Page 2 of Ace (The Deuces Wild #4)

Isaiah seemed barely in control. Keller got the weirdest sensation he doubted himself, that he was afraid.

But mostly? Isaiah’s love for his wife battered Keller, nearly knocking him out of his chair to his knees.

It wasn’t Isaiah’s sadness choking Keller, though.

It wasn’t anger. It was the raw, frightening pain of leaving her behind.

Like the air and the stars in the sky and night and…

Isaiah didn’t want to leave this mortal life, es pecially Roxy!

It clawed at him, and now it clawed at Keller, too.

“Where are you going?” Keller asked as evenly as he could.

The rest of the room faded away as he focused on Isaiah, but damn.

The bleakness radiating off the Level Ten filled Tucker’s office to overflowing.

Suffocating and dark, it was as thick and stiff as tar, and Keller was Uncle Remus’s tar-baby.

Stuck, his gift of empathy holding him fast.

Isaiah nodded that he now knew Keller was on board, that Keller sensed the real reason for his discomfort.

He closed his eyes, and the stifling sensation evaporated.

“Sorry. I can’t always control it. Now you know what I’m up against.” He cleared his throat, the muscles in his neck rigid.

“At the moment, I’m going nowhere fast. Just like you, I’m stuck.

I can’t do the job I love, and I’ve become a danger to everyone around me. ”

“Including your wife and unborn child.” Keller understood perfectly. That was the only good part of this extraordinary gift he’d been blessed with. Psychic empathy filled in the blanks when words failed.

Isaiah cupped his chin, his elbow still on the armrest as if his neck wasn’t strong enough to hold his head.

“But that’s not the real problem. Most people’s bodies fuel their brains and minds, but mine works in reverse.

I think it pulls energy from the universe.

I can’t control it. It’s an automatic reflex, like blinking, breathing, and heartbeats.

Because of that, my brain never shuts off, and by default, my mind can’t.

What I can’t deal with is the negative energy my genuinely scary adult mind produces.

That’s what you just felt. I can’t sleep, and most times, I don’t eat. I can’t. It’ll take over if I do.”

“You’re over-energized?” Keller murmured. Whoever heard of that? “Um, sorry. Didn’t mean to—”

Isaiah tilted backward, bumping his head against the wall behind him. “Tell him, Tuck.”

“Tell me what?”

The narrow empathetic tunnel between Keller and Isaiah expanded outward to include Tucker Chase.

Tucker huffed, blinking like he had something in his eyes all of a sudden.

“There’s a woman in Louisiana near New Orleans.

You’re going to visit her. She’s a hundred and three, but word on the psychic street is she’s got the same condition and power as Isaiah.

She’s a Level Ten, only she knows how to handle it. ”

Keller’s hand lifted automatically to the back of his neck where a migraine had just mushroomed like an A-bomb over the Pacific.

Empaths worked that way. They suffered the same physical, emotional, or spiritual pain the person transmitting did, oftentimes more acutely than the transmitter.

Mother Nature had a knack for enhancing the most peculiar traits in her prodigy.

While Isaiah was transmitting one helluva mental cocktail, Tucker’s pain was worse.

He wasn’t just angry at himself. He was pissed at not being able to fix Isaiah’s problem, for being as helpless as Isaiah.

Keller bowed his head to shake the powerful sensations lapping at him from his boss and friend. If empathy was a gift, he didn’t want it.

“I get why you’re angry all the time, Keller,” Isaiah said quietly, his voice softer than Keller had ever heard.

“ I know you don’t want to be here. You don’t like us.

I understand. I do. One day you were a normal guy doing a bang-up job for the Bureau, and you had the world by the tail.

Then lightning struck, and the next thing you know, you’re tagging along with us like a newbie instead of leading the way.

You’re learning there’s an entirely different, invisible world out there, one you still don’t believe you belong in.

Yet you never fit into that other world, did you?

Not even when you were active duty and hiding what and who you were. ”

Wasn’t that the truth? Keller stared at Isaiah instead of answering.

But yeah. He’d had no idea how powerful his reaction to his first Army kill would be until the repercussion—his damned empathy for the bastard aiming a fifty-caliber rifle straight at him—slammed over him that day in Afghanistan.

Self-defense hadn’t made shooting that enemy sniper—a kid, for the love of God—any easier.

And puking his guts up afterward had only made Keller look weak in front of his men.

But that day, he’d felt every barb of the twisted hate emanating from that teenage killer.

Stupid kid was clutching a fully loaded, beat-to-death Kalashnikov in his sweaty hands.

But deep inside, the hatred he’d been taught mingled with liquid yellow fear that ran down the kid’s legs beneath those dirty pajama-like trousers.

Only thirteen, he’d been promised he’d see Allah if he followed through with his divine, holy mission.

There was nothing on earth worse than an overzealous, homegrown martyr, peeing himself and crying because he knew he was going to die.

His name was Ahmed.. .

Keller swallowed hard, remembering. Ahmed had been told to kill American soldiers. That was his mission. He’d meant to be brave and courageous. He’d meant to die a martyr’s death to honor his parents. But he’d hesitated…

In the end, it all came down to the law of the jungle, kill or be killed.

There’d been no other choice. Not for Ahmed.

Not for Keller. The kid was armed, twitchy, and dangerous.

There wasn’t time to talk him out of his death wish.

It was either him or Keller’s men. So, Keller granted the wish.

Ended the threat. Saved his men. Became a hero.

Yeah, right. Killing a kid with a gun was the worst kind of hero to be.

But that was also when Keller discovered just how different he was.

That no matter how he tried, he would forever share the last few moments of his target’s terror, especially good kids or men like Ahmed.

Which was why Keller had hidden his so-called talent for years.

Didn’t want it now. A fat lot of good empathy did in a world gone batshit crazy, when a man had to kill a kid.

Keller shot Isaiah a look from the corner of his eye. “I’m not mad at you.” Which clearly targeted Tucker, but so what? Most of the world couldn’t handle Tucker’s brash, in-your-face, Navy SEAL ego.

“You just don’t want to be here. I get it.

You think we’re a bunch of freaks, and you don’t want the stink rubbing off on you,” Tucker stated as undiplomatically as ever.

He tipped back in his swivel chair, his elbows on the armrest, his long legs stretched forward for balance, and his fingers steepled beneath his big, square chin.

Always the predator, his dark brown stare beneath intense thick brows seemed to see right through Keller.

He squared his shoulders and anted up. “What the fuck do you want me to do?”

Tucker opened his mouth, but Isaiah interrupted with, “Talk to her, Keller. That’s all. Just go see her and learn what you can from her. If she’s the real deal, you’ll know the moment you shake her hand. If she’ll let you. She may not. Psychics are funny about touch.”

Yeah, whatever. Keller’s need to get away from Tucker was growing stronger. “You got a name and address?”

“I’ll text you what you’ll need, only—” Tucker rolled forward and stuck his elbows on his desk. The vein that ran across his forehead when he lost his temper bulged thick and dark and tense.

“Only what?” Keller asked, impatient to be gone.

“Only I need you gone now. Grab your go-bag. It’s late, but I’ve got a pilot on standby. He’ll get you there by morning. Call when you touch down, the moment you make first contact. She lives east of New Orleans. I want hourly Sit Reps. I need to know what you know, as soon as you talk with her.”

Who’d ever heard of hourly situation reports? “Why the rush?”

“Because I’m dying,” Isaiah murmured from the darkness swelling around him. “And you’re going to save me, Keller.”