Stealing Shadows by Kay Hooper Page B

it?"
     
    "I suppose. It was always called that in my family."
     
    He glanced up from her hand. "Always?" She was looking at him with an unusually steady gaze, her eyes impenetrable and her expression calm; he had no idea whether she was able to read him, and he didn't feel her gaze as he sometimes did. Was it because she was actually touching him?
     
    Cassie nodded slowly. "It's like one of those stories you see in fiction. I'm not the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, but the sight has been in my family for generations, almost always handed down from mother to daughter."
     
    "What about the sons?"
     
    "There haven't been any in the last few generations of my mother's line. Further back, I'm not sure. According to the family stories, it was a female gift exclusively."
     
    Ben smiled. "Maybe to level the playing field?"
     
    "The boys got the muscle and the girls got the sight?" Cassie smiled as well. "Maybe."
     
    He returned his attention to her hand, putting a clean gauze pad in place over the wound and then winding gauze around her hand to secure it. "So if you have a daughter, she's likely to be psychic."
     
    "I suppose," Cassie said.
     
    With more reluctance than he Wanted to show or admit to himself, Ben released her hand. "All done. That wasn't so bad, was it?"
     
    "Thank you."
     
    "You're welcome." He kept his voice light. "So, could you read me?"
     
    Cassie didn't answer for a moment, gazing down at her hand as she flexed the fingers slowly. Then she looked up, a very faint frown between her brows. "No. No, I couldn't."
     
    "Not at all?"
     
    She shook her head. "Not at all. A very… closed book."
     
    Ben was a little surprised at first, but then wondered if he should have been. "Like I said, you're probably too tired to read anybody tonight."
     
    For an instant her eyes seemed to bore into his, and he felt that touch again, still cool but so firm this time that he almost glanced down to see if she had reached across the table and laid her hand on his chest.
     
    Then Cassie was smiling just a little, and her voice was casual. "You're right. I am tired."
     
    "I'll go, and let you get some rest."
     
    Cassie didn't protest. She walked him to the front door. "It would probably be a good idea for me to see Miss Jameson's house tomorrow. I don't know if I'll be able to pick up anything, but I should try."
     
    "I'll come get you – since you're without a car. Early afternoon all right?"
     
    "Yes, fine."
     
    "Good. Sleep late, okay? Get some rest."
     
    "I will. Good night, Ben."
     
    "See you tomorrow."
     
    Cassie watched him until he reached his Jeep, then closed the door and locked it, and set the security system. She went back to the kitchen, put away the first aid kit, and rinsed out the used coffee cups, the actions automatic. She hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, but wasn't hungry now and definitely didn't want to bother fixing anything.
     
    Her hand ached, but that was her own fault. It hadn't been hurting until she'd dug her nails into the gauze to reopen the wound just before calling Ben's attention to it.
     
    For all the good it did.
     
    She hadn't really suspected Ben of being the killer, but she'd seen too many outwardly decent men with black souls to discount anyone, at least until she was able to see inside their minds. Unfortunately she had not been able to read him – and she was afraid it was not because she was tired.
     
    He had walls, solid and strong ones.
     
    The kind of walls that few nonpsychics ever needed to build unless they had experienced some sort of emotional or psychic trauma.
     
    Had Ben? Was there, in that seemingly open and honest man, some secret hurt or experience that had left him guarded and wary at the deepest levels of himself? Nothing in his background suggested that, but Cassie knew only too well how inadequate was the public information about a life lived.
     
    It was the most likely explanation, that Ben's walls came from some injury or