn’t go much nastier than “Darn” no matter what her tone said.
She brushed by him, trying to land a hard shove as she passed.
Devlin saw it coming and braced himself, so all she achieved was pushing herself off him and crashing into the door jamb.
“Ow! Goddamn you!” She turned toe-to-toe with him. “You hurt her even a little and you’re a dead man!” Then she stormed away.
The man watched him long enough to communicate that he’d deliver on the redhead’s promise if she couldn’t.
It was a language he understood. At his nod, the guy went.
Isobel still sat on the toilet, her long hair hanging forward over her bowed head.
“Some friends.” Didn’t need enemies with them around.
“Best friend and my brother. Married about six months ago.”
“Yeesh.” Kind of ties that he’d never had and never wanted. He’d had his run through the system and was long since done. His last set of foster parents had him over to dinner a couple times a year. Only decent ones he ever had, but that was plenty for both him and them.
“So what the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m certainly not being alone in the bathroom.”
“Want me gone?”
She seemed to think about it for a minute, then shook her head and leaned back so that he could see her face. But she didn’t speak,
though she was staring at him hard enough.
“So, let’s start with what the hell you’re doing in Seattle.”
Again that thoughtful study. “I’m trying to make a movie.”
“With them?” He tipped his head toward the group downstairs.
She nodded.
“You sure?”
She matched his smile, “I’m sure. They’re…special.”
“If you say so.” Wouldn’t be his first choice, but what did he know? “The way I figure it, if you’re going to do that, you’re gonna need a hand.”
“Is that an offer?”
He supposed it was. He held out a hand to make the point.
She took it and he pulled her to her feet.
Again so close that he could smell the glory of her.
“I suppose that I should warn you,” she didn’t step back.
Close enough he’d have tried dancing with her if it they weren’t in a bathroom. Even on this houseboat it was about luxury, not wasted space.
“Ricardo, my brother, was a former Delta Force operator. And Hannah, the little blonde, was too. You probably want to avoid pissing them off.”
Devlin had hung with his fair share of homeless vets around Seattle. Used be a whole cardboard box village of them under the Alaskan Way Viaduct before the elevated highway got replaced by a tunnel and was torn down. As they’d scattered, he’d lost track of a lot of good guys—royally fucked up, but still good. They hadn’t exactly been the kind of guys with address forwarding.
While Devlin hadn’t served, they’d still told him lots of stories, including a few about the silent super-warriors of Delta Force. A stupid part of him was sorry he hadn’t tested himself against a genuine Delta. Most of him was sensible enough to think he’d probably just dodged a very embarrassing moment of being plastered to the floor at Isobel’s feet.
Chapter 6
Isobel wasn’t sure how Devlin had done it, but he’d somehow left all except one of the team back at the houseboat.
Her brother had put his foot down about her touring Seattle without security. And Devlin had made sure that security was Hannah, and just Hannah. Probably just as well, because if it had been Ricardo, Michelle would have found a way to come too, and Isobel wasn’t up for that at the moment.
Rather than taking the team’s Chevy Suburban with tinted windows, he’d fetched his own car. She’d expected a muscle car, which had been half right. She hadn’t expected a perfectly cherry 1957 Chevy One-Fifty. It was dusky maroon except for the white on the upper rear quarter panels and trunk lid.
“I don’t drive her often, but I figure most folks will be looking at the car, not the people in it.”
“Which engine?”
He eyed her carefully.
“I had a ‘boyfriend’ in Thunder Lane who drove one of these. I was a better driver than he was. The stunt team on the set liked that and they thought I was cute, so they gave me my first real taste of it. Couldn’t get enough. I got the training and still do most of my own stunts.”
“A dead man would think you were cute. It’s the 283 with the dual four-barrel carbs.” He made no comment about her skills. Either it didn’t surprise him or he didn’t believe her. Either way, she couldn’t feel his reaction to tell.
“Race it much?” She kept the conversation going as she tried to find some way around his emotion block.
“You joking, lady? I’ve put way too many hours into rebuilding it to risk blowing an engine.” But his smile said he’d run it a few times.
“Pansy.” After holding the seat forward for Jennie and Hannah to climb in the back, she settled onto the luxurious bench seat. She’d forgotten the joy of not being confined by a modern bucket car seat.
His smile was absolutely a challenge. “Sometime when it’s just the two of us, I’ll bring out the ’37 Bugatti roadster.”
“How many cars do you have?” Isobel tried to remember the last time she’d been out anywhere as “just the two of us” and couldn’t. Having her friends of Shadow Force: Psi slowly push aside the cluster of handlers that “protected” her from the world had been a relief. But last night had been the first time she’d done “just the two of us” in a long, long time. “Alone” was from some completely forgotten past.
“Only the two cars. Built them back up from mostly scrap metal and rust. Got an old pickup.”
