Primal Instinct

“I know you can handle it, Vince. I’m not sure what I would’ve done without you for the past year.” She smiled gently at him.

The older man blushed and looked away. Nothing thrilled Vince less than talking about feelings, Adrienne knew.

“Vince, I know you had trouble with the law in your past, but I’ve known from the beginning that you were someone I could trust. Whatever happened in the past isn’t important to me. You’ve been a godsend.” She handed him a sandwich.

“Well, you know that goes both ways.” Vince took a big bite of his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. “Why do I get the feeling all of this conversation has to do with those FBI agents?”

Adrienne sighed. “It looks like I’m going to need you to keep things afloat for me here for a little bit.”

“While you go help the FBI.”

“Yeah.”

“What exactly do you, or did you do, for them?”

Adrienne pushed her sandwich around on her plate. How was she supposed to explain this? “I guess I was kind of a profiler for them.”

Vince grunted in agreement the way he often did. He didn’t look at all surprised. “I figured it was something like that, given your...” He waved his hand in circles above his head.

Adrienne was shocked. She had no idea Vince was aware of her gift. They had never talked about it. “You knew?”

“Not at first. As a matter of fact, when you initially hired me, I thought you were a little reckless. What woman hires someone completely unknown, then invites him a few weeks later to move into the house with her?”

“Vince, you were sleeping out in the barn!”

“I know, I know. Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful for your invite. But I could’ve been dangerous.” Vince shook his head.

“I knew you weren’t.”

Vince grunted in agreement again. “Then I saw over the next few months how patient you were with almost everybody. Even some of the brattiest or angriest kids who came out here to work. You were always kind and gentle, when I wanted to throw some of them out on their ears.”

Vince put down his sandwich and looked Adrienne right in the eye. “Then that blond guy showed up last July. He seemed polite and charming. All the college girls were sighing over him and his good looks. You came out of the house, glanced at him for five seconds, and asked him to leave and never come back.”

Adrienne remembered very clearly the appearance of the young man, probably twenty or twenty-one years old. Like Vince said, he had blond hair, blue eyes— all-American good looks. Seemed amiable and charismatic, at least on the outside.

But the thoughts in his mind were utterly sinister. A malevolence that only Adrienne could pick up on had permeated the air around the young man. The things he thought of doing to the female students who had worked at Adrienne’s ranch—to Adrienne herself, once he had seen her—made Adrienne’s stomach churn. She had immediately made him leave, much to the girls’ dismay, telling him there were no more internships available.

Then had promptly gone back inside and vomited the entire contents of her stomach.

The next day Adrienne had gone into town to check with the sheriff’s office to see if there were any warrants out for the man or any reported attacks on women in the area. There were none. Adrienne decided to leave it alone—after all, she had no idea if he would ever act on any of those evil instincts floating around in his brain. Perhaps not. But either way she did not want him around her ranch or the young people she had working there. Thankfully they never saw him again.

Adrienne looked at Vince. “Yeah. I remember him.”

“I don’t know why you sent him away. I don’t know why you made him—a good, clean-cut-looking kid—leave when you had hired some of the roughest-looking tattooed hoodlums multiple times. Hell, I’d seen you make jobs for people when we didn’t need another soul.”

“He just wasn’t a good fit for our ranch.”

“It’s your ranch, and you can certainly hire or not hire anyone you see fit. But you not even giving that kid a chance—that kind of caught my attention.”

Vince stood and walked his plate over to the sink, then continued. “I watched you after that when you were around people—especially new folk. It took a while, but I realized you have a sort of insight into people that most don’t have.”

Adrienne sat in silence as Vince rinsed his plate off, then turned to look at her. “It’s probably more than just an insight if the FBI wants your help.”

“A little. Especially when it comes to anyone who has some sort of sinister intent. I can kind of hear their thoughts.” Adrienne was worried that she may be freaking Vince out, but he seemed to take it all in stride.

“Hmm. And you helped the FBI before?”

“Yes.”

