Chapter 2
Chad tilted his head, licking his lips, inching closer.
Savanah’s chest heaved forward, pressing her warm, soft breasts against his hard torso. She didn’t blink, nor did she say a word.
“Everything about you terrifies me,” he whispered.
Ever since the day Savanah had nailed Chad where it counts with a candle, walking out of his life, he’d been God-awful miserable. Nothing in his life made sense anymore. He hated everything and everyone.
But finding her and begging her for forgiveness meant he had to accept that he was indeed a psychic, and he hadn’t been ready to do that.
Didn’t think he’d ever be ready.
Until Brett Radcliffe showed himself in a remote view. The cloudy vision, much like the light that filtered through the darkness from an old movie project onto the screen with its tiny particles, floated across the room, and Chad watched Brett take the knife off the desk. The metal object went from its solid form in one plane, to a foggy version of itself in Brett’s reality.
It wasn’t just being able to see Brett when his body had been miles and miles away, but it was the real sense, deep in Chad’s gut, slicing him to his core, that he not only knew Brett, but they shared a common bond.
The kind of connection he had with his brothers in arms.
Times one hundred.
Immediately upon seeing Brett in person, a vision-like dream played out inside his mind where Savanah, along with her three sisters, Hazel, Willow, and Alexis, were seated at a large table. Brett sat next to Hazel, while he was nestled between Savanah and Willow. Two other men also joined them at the table.
Both he recognized, though he didn’t know either man well, but felt a strong bond to them.
One of them, Hunter Knight, was the demo man for the missing SEAL team. Chad had first met him two weeks after he’d let Savanah walk out of his life. Hunter’s team had just been assigned to Chad’s command and were prepping for a tour in South Korea. A couple of weeks ago, the team had gotten word about a group of unfriendlies crossing the border from the north to the south. That’s when Chad had lost contact.
“You don’t fear me,” Savanah said, resting her hands on his shoulders, her fingers curling around the sides of his neck. “Your powers are strong, and you’ve never had anyone to help you develop them. The anxiety that must cause—”
He melded his mouth against hers in a soft, tender dance they’d done a million times. His tongue searching and exploring her sweet nectar. Everything about Savanah turned him on. He tore his lips from hers, taking a step back. “I’m not anxious about being intuitive.”
She cocked her head, the right side of her mouth tipping upward. “Intuitive? Okay. We can start with that.”
“I often have to rely on my intuition when working in the field, making split-second decisions that could save or take a life. I have trepidation using that over other resources. We can’t save someone miles away unless we have boots on the ground, and even then, it might be too late.”
“Our gifts can’t save or protect everyone, but they can make a difference.”
He turned his back, running a hand through his nearly buzzed hair.
You have a gift, son, and it’s not just football. You’re special. You know things others don’t. See things others can’t. I know it can be scary at times, and I wish I could tell you it would always be a good thing, but I can’t.
His father’s words cut straight through his heart as they crashed into the barrier he’d built around the memories. It hadn’t been until he’d turned sixteen that he told his dad about the premonitions. His father had said his mother, Chad’s adopted grandmother, had the sharpest intuition of anyone he’d ever met. She always knew when he’d been feeling down, or something bad had happened, but she could also see his future, which was one of the reasons he’d adopted Chad in the first place.
His grandmother had seen it in a dream and told him all the time of the boy that would come and make his life complete and how special the boy would be.
Chad had never gotten the chance to meet his grandmother.
“The water is running, and I suspect it won’t be hot for long,” he said, strolling into the kitchen. A dozen packs of dehydrated food lined the counter. “We’ll talk about our game plan over food and coffee when you’re done.”
“All right.”
He didn’t look in her direction until the door clicked closed. The ability to sense how someone was feeling was totally different from knowing what will happen in the future. Not all of his visions had come to fruition, and it had been a long time since he had one. His mind eddied with a mirage of images, and he couldn’t control them, nor could he separate them, but they all had to do with Savanah, and he needed to push those out of his head and focus on Hunter Knight.
And Hunter’s team.
Chad found a pot, filled it with water, and placed it on the gas burner. The coffee was instant, which was gross, but he got used to it in the field. Same with the dried noodles and beef that looked more like rabbit pellets than tiny pieces of meat. Food, while on an op, was never about taste, only nourishment.
