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Plate Tectonics – Part OnePeter Vithoulkas poked his head into Dr. Stephen Benford’s office. “Hey, Danny told me you were going away for a few days. Hot vacation in the Bahamas?” the Division P healer teased.Stephen grinned from behind his desk. “No. I wish. I’m presenting at a psychology conference in Seattle. I could loan you a copy of ‘Cognitive Therapy Goals in Military War Zone Injury Survivors’ if you like.”“Eh, I’ll pass. Does that have something to do with Jonas?” Peter referred to one of their agents who had been critically injured while on assignment for Division P and then a second time as part of his Navy SEAL duties.“He’s one of the case studies, minus all the psychic Talent information.”“Well live it up in Seattle. Drink good coffee and go up in the Space Needle.”“That sounds like a good suggestion.”Peter gave a wave as he started back out into the hallway, then he paused and called back. “Next time, see if you can find a conference in Tahiti.”The dark haired psychologist returned to working on his power point presentation. Maybe Peter suggestion was a good one. Getting in a little relaxation while in Seattle would be nice.~“I’m getting on my bike tonight,” said Claire Holden, looking up from her slab gel. Her hands were encased in nitrile gloves as she was prepping for a DNA analysis.“Pedal pedal or the kind with a motor?” Dave asked from the other side of the lab. He was a tall solidly built man with brown hair and a mercurial smile.“Huh, oh actually I meant the mountain bike,” she replied with a grin.“If you want some company, I could do with a hard ride.”Claire cast a hairy eyeball in her colleague’s direction and waved her Epindorf pipette at him. “I think you should ask your boyfriend about that.”“He’s out of town.”“Did you just sigh? I swear you two are worse than newlyweds. I was going up to Topanga Park. I’ll let you tag along if you’re really interested.”“You just think you can beat me to the top. Won’t happen,” Dave shot back. The analytical chemist was just as competitive as she was outside the lab.Claire stuck her tongue out at him. She and Dave had been friends since second grade and she occasionally wondered if he had been straight if they would have been a couple. “I need something to blow off some steam before I fly to Seattle tomorrow,” she said.“Oh yeah I forgot you were going to that psychology conference thing. Tell me again why you think you need to go to that? Is this your other boss’s idea?”“Enh, yes and no. The mandatory psych rotation in med school is the only clinical training I’ve had in that field and I sometimes feel out of my depth when there’s a crisis over at P.” Dave was one of the very few people who had some understanding of the second job Claire juggled against her FDA research position. The west coast branch of Division P was considerably smaller than the main headquarters in Virginia, and Claire functioned as the on-call healer for the L.A. based location. Like most of Division P agents/employees, she balanced a standard government job against her duties to the psychic agency. “The staff psychologist from P’s headquarters is presenting a paper at the conference. I thought it might benefit me to hear what he had to say, and maybe have a chat with him face to face. I’ve exchanged email with him a few times but we’ve never actually met.”“I thought you said everybody got sent back east for training?”“It’s supposed to work that way, but Steve Milbourne was so effing desperate for my help at the time, he just hired me and figured we’d sort out the details later. Sorting out the details actually involved a guy named Peter coming here to L.A. for a week-long crash course. That was over a year ago.”~Stephen had just finished presenting his paper - Cognitive Therapy Goals in Military War Zone Injury Survivors. He was discussing one of his points with a few people in the hallway outside the conference hotel’s meeting room when he noticed a woman waiting patiently off to one side. She was marked different from most of the psychologists attending the conference, not in dress, because she wore a conservatively cut gray skirt suit, but she had a bright blue streak in her blond hair and an obvious black eye.“Are you waiting to talk to me?” he asked as he finished speaking with the other seminar attendees.“Yes. I’m Claire Holden. I work for the L.A. office of Division P,” she responded, holding out her hand. “We’ve exchanged a few emails but have never actually met.”“It’s always nice to be able to attach a face to a name.” He shook her hand and dredged his memory for what little he knew of her. She was the west coast’s staff healer and had worked for the agency only a year or so. He remembered reading some email exchanges about some sort of crisis going on at the time of her hiring and it had been a very spur of the moment thing. She had a nice smile, and he thought she was attractive.“Can I buy you a cup of coffee? I was hoping we could talk shop a little, and maybe I could pick your brain,” she suggested.