Page 5 of Ace (The Deuces Wild #4)

Why did those words feel familiar, as if he’d felt them before? And why did he get that same eerie, I’m-watching-you sensation, as if this little thing could pack a punch behind that angry command and make him leave if she wanted to? “You did hear me say I was FBI, didn’t you?”

Her eyes popped. “Are you threatening me? ”

He raised the ante. “Do I need a warrant? Is that what it’ll take just to talk to Mariposa Church? Because I can do that if you won’t listen to reason.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” she hissed even as she wiped the corner of her eye and...

Aw, shit. She’s crying. Keller took a voluntary step back that time, pissed at himself for not catching onto what was going on.

He was a psychic empath. He should’ve recognized her pain.

He should’ve felt it. This woman wasn’t angry.

She was defensive and sad and... so beautiful it nearly hurt to look at her.

“I can help if you let me,” he offered quietly. “Trust me. Whatever you’re up against, I can help. That’s my job.”

Her nostrils flared even as her full lush lips pinched into a thin line. “I don’t need your help, mister, now please. Just get off Gran Mm-m-m… I mean, m-my porch and...”

He couldn’t make his eyes move away from the pain he now clearly saw. This woman was tender yet fierce, gentle but determined and stubborn, not traits he usually cared for in the fairer sex. But they lit her from the inside out like candles glowing behind the loveliest stained-glass windows.

Awareness came to him on a stifling wave of Louisiana humidity.

Keller’s hand went automatically to his chest where a black hole was now sucking the sunlight out of the day.

He sensed bottomless grief hollowing her soul even as she stood there brave and ready to fight him—the last thing he wanted.

He wasn’t there to fight, especially not her.

He reached out his other hand, needing to touch her.

This young woman was barely holding it together, and empathy demanded he help her—if only to alleviate the same pain now hollowing him like a razor-sharp melon baller.

But she stepped back. Damn it.

Yes, that contact would’ve been devastating—to him—but touching her was the only way Keller could complete the connection between them.

At the moment, he was an overloaded circuit with no release.

All the negative power channeling from this woman was on a one-way, dead-end track that would fry his circuits.

He’d learned the hard way. He was the receiver and she was the transmitter.

Only as usual, his mind wasn’t strong enough to contain all her negative energy.

It was too much. He had to give something back—and soon—or risk an overload that would manifest one ungodly killer migraine.

He’d end up incapacitated for days. Empathy was never a one-way street.

Like karma, it was a giver and taker. It demanded balance.

In one way or another, comfort had to be exchanged for grief and pain.

Forgiveness for sin. Sooner than later. Before he lost his mind.

Keller faltered as the son-of-a-bitchin’ auras that preceded his migraines began their inevitable dance of agony at the edge of his peripheral.

“Please. Let me help,” he said as evenly as he could.

“Tell me what your great grandmother needs.” Before I go blind from this headache and embarrass myself.

The instant those words fell from his lips, the details of his intended subject’s life came back to him.

Oh yeah. Mariposa Church. One hundred and three years old.

Born in New Mexico to a wandering Cajun alcoholic.

But Max Butterfield never married her mother, Grace Finley.

They gave birth to three daughters before he killed Grace one particularly dark and drunken night, turned his bloody knife on Mariposa’s two older sisters, then killed himself as well.

Mariposa was the only survivor of the bloody crime.

She’d spent years in a loving foster home before she’d married Antonio Church and moved with him to his hometown, New Orleans.

After he died an early death, she took to the brackish waters of the deepest bayou.

Known as a gifted, sighted psychic, she read palms and tarot cards for a meager living.

When her two sons passed, she took in the last of her dismally sad line, her great granddaughter, one Savannah Charisma Church.

Who had to be the beautiful woman confronting Keller now. The one whose bottom lip quivered as a sheen of unshed tears extinguished the fiery sparks in her eyes. “No, you can’t help,” she murmured, her voice soft and broken. “It’s too late. No one can help her now.”

Which meant the old woman was dead, and Isaiah was screwed. Talk about bad timing. Keller had arrived on what had to be the worst day of the young Miss Church’s life.

He stepped forward when she wiped her face again.

“May I?” he asked politely as he reached for her hand, desperate to release the thrumming energy dammed up in his head, but just as desperate to lessen her pain.

Migraine be damned, he could help this woman if she’d just let him.

That was his true gift, helping the broken hearted when no one else could .

But she said, “No.” Standing there like a teary stone wall, yet falling apart at the same time, needing someone to lean on, but not willing to let it be him, Miss Church resisted his help.

Once again, Keller pulled back and stopped being the hero.

Kindness wasn’t getting him anywhere, not today.

He had to get out of there. It might already be too late.

He mentally tallied the pain meds this migraine would demand.

The ice packs. A pitch-black cave to hide in until his retinas could tolerate light again would be a blessing, but he doubted he could find one before the suffocating pain took over.

If big, brash Tucker Chase only knew what a pansy he’d hired. ..

“I’m sorry I bothered you,” Keller said sincerely as the first lightning strikes of what would soon be pure agony lanced from left to right across his frontal lobe.

