She approached her home from the north, the only real safe passage through the swamp. Twice she had to wade knee-deep through the black water, using the cypress trees to guide her progress. Dahlia was careful to make no sound, blending with the night creatures, tuning to them so the insects continued in harmony and the frogs croaked with annoying repetition. The last thing she wanted was to give her position away by having the animals go abruptly silent. It took stealth and calm to move in their world and not disturb them. Dahlia could do it, but it required all of her concentration when her heart was pounding in alarm.

The smell of something smoldering choked her as she approached the sanitarium. She could make out the cloud of black smoke rising and orange-red flames pouring from inside the building. The sanitarium was built on solid ground in the center of the small island. A walkway led from the dock over spongy marsh to the higher terrain where the building was located. Dahlia had taken two steps toward her home when the first wave of energy hit her so hard it drove her to her knees.

Violence—dark, malevolent. It poured from the building and rolled off the walls. Something terrible had happened. The energy was living, left behind by the aftermath of what had created it. Death. She smelled it. Knew it waited just inside the building.

Dahlia fought to breathe her way through the pain. She avoided violent energy whenever possible, but she could force herself to endure it if necessary. She’d done it before. She had to go inside. She had to know what happened, and she had to get to Milly and Bernadette and maybe even Jesse. Resolutely, she drew air into her lungs and stood up. Her tongue moistened her suddenly dry lips. It was difficult to concentrate with so much pain, but she’d learned to push it to the back of her head. And she had to see what happened. What was left. It was the only home she could remember. The only people she had contact with lived there with her. Her books. Her music. Her entire world was in that building.

She kept to the trees, running lightly through the tall grass, moving with the breeze rather than against it. She knew there was someone left behind. Someone waiting for her arrival. Energy flowed toward her and it confused her. There was the violence, hot angry waves rolling in to swamp her and a secondary source, completely different. Calm, centered—patient. The contrast was shocking. She’d never experienced it before, and it made her all the more wary.

As she approached her home, she could see several men dragging Jesse Calhoun down the well-worn path to the boat docks. Jesse appeared unconscious and covered in blood. His legs dragged uselessly and she could see the damage, raw and ugly even in the night. “Jesse.” She whispered his name and switched directions, hurrying toward him, using the natural cover, uncertain how she could help him. She never carried a gun. She had long ago realized she couldn’t survive the deliberate taking of a life.

There were too many men slipping through the night toward the waterway. A purge. The men had come to kill her, to wipe out her existence. Why? She’d completed her mission. She tried to maneuver closer, thinking she might be able to scare them away from Jesse with heat and fire. The sound of gunfire erupted from within the building.

“Milly. Bernadette.” She’d never felt so helpless or torn in her life.

Shouts broke out as Jesse woke, struggling and fighting. Dahlia immediately followed the group of men, reaching out to Jesse as she did so. She wasn’t particularly telepathic, but Jesse was, and he would feel her energy and know she was present. Jesse. Tell me what to do.

A man’s voice answered in a hard, authoritative voice. . . . And it wasn’t Jesse. Don’t do anything. Stay away from here.

She froze, sinking into the tall grass. Other than Jesse, no one had ever spoken to her like that. The world was crashing down around her and nothing made sense. The overload of violent energy made her sick, her stomach rebelling as the waves rushed over her, wanting to consume her. Her head was throbbing with pain. She kept her eyes on Jesse, hoping he would reach out to her, tell her what was going on. She saw one of the men deliberately reach down and slam the butt of his gun into the raw mess that was Jesse’s leg. Jesse screamed, a terrible sound that would echo in her dreams for a long time.

The rush of violence hit her hard, swamping her so that she sagged backward, but she kept her gaze focused on the man who had struck Jesse so viciously. Flames rushed up and over him, huge leaping streaks of orange and red, as high as a bonfire, flames she couldn’t possibly control. Chaos erupted. Several men fired shots in scattered directions, uncertain where the attack was coming from. One man rolled his partner in a jacket to put out the flames.

A third man simply shot Jesse a second time, in his other leg. Dahlia had never heard so much agony in a scream. She was sick, over and over, the power of the violent energy swirling around her and beating at her with more force than she’d ever endured before.

“We’ll keep shooting him. You can’t get all of us,” the man who shot Jesse shouted. They kept moving, a tight unit now, Jesse in the middle, being dragged away while the men faced outward with their guns.

Dahlia was too sick to move, to think. She cursed her inability to do more than sit there, hiding like a rabbit in the grass while they tortured Jesse and took him away from her. Jesse, who had taught her to play chess and gave her more relief than she’d ever imagined possible by just his presence. Jesse with his easy, engaging smile. He was the only person who ever teased her. She hadn’t even known what teasing was until Jesse had come into her life.

She should have carried a gun. She knew how to use one. She could only watch helplessly until they were out of sight and she heard the boat motor start up. Dahlia rushed down to the docks to see two boats disappearing down the channel. The only evidence of Jesse was the terrible blood-stain. The red puddle looked shiny black in the darkness.

Dahlia turned back toward her home. Smoke poured from the windows and doors, drifted toward the sky. She could see the flames licking at the walls. Jesse was gone. They’d taken him. I’ll find you. Stay alive, Jesse. I’ll come for you. She made it a vow. Just using telepathy without him creating the bond sent shards of glass into her brain, but she was far beyond caring.

That’s what they want, Dahlia. I’m the bait. Don’t let them kill us both.