“That would be great. Did you have someplace in mind?”“There’s a coffee shop across the street,” she said.“Okay.” They fell in step walking out toward the front of the hotel, and he tried not to stare at her black eye.“Before you ask, no domestic violence was involved regarding the black eye. Blame my mountain bike, a rut in the trail I was trying to avoid and a low hanging branch,” Claire volunteered.“Ouch.”“Yeah, and a lot of other really choices expletives were involved too.”“Couldn’t you…?” He waggled his fingers in the general direction of his eye, not certain what word he wanted to use in a public place to imply she could heal it.“Eh, fixing me is not my forte, and it didn’t seem worth the effort.”He was at a loss for a reply. There weren’t too many women he knew that wore their “battles scars” that casually.The coffee shop was only moderately busy at one thirty in the afternoon. She ordered a double espresso and he ordered a latte. They sat in a back corner booth.“So I want to know the parts you didn’t put in the paper. I’m sufficiently in the know to realize there are massive chunks of psi related information that were selectively deleted,” she prompted.“The biggest piece that I left out concerns the differences in how psi process flashback experiences.”“Patient three’s case study in particular in missing a large slice of information. He was injured in a covert op in Kosovo, that much I acknowledged. I neglected to cover that Peter Vithoulkas saved his life and later his flashback issues were controlled with the help of his girlfriend, who’s a very unusual untrained empath,” said Stephen.“Keep going, I want to understand better.”The conversation continued and Stephen gave her many of the unpublished details. Over the coffee cup, Stephen found himself casting lingering glances at Claire. She was attractive, interesting, smart and unconventional. He admired the audacity of the blue streak in her hair and the long smooth curve of the blouse across her breasts. Damn. He shouldn’t be letting his thoughts stray in that direction, but it’d been far too long since he’d been on anything that even approximated a date. Morticians and shrinks, two of the worst professions when it came to being a turn off in the dating world. It didn’t help that his own personality tended to be quiet and reserved.~Looking across the table at Dr. Benford, Claire decided his profile reminded her of some of the Roman statuary she’d ogled one time in the British museum. Straight nose, thin well defined lips, smooth angular cheekbones, he was probably in his early forties. Oh my God, was her brain actually trying to decide if he was good looking? That was disturbing like trying to decide if your college professor was hot. Not that there was that huge of an age difference between them, maybe seven or eight years, but really? What the hell was she thinking? Okay just fuck it; he was interesting and good looking enough that she was attracted. So be it.“So is there a girlfriend in the picture? I don’t see a wedding ring,” she said.He blinked. She’d caught him off guard. Cool.He smiled a little. “No girlfriend.”“Boyfriend?” In Division P all bets were off when it came to guessing orientation.He chuckled and shook his head. “No boyfriend either.”“In that case, if you’re free at the end of the day, we could do dinner.” “I’d like that.”~Dinner started out as more professional shop talk but slowly digressed to telling all the sordid ridiculous parts of her tree encounter. Stephen confessed to enjoying biking but his forays tended to be confined to the rural back roads surrounding Division P’s Virginia complex.~Her hand slipped into his as they left the restaurant, and Stephen felt his pulse accelerate a little at the physical contact. She had flirted with him all the way through dinner, and he had dropped his shields just enough to know that her interest was real. He wanted her. It had been far too long since he’d felt the combination of physical lust and intellectual attraction. They paused in front of a store window filled with jewelry.“Dang, talk about tacky,” Claire commented, pointing at a hideously gaudy necklace. Stephen gazed at the mix of semiprecious stones and gold metal. “Mmm, yes. I’m afraid the word bling comes to mind and not in a good way.”She laughed, and he loved the way it lit up her face. Did he dare? He cupped a hand against her cheek and kissed her very lightly. Her breathing hitched slightly and they hovered motionless for a long moment, faces barely an inch apart. She tilted her head slightly and then her mouth met his again. The second kiss was light years from the chaste brush of lips he had dared. It was a full out seduction of teeth and tongue and warm pliable body pressed against his. His brain hit vapor lock as ninety percent of the blood in his body rushed straight south.At some point they were both oxygen starved enough to part for air.“You have a hotel room yeah?” Claire mumbled.“Uh-huh.”“Then maybe we should go there before we get arrested for doing something obscene in public.”