She noticed the young man immediately when he walked past her, head down and in a hurry, but not only because he was so good looking. He had no thoughts, no mental activity, and that grabbed her attention in a way nothing else could have.
Following him, she stepped into a shop doorway when he stopped and looked around. She didn’t need to keep him in sight. She could feel his emotions, so strange coming from someone with no thoughts she could read, different than all the other people on the streets. Checking her mental shields to make sure they were as tight as she could make them, she followed him around a corner. He didn’t look back, seemingly not aware she was there.
Moving closer as he turned another corner into an alley, she stopped when he hesitated at the other end. He looked about before stepping out onto the street, but he never looked back. Realizing he couldn’t feel her, she closed the distance between them.
Scanning the area with her mind, she discovered two other men, farther away, who also were mentally shielded. Their emotions were completely different than his, and she shivered at the malice radiating from them. Every time the first man changed direction, the others soon followed. Although they couldn’t see each other, it was almost as though they could feel each other, just as she could feel them. Through the maze of streets in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor area, they danced across the city in the summer twilight.
He walked into a bar just a block off the water. She knew it had entrances on two different streets, and rather than follow him, she walked to the corner, out into the street, and stood in front of one of the unusual old triangular houses in this part of town. From her vantage point she could see both entrances.
Coming out the other side, he walked in the opposite direction, away from the harbor. He was doubling back, hoping to lose his pursuers, but they weren’t tracking him by sight or sound. She watched a man hesitate in front of the door the young man had used to enter the bar, stop, and then turn around.
He was walking faster now and she was forced to break into a run to keep up with him. He stopped in a small park, in a dark area near a building, turning and waiting for her.
“Why are you following me?” he asked as she approached him. He was tall with brown hair and blue eyes in his early twenties.
“Those men are following you. Do they want to hurt you?” she asked, looking up at him. “They don’t feel the same as you do.” His blue eyes widened. “They’re coming. They can feel you.”
“I can’t feel you, and I doubt they can either,” he answered with a puzzled tone in his voice. “You’re an O’Neill.” He took a step toward her. “Who the hell are you?”
She felt the other men at the edge of the park. “Why are you afraid? Are they going to hurt you?”
“I don’t know. They might try,” he answered, smiling nervously.
She covered him in her shield and saw his fists clench as the other men approached. The sense of menace radiating from them increased as they drew closer, moving stealthily. In the darkness, she couldn’t see them clearly. Large men, even bigger than the young man she was following, they had a rough look. One passed within only a few feet. He turned and looked directly at them, but continued on. She could see he held a pistol close to his body.
“Holy Mary,” the young man breathed when they were well gone.
She stepped close to him, out of the shadow, and looked up at his face. It was the first time he could see her clearly. His eyes widened in shocked surprise.
“Who are you?” she asked. “What are you? Do you know what I am?”
He stared at her pale face wreathed in black hair. His mouth opened, then closed. He swallowed and shook his head.
“Please,” she said, her voice cracking, “can you help me? I’ve been alone for so long. Are there more people like us? Do you know where to find them?”
Taking a deep breath, he leaned forward and in a low voice said, “Come with me. I’ll take you to someone who can answer your questions.”
He started off, then turned back when she just stood watching him. “I know what you did to make those men miss us. Thank you. I promise no one will hurt you if you come with me.”
They set off across the city together. After several blocks he turned up a street, similar to many in the area, where all the row houses looked exactly the same. They walked to a house halfway down the street and rang the doorbell. When the door opened, he entered, pulling her after him.
“Jared, what the hell?” the man inside stepped back frowning, his eyes scanning over her, lingering on her chest. “Who’s this?”
“I’ve been playing hide-and-seek with two thugs half the afternoon,” Jared answered. “Their shields and strength were pretty much a match for mine, and I just couldn’t shake them. Then I ran across this lovely lady who graciously extended her shields to hide me from them. Where are Seamus and my mom?”
“Shielded you?” She felt him attempt to read her mind. Her blue eyes flashed and she pushed back, feeling his shields bend under the pressure she exerted. His eyes widened. “I see. Seamus is probably in his office.”
Jared took her by the arm and led her down a corridor. They took a turn, then turned again into another corridor. Bewildered, she let him guide her. She had been in dozens of Baltimore row houses and they were small, open structures. She felt like she’d fallen down the rabbit hole.
They stopped in front of a door and Jared knocked, then entered when a deep voice said, “Come in.”
Inside a spacious office, a very large man with shoulder-length gray hair and a bushy beard was seated behind a desk. A tall, thin woman with sandy colored hair in her late thirties or early forties stood just inside the other door to the room. She took a tentative step forward, the blood draining from her face, and the man sat up in his chair, eyes riveted on the face of the young woman with Jared.
The young woman wore a white tank top and hip-hugger blue jeans that outlined her wasp-waisted hourglass figure. Thick, wavy black hair cascaded to her waist, contrasting with her pale complexion and sapphire blue eyes.
“I’d like you to meet … I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name,” Jared said, turning to her with a slight smile.
“Brenna,” she said.
“Of course. This is Brenna. I had a couple of stalkers follow me tonight. She helped me get home. Brenna, this is my grandfather, Seamus, and my mother, Callie.”
“Thank you for seeing my grandson home, Miss, uh,” the man said slowly. He had a faint but distinct Irish accent.
“Morgan,” Brenna supplied.
“Miss Morgan. I didn’t know he was lost, but thank you for your help,” he said with a faint smile.
“She shielded me,” Jared said. “Covered me to invisibility without touching me.”