While he waited for the water to boil, he fired up the computer. Next to the laptop, he noticed a book titled: A Psychic’s Guide to Crossing Abilities by Riley Jacobs. He sat down, opening the book to the table of contents. He’d never read anything about psychics other than a few studies he’d come across here and there in the military. The government had all sorts of programs centered around the topic along with various top-secret projects. Ones that Chad had tried to avoid, even when being heavily recruited.
This thing with the SEAL team and the Projection Project, he hadn’t been given a choice. His commander gave him a direct order. Chad had tried to find a way to pull out of the operation to no avail.
He flipped to the section titled THE COLLECTIVE ORDER.
Four sisters.
Four quadruplet brothers, separated at birth.
Is it a myth? Legend? Or did the Collective Order exist and will it be reunited, helping to unify psychics all over the globe and keeping those from using the powers for evil?
It’s believed that in the mid eighteen hundreds, a group of psychics, who referred to themselves as The Collective Order, were hunted by those who believed they were witches and burned them at the stakes. Those that survived disbanded as a collective group, but believed that one day, four sisters would meet four very special brothers. These quadruplet boys are direct descendants of one of the most powerful psychics known in our history: Dimitri Orgaloph.
It was Dimitri’s oldest daughter, Helena, who foreshadowed the sisters and brothers coming together in the twenty-first century. Helena described the future as a place where people like them were called upon for help instead of rounded up and murdered.
Hearing the door to the bathroom squeak open, he set the book down and glanced over his shoulder. “Feel better?” he asked, swallowing his breath as Savanah stood in the middle of the room, towel drying her thick, blond hair, wearing a white tank top that hugged her large breasts, heaving them upward. Cameo pants hung off her wide, voluptuous hips. He had always enjoyed the curves of her body. Full and firm. Strong yet so utterly feminine he couldn’t see straight.
“Better enough.” She hooked the towel on the door, running her fingers through the long strands. “What do we have to eat?”
“Just think nourishment, not food.” Setting the book aside, he stood.
“Don’t get up, I’ll do it.” She raised her hand.
“Just add a cup of water to each packet, shake, pour, and bam, we’ve got dinner.” He did his best to ignore the fresh scent of basic soap. Who knew that could be so sexy?
“What are you reading?”
He held up the book, not wanting to say the words out loud.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” She clanked about the kitchen, making two bowls of slop before putting one in front of him, along with a cup of coffee that looked and smelled like tar. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she sat in the chair next to him. “Where’d you get that book?”
“It was left here, I suspect by Scottie.”
“He sounded like a firm believer, even if he doesn’t want me here.”
“So are you,” he said with an arched brow as he stuffed a fork full of noodles, dripping with a watery, white sauce that tasted like a glue and paper mixture, into his mouth.
“I’ve always believed in psychic abilities, but it’s only been in the last few years I’ve bought into The Collective Order.”
“I opened to that chapter. Weird stuff.”
“Let’s save that discussion for after we find the SEAL team.” She plugged her nose as she chewed her food.
He laughed. “It’s not that bad.”
“It tastes like armpits.”
“Right. Because you’ve had your share of eatable armpits. Tell me, do you prefer them with or without hair?”
“That’s even more disgusting.”
He watched as she continued to inhale her food, all while keeping her thumb and index finger firmly planted over her nose. Her forehead crinkled with every swallow. Savanah had never been the kind of woman to hold back her thoughts. Strong-willed and stubborn didn’t do her personality justice. Her confidence exploded off her skin, radiating a glow as if she were doing the catwalk. When they’d been dating, he could sit and stare at her for hours, enjoying the fluidity of her body movements.
“Last summer you said you had the ability to remote view. You know the government tried to use the very same—”
She covered his mouth with her hand.
He resisted the urge to kiss the soft swell of her palm.
“I’m very well-aware of the failure of that program and the loss of lives. But the government didn’t use psychics, and instead tried to train those without abilities, and as it often is with top-secret experiments, no one knew about other programs going on at the time that harvested many viewers with other talented psychics.”