“Uh-huh.” He had to take a half step back to pull together a more coherent thought. “It’s about two blocks. The Hyatt on Pine Street.”“Lead the way.”~Remarkably, they mostly managed to keep their hands off each other and their clothes on all the way to Stephen’s hotel room. Once the door clicked shut behind them, all bets were off.This is going to be amazing or spectacularly mediocre, Claire guessed. She was wrestling with his belt as he nipped at her throat. The heat of his mouth on her skin was overshadowed by the heady buzz of his psychic presence. It was just sex. You never knew what the luck of the draw was going to be. His belt buckle came open and she popped the button, dragging the fly down with a couple of fingers. His erection was rigid against her fingertips, straining against the fabric of his boxers. She was pinned against the back of the door as his hands scrunched her skirt up level with her crotch. Warm blunt fingers skimmed the front of her panties and dipped just barely beneath the fabric along the edge. Claire could feel the beginning throb of arousal between her legs. His level of want was ramping her desire higher everywhere they touched. She palmed his cock and he ground into her hand, dampness soaking through his boxers. Her own underwear was rapidly becoming a lost cause too. His tongue was doing amazing things to her mouth. God, he tasted good, hints of the wine they’d drunk, and that underlying musk of all male. She wondered if his mouth would feel just as good other places too. “Getting to it,” he mumbled. “God I hope you have a condom, ‘cause it’ll take an hour to find one in my suitcase.”She snickered. “Purse. Inside zipper pocket.” Her purse had fallen to the floor beside her feet.He slowly knelt, kissing his way down the front of her blouse, nosed against the ruched fabric of her skirt and nipped at her panties. Fabric got pushed sideways and his tongue dipped into the folds of her sex. Her head thudded back against the door. Fuck, she’d forgotten how ferociously fulfilling having a psi partner could be. The hot wet swipe of his tongue on her clit , teasing, stroking, as his fingers slid up inside her was sending her rocketing toward the edge of climax. And then he slowed and she wanted to scream in frustration. One handed, he was groping in her purse, and now she wanted to whack herself up beside the head. He had asked about the condom about twenty seconds ago and in their frantic actions she’d already forgotten. She giggled and pushed his hand away from her body long enough to help him find the stupid little box. Rip, tear, toss the foil packaging on the floor until later and she shoved his boxers down over his thighs. Yum, nice cock. Not overly long, but thick enough her fingers didn’t quite meet when she stroked him. There was another moment of stupid acrobatics as she kicked off her shoes and wriggled out of her panties. Claire wrapped one leg around his hip as he plunged into her. She was pressed into the corner between the door and the wall and that support was probably the only thing holding them upright. “Ohgodfuckunhgoodhardergod,” she gasped in sharp loud moans with each thrust. His thumb was provided a delicious toe curling pressure on her clit as his thrusts hit spots deep inside her. His mouth was only half sealed against hers as they both gasped for breath. Best of all she could feel the roar of his need zinging through her nervous system. He was so close to climax, it was like standing under a wave, waiting for that last crest of the curl to break. She could feel his control unraveling and he did something, some little nudge inside her head that matched the drag of his thumb across her clit and the orgasm tore through her in long breath stealing pulses that were followed by the finger tingling echo of his climax as he slammed into her.They slowly slid to the floor a tangle of arms, legs and clothing. His head drooped on her shoulder. “Oh fuck, I’m not usually… I’m sorry I’m not usually that crazy,” he muttered, still breathing hard.“Jesus Stephen, don’t apologize that was amazing, feel the earth move mind blowing.” She placed a lopsided kiss on the corner of his mouth and he gave her a dopey grin.“Oh God we are so wrecked,” he lamented.She surveyed the mess. Her purse had spewed half its contents across the floor. His slacks and boxers were down around his ankles, his jacket on the floor and his shirt hanging open. Her skirt was scrunched around her waist, the underwear was halfway under the open bathroom door and her heels were kicked six feet in the direction of the bed, the bed they’d never actually made it to. She giggled. She had to, it was ridiculously funny.~If he wasn’t still riding the warm endorphin rush of the act, Stephen figured he would be dying of embarrassment. Up against the door in a hotel room? What the hell was he thinking? Thinking with his dick apparently, but Lord she was beautiful. Her hair was tousled and her face flushed, pupils blown and that smile… He touched his fingertips to her lips. Her mind was a hot lush pressure against his. Her shields were only partway down but he reveled in the sensation. Despite what they’d just done, he wanted skin against skin, every inch of her naked and touching him.