Seamus’ eyes narrowed at this assertion, studying her closely. “That’s very interesting.”
Biting her lower lip, the woman walked toward Brenna and indicated a chair with a trembling hand, “Please be seated. Can, can we get you anything to eat or drink?” Her cultured voice quavered.
“Oh, no,” Brenna replied, “I’m fine, thank you.” They were all telepaths, she could feel their shields. She sat stiffly on the edge of the chair, fidgeting and wringing her hands in her lap.
“Are there many of us?” she blurted. “I‘ve felt more mind readers tonight than I ever have. What are we? Do you use the term telepath?” the questions tumbled out. Her eyes darted from one person to the other. “Jared said you could answer my questions.”
“Yes,” the older man said softly, “we use the term telepath. And there are quite a few of us.” He leaned forward, his blue eyes staring directly into hers, “I don’t think Morgan was the name you were born with. What was your original name, do you know?”
She looked at him questioningly then said, “My birth name is O’Donnell.”
He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his stomach. “Brenna Aoife O’Donnell?” he asked, saying her middle name with its correct Gaelic pronunciation, Eefya. Her eyes widened, mouth hanging open, and she nodded. “Your parents were Jack and Maureen O’Donnell and they were killed in a plane crash about fifteen years ago?”
“Yes, how do you know all that?”
“My name’s Seamus O’Donnell, child, and I’m your grandfather,” he said with a catch in his voice. He leaned forward, tears in his eyes. “Good Lord, we thought you were with them on that plane.”
She turned and looked at Jared and Callie. Jared was nodding, Callie lifted a trembling hand to her mouth. Tears ran down her cheeks. She started forward as though to take Brenna in her arms, then caught herself and stood gazing down at the girl’s upturned face.
“I’m your aunt,” she said. “Your father was my older brother.”
“You look exactly like your mother,” Jared said, shaking his head. “Exactly. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you. It was like Maureen coming back from the dead.”
“I, I don’t understand,” Brenna stammered, “I’ve been in Baltimore the past six years and never run into any telepaths. I’d have felt you.” She jumped up from her chair, walking away from them, then turning back, face flushed and hands fisted by her side. “Where have you been? Why did you abandon me? Why didn’t you look for me?”
“Brenna, Mom and Grandfather don’t live here in Baltimore, and I just moved here,” Jared said. “This house isn’t used very often, but we had business here this week.”
Seamus sighed, his voice gentle, “Our need for secrecy sometimes works to our disadvantage. Your parents were in the middle of changing their identities when they died. We did look for you, but we didn’t know where to look. It took us two days to confirm they were really on that plane. At first, we couldn’t find the house they had just moved to. The whole mess was so chaotic, and we thought you were with them. No bodies were ever recovered from the crash.”
“Changing their identities? Why?” her voice rising in pitch, her gaze darting from Seamus to Callie and then to the door.
Callie walked over to her. “How old do you think I am, or Jared?” she asked softly.
Brenna looked at Jared, who appeared barely older than she herself, and remembered him saying he knew her mother, dead fifteen years. And if Callie was his mother, she must have had him as a teenager.
“I don’t understand. What are you trying to say?” Agitated, Brenna edged away from Callie, her whole body shaking.
Callie sighed. “I’m eighty-three. After a while, people start to notice that we don’t age as normal people do. So your father and mother were in the process of changing identities, dying and being reborn as someone younger, and at first their deaths created a lot of confusion. Real deaths, fake deaths, moving from Maryland to Virginia, we didn’t know what was going on, and when we were able to confirm their deaths, we thought you were dead too.”
Seamus started to say something but his voice caught. He cleared his throat, and haltingly said, “I thought they were going to drop you off with me, before their trip, and when they didn’t, I assumed they decided at the last moment to take you with them. Dear God, child, I thought I’d lost my whole family. I wanted all of you to be alive.” His face quivered and tears spilled down his cheeks.
“I was supposed to stay with my grandfather,” Brenna said softly, staring down at the floor. “One of my friends was having a birthday, and I didn’t want to miss it. Mrs. Harris told my mom I could stay with them. It was kind of last minute. Then we saw the news about the crash.”
She looked up, tears in her eyes. “I knew I had grandparents, but I didn’t know their last names, or how to find them, just that they lived far away. Social Services couldn’t find any record of me, no school records, no history. I could tell them I used to go to school in West Virginia, but they couldn’t find any records of me. I spent four years bouncing from foster home to foster home, and then the Morgans adopted me.
“You know, I’m having a lot of trouble with all this,” Brenna said, her voice shaking. “I feel like I was just dumped and now all of a sudden I have strangers telling me a fantastic story and wanting me to just open my arms and welcome them into my life. I’m not even sure I want to believe you.”
“They wouldn’t have found any records,” Callie said. “Where we live in West Virginia isn’t on any maps and the school you attended is private. Father doesn’t exist as far as the world knows, and O’Donnell is a rather common name. Brenna, you have to believe us, we thought you were dead.”
Seamus said, “Well, we’ve found each other now, and I’ll make damned certain we don’t lose each other again. Are you living here in Baltimore? We can move you in here and then decide what to do next. Are you still in school? Working?”
Shaking her long black hair back from her face, she raised her chin, squared her shoulders, and said, “I just graduated and I’m working. I have a house about a mile from here. I have a life. I appreciate that you feel we need to get to know each other, but I’ve been without any family for a long time now. I’d like to be able to sort of ease back into things, if you don’t mind.”
“Brenna, our family has enemies,” Jared said. “It isn’t safe for you to be completely on your own. What if you ran into those men who were following me?”
