Page 1 of Ace (The Deuces Wild #4)
There was something in the stuffy, filtered office air that afternoon.
Something unsettling and unseen. Something dark.
The moment Special Agent Keller Boniface returned from meeting with the District’s police chief about a prostitution ring that crossed state borders, he felt a sinister presence tap, tap, tapping at his double-reinforced psychic perimeter.
From the get go, he’d developed a hands-off boundary to protect his inner self from prying by his new associates, aka the not so subtle geniuses of the Bureau’s only psychic team, Deuces Wild.
A relentless migraine commenced throbbing deep in the muscles at the base of his skull at the mere thought of the stupid moniker. Keller willed the pain away as if he truly possessed that kind of power. How he wished. He would’ve willed himself away from this team months ago .
Keller didn’t like his new assignment, plain didn’t want it.
Until Candace-the-Psycho Bratton murdered her father-in-law, Chester Bratton, aka the father of one of her two kids, Keller’s life had been on track.
He’d been in control and able to hide his unique brand of empathy.
He’d lived as close to a normal life as any empath could. Off the radar and out of sight.
It’d taken years to learn how, but he’d kept his head down and he’d worked hard, racked up enough trust to be deemed reliable, earned more than enough awards, garnered only the right recognition to be considered indispensable. A team player. One of the guys.
Not anymore.
Since the fateful day he’d seen, as in psychically seen, Candace stabbing her father-in-law and lover, Chester, to death, well, now the proverbial lid was off.
Because Special Agents Isaiah Zaroyin and Tate Higgins had been in that abandoned garage near the Navy yards that day, too.
They’d seen the same vision and were savvy enough to know who and what Keller was.
His days of normalcy evaporated, and now everyone in the Bureau knew Keller was different.
Weird. An empath who saw things most people couldn’t.
Everything Keller never wanted to be. Everything he’d hidden from the world.
But like the obedient civil servant he was and would always be, FBI Special Agent Keller Boniface now boldly stared at his new boss, the bombastic and most pretentious man alive.
Tucker Chase, Supervisory Special Agent and Director of the FBI’s one and only Psychic Team that he himself had named Deuces Wild.
Like anyone cared what Chase called his team of misfits.
Jesus Christ, look at them. All busy little bees tapping out reports Tucker probably didn’t even know how to read.
The last rays of spring sunlight faded from the panoramic view of this tenth floor open office. Normally Keller wouldn’t have noticed, but the way it had faded from yellow to gold to orange, now red, seemed prophetic in a backward kind of way. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight…
It’d been a damned long time since he’d known one second of sailor’s delight. Rolling his neck, Keller strived for patience to endure this forsaken group of wannabes. Former SEAL, huh?
Tucker cocked his head as if…
Damn, maybe he really can read my mind.
Tucker’s head canted to the other side, as if...
Shut the fuck up, Keller commanded himself. He can hear you. Stop. Thinking.
Even that earned him one of Chase’s infamous smirks.
Guess he heard that, too.
Which explained why Ky Winchester and his sidekick, Eden, chuckled as if they’d shared a private joke. Because they probably had, and no doubt that joke was Keller.
Well, har dee, har, har.
“No, it wasn’t. Honest,” Eden piped up, her pretty green eyes bright against her creamy complexion.
Blonde, forever smiling, and one of those terminally cheerful morning people, Eden could read most people’s minds, as well as influence their decisions.
The story was that from her kitchen in Virginia, USA, she’d ‘heard’ Ky’s psychic plea to die from a prison cell a world away in Afghanistan, where he’d been tortured for days.
She was the psychic who’d then influenced the big bruiser of a Marine in the cell next to Ky’s to escape and help him.
It was USMC Lee Hart who’d saved a few other American soldiers that night, but it was Eden who’d truly saved Ky.
He was blind back then, his face beaten and unrecognizable, his will to live gone.
Lee might’ve given him the knife to defend himself, but Eden gave Ky what he’d needed to live.
She gave him hope. Yeah, that was Eden Winchester for you, terminally hopeful.
But she was talking too fast now, tripping over her words.
“Ky made a funny face, that’s all, Keller.
He does this thing with his nose, and then he…
Oh, my gosh.” Her eyes grew wide when she realized she too had mentally eavesdropped.
She slapped a hand over her mouth but chuckled through her long, slender fingers.