“Maybe now would be a good time to actually get undressed?” She gave him a naughty smile.“Um yeah.” He pulled off his shoes so he could remove his trousers and boxers the rest of the way. She deftly unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and he shrugged it off, as she took off her blouse and jacket.“I’m going to have to stand up to get the skirt off,” she said.He slid back a couple of feet so she could get up and watched her drag the skirt back down and reach back for the zipper. It puddled around her ankles as she let go. He pulled off his T-shirt and belatedly realized his socks were still on. He tugged them off too.She held out a hand to help him up. As he stood, he noticed the jagged scar that started left of her belly button and extended a good hand span toward her hip.“More mountain bike incidents?” he asked, grazing his thumb across the edge of the scar.“No.”One word, that bore such an amazing load of emotional pain. Stephen could have fished for details in her head, but he didn’t. He pulled her tight to his body and cupped her face in his hands, kissing her softly.“There’s a bed over there,” he murmured.“Gonna need this,” she said, picking up one of the unopened condoms.~As Stephen lay back on the bed, he pulled Claire down on top of him. She was a wondrous mix of soft curves and nice muscle tone. He kissed his way down the length of her arm, over her bicep and inner fold of her elbow, down over her wrist. She shivered a tiny bit as his tongue drew a slow wet circle across the sensitive skin there. He sucked in her fingertips and licked the center of her palm. He could feel the soft flare of desire as he teased that small chakra. Mmm, it stood to reason that a healer’s palm chakra would be extra responsive to that kind of attention. Her hands slipped underneath him and kneaded at his back and then lower sending smoldering hot energy through his glutes. The electric thrum of her touch wound around his hips to his cock. He wasn’t hard again yet but blood was heading that direction, robbing his brain of logical thought. Their mouths were dueling again, tongues thrusting and exploring. He groped between her legs, lust clouding precision, but she didn’t seem to mind. She was dripping wet against his finger as he rubbed her clit until she was moaning. Her arousal was like a roar in his head, feeding his own.Another condom on and she was straddling his hips, hilting him inside her body as her back arched. His hand skimmed over her breasts, enjoying the way her nipples tightened at his touch. Claire moaned loudly, riding his thrusts, head thrown back. Stephen was lost in the haze of pleasure, feeling the energy from her Talent crawl through his body. His fingers dug into her hips as their bodies slammed together and then he was coming hard. The throbbing squeeze of her orgasm wrenched a cry from him. Claire slowly flopped down on top of him, breathing hard.“Oh god, that was just fucking awesome,” she said, gasping.~He was drifting toward sleep as he held her. Claire could sense the drowsy sated pleasure of his mind curled against hers. His hand traced a slow path along the back of her waist and she could feel a thread of emotional want beneath the touch. She needed to leave. She suspected Stephen wasn’t good at casual, and she was horrible at anything else. “I have to go,” she whispered, nipping gently at his jaw.He blinked and looked puzzled. “Why?”“I just do.” The psi connection between them was just strong enough that a lie would never work. “It was awesome, really it was. I like you but I can’t stay.” She could feel the confused hurt flicker through him. She kissed him softly and slid out of bed. He sat up in bed, arms looped around his knees and silently watched her dress. Her fingers struck the scar on her stomach as she tucked her shirt in. She shouldn’t paint Stephen with the same brush. Rex had always had a broad violently jealous streak. How could she have known that he would go ‘round the bend after she broke it off with him? She should have known. She’d spent time in his head. She should have known.As she started for the door, she hesitated and turned back to face Stephen. What could she say that wouldn’t hurt him more?What he said to her took her by surprise. “If you ever want to talk about it, call me. I’ll listen. I promise.”“Thank you,” she whispered and fled.~In the last moments before Claire left, he got a clue as to why. There was just a hint; it was too invasive too push deeper, but he caught a fleeting glimpse of a dark traumatic event in her past. It had something to do with the visible scar, but the damage that was attached ran far deeper. Sometimes being a psychologist just plain sucked. He understood too well the long term emotional and mental injury that could occur. He sighed and flopped back onto the pillow, disappointed. He thought he and Claire had made a connection, enough to consider exploring where it might go, now he wasn’t sure.