Кей Хупер: Blood Ties

She barely had time to grasp all that before she realized he was lunging toward her. Even as he knocked her off her feet and carried her to the ground, she felt something tug at the shoulder of her jacket and heard the distinct, weirdly hollow craa-aack of a rifle.

Diana did have an almost uncanny sense of direction, a talent she had discovered only in the last year or so, but her physical conditioning and endurance, unlike that of most of the other team members, were still considerably under par.

She hated that.

No matter how many times Quentin or Miranda reminded her that she was playing serious catch-up after spending almost her entire adult life in a senses-dulling haze of various medications, she couldn’t escape the feeling that she should have been… further along by now. Physically stronger, at the very least.

“You’re stronger than you know,” Bishop had said, only a couple of weeks before.

Yeah, right .

The truth was that she had drifted through her life, completely detached, uninvolved in… anything. Diana honestly wished she could believe that all the doctors who had tried one medicine or therapy or treatment after the other had done it only because they’d had her best interests at heart and sincerely thought she suffered from some unnamed mental illness. But what she believed was that her father was a wealthy, powerful man, and what Elliot Brisco wanted, he got.

He’d wanted his only daughter’s life under his control. And though he still claimed his actions stemmed from love and concern, Diana had come to the conclusion that he had been driven as much by that need to control what was “his” as by a deeply rooted fear of anything he didn’t understand.

Such as psychic abilities.

Diana tried to shove the painful musing aside, wishing her father hadn’t intensified his efforts in the last couple of months to try to convince her one more time that she’d made a mistake in joining the FBI. And, especially, the SCU.

It was no accident, she thought, that he had been applying more pressure just when she was becoming involved in her first field assignment.

Consciously or not, he knew exactly how to undermine her confidence in herself.

Never mind him. Concentrate on the job at hand, dammit .

Leaning against a handy maple tree to catch her breath, she decided that the shortcut that had seemed such a good idea really wasn’t. The trade-off of avoiding the greater distance of twists and turns for a more direct route meant she was forced to do a hell of a lot of pretty rugged climbing to get over a ridge.

“Suck it up,” she muttered to herself. “You’re surrounded by people who don’t even get the concept of quit.”

That reminder did little for her self-confidence, but at least it caused her to push herself away from the support of the tree and press onward.

And upward.

No more than twenty or so yards farther, near the crest of the ridge, she stopped to lean against another tree, but this time not only because of her burning legs and thudding heart.

Quentin was near.

It was weird, that… sensation. More than knowledge or awareness, it was a tangible connection she couldn’t really explain—and had so far refused to examine closely. Even after all these months, she invariably caught herself resisting, pulling away from that powerful inner tugging, not allowing herself to be drawn toward Quentin as every other instinct insisted she must be.

Bishop said it was because she had lived so much of her life under someone else’s control and that, once all the medications were out of her system and her father’s authority over her had been legally and practically severed, she was bound to instinctively fight for her independence—even against a connection that posed no threat to that independence.

He had said this out of the blue one day while he was teaching her a few basic martial arts moves, and Diana had somewhat indignantly believed he did it only to distract her so he could maintain the upper hand in the match—until she thought about it later. First she recognized that he had hardly needed any sort of distraction, given his skills. And she recognized second that not only was he right in what he’d told her but also that she never would have brought up the subject herself, and what he’d told her was something she really needed to know.

Which figured. Bishop, she had discovered, was like that. He picked up on the things one didn’t want to discuss and matter-of-factly made one discuss them.

Or at least consider them. She hadn’t been willing to discuss that particular subject, her prickly defenses going up immediately. She just wasn’t ready to talk about her father and all the baggage he’d left her with. Not with Bishop.

And only very rarely and briefly with Quentin.

That made her feel guilty as hell, even though she was reasonably certain he knew exactly what was going on in her head. Because Quentin, with highly uncharacteristic patience, had not demanded or even asked for any kind of commitment from her, giving her all the time she needed to come to terms with both her new life and startling abilities and with a tie to him that had nothing to do with domination.

At least she thought that was why he hadn’t—

“Diana?”

Thank God he’s not a telepath .

“Hi.” She was relieved to note that she’d had time to catch her breath and didn’t sound as out of shape as she was.

“We heard shots.” He hadn’t drawn his weapon but was visibly tense, his gaze scanning their surroundings warily.

“Hollis and I ran into a bear.” When he quickly focused on her face, she added, “Not literally. But we needed to scare it away. It found something, Quentin. Another body. Or what’s left of one.”

“Shit. Murder victim?”

“We think so.”

He let out a short little breath. ‘Okay. Miranda’s on her way with a couple of Duncan’s deputies. She said Reese would be there with Hollis before we get back to them.”

“How does she know—” Diana broke off as she realized.

Quentin was nodding. “I’ve never quite figured out how she and Bishop do it, but they always seem to know where each of us is at any given moment, in relation to them and to each other.”

“That’s a little… unsettling,” Diana admitted.

“You’ll get used to it.” He paused, reflecting, then added, “Or not. Come on, let’s go.”

“You’re assuming I can find my way back there.”

“I know you can find your way back there.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “You’re as good as a compass.”

“My one skill,” she muttered.

“One of many. Your father called again last night, didn’t he?”

“He calls nearly every night,” she said, trying to make her voice careless. “He’s stubborn as hell. So?”

“So stop letting him damage your confidence. Diana, you’re a valued member of this team because you have abilities and skills. In case you haven’t noticed, the SCU isn’t exactly the easiest team to join, and nobody gets in unless Bishop knows they can contribute to an investigation.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No buts. You earned this. Okay?”

After a moment, she nodded. “Okay.” She turned to begin to retrace her steps, thankful that the way back, at least, was mostly downhill. “Do you think we have two killers?” she asked over her shoulder.

“I think it’s unlikely. Stranger things have happened—certainly when we’re around—but the odds are against it.”

“That’s what we—” The craa-aack of a shot cut her off, and Diana jerked to a stop, half-turning to look at Quentin. “What the hell?”

“That was a rifle. And none of us is carrying a rifle.”