Кей Хупер - Whisper of Evil

Beginning with a fist, she began to very slowly extend one finger after the other, pausing briefly between each. Counting to five. She only hoped Ethan saw it, and got it, because she hadn't been able to think of any other way to warn him.

"If you kill the only family you have left here in Silence, you'll be all alone," she reminded him. "Is that really what you want?"

Kyle shook his head, more in reproach than negation, and his free hand reached for the rope he had set aside on a nearby table when Nell had arrived. "All I want is —"

Nell caught the flicker of movement in the foyer beyond Kyle in the same instant that she reached the count of five. She felt as well as heard Ethan wrench his chair sideways even as she went for her gun.

"Drop it, Venable!" Galen's voice rang out.

Maybe it was training or instinct that told Nell that Kyle would not obey the command. Or maybe it was simply the Gallagher blood or the Gallagher curse they shared that told her what he would do.

She saw him start to turn, to swing the gun toward her. Even saw, in one of those peculiar telescopic views one often saw in critical moments, his finger tighten on the trigger and his mouth curve in a smile.

It was as if time had slowed to a crawl. She was moving, leveling the gun Hailey had given her, throwing herself toward a chair that was the only possible cover nearby. She saw Kyle jerk before she heard the gun's report, saw scarlet bloom on his uniform shirt, then saw a second bullet hit him and wrench him around so that he was ironically in a better position to fire at her. Her gun bucked in her hand just as she saw the recoil of his own gun.

And then something slammed into her with the force of a train, and everything went black.

As soon as Nell opened her eyes, she knew that time had passed. A lot of time. She had that heavy, sandpapery-eyes sensation that told her she had slept for hours, yet felt remarkably well for all of that. At least until she moved.

"Ouch. Dammit."

"Serves you right. Don't move and it won't hurt so much."

She turned her head cautiously to see Max sitting beside her bed. Her hospital bed. Her head throbbed a bit, and she was conscious of a restricted sensation in the region of her left shoulder and arm. "What happened?" she wondered.

"You don't remember?"

Nell thought about it and, slowly, everything came back to her. Or most everything, anyway. "Is Kyle dead?"

"Yes." Max grimaced. "Even though it took a bullet from almost every gun we had to bring him down. And even then, he still managed to shoot you."

Which explained the constriction she felt in her arm and shoulder. Heavy bandages, from the feel of them. Nell fumbled with her right hand until she found the bed's controls, then used them to raise the head a few inches.

"Ouch," she said again as her shoulder began to throb in concert with her head. "The bullet didn't hit anything vital, did it?"

"Amazingly enough, no. Passed right through. The doc says most of the heavy bandages can come off by tomorrow, and then you'll wear a sling for a week or so. He says you heal fast."

Nell eyed him, perfectly aware that his level and unemotional tone was about as stable as nitro. The psychic door between them was securely closed; she had slammed it shut the second she had realized Kyle would probably shoot her, knowing too well that Max would have shared her pain — and possibly more than that. But even without the direct communication, she knew Max Tanner pretty well. "I feel fine," she told him. "Rested, in fact. How long have I been out?"

"It's nearly five. Sunday afternoon."

She bunked. "What? I slept all day?"

"The doc also said you seemed to need rest — the body's way of healing itself. Galen informed me that you'd been shot before and had slept for hours that time too."

"Is that what this is about?"

"What?"

"You're upset because I was shot before?"

Max drew a breath and let it out slowly, the picture of a man holding on to his temper or his patience. "I'm upset you were shot at all. Either time. Both times. You'll have to forgive me. Seeing you lying there bleeding is not destined to be one of my favorite memories."

"It doesn't happen often. Most agents go through their entire careers hardly drawing their guns, much less getting shot."

"It's happened to you twice. And how long have you been an agent?"

Nell smiled at him. "I'm fine, Max. Really."

He stared at her for a moment, then reached over and took her free hand in his. "Don't do that to me again. Ever."

"I'll certainly try not to. It wasn't much fun."

"Is that why you slammed the door shut? So I wouldn't be able to feel what happened to you?"

"I didn't want to shut you out. But I had to then. Feeling what I felt could have incapacitated you just when you needed to move or react."

Max hesitated, then spoke slowly. "Look, last night showed me pretty clearly both the benefits and the drawbacks of sharing a connection with you. So I understand better now why you'd prefer to keep the door closed most of the time."

"But?"

"But… all through those years without you, knowing that door was there, always there, and I couldn't do a damned thing to open it myself, was…"

"Frustrating? Maddening?"

"Painful."

She held his gaze steadily. "Another drawback of hitching your fate to a psychic's. I'm sorry, Max, but I don't know any way to change that, to give you any kind of control over it. I think — all that reading you did over the years, you must have been searching for an answer. Right?"

"Yeah, more or less."

"You didn't find one."

A breath of a laugh escaped him. "Hell, I didn't find anything that even came close to explaining what had happened between us, let alone offered a suggestion of how I could become an active rather than a passive participant."

Nell chose her words carefully, all too aware that, despite love, Max could well decide in the end that hitching his fate to a psychic was not a future he wanted. "Is that what you want? To be psychic yourself? Or is it more a matter of control, really?"

"It's a matter of sharing, Nell. I don't have to be psychic myself, not if you're willing — truly willing — to open yourself up to me. In the bad times as well as the good ones."

"If the door had been open when I got shot, you would have felt that, Max. I told you, it could have —"

"It could have gotten me hurt, yeah. But if it's a choice of hurts, then I choose sharing yours and risking whatever happens afterward. Because even with the distractions and potential problems of keeping that door open, every time you close it in my face I

feel like you're pushing me out of your life. Every time. And that hurts."

"I don't mean to shut you out. I never wanted to do that."

"You're shutting me out now." He shook his head. "I got enough last night to realize that you're pretty sure that the darkness you've felt in yourself all these years was Kyle somehow. His evil, not yours. That's true, isn't it?"

"I… think so. I can't be sure, of course, but I knew as soon as I woke up that there was a lightness in me I'd never felt before. As if a weight had lifted. But there's no guarantee, Max. Nothing to say my abilities won't eventually… break my mind in some way."

"I'm willing to risk it. I've had twelve years of being without you, Nell, and the one thing I know absolutely is that being with you is what I want."

"And my work? It's important to me."

"I know it is," he said immediately. "I would never ask you to give that up."

"Your ranch is here. Your life is here."

"We'll find a way to make it work, Nell. All you have to do is say it's what you want too."

"You make it sound so simple," she murmured.

"That part of it is. Tell me you love me and want to spend the rest of your life with me. Everything else will take care of itself in time."