~Entering information on his PDA, he noted that Dr. Claire Holden had entered the hotel room of one Dr. Stephen Benford. The two subjects had been holding hands in the hallway. Holden had remained in the room for two hours and thirty-five minutes and was now exiting alone. Her hair was messy and her makeup mostly gone. It could probably be assumed that a sexual encounter had taken place. More information needed to be obtained on the nature of the relationship between the two.~The hotel lobby had a bar along one side. Stephen glanced at his watch. Six thirty, hell that was late enough for a drink after spending the day immersed in seminars about clinical depression and PTSD and a host of other mental illness issues more common in people with high stress careers. He sat at a table and ordered a double of Glennfiddich.He watched the people flowing through the lobby as he sipped his drink, analyzing body language. Those two were married. Those two were having an affair. That man was headed for a heart attack based on his stress level. Stephen wondered perversely how right or how wrong he was in his guesses. With his psi shielding up hard and tight, there was no way to tell, but it made for an interesting mind game. He was also trying to distract himself from thoughts of Claire. They’d had a hook-up. What a distasteful word. The sex had been fabulous and … he wasn’t sure he was ever likely to see her again. If he did, it was sure to be awkward.Stephen finished his drink and considered walking down the block to find someplace for dinner. Hadn’t he passed an Indian place early in the day when he’d headed toward the hotel where the conference was held? He walked out the main door of the lobby. The steep angle of the hill on which the hotel was set led to the creation of a set of terraces of different heights broken by steps in between. Each terrace was bordered by a low planter. He cast a glance down the long slope of the street and his vision swam. Oh, maybe that double shot on an empty stomach hadn’t been the best idea. Odd, he had a drink a couple of times a week and wasn’t usually prone to getting buzzed on such a small amount of alcohol despite the high proof content.A man stepped up beside him. “Dr. Benford?” “Yes?” “George Griffen from the conference. I was wondered if I could ask you what you thought of Todd Freeburn’s presentation on the efficacy of using aripiprazole as an adjunct?”Stephen tried to focus his eyes on the other man, but his vision was blurry. Something was off and he couldn’t put a finger on what. Reflexively, he dropped his shields about halfway as he spoke. “I have m-mixed feelings about the c-combinations.” The question asked by the man did not correspond at all with the thoughts Stephen was sensing. There were dark aggressive intentions wrapped with hints of violence. Taking a step away, Stephen said, “I ought to… I should go to my room.” His tongue felt thick and his vision was blurring. “Are you okay Dr. Benford? Listen there’s a bench just down around the corner, maybe you should sit down.” The man gripped Stephen’s arm and tried to guide him to the steps to the next terrace down. No, it wasn’t guiding, Stephen slowly realized, it was coercing.“I n-need to go to my hotel room,” Stephen tried to pull away, but the other man’s grip tightened.“I think you should come with me. You don’t look well.” The man dragged Stephen another step forward.Stephen opened his fogged senses further and flexed his Talent. Let me go, he ordered, ramming each word of the thought into his assailant’s mind. The man hesitated, hands still on Stephen, but no longer pulling. Let me go and walk away. A puzzled expression crossed the man’s face. Leave now. I am not the one you want. Okay so maybe that was a little too Jedi, but it got the point across. The man slowly let go and walked off down the terraced incline. Reeling from the effort combined with whatever drug he’d been given, Stephen staggered. It took him a moment to grab hold of a light pole and steady himself. The world felt foggy. He stood there for a number of minutes trying to remember where he was going. Food. There had been a plan that involved food. He trudged down the steps and wandered down the street to….~Claire opened an eye and stared at the clock on the nightstand. It read 5:35 a.m. Somebody must be banging around in the hotel hallway because she thought she’d heard a knock on the door. Check out wasn’t until noon. There was no way she was getting up this early on purpose. She closed her eyes and burrowed deeper into the blankets.There was that sound again. Tap, tap. God damn it, if it was some maid who was mistiming a room cleaning, Claire was going to be mightily pissed. She stumbled out of bed and stopped just long enough to check and see if all vital parts were covered. She had on a baggy T-shirt and underwear, close enough. Leaving the door chain on, she opened the door a crack.Wah! Stephen Benford stood outside her door, soaked to the skin and his face half covered in blood. Claire wrenched the chain off and yanked the door open. Stephen had one hand braced against the door frame. His clothes were plastered to his body and blood dripped down the side of his face from a gash in his scalp. He gave Claire a bleary unfocused look.