“You must have been pretty young.”

“Barely eighteen.”

Vince’s eyes narrowed at that. “Hmm. And working with them wasn’t a pleasant experience?”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

Vince nodded. “But you’re going back to work for them?”

Adrienne looked away; she didn’t want Vince to know he was the reason she was returning to work for the FBI. “Yeah.”

“Even though you don’t want to.” It wasn’t a question.

“Pretty much.”

“And you told them you’re not interested in helping?”

“I tried.”

“But they didn’t listen?”

“Evidently they need my help in a pretty big way. ‘No’ wasn’t a possibility for an answer.”

“Seems to me, living in this free country of ours, no is always a possibility in a situation like this.”

Adrienne finished her sandwich and brought her plate to the sink so she wouldn’t have to look at Vince. “Well, let’s just say they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

There was silence for long moments, and Adrienne made the mistake of looking over at the older man.

“If I told you,” Vince began with a grimace, “I had missed my last few meetings with my parole officer after I left prison, and that there’s a warrant out for my arrest, would this be new information to you?”

Adrienne looked back down at the plate she was washing. “I already told you, Vince. I don’t care what happened in the past. I just know I can trust you now,” she sidestepped.

Vince nodded. “But that’s not what I asked you.”

Adrienne sighed. “No, that info isn’t new to me.”

“Did you know this before today?”

Adrienne turned and looked the older man in the eye. “No. Agents Perigo and Harrington told me.”

“And that’s how they’re getting you to come back, right? By using me?”

“Vince...” Adrienne reached toward him but he leaned back in his chair away from her.

“I won’t let you do it, you understand? I’m not going to let you be forced into something because of me!”

“Vince, it’s all right. I’m going to do this one thing for them, and that will be the end of it. And before I do, I’ll get their assurance that the warrant for you will be canceled or whatever. I promise. It’s not a big deal.”

“I still don’t like this,” Vince muttered.

“Don’t worry. I’m going to be fine. Maybe I’ll find that the FBI has become a little better at playing with others in the past ten years.”

Vince took a sip of his drink and sat back in the chair. “I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

Chapter Four

Hours later Conner lay sprawled in his bed looking up at the ceiling. After leaving Adrienne Jeffries’s house, he had been pretty much useless for the rest of the day. They had gone back to the office for a couple of hours, briefly reporting to Chief Kelly about their success with getting Adrienne’s agreement to help. Seth, well aware of Conner’s black mood, had talked Conner out of questioning the chief about Adrienne’s history with the FBI.

There were so many things about Adrienne Jeffries’s history that didn’t add up that Conner didn’t know where to even begin his questioning. Definitely better to leave his questions until he was in a better—or at least more respectful—frame of mind. Maybe he would just talk to her and leave the chief out of it altogether. Less chance of Conner getting fired that way.

Adrienne definitely had not been what he was expecting. For one, her age. Certainly not the middle-aged woman he had been anticipating. But that wasn’t even what caught him off guard so much. Conner ran his hands through his hair, staring up at the ceiling from his bed. He had never had such an instant reaction to a woman before. Adrienne Jeffries had affected him on every level.

She was five feet four of pure dynamite, it seemed. Conner normally preferred taller, more athletically built women—and with long blond hair. Adrienne Jeffries was slender, but short, and her hair definitely wasn’t long and blond. Rather pixie-short and brown, with little chunks of copper in it. But Conner found his fingers itching to run through it.

He knew his behavior earlier today had been unprofessional and may have seemed borderline psychotic to Adrienne. Harrington had let Conner have it more than once on their way back to San Francisco from Lodi. Conner knew, whatever he was feeling, he had to get it under control before he saw her again in just a few short hours.

No matter what confusion Conner may have over his attraction to Adrienne, he had no confusion over his feelings about her so-called “abilities.” Obviously years ago she had somehow convinced the Bureau she could track criminals like some supersleuth. Conner had no reason to believe she could do all that the FBI urban legends about her suggested she could do.

