Page 4 of Training Rain
Chapter 1
The biggest mistakeshe’d ever made, and she’d made some big ones, had been agreeing to this stupid psychic agent training. She hated the cold and of course the first place Joshua Lakeland, the head of the Psi Alliance, had sent her was Yellowstone National Park in the dead of winter. The park was closed, she was alone in a cabin and nothing was going the way she thought.
Rain Silver had a perfectly normal life on the reservation in Nevada. She wouldn’t have said she was happy, but at least she hadn’t been terrified. The wind whipped through the trees, the roof creaked with the weight of the continually falling snow and now a new noise had her pointing a shotgun toward the front door.
Was it her imagination or was someone outside? The proximity alarm had sounded, but stopped almost immediately. She didn’t think it was an animal, her senses would have detected a wolf or mountain lion. She’d sensed a dog not too far away for a few days but those types of animals were smart enough to have taken cover before the blizzard set in. The only creature stupid enough to be out in this kind of weather was a human.
She gripped the weapon a bit tighter, aiming for the center of the door.
The noise outside became louder, boots trudging through the snow. A dog barked not far away, not close enough to get a good reading or know if the animal was in trouble. The lights flickered. Was that the storm or was the intruder messing with the electricity?
“Who’s there?”
Someone beat on the door.
“Identify yourself.” The panic in her voice didn’t exactly scream confident law enforcement agent.
More banging and then the doorknob turned. Rain’s heart thundered so hard her ears rang. The room seemed to be closing in. The roof continued to creak under the weight of the snow. Whoever pushed on the door had it halfway open. She could see the sleeve of a white parka.
She fired!
The shotgun jerked against her shoulder, pushing her back a step. Her hip came up hard against the back of the couch, but she held her ground, ready to take the second shot if need be.
The door pushed all the way open. Freezing cold wind and a swirl of snow whipped through the cabin. The lights went out. A body fell into the room. “Goddamit!
Put the fucking gun down, Rain. It’s Jess.”
The lights came back on. Jess McMean lay on the floor in the open doorway. A red blotch was spreading out on the arm of his coat. The last time she had seen him, he’d also been injured. She had healed his aura after an attack in Las Vegas. She remembered him staring up at her from the marble floor. He’d looked scared and pained all those months ago—now on the floor of the cabin, he just looked angry.
Rain shook with the rush of adrenaline, but she still managed to be annoyed with the wounded man. “Why didn’t you say it was you? I called out.”
She put down the shotgun and crossed the room. Helping him get to the couch, she then turned and used her full weight to push the door closed against the wind and snow that had built up during the blizzard. Wind rushed through the holes the buckshot had made, but it was still warmer with the door closed.
Jess tugged at the hood of his parka and grimaced from the need to move his wounded arm. “I couldn’t hear you with all the wind and I didn’t imagine you would shoot at the door without knowing who was there first. Plus only an agent with the code could have shut down the proximity alarm system.”
Even in her state of complete horror over shooting him, she instinctively helped him out of the coat and carefully peeled back his flannel shirt to get a better look at the wound. “I’m not trained for this kind of thing. I got scared. No one said you were coming. Not that there’s any goddamn cell service up here. They just told me to hole up in this cabin and wait for further instructions. I don’t even know why I agreed to this.”
He looked down at the series of wounds on his upper arm and shoulder and then up at her.
Considering the condition of the door, he was lucky his injury was superficial. She tried to focus on the blood and healing, but couldn’t help noticing how handsome he was. Dark golden hair, sharp blue eyes and the darkest eyebrows and lashes she’d ever seen. Jess was the kind of man who turned heads. She’d only met him once before when he’d come to the reservation to help his friends and they had all gone to Las Vegas to defeat Banta, a psychic madman. Troth Banta had been collecting the psi talents of others and ripping their souls out in the process. One good man had died that day and Jess had nearly been the second.
The small wound she had inflicted when the buckshot pierced the door was nothing compared to the damage from having his soul nearly ripped away.
“I’ll get the first-aid kit.” She was glad to have a few minutes away from him. He looked angry, but there was something about the way he stared at her that made her uncomfortable. The quivering she experienced in her stomach didn’t help her feelings of insecurity either.
Retrieving the white box from under the bathroom sink, she wet a towel and then had no choice but to return to the small living area. A kitchenette on one side with a small folding table, two chairs and a leather couch in front of a heavily mantled fireplace completed the common room of the cabin. It had only one bedroom and one extremely small bathroom.
By the time she returned he’d stripped out of his flannel button-down and thermal undershirt. His muscular chest had a light smattering of golden hair and the fire reflected off his skin. Her stomach did a flip that was not entirely unpleasant.
The lights flickered again.
Sitting down, she ignored her attraction and started cleaning the wound. She pulled a small piece of metal from his puckered skin. “I’m sorry I shot you.”
She expected a snide remark in his southern drawl, but he just gritted his teeth. “I’ll live.”
“This is not bad, but it needs a few stitches.” She pulled a hypodermic needle out and a vial of Novocain.
“I don’t need that. Just stitch it up and it will be fine.”