Her shoulders scrunched, making her even more adorable.
Damn, she was pretty. “Oops, you’re right.
I’m sorry. But Keller, you might as well get used to us.
We are psychics, after all. It isn’t easy to not listen. ”
Even Ky’s face split with a big, cheesy grin. “Yeah, big guy, mellow out. We’re on your side, you know.”
Keller kept his big Ranger mouth shut. Why shouldn’t Ky be happy? He had Eden to go home to. Keller had shit to go home to.
But apparently Tucker had something to say. He nodded to Keller, then at his office .
Keller followed, certain he was on his way off this team , which would suit him fine.
“Sit,” Tucker ordered the moment he cleared his door.
Keller took the chair nearest the exit, his eyes straight forward, his butt ready to be reamed.
“At ease, damn it. You’re not Army anymore.”
“Why not? You’re still Navy,” Keller said as evenly as he could manage without sarcasm.
The sooner Tucker fired him, the better.
He could get back to his carefully controlled life, and if he was lucky, another position within the Bureau.
“Don’t you guys always say, ‘Once a SEAL, always a SEAL?’ Well, I’m still a Ranger. ” So back off.
“Shut the door,” Tucker ordered.
Keller complied, not that closing the door prevented his psychic teammates from listening in.
Pursing his lips, Tucker assumed his position behind his desk, his ass in the chair, and his nose in the air. Lifting one hand, he scrubbed it over his big square chin, while Keller waited for USN words of wisdom he didn’t want to hear.
To be fair, the rugged, unpolished man did have a well-deserved rep.
Built like a brick wall, Tucker Chase was one of those tall, dark, and handsome hero types.
Over and over again, he had saved countless American servicemen and women while he’d served.
After he left the Navy, he’d joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
There, he’d accomplished something no one else could have when he pulled the Bureau’s first team of psychics together, slapped a catchy handle on them, and made it work.
Keller just didn’t want to be part of Tucker’s Deuces Wild team. He didn’t want to be that kind of ‘special’. He wanted to be normal again, just one of the guys. Just not these guys.
“You’re an empath,” Isaiah Zaroyin said quietly from the corner opposite the door.
Keller’s head jerked up at the unexpected comment. Man, these psychic types are creepy. Just when you think you’re alone, you aren’t. “Didn’t know you were there.”
Isaiah shrugged. Dressed professionally as usual in his stereotypical Men in Black’s crisp black suit, white shirt, and black tie, the Tucker Chase look-alike seemed particularly gaunt this morning. Tired. Shadows rimmed his eyes and his cheeks were hollow. Gray.
That head of dark, curly hair and his blue eyes made Isaiah look younger than he was.
But in fact, Isaiah Zaroyin was the old man of this team of mavericks.
The only Level Ten psychic in the country, he was the real genius behind Deuces Wild.
Eden, Ky, Tate Higgins, and Tucker Chase were just wannabes by comparison.
Hell, so was Keller, only he’d never wanted the notoriety that came with this job, when people knew you were gifted.
He worked best from the shadows, unknown, unseen, and unappreciated.
That was who he was, just an average Joe doing his job, controlling the scene, and doing it right.
But Isaiah was the real deal. He actually could move mountains. Since he’d married Roxy Thurston, he’d changed from a nervous genius to a genuinely scary adult male with crazy psychic abilities. Tucker said his powers were growing. Keller didn’t want to know what that meant.
“Unfortunately, it means I’m still scary,” Isaiah offered a sincere but faint smile, tapping one elegant brow with a long finger as he met Keller’s gaze.
“You heard?” Of course, he heard.
With a gentle nod, Isaiah closed his eyes and exhaled a controlled breath.
He sank deeper into the chair, one arm cocked, one hand holding his forehead.
Superman. That was who he looked and acted like.
Make that Clark Kent. Mysterious but humble.
Good-looking but capable of inflicting complete control on the psychically impaired—politically correct speak for normal folks.
Keller’s antagonistic opinions fled as an empathetic wave of heartbreak, so bleak that it dimmed the bright ceiling lights, washed up from the floor like a flood.
Make that a tsunami, the waves cresting up the length of his body and ending high over his head.
Turning in his seat, he angled his shoulders and zeroed in on the source of the pain, Isaiah. What the hell was going on?