As far as he was concerned, she would come in, they would get all the insight from her that they could—if any—and then they would send her on her way. It shouldn’t take more than a day. His boss would be appeased, and he and Harrington could get on with real law enforcement work and catch Simon Says as soon as possible.

And maybe, after Simon Says was apprehended, Conner would head back out to a certain horse ranch in Lodi and see Adrienne Jeffries again under very different circumstances.

But until then, Adrienne—and her abilities—were just a distraction. Something to draw his focus away from what he knew needed to be done to catch the killer. Conner couldn’t allow that to happen. No matter how much he may want it to.

Conner decided to get up and get dressed since dawn was about to break anyway. He may as well go into the office and make an early start of what surely would be a long day. He wouldn’t be surprised if Seth was there early, also.

* * *

FORTIFIED WITH MULTIPLE cups of coffee, Adrienne drove herself into San Francisco the next day. She needed the coffee after being awake most of the night—first packing and preparing for the trip, and then worrying about the toll it would take on her. The drive was relatively uneventful, but she found herself getting more and more uptight as she got closer to the city. Already she missed her little ranch and the serenity it offered.

And she hadn’t even put herself in the clutches of the FBI yet.

She turned the radio up in her old Corolla as she crossed the Bay Bridge and entered the city. She forced herself to sing along to some familiar song by an ’80s hair band. Singing helped her not to think too much and to ignore any buzzing she might start to hear in her head. With a population of nearly a million, Adrienne knew there would be people around the San Francisco area with malicious thoughts. There was nothing Adrienne could do about them, so she knew it was better to try not to hear them at all.

Adrienne navigated the hills and multiple one-way streets San Fran was famous for and finally parked at the FBI field office’s parking garage. As she shut off her car, Adrienne braced herself to be bombarded by other people’s thoughts in her head or to at least hear a dull roar of competing voices. She was pleasantly surprised to find just the slightest buzz—almost nothing.

Adrienne smiled. Evidently everybody in San Francisco must be having a good day or something. She didn’t mind, less of a headache—literally—for her.

Upon entering the building, she was escorted up to the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program offices. She saw Conner Perigo as soon as she entered the main area. Dammit. The man looked just as good as he had yesterday. She had hoped she had imagined the thick black hair and gorgeous green eyes. But evidently not.

Those green eyes were fixed on her as Agent Perigo’s partner, Seth, came over to meet her in the doorway.

“Ms. Jeffries, we’re so glad you made it,” Seth said as he led her over to an interrogation room. The two agents sat in the pair of seats on one side of the table and motioned for her to sit in a chair across from them.

Teams had obviously been drawn, and she wasn’t on theirs.

“Not that I had much choice,” Adrienne muttered. “But it’s still okay to call me Adrienne.”

She could feel Conner Perigo’s eyes on her. Adrienne resisted the urge to fidget in her chair.

Agent Harrington smiled. “That’s good. Please, like I said yesterday, call me Seth.” He pointed at Agent Perigo. “And you can call him Conner. He promises to be on his best behavior today.”

Somehow Adrienne doubted it.

“Okay, Seth, Conner it is, then.” Adrienne decided she should try to make the best of the situation—not antagonize the agents, especially Conner. “But before we get started, I want your assurances that all charges or warrants or whatever against Rick Vincent will be dropped once I help you.”

Conner spoke to her for the first time. “That won’t be a problem, Adrienne. Neither of us were thrilled with how that went down.”

Adrienne looked at Conner, and he nodded. She believed him. Whoever’s idea it had been to use Vince as leverage, it definitely hadn’t been Conner’s. But that still didn’t mean he liked or trusted her.

“Okay, Adrienne,” Seth said. “We’d like to get started right away. But to be honest, we’re not exactly sure how to proceed. Maybe you can provide us a little insight.”

Adrienne took a deep breath. Might as well just get this over with. She had already made sure her purse contained a full bottle of ibuprofen. She would need most of it over the next few days.

“What can you tell me about the case?”

