Кей Хупер - Out of the Shadows

And after that, soon after that, the end would come with little warning. The images showed him what Miranda had seen from her perspective, a hazy background but Bonnie in clear danger, a hand pointing a gun at Miranda. And as she reached for her own gun, a shot echoing hollowly, the brutal shock of pain — and the utter certainty of death. Then, nothing.

Permeating all the rest, infusing every event throughout the vision, was another absolute certainty, a conviction so powerful there was simply no room for doubt. Bishop would save Bonnie. Without him, she would die as well. Miranda knew that, had known it all along. It was why she had contacted the FBI for help, knowing he would come.

"No," Bishop said again. He realized his eyes were closed, and opened them to find her watching him gravely. For the first time, he wished violently that their connection didn't allow him to see everything she had seen.

"You said once you'd take care of Bonnie if anything happened to me. I'm depending on you for that."

He didn't remember putting his arms around her, but now they held her tighter. "Nothing is going to happen to you. You are not going to die, Miranda. Not here, not now. Not for a long, long time."

As if she hadn't heard him, she said, "Bonnie's too young to go on by herself. She'll need someone. You'll be there for her, won't you, Bishop?"

He was unable to ignore that appeal. "You don't have to worry about Bonnie. I swear to you, I'll take care of her. But this bastard is not going to kill you, Miranda."

She didn't reply to that but kissed him instead, and despite every other emotion crowded inside him, Bishop felt desire escalate so sharply that it threatened to push aside everything else. It had always been that way between them. The hunger was instant and total, and very little short of his fear for her could have kept him from responding wholeheartedly.

You're trying to distract me.

Would I do that?

He groaned and pulled back just far enough to make her look at him. "I'm not going to lose you again. Do you hear me? If I have to lock you in your own jail to keep you safe, then that's what I'll do."

Miranda smiled faintly. "No, you won't. Because you believe what I believe. The best way to deal with a vision is to make the logical decisions and choices as they come up, to stay where you are and go on with your life, and keep an eye out for warning signs. Do something drastic to change fate, and you always end up with a worse outcome than the one you originally saw."

"Worse than you being dead? I'll take that chance."

"But I won't." She stroked his cheek with a surprisingly gentle touch.

"Listen to me, and stop being such a goddamned fatalist. You told me years ago that your visions didn't always come true, didn't always happen the way you saw them."

"Yes. But so far this one has. There's no reason to expect the end to be different."

"There's a very good reason. Me. Where the hell was I in that scene? Because if you think I'll let you out of my sight until this is over, think again."

With a little chuckle, she said, "I wouldn't expect anything else. But you do realize, I hope, that we can't sleep together again in the meantime?"

Belatedly, he did realize that. "We can't take the chance of being without our abilities just when they're needed."

"It probably wouldn't be wise. We had an excuse last night, but not now. It may well be that the only edge we have is the psychic one."

Bishop eyed the white hurricane still going strong outside the window and wasn't all that surprised that he'd been completely unconscious of it for the last little while. "Nothing's likely to happen while it's storming," he pointed out, not really arguing.

"Not likely. Not impossible." She linked her fingers together behind his neck. "Better to be safe than sorry, especially with a killer on the loose."

As badly as he wanted her, Bishop wasn't about to do anything that might put Miranda at greater risk; whether or not she had seen the actual future in that chilling scene, it was a foregone conclusion that both she and Bonnie were at risk, and he wanted all his senses at full strength. No matter what it cost him.

He kissed her, forcing himself to keep it brief. "This is going to be something we'll have to deal with in the future, you know. Maybe we'd better talk about it now and decide how we want to handle it. I mean, I have no intention of putting our love life on hold indefinitely just because we're both likely to be chasing after killers and other criminals most of the time. There is such a thing as sacrificing a little too much for king and country, so to speak."

Her smile wavered for just an instant, but her voice was calm when she said, "Why don't we talk about that later?"

"There will be a later, Miranda."

She nodded. "I'll try to stop being such a fatalist and think positively, okay?"

"That's all I ask. Well — that and one more thing. Stop calling me Bishop."

"I've always called you Bishop."

"I know."

"When we first met, you told me that everybody did. Except for your best friend from college, not a soul alive called you Noah. At least, not more than once."

He grimaced. "That was real subtle of me, wasn't it?"

"Let's just say I got the point. Would you like me to profile you now? Explain how being known only by your surname was one of the ways you used to keep people at a distance? Even lovers?"

"All right, all right. But the point is, I'm very different now and I don't want you at a distance. In any way, but especially emotionally and telepathically."

"You do recall there's a price to pay for that sort of closeness? If I should have another vision—"

"I'll have it too. Yeah, I know. They hurt, as I recall."

"That's still the same, I'm afraid, Like a blinding migraine, though thankfully lasting only a minute or so."

"Now that you're no longer working so hard to shut me out, is another vision likely? You told Tony right after we arrived that you'd more or less burned out on the precognition."

"Lied."

Bishop winced. "And even years ago, once we were linked, you said the visions were more . . . intense."

"Uh-huh. And you're much stronger now than you were then as a telepath. So with your energy added to mine, we'll probably blow the top off that scale you guys developed at Quantico to measure these things."

He knew that was quite likely true. There had been so much going on the summer they had first become lovers, both around them and between them, that exploring the limits of what was psychically possible with their connection had not been uppermost in their minds. But what they had discovered in due course was that they shared each other's abilities even when apart, and that when they were in physical contact, the energy of each enhanced the energy and abilities of the other.

They had found out quite by accident that if they were holding hands or otherwise in physical contact and either of them touched someone whom neither had been able to read alone, they were sometimes able to read that person. Not always — but often enough to, as Miranda had put it, shift their combined range well over into the FM scale.

It made them, quite simply, more than twice as powerful together than either was alone.

Following his thoughts easily, Miranda said, "We're an odd pair, there's no question about that."

"I choose to think of us as unique, not odd." He drew her a bit closer, smiling. "And you never said you'd stop calling me Bishop."

"I didn't, did I?"

"Miranda."

She chuckled. "Well, it'll take some getting used to. You've always been Bishop." Even in my mind. Her mouth brushed his, then lingered. "But I'll work on it... Noah."

For a while, Bishop forgot everything except the aching pleasure of being physically close to her. Holding her and touching her, their mouths hungry, bodies straining to be closer despite the clothing and the necessity keeping them apart.