“Help me please,” he mumbled.“Oh Jesus God what happened!” Claire dragged him inside. He stumbled and probably would have fallen flat if Claire hadn’t caught him. It took all her strength to hold him up long enough to guide his staggering steps to the bed. He sprawled limply across the bottom of the king-sized bed. Claire cupped one hand to his face and laid the other hand on his chest, turning her healing Talent loose.Bruised and skinned knees and elbows, abrasions on his hands, scalp laceration, early stage hypothermia and…drunk? No, not drunk… drugged, based on the sluggish nervous system responses and the piss poor coordination.Was he in enough danger to call 911? She double checked his breathing and heart rate. It was iffy, but a dozen head-blind doctors and nurses in an ER with their hands all over him could make it so much worse. “Stephen? Stephen? Open your eyes for me,” she demanded.He blinked slowly and looked up at her with a completely unfocused gaze.“Stay with me. You body temperature is falling and I need to get you warmed up.”“Rain,” he muttered.“I kind of guessed that part.” She pulled off his shoes and socks, both were saturated. How long had he been out in the rain? He made a feeble attempt to help her remove his slacks and dress shirt. Eventually the T-shirt and boxers were added to the pile of totally sodden clothing, and he now lay naked on the foot of the bed.She ducked into the bathroom and grabbed all the towels. Using a hand towel, and a surge of her Talent, she staunched the bleeding from the gash several inches above his left temple. She flicked on the light to get a better look. It appeared to be clean if deep. The rainwater had slowed clotting but washed it fairly well. She sealed it just enough to fully stop the bleeding. It might be courting infection to do any more without ready antibiotics.Stephen shivered weakly, his skin pale. Deal with the incipient hypothermia next, she decided. She thoroughly dried him and hauled him up to the top of the bed, drawing up all the blankets. Reaching for the comforter, she realized it had absorbed a lot of the water from Stephen’s clothing. Off onto the floor with the rest of the wet stuff it went. She went to the closet for the spare blanket and spread that over the top instead.Her hands caressed his shoulders as she tucked the covers up around him, and she let her healing explore further. He was running a little shocky, blood pressure lower than desirable, and breathing a touch labored. Her mind was also still trying to figure out what had happened to him. Details were probably going to have to wait. She re-locked the door, stripped off her clothes and slid into bed beside him. He was hovering on the edge of unconsciousness, and that set her worrying again. At least here in the relative safety of the hotel room, she could hold him close and let her talent run deep. If she found signs of internal injuries or bleeding inside his skull, all bets were off and she was calling for an ambulance.Stephen’s skin was chilly against her own. She cuddled him tight to her body and sought deeper within him for signals of serious damage. A little vasoconstriction to boost his blood pressure and a little bronchodilation to ease his breathing and then she could turn her focus to the minute examination of the blood vessels in his skull. After a number of minutes she was satisfied that he was reasonably stable.He had gone totally slack in her arms, exhaustion coupling with whatever drug was in his blood stream. Claire gave a few moments thought back to the drug idea. She had a really hard time imagining Stephen as the recreational drug user type, so that left accidental overdose and malicious intent. Somehow her brain was leaning toward the malicious intent idea, but how many forty-plus year old guys got drugged and mugged… or… she gulped against the darker idea and spent a moment rifling through the physical responses of his lower body with her Talent, double checking. In her arms, Stephen made a small sound of discomfort at her rough plow through his system. All the damage below the waist was confined to banged up knees and hips as if he had fallen, more than once, no anal tearing or bruising and his penis drooped limply unharmed against his thigh. “Sshh, sorry, just checking things,” she said, placing a kiss on his forehead.Claire waited a good half an hour for Stephen to warm before she slipped out of bed. She didn’t go far, just to the end of the bed and the heap of soggy clothing. She felt through his pockets and came up with a wallet, a handful of coins, a cell phone and a plastic room cardkey no doubt to his own hotel room. She peeked into the wallet and saw seventeen dollars as well as several credit cards. It would appear he hadn’t been robbed. Thumbing the phone’s screen on, she saw a listing for two missed calls, six texts and two voicemails. Somebody had obviously tried to get in contact with