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“I don’t like Kettering either, little brother, but we need the money.”

The stranger’s deep voice echoed through Zeke’s mind as he touched one finger to the object on the table in front of him.

Psychometry was the fancy name for the dubious power that had been gifted to him in the ancient city of Babylon.

It meant that he could divine the history of an object simply by touching it.

He didn’t have the greatest control over this new power yet, which was why he’d taken to wearing gloves most of the time.

He’d had one too many jarring visions of the violent pasts of certain objects.

He didn’t need any more of those nightmare images in his mind.

The gloves stopped him from picking up unwanted imagery from everyday objects.

Everyone had agreed that he should reserve his gift for use on things that needed to be scanned for operational purposes, and in the meantime, he was working with the scientists and doctors that had joined their team to try to figure out both the limits of his new ability and how to control it better.

Today’s exercise had him hooked up to a brainwave monitor that would record any changes in his brain activity during one of his visions of the past. The object to be scanned was something that had been taken from a group of hammerhead shark shifters who had been captured while trying to assault Dr. Lynn Tucker, who was observing this test along with the rest of the research team.

She was recently engaged to Rick Lovelace, the medical doctor who was part of their Green Beret unit and could now heal the worst of injuries with just a thought.

He was in the room too, right there alongside Lynn as they watched the readouts from the many electrodes attached to Zeke’s head.

Zeke was sure he looked ridiculous, but he knew he needed help harnessing this new ability.

He hadn’t really gotten anywhere on his own except the need to accessorize his uniform with gloves, which looked downright weird in the summer.

He’d requisitioned a number of different styles of work gloves and kept a pair on him at all times. Just in case.

He touched the object on the table, bracing against what he might see.

It was a handwritten note on a small card that one of the prisoners had kept in his wallet.

Ostensibly, it had been written by the mysterious arms merchant who had hired the shark team to go after Zeke’s unit.

Abdul Kettering. They knew only the bare bones about the reclusive billionaire.

Zeke hoped they might learn something more through his unique talent.

The moment he touched the small piece of paper, images came to his mind. He recounted them for those who were watching.

“Liam Kinkaid handed this to Rick, who placed it here. Before that, one of the shifters—the rangy guy named Oscar who I think is a werewolf—got it from one of the sharks during the interrogation. It was the leader of the shark shifters. He carried this with him in his wallet. Yes, I know we all know that,” Zeke said, stating the obvious with a sigh, then went on.

“But he said something to his brother when he put the card in his wallet. I can see them talking and hear their words. He said, ‘I don’t like Kettering either, little brother, but we need the money.’ The brother agreed and asked why his brother was keeping the card.

He told him, ‘ Insurance. Kettering’s fingerprints are on this card, as is some of his DNA.

’ Apparently, Kettering sneezed on it before handing it to the head shark.

Yeah, I can see that now. Kettering was writing out these coordinates and something tickled his nose.

He couldn’t control the sneeze, and it sprayed on the card, though he didn’t really seem to notice it.

He was more concerned about germs, I think.

I suspect our buddy Abdul is a bit of a germaphobe.

He made the shark wait until he got a disinfectant wipe out and swabbed his hands.

And he refused to shake hands with the shark guy.

” Zeke paused for a moment, closing his eyes to see more clearly.

“Before that, I see a male assistant putting this card, which was in a stack of others, into a holder on Abdul’s desk.

Before that, it’s a manufacturing plant in Germany, I think, where the cards were made. Nothing notable.”

“Can you see any details about the assistant?” Rick asked.

“Yeah, I see his face. I can draw him,” Zeke replied confidently. He’d always enjoyed drawing and creating art. It had come in handy a time or two in his work too. Like in this instance, when he needed to convey an image only he could see to his team.

The assistant might be a way in. Or not. But they had precious little intel on the illegal arms magnate. Every little bit of information they could add to the very thin file they had been compiling would help.

Zeke removed his finger from the paper and sat back. He’d only touched the very edge of it. Rick came over to the table and used forceps to put the card back into a plastic bag.

“Now that we know who sneezed all over this, we’ll begin the hunt for his DNA and fingerprints.

We have the prints from the sharks, so we can eliminate those and isolate Kettering’s.

” Rick looked pleased. That sort of biometric information was hard to come by for a recluse like Kettering, so this was a major step forward in their investigation.

“How are you feeling?” Rick asked, looking Zeke over carefully. “Any fatigue?”

“Nope,” Zeke replied, leaning back in the chair, ready for more testing.

It was boring, for the most part, but the past few minutes had reinvigorated him a bit. The team wouldn’t have known about the possible DNA and fingerprints if not for Zeke’s somewhat lame gift.

He hadn’t really said anything to the other guys, but Zeke sometimes felt that he’d gotten the wimpiest of the gifts handed out by that magical djinn.

