The Departed

realize he was the subject of intense scrutiny.
    Special Agent in Charge Taylor Jones was staring at him, and he did not look pleased. If Desiree Lincoln was fucking freaky, then Jones was fucking scary and that look never boded well.
    Swallowing, he held that steely blue gaze and prepared himself for the fact that his head just might be rolling across the ground, figuratively speaking, in a second or two.
    But all Jones did was stare at him—long enough to make sure the point was made.
    Idiot.
    Taylor Jones didn’t much like having any of his people being called crazy—they were unique, all of them. If they weren’t unique, they wouldn’t work for him. But unique didn’t make them crazy—and it didn’t make them freaks.
    The tech flushed and after another fifteen seconds, Taylor looked away.
    Still, he knew the man’s thoughts were echoed by a number of others. At least among the techs. Those on Taylor’s team understood, on some level, how Dez’s gift worked and they were no longer surprised by her reactions, even in a place as disturbing as this. Others, though…no, they didn’t like to see a woman smiling when she stood in the middle of what was likely an unmarked, mass grave.
    Perhaps, if he didn’t know Desiree, he’d agree with them.
    He knew her, though, and her gift had long since stopped unsettling him. Other things about Dez might unsettle him, but not her gift. He knew she wasn’t smiling because she stood atop the possible gravesites of murder victims.
    She smiled because one of them, at least, would find peace tonight.
    To Dez, that meant a lot.
    Taylor wished he could find some solace in that, but all he felt was a fiery hot rage, carefully hidden under a cold, professional veneer. Somewhere, buried under all of it, was exhaustion.
    He couldn’t let that cold professionalism crack and he couldn’t give in to the rage. Later, sometime much, much later, he could give in to the exhaustion, though.
    They already had the killer in custody. Correct that , he thought to himself. The alleged killer.
    Alleged, my ass . Keaton Weiss was a brutal, sadistic bastard who had spent the past fifteen years preying on the Miss Lonely Hearts type, stalking them, seducing them…then kidnapping them, raping them, and killing them. Their bodies had never been recovered, until one victim had managed to get away and that was how they had finally managed to catch Weiss.
    And catching Weiss was what had led them here.
    No…it was what had led Dez here.
    All Taylor had to do was place her in the room where Weiss had committed untold atrocities on untold women and, one by one, the ghosts had started to whisper to her. Most of them, though, had been too weak, too faded, or still too traumatized to connect with Dez.
    She would work with them and hopefully, over time, she could help them move on.
    But one of them had been able to establish a tenuous link with Dez and that link had proven strong enough for her to lead them here. Here, they’d find the evidence they needed to put the bastard away.
    Jones didn’t have the gifts Dez had, but he knew his people, and judging by the looks on the faces of some of them, they had hit the crime jackpot here. Some of them were all but chomping at the bit to get out there and start their own hunt, but they knew they needed to give Dez her space.
    If they screwed this up for her, the ghost may never find the peace she needed.
    Some of the ungifted techs didn’t quite understand that. While Taylor was impatient in the extreme and itching to get out there, he knew if that ghost didn’t find any sort of peace, she’d linger with Dez.
    And that would torment her.
    He couldn’t do that.
    Not to her.
    He tried to force up some semblance of the cold, hard shield he’d perfected so long ago—he didn’t have any sort of special interest in Dez Lincoln. He wouldn’t wish the unrest of an agitated ghost on any of his people; that was all. He needed them all at their best, all the time.
    But even as he told himself that little line, he knew it for what it was.
    Nothing but shit.
    He most certainly had a special interest in Dez Lincoln. And he had from the very beginning.
    Not that it mattered, though.
    She was a member of his unit and that made her off-limits.
    And even if that wasn’t an issue, Taylor Jones didn’t do relationships.
    Period.
    “WILL you find him? Stop him?”
    It was the third time Tawny Lawrence had asked Dez that question. The departed so easily forgot