She watched as Conner and Seth—now in full FBI agent mode—looked at one another. Obviously until she proved herself and her abilities, they were loath to provide her with too much information.

“We have a serial killer on our hands. The victims are all women—five in the past ten months,” Conner told her.

Adrienne waited to see if there would be further information, but evidently that was all they felt comfortable sharing with her.

“Okay, well, do you have anything from the crime scenes? Particularly anything the killer may have touched.”

Seth responded this time. “There was no forensic evidence found at any of the scenes. Whoever the killer is, he’s very careful.”

No forensic evidence made it more difficult for Adrienne to get any sort of clear bearings about the killer, but not impossible.

“Do you have anything the killer might have touched, even with gloves on?”

Conner and Seth looked at each other once again. She saw Conner give a slight negative shake of his head.

Seth handed her an envelope that had been lying on the table. “We have some pictures of the crime scene. Will that help?”

Adrienne nodded and took the pictures. She braced herself as she opened the envelope. Death scenes were always jarring. She took out the first set of pictures, slowly looking at each one. The dead woman in the picture had been left in what looked like an abandoned warehouse of some sort. Multiple stab wounds covered her body. Different pictures showed the poor woman at various angles.

Three or four pictures in, Adrienne realized that, while she was horrified at what she was seeing, none of it was causing her any pain. Which was great, except for the fact that she also was not getting any insights or feelings from the pictures whatsoever.

Adrienne went through the entire set of crime scene photos for the woman in the warehouse. She then looked through them all again to be sure.

She felt nothing.

Adrienne looked up to find Conner and Seth watching her intently. She didn’t know what to say—nothing like this had happened before when she had helped the FBI in the past. What was wrong with her?

“Do you have pictures of any of the other cases?” Adrienne finally asked.

“Yes. The ones you were just looking at is the first victim,” Conner replied as Seth got out another set to show her.

First victim. Adrienne relaxed for a moment. Maybe the reason she couldn’t get any feelings from those pictures was because of the length of time that had passed between then and now. That had never happened to her before, but it seemed plausible.

Adrienne tried to clear all thoughts from her head as she took the next set of photos. Another stabbing scene with a young woman. This time it seemed she had been left under a highway overpass bridge.

Again Adrienne was horrified by the violence but felt nothing in terms of the killer’s thoughts, plans or motivations.

This continued for the next hour as Adrienne pored over the photos again and again. Nothing. Her insight wasn’t working at all. Although the agents across from her never said anything, she could tell their frustration was growing.

“I’m sorry,” Adrienne said, handing the photos back across the table. “I’m not getting anything from any of these.”

Conner Perigo didn’t look a bit surprised. “Do pictures not work for you?”

“They did in the past. The glimpses I would get from crime scene photos weren’t as clear as actually being at the crime scene or touching something the perpetrator touched, but there was always something.”

“I see.” Perigo’s smug tone grated on Adrienne’s nerves. Obviously her lack of ability to perform here was just confirming what he had suspected all along—she was a fake.

Adrienne sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes with both hands. On one hand she was happy her gifts weren’t working—it definitely saved her a literal headache—but on the other hand she desperately wanted to show Conner Perigo he was wrong.

Adrienne crossed her arms on the table and laid her forehead on her arms, taking a few deep breaths. She needed to center herself. She needed to block out all the buzzing around her and focus.

That’s when Adrienne realized there was no buzzing going on inside her head at all. It was completely silent.

Even if she wasn’t getting any reading from the pictures, she should still be hearing some sort of low murmur just by the very nature of being in a large building filled with people. Everyone gave off static. The more people around, the louder it was to her. That was why she chose to live in a relatively isolated area—so she wouldn’t have to put up with the white noise all the time.

As long as there was no one with malice in their thoughts, then everything stayed at a low static—annoying, but bearable. But sinister intent would instantly throw pictures into Adrienne’s mind. Along with searing pain. When she touched something that had been handled by someone malicious, she also could usually get some sort of picture of what had been going through the mind of that person.