The rest of the unit had cool, useful abilities like super strength, healing, seeing the future, walking through walls, and calling lightning out of the sky, among others.

Zeke still wasn’t sure his particular ability was anything other than a party trick.

Useful, sometimes, but not helpful at all during combat situations.

He might be an archaeologist by training, but he wasn’t a desk jockey. He preferred to be out in the field, doing things. Always had. Which was why he had gone into the military in the first place.

Zeke had never thought that his advanced studies in archaeology would’ve come in handy in his military career, but they had.

Much to his surprise. He’d been recruited into a very special unit, and had been able to use his knowledge of the past to help protect the future.

At least, that’s the way he’d seen it. But now, everything had changed.

Ever since that strange encounter in the ancient city of Babylon, he and his team were being hunted.

They hadn’t been on a real mission in far too long.

They’d been confined to a secret military base off the coast of Long Island for months now.

And although they’d had to fight a few times to protect themselves and those who had joined them here—a few of the guys had gotten married or engaged recently, and their wives and girlfriends had come to stay—the unit hadn’t been assigned any real-world missions in far too long.

In fact, their entire future in the military was up in the air right now.

They were being studied. Like lab rats. Their new abilities made them a liability , in some respects.

They weren’t just soldiers anymore. Not that they had been ordinary troops, in any case.

They’d been among the best of the best. A specialized Green Beret unit created for specific situations in which their various fields of expertise could be utilized.

Their team not only had an M.D. bioweapons expert, but also a linguist, geologists, archaeologists, and other experts on antiquities and other arts and sciences.

They hadn’t just been any run-of-the-mill Special Forces team. They’d been used on highly specialized missions all over the world. But after that last mission, that had all come to a screeching halt. Now, they were the ones being studied and observed. They were the ones being hunted.

“I gathered a few more objects, if you have time and energy to give them a read,” Rick said, drawing Zeke’s attention back to the matter at hand. The unit’s doctor retrieved a plastic bag from one of the desks along the far wall of the room and brought it over.

“Is this more stuff from the prisoners?” Zeke asked, looking at the odd assortment of plastic bags containing various items, including a small stuffed animal. That surely hadn’t come from the prisoners.

“No. Just a few odds and ends I gathered from various people. A random test of your abilities, if you will,” Rick replied.

“This ought to be fun,” Zeke muttered as Rick took the stuffed animal out first and placed it on the table.

Zeke did his best to clear his mind before touching one fingertip to the small, furry bunny.

He frowned, reaching for and grabbing the bunny in his full hand.

“This thing is new. I see you getting it out of a package. Before that, it was on a store shelf, and nobody has really touched it enough to leave an impression but you. The ladies who sewed it were Chinese. Looks like a typical sweat shop on the other side of the world. Before that, it was just fabric. And before that…nothing.”

Rick retrieved the bunny from Zeke, taking it in his hand and stuffing it into a gift bag he’d had behind a desk. It had a big pink bow on it and tissue paper peeping out from the top. What the heck?

“Good. Casey will be relieved. This is for the baby. I just wanted to be sure there was no bad juju on it,” Rick explained.

“That’s what I’m here for. To check for bad juju on baby toys.” Zeke sat back with a gusty sigh.

His gift was lame. The other guys were just too kind to say it out loud. What were they even doing here, trying to test what he could do? It was obvious. And the next best thing to useless.

Though, learning about Kettering’s DNA and prints on that card was pretty cool.

Still, it wasn’t earth shattering, exactly.

A good forensic examination would have turned up the prints and probably the DNA anyway.

They just might not have known whose prints or DNA they were.

At least not right away. So, his gift was useful in that respect, at least.

“Ready for another one?” Rick asked, eyeing Zeke closely.

“Yeah, no sweat. Ready when you are.” He might as well. He had nothing better to do this morning. Might as well prove to everyone just how stupid his gift really was.

“Okay, how about…this one?”

Rick seemed to pick a plastic bag at random and opened it, shaking the contents out onto the table in front of Zeke. It was a guitar pick.

Intrigued, Zeke reached out a finger and jumped back at the blast of sound in his mind. He looked up at Rick and frowned.

“What?” Rick demanded.

“I just heard a wicked guitar solo. This thing was used in a coliseum-sized concert not too long ago,” Zeke explained.

Braced for the music, he touched the edge of the small plastic object again.

He listened for a moment, enjoying the experience of being at the concert in his mind, then reached for more.

“The lead guitarist used it only briefly. He had a row of these taped to his mic stand and was tossing them out to the pretty girls in the crowd in front of him from time to time. Before that, the roadie got them out of a box and stuck them up on the tape. Before that, it was punched out of a plastic sheet that had been printed with the band’s logo and the guitarist’s name.

” Zeke put the guitar pick back in the little plastic bag and tossed it back across the table to Rick. “Next.”