“Let me guess, a 1949 Chevy.”
“I like the way you think, but no. It’s a beater ’95 Ford. Can haul around my boat or a new engine block without having to stress.”
Isobel rubbed a hand over the rough fabric of the big seat as Devlin left behind the houseboat community and eased into Seattle’s main traffic flow. She loved all of the room. The three-on-the-tree shifter left the sprawling footwell and front long bench seat open. It was just made for snuggling up close with someone at a drive-in movie. Not that she’d ever done that except while shooting Thunder Lane, but it was a nice image.
“Do they still have any drive-in movie theaters in Seattle?”
Devlin kept his eyes on the multi-lane mayhem as they circled south of the lake, but she could see his smile. “Did I mention that I like the way you think? Yeah, we’ve still got some. My favorite is across the ferry on the other side of Puget Sound.”
That was the last time she’d been truly alone. Just standing on the upper deck of a Seattle ferry. Her breakout fame from Where Dreams Sail still ahead of her, she’d been able to leave the crew below and simply enjoy the sea air, unrecognized among a cluster of strangers.
“I’d like to do that again.”
“It’s a date.”
She twisted to look at Devlin. She hadn’t meant that, she’d meant be alone. And she certainly wasn’t going on a date with a man she knew so little about.
Devlin must have noted her reaction. “Shit, woman. Not talking about marriage; talking about a ferry ride and movie.”
“Maybe,” Isobel could feel herself pulling back in caution. She again tried to feel what Devlin was thinking, and again felt nothing. This was getting very problematic.
She tried to figure out how to ask if he was aware of having any psi powers, without really asking, but wasn’t coming up with much.
“Okay, I wanted you to see this tunnel first. It’s brand-new and replaced the ancient Alaskan Way viaduct.” The two-lane highway plunged down into a tunnel. “They dug it with one of those massive boring machines. We have two lanes southbound stacked over two more northbound. This would be hella tough to license for a chase scene or something, but it’s a real unique Seattle fixture.”
Isobel and Jennie had discussed the single car-chase scene. She wanted to keep it because she wanted to be the one to drive it, but the cost of a car chase had shocked her speechless. Underground ones were probably even worse.
She pulled the headset out of her purse and hooked it over her ears.
“What’s that?”
“Headset camera. It’s only video resolution, but it records what I see. That way I can review locations for the film later.” She held up the small remote control and pressed record. “Smile! You’re on Candid Camera.”
His scowl was perfect.
She turned her attention out the window as the highway descended into the tunnel to dive beneath the city. She checked the feed on her phone. The image was clear. Tucked under her thick hair, there would be very little to see other than the tip of the lens as she recorded the tunnel’s entrance.
“I doubt if the city would let you shut this down, but I might have a trick for you.”
Isobel had never liked the sound of that on a film set; it was always someone who thought they were too slick, too smooth.
And typically it meant they were too dangerous.
Speaking of dangerous, just as they were exiting the tunnel at the far end, someone was walking along the narrow margin while two lanes of traffic raced by at sixty miles an hour. Even as they approached, he walked past the big steel door of an emergency pedestrian exit.
“He’s an idiot?”
Devlin liked Isobel’s snappy comeback, but that wasn’t what he was referring to. The instant they were by him, he’d twisted around to stare at the car as if he’d impossibly spotted Isobel and was shocked to the core. Even now, his tiny figure in the rearview was standing stock-still and staring in their direction.
Christ it was weird. To be so famous that you needed to be moved around in the back of an armored car—inside a money bag. It sure hadn’t looked as if the guy just had a thing for 1957 Chevys.
“So what’s this ‘trick’?” He could hear the distrust in her voice.
“It’s called a rolling roadblock.”
Isobel didn’t react as Devlin negotiated them out of the tunnel through the heavy traffic, and got them turned around to head back into Pioneer Square.
“Make the run in the middle of the night because it doesn’t matter underground. You get a line of cops running in front of you to make sure the tunnel’s clear. Follow along with your camera gear and car chase. Then a line of safety cops behind you. Tunnel’s only two lanes wide with no midpoint ramps, so four cops could do it. Wouldn’t work if you were crashing or even banging cars, but you aren’t. Run it fast and the tunnel will only be ‘closed’ for a couple minutes.”
Isobel hummed thoughtfully to herself, then looked back over the seat at Jennie.
“That might work…” Jennie sounded less than convinced. A glimpse in the rearview showed that she’d plunged back into her script and was making notes. Which meant—
“Five gets you ten she finds a way to do that,” he told Isobel. He didn’t see any point in whispering as he doubted Jennie could even hear him at the moment. “Of course, if the budget was really tight, you might try it in a single take. It would need some serious planning and a couple of good drivers, but it could work.”
“Are you one of those?” Something about her accompanying laugh made him bristle.
“I know how to drive a car.”
“Good for you. So does every joker out there.”