She should have been able to do that with the crime scene photos, but she couldn’t. Right now not only was she not getting any pictures in her head, she wasn’t even getting any static. That had never happened before.

The silence was so unusual to her it was eerie. But not unwelcome.

She had no idea how long the silence would last. But the way the agents across the table were looking at her—especially Conner—they were not willing to wait long to see. Maybe she would get out of this after all. But then she thought of Vince back at the ranch. She wanted to get rid of whatever guillotine blade that the FBI had hanging over him.

If only for Vince’s sake, she wanted her gifts to work, just this one time. Although, if she were honest, Adrienne knew she also wanted to show Conner Perigo what she was capable of.

She watched Conner and Seth look at each other. Seth finally broke the awkward silence that had been building. “Look, it’s early. Maybe I can get you a cup of coffee or something and that will help.”

Adrienne nodded, grateful for the reprieve. “Yeah, coffee would be great. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on. Maybe I’ve just been out of the game for a little too long and need to ease my way back in.”

“No problem,” Seth said. “You stay here and look through the pictures a little more. Conner will stay, too. I’ll get coffee and be back soon. Anything in particular in it?”

“No, just black, thanks.”

Seth stood. “I’ll run down to the coffee shop in the lobby and get it. If you drink what’s in our office, you’re liable to have to be chained up in the next full moon.”

Conner looked over at Seth. “If you’re going down there, I’ll have the usual.”

Seth rolled his eyes and snickered, walking out the door without responding.

“What’s ‘the usual’?” Adrienne asked Conner, her curiosity piqued by Seth’s response. In the long silence that followed, Adrienne wasn’t sure he was going to tell her.

“Skinny vanilla chai tea latte with no foam and sugar-free vanilla,” Conner finally said. “I get ragged pretty hard from the guys.”

Adrienne couldn’t help it; she broke out into a smile. The thought of this big tough-looking agent whose shirt seemed to be perpetually slightly wrinkled and whose tie was probably one of a dozen stuffed in his glove compartment, using the words skinny and latte when referring to his coffee was downright hilarious.

Conner smiled back, looking sheepish. “I know. It doesn’t exactly fit the tough-guy image.”

The way he cocked his head to the side caused his black hair to fall onto his forehead. Before she could stop herself, Adrienne’s fingers reached up to tuck the hair into place. Halfway to his head she realized what she was about to do and immediately lowered her hand back to the table. She studied the photos again intently, hoping he hadn’t noticed her...

Her what? Desire to touch him? Inexplicable need to be closer to him? Complete lack of control of her own hands?

Adrienne stared down at the pictures for a long time without looking up, grateful for the distraction, although she still wasn’t getting any helpful info from them.

“Are you sure these are all the work of the same killer?” she finally asked.

“Yes.” There was no doubt in Conner’s voice. “He has a signature that makes it clear they are all the same killer.” He didn’t offer any information about what that signature was. Adrienne didn’t ask, knowing he wouldn’t tell her anyway.

Adrienne was tired of looking at these poor dead women. It was so frustrating to review them without any understanding as to what and how it had happened. She pushed the pictures back toward Conner’s side of the table.

“I need a break. I can’t look at them anymore right now.”

She gazed at Conner, expecting to find more of yesterday’s hostile and condescending tone from him. Instead, he looked attentive, even the slightest bit sympathetic.

“You know, it’s okay,” Conner said gently. “Whatever’s going on here, whatever reason you’re not able to help us, it really is okay.”

Adrienne couldn’t help but respond to his gentleness. “This has never happened to me. The...nothing. I’ve always been able to hear or see or feel something before.”

“It’s been a long time since you’ve done anything like this, right? Maybe you just need to ease yourself back into it, like you said.” The gentleness was still there but Adrienne could hear the disbelief that colored his tone.

“You don’t understand. I always hear something when I’m around people, no matter what. It’s like a buzz. But right now I don’t hear anything.”

“Maybe it’s the pressure of the situation. Or maybe the pictures are too old or something.”