The aura now dominated most of his line of sight, all but blinding him.

He was operating on empathy alone. Vomiting would soon follow.

“And I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sure your great grandmother meant everything to you. ”

Reaching inside his jacket, he fingered a business card up from an inner pocket and handed it over, fighting to control the tremor at his fingertips.

“I’ll be in town until tonight if you change your mind.

If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to call.

That’s my cell number. As I said, I’m FBI Agent Boniface. Call me anytime.”

Mental note to self: Sleep with your damned cell under your pillow in case she does call .

Savannah Church took the card. But when it crumpled in her fist like so much garbage, Keller’s last hope for sweet relief died.

He turned to leave before he was too blind to walk or before he threw up.

Empathy migraines struck hard, and they were brutal.

He forced his feet not to run even as he knew he was out of time.

Retreat, especially on his hands and knees, was not his style.

His heels had barely hit the end of the gangplank when he heard a whispered, “Thank you for your service.”

How did she know? Unlike the rest of his team, Keller couldn’t read minds, only feelings, and this woman was a cast of thousands.

Even an ungifted man would’ve felt the boundless sorrow washing off her and spilling into him.

She was that overflowing pitcher of sorrow, and it was cold and black, and it was killing her.

He truly was an overflowing cup. Only his cup overflowed with other people’s darkness, pains, and sins.

The grief he could understand, but the fear quivering inside this woman like a hiccup she couldn’t expel, was something else again.

Might be the unknown future all survivors faced.

Losing a loved one pushed vulnerable people into uncharted waters where they didn’t want to go.

Women who’d never worked were forced into a dog-eat-dog workforce to take minimum wage jobs, to learn how to handle home finances and auto repairs.

Men who’d never learned to cook, well, they usually starved until they acquired numbers or apps for every pizza parlor in delivery distance.

Children too young to care for themselves went to family that often didn’t want them or worse, handed them over to state institutions for any number of sniveling ‘good’ reasons.

His migraine roiled like a living beast inside the cramped confines of his skull, beating him for what he’d lived through when his wife had died at the tender age of twenty-two. Life was incredibly unfair. Why should it be any different for this young woman?

But why did it have to be as tough?

He couldn’t just leave. “You have psychic skills,” he said as he turned around.

“W-what?” she asked as her big brown eyes widened with disbelief and her ever-ready dose of hostility hit an all-time high. “I’ve got skills? That’s all you’ve got to say?”

Interesting. She hadn’t denied her psychic talents, just didn’t like him mentioning them.

“I also said I was sorry for your loss,” Keller reminded her gently.

He ached to rush back up that gangplank and hold this woman, but not for his gratification.

The migraine he could live with. He’d survived enough of them before.

Only most times there’d been no way to complete that demanding cosmic circle of give and take.

Evil men and women simply did not want to be touched, but if he’d had to kill someone in the line of duty, well.

He could kiss that much needed psychic connection goodbye, and ‘Hello Excedrin headache number one million forty-five.’

But this was different. This was Mariposa’s great granddaughter. More than anything, she needed to know she wasn’t alone, that someone who’d shown up on the worst day of her life, even a hard-nosed, pain-in-the-ass Ranger, could genuinely care for the stranger he’d just met.

Keller played it cool and stayed put, not wanting to frighten her more than he already had. “Is there someone I can call for you, ma’am? At least let me do that before I leave.”

Swallowing hard, she shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”

“I doubt that, but okay,” he said, summoning the strength to maintain a professional FBI vibe.

It was early morning, but the day was already so hot and humid, he could barely breathe.

A steady trickle of sweat ran down the center of his back, and his pounding head felt heavy, ready to implode. “Well, you’ve got my number.”

“Thanks. Yes. I’ll call if—”

‘If and when hell freezes over,’ Keller thought as he shook off the oddest sensation of sparks beneath his skin. Once again, he began the trek to his car and its air conditioner. The cool air might stall the migraine until he made it to a hotel. It could work. If he hurried.

“Bacon.”

Keller froze at that softly spoken word. Was it a lure or a threat? Did she plan to feed him or turn him into dinner for some nearby alligator? Allowing the smallest smile to breach his dry lips, he cranked his stiff neck and turned one last time to face Miss Church. “Excuse me?”

Still at her front door, she lifted her chin and declared, “I said bacon. Listen, Mr. Secret Agent Man, if you help me get through the next couple hours, I’ll.

.. I’ll...” The cords in her throat worked extra-hard.

“I’ll fix breakfast, and, umm, well, all my dogs come when I say bacon, so I figured… ”

That I could be lured with bacon, too. Keller let the insult hang. Being called a dog by anyone else would’ve offended him, but dogs were better than most people he knew, and maybe soon this stubborn woman would let him at least shake her hand.

“I accept,” he replied as the first of what would soon become many opaque spinning vortexes completely obscured the rest of his twenty/twenty vision.

This migraine promised suffering. But if the reprieve the younger Mizz Church had just offered allowed the smallest chance to get her through this day, he’d suck up the pain and endure.