Jesse’s voice was weak, tinged with pain. Her heart turned over. I’ll find you, Jesse. She vowed it with determination. Dahlia knew Jesse was aware she was stubborn and would do exactly what she said. She prayed it gave him the necessary hope to stay alive in the worst of circumstances. Knowing there was nothing she could do for him, she made her way up the path to the house.

She staggered at the entrance. The energy was much stronger close to the source of the violence. Her body was rebelling, and she could feel the reaction building despite her attempts to keep control. She had only a few minutes to discover whether Bernadette and Milly had survived the purge.

Dahlia curled her fingers into a tight fist, nails digging into her palm. There was only one person whose energy she could feel emanating from her home. Male. A stranger. She couldn’t get a direction on him, the energy level was too low and too spread out, almost as if he could disperse it deliberately across a vast area. She gained the wide verandah, her soft soles making no noise on the wood. “Be alive.” She heard the whisper of breath and knew she said it, although she didn’t remember the actual thought. She already knew otherwise; her senses told her the truth, but her mind wouldn’t accept it.

Smoke poured out the open door leading to the entryway and offices. No one ever manned the offices, they were there mostly for show if anyone visited. No one ever did . . . until now. She glanced inside and saw the file cabinets overturned and folders spilled onto the floor smoldering or already succumbing to the flames. Her heart began to pound loudly. She could see a ribbon of wool, a pale blue splashed with a bright red.

Tears swam in her eyes, blurred her vision. She swallowed hard and brushed at her cheeks and lashes. There was a strange roaring in her head. She didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t prevent her terrified gaze from following the blue string to the blood-soaked ball of wool and the outstretched hand beside it.

Milly lay sprawled on the floor. Dahlia heard a noise escape her throat, a high keening sound of grief. She knelt by Milly, stroked back her hair. She’d been shot in the forehead. Dahlia couldn’t bear to have her lying on the floor with the horrible mess around her and smell of gasoline heavy in the room. Bernadette lay only a few feet away. Dahlia sat between them, rocking back and forth, a keening sound that she was certain was not really coming from her throat sounding loud in her ears.

Dahlia could barely contain her grief. It built in her, fed by the voracious appetites of the violence embedded deep in the waves of energy rolling through her burning home. These two women were her only family. Jesse had been her only friend. She reached out to touch Bernadette, a silent apology for being late. She stroked a caress down her arm and tried to weave her fingers through Bernadette’s, needing to hold her hand, to simply have the contact. There was something in Bernadette’s hand.

Dahlia leaned over her to pry the object from her fingers. It was a heart-shaped amethyst. Dahlia had brought it to her a few years earlier. Bernadette’s eyes had brightened as she took it, murmuring something about a waste of money for Dahlia to buy her such trinkets. She had worn it around her neck every day since.

Grief clawed at Dahlia’s insides, raked hard so that she felt raw and wounded. She took the small heart and pressed it to her face. Tears poured down her face, and her chest hurt so bad she was afraid it would explode. Heat seared the air around her, shimmering in the room. Papers ignited only a scant few inches from where she sat.

Without warning she heard a door to the nearby gymnasium bang open. Startled, she glanced at the open door to see a man sprinting toward her.

“Run!” She heard the command, a sharp imperious demand that cut through the terrible pain burning in her chest. He seemed to flow across the floor, a sinuous movement of muscle and power. Immediately she had the impression of a great tiger bearing down on her.

“Run. Get out of here.”

As he bore down on her, she felt the first flutter of fear. It blossomed immediately into a panic attack. For the first time in her life, Dahlia was frozen, unable to move or think. She could only watch as the heavily muscled man closed the distance between them with his long strides. He reached down without missing a step and scooped her up effortlessly, as casually as he would have retrieved a ball, and continued running from the building.

Dahlia found herself upside down over his shoulder, a package much like his rifle and gear. She’d never experienced grief before, not the mind-numbing kind that pervaded her body and left her pliant in a stranger’s arms.

She’d never been in any man’s arms. She’d never been this close to a man before in her life.

“Keep your head down. The building’s rigged with explosives. When it goes off we want to be far away.” Nicolas gave Dahlia the explanation although he hardly thought it necessary to explain his actions. It was just that she was so pale and shell-shocked. He could feel her heart pounding, threatening to come right through her chest. He didn’t expect her to be so fragile and to feel so feminine against his body. He didn’t expect to notice her much at all, yet he was acutely aware of her, even in the life-threatening situation.

“I can’t just leave them.” The words slipped out, choked with grief, when she knew it was silly to say it. To think it. Who would be stupid enough to go back into a burning building that might blow up any moment to retrieve two dead bodies?

“You’re in shock, Dahlia. Let me get us to safe ground.”

There was no safe ground. He didn’t understand that. No one was safe, least of all the man trying to save her life. She clung to his back, a dizzying ride as he raced across the bog to save their lives.

Nicolas counted to himself, judging the time they had, knowing it couldn’t be long, but wanting to use every second to put distance between them and the blast. Dahlia was making the most heartbreaking noise he’d ever heard and it was twisting his insides and tearing at his heart, a first for him. He wanted to hold her in his arms and comfort her as he would a child. Worse, he was certain she wasn’t even aware she was making the noise. Her fingers were clutched in his jacket, and she didn’t fight him at all. The Dahlia he had seen in the tapes had been a fighter all the way and that told him how shocked she really was.