He nodded, knowing he had to put aside all his default defenses. He wouldn’t admit anything to her, but he would do what his government asked him to in order to save his men. “Is that the only ability you have?”
She cocked her head and gave him an amused smile.
He tossed his hands. “Look, I’m stuck here, with you, and am told this is how I’m to be useful in finding my fellow SEALs, so for now, I will suspend disbelief, okay?”
Her turn to nod. “Just in the last few weeks, I have been able to invite Brett into my view and to use it to hurl him into another.”
“That makes no sense to me.”
“In order to remote view, you have to have a connection somehow. It can be through knowing the person, or having something that person owned, or just by going to a specific place. When I had been kidnapped, Brett could always find me, but the people who held me captive were also psychics, and they could block him, but not if I drew him inside my space between.”
He kicked back the chair, stood and started to pace, rubbing his temples. “That doesn’t help me understand.”
“I can show you better than I can explain it.”
He stopped dead in his tracks, staring at her while she chewed on her fingernail. “How can you do that?”
“You have the ability to remote view.”
He shook his head. “The only thing I’ve been able to do is see events right before they happen. Like right before they happen.”
“That’s because you try to block everything. If you let it flow, it will happen.” She held out her hands. “Sit. Let me show you.”
“I’ve lost my fucking mind,” he muttered, sitting down, holding her hands, fanning his thumbs over her soft wrists. He’d never be able to resist her. Ever. No matter how hard he tried.
She closed her eyes.
He waited.
And waited.
For five minutes, nothing happened. He was about to pull away when his body grew rigid and cold. He shivered, blinking his eyes closed. An ice cave formed in front of him. He’d seen this cave before. A few times. In dreams, or daydreams. He’d often walk through the cave, being transported to other places with people he cared about, and some he didn’t.
Savanah waved to him from the other side.
He ran through the tunnel. It seemed to stretch on forever. When he finally came to the other side, he noticed he stood in the middle of the town that they had passed a few miles from the cabin. Savanah had perched herself on a bench across the street. She lowered her chin and batted her eyelashes, then pointed to another ice cave tunnel.
Should he stay, or should he go?
He also wondered if this was his view, or hers?
And what was in the next tunnel?
God, he felt like he was on some weird seventies game show.
He took off jogging toward the ice cave. Cold prickled his body as he ran and ran until heat smacked his skin like a water balloon exploding as it hit his body. Slowing down, he checked out his new surroundings.
Tall trees.
Thick vegetation.
The smell of smoke in the distance tickled his nostrils.
The groans of battle stung his ears. Screams of dying men echoed in the still, humid air. In the distance, he saw the wounded men.
No.
Dead men.
He raced to the bodies sprawled out in a bunker. Four United States Navy SEALs lay in pile of blood and guts. Chad knelt in front of one of the men. His heart breaking in a million pieces for the loss of life. It didn’t matter these men knew the danger that lurked at every corner. Chad vowed he’d make sure these men didn’t die in vain.
Standing, he glanced around the jungle in search of the other two missing men. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel their beating hearts. Slow, but rhythmic.
“I’m coming for you,” he vowed as he took off through the ice cave, his lungs burning as he found his way back to the small village. Grabbing Savanah by the hand, he tugged her through the second tunnel and back into the cabin in the woods.
As soon as his body crossed the plane, Savanah yanked her hand away as she rushed toward the bathroom, gagging and coughing.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” she said between coughs as she gripped the sink. “You could have really hurt me taking me back through your tunnel instead of letting me go back through mine.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. But I know where some of my men are.”
She glanced over her shoulder, her face pale, and her eyes bloodshot.
“Where? Are they alive?”
“Four are dead, but I can lead us to their bodies. The other two are being taken somewhere. I could feel them miles ahead.” He held her hips steady, holding her weakened body upright. “I’m sorry, Savanah. I didn’t know about the tunnels.”
“It’s not supposed to be possible for anyone to travel in another viewer’s passage to a different plane. Last time I heard about someone trying, they died.”
“Oh, that’s not good,” he said. “I’ll remember that next time.”
“I have to say it’s kind of worth the excruciating stomach cramps and killer headache to hear you say there will be a next time.”