The Protected (Fbi Psychics) by Shiloh Walker Page A

himself more than anything else.
    More than an hour passed before he was done and he was dripping with sweat, tired and sore.
    And still frustrated. Still angry.
    Judging by the silence of the house, Alex was still unhappy with him as well.
    He moved out into the hall, passed by the boy’s narrow, small room, and saw the kid lying on his cot, staring up at the ceiling with no expression on his face.
    Gus turned away.
    There was nothing, he knew, that could be said or done.
    Nothing.
    * * *
    “WELL . . . THE cameras work.” Vaughnne stared at Gus’s naked, muscled back.
    His very
nice
naked, muscled back.
    As the bathroom door shut behind him, she groaned and leaned back in her seat, covering her face with her hands.
    The cameras worked. The audio feed worked.
    The motion sensors she’d placed at the doors and windows worked. The cameras were tucked snug inside the smoke alarms, and she’d been watching him through the tiny little slats and feeling like a pervert.
    She’d also had a front row seat to what the boy had done.
    He’d seen the tape. Her mistake. That fatal little flaw.
    Her heart had dropped like a stone when he moved over to it, but then she’d realized what he was doing.
    Fixing it.
    And then he lied.
    When Gus asked him if everything was okay, he’d turned around, looked the man in the eye, and
lied
.
    She didn’t know what was up with that. Part of her wanted to continue with her own little lies, insisting to herself that she
didn’t care
. But she couldn’t. She needed to know everything about these two males and she needed to know it
now
. And it was already for reasons that went beyond the job. It had been from the very beginning. For Alex, it was because she understood that fear in his eyes. With Gus . . . hell. She couldn’t even explain that mess, although it might have something to do with the way her heart skipped up a few beats when he looked at her and it might have something to do with the way he watched over that kid.
    It got to her. She couldn’t deny that. Her father had tossed her out like she was nothing more than trash. But this guy . . . there was no denying that he would tear down mountains to protect that kid. It got her, right square in the heart.
    Maybe that’s all it was. Admiration for him. A little bit of lust.
    “Yeah, right,” she muttered.
    Swearing, she skimmed her hands back over her hair and tried to focus her brain on the job. The
job
. These two males were the
job
. That was what they were and what they
had
to be. She couldn’t do her job if she kept letting other things get in the way.
    “Just the job.” She shoved back from the computer and rose to pace.
    She’d done the main thing she needed to do—she had eyes inside the house now, and so far, they hadn’t been discovered. The first few minutes, she knew, were critical. That was when somebody was going to sense something was off. That was when their instincts would scream the loudest, if it was going to happen, and at this point, nothing
had
happened.
    Between the eyes she had inside the house and the motion detectors she’d set up on the perimeter, hopefully she’d done enough to catch anybody before they could move in on the two.
    There were times when she wished she had something other than a psychic’s banshee wail. Being able to talk to anybody she needed to talk to was nice enough, she guessed, although she couldn’t
hear
anything unless the person was also a telepath. This was flying blind, though. She had no ability to sense anything more than what her instincts were able to tell her, and while those instincts were pretty damn sharp, she hated relying on just those and her wits.
    Something caught her eye and she glanced down at her monitor.
    “Damn.”
    The word gusted out of her in a rush as she stopped to stare.
    It was Gus.
    He’d come out of the bathroom, a towel slung around his hips and water rolling down his chest in tiny little drops. One bead rolled down the midline of