Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Mack helped him to the chair this time. Paul sank into it gratefully, pressing his fingers to his temples as if to relieve a terrible headache. Gideon knew that at times the psychic surgeon briefly took on whatever his patient had wrong in his efforts to heal them. They waited until Paul was able to drink enough water to recover his ability to speak.
“That is one strong woman, Gideon. She’s in pain. That strange sensation is no small thing. It’s part of a cloaking device that’s coming undone. It’s been in place for years and has become part of her physical makeup.”
“I don’t understand,” Gideon said. “I’m in her mind. How could she hide her ability to shield from me?”
“I don’t believe she’s aware she’s doing it.” Paul indicated the bar, and Mack immediately got him another bottle of icy water. Paul didn’t drink it but pressed the bottle to the spot above his temple.
“Then Whitney did program and send her here for a reason.” Mack sounded tired.
Paul sighed. “I saw absolutely no evidence of that. There’s no bomb. No programming that I could discern. She’s been experimented on multiple times, just as Rose has been. Her bronchial tubes have to be opened. And whatever obstruction he put in her lungs needs to be dealt with. She may have been born with poor lungs, but he introduced something foreign to her lungs to make her breathing problems worse. When I’m stronger, I’ll do my best to take care of that for her.”
“Let’s go back to the shield she has,” Mack said. “You say you don’t believe Whitney placed it in her, and it’s been there so long it’s become part of her physical makeup. That doesn’t make sense.”
Gideon was beginning to understand. “It does if she was a child when she ran, Mack. Whitney drove her to the brink of suicide. I caught glimpses of things he said and did to her. She was in an attic wearing a mask, and she pried open a board covering a window and stepped outside. She was a couple of stories up. If she could cloak herself—and I know she could, because she had just come back from a mission, and she’d saved Rose and Ivy by shielding them from the enemy—she would have been able to hide from the guards while she escaped.”
“Then what?” Mack demanded.
“Then suppose something happened, and she didn’t remember to take down the shield, or she didn’t remember how. She was a kid.”
Mack began to pace. “That’s a big leap.”
“Not really,” Paul said. “It makes sense. If her nightmares have been increasing, it’s because the shield has been thinning. Memories are surfacing. The hood over her face for so long, the threats and being unable to breathe properly will most likely trigger even more memories, and she’ll be confused. The pain is excruciating, by the way. It does feel as if the skin is being ripped away. In a way, it is. Like I said, that shield has become part of her physical makeup.”
“Is there a way to make it more bearable for her?” Gideon asked.
“I can try if she’ll allow me to. I need to rest, Gideon. I’m going to use one of your spare bedrooms for an hour. If she wakes up, tell her she isn’t a threat to anyone, least of all you, and I can help her with her breathing problems.”
Paul pushed up from the chairs, his movements heavier than his usual easy gait. He left the room without a backward glance.
“That was an unexpected diagnosis,” Mack said. “A kid building that dense of a shield that none of us could penetrate it. Not even Whitney. She hid from him right out in the open for years.”
Gideon took Rory’s hand and brought it to his chest. “I want a few minutes with these men before we kill them.”
“Gideon, you know we’re going to have to let Larrsen know she’s alive and that we’ve got cameras set up to catch whoever took her. He’s a decent cop. As much as I want to do a little revenge on them, they killed a detective. We need to let them handle it. If they manage to slip through the cracks, then it will be our turn.”
“We can claim military jurisdiction, say it’s classified and take it out of their hands,” Gideon pointed out.
“I understand how you feel.”
“Do you? If this was Jaimie lying here, Mack, would you turn it over to the detective and just walk away? Because I don’t believe you would. I know you. You’d hunt them down and slit their throats.”
Mack was silent for a long time, and then he began to pace. “Yeah. That’s exactly what I would do, but it wouldn’t be right, Gideon. I’m trying to think what your woman would want you to do. I know Jaimie wouldn’t want me to do it. Would Rory? Because she doesn’t seem like a woman who would tell you to go find them and cut off their balls for her. I think she’d ask you to call Larrsen. I could be wrong.” He turned back to face Gideon. “You know her a hell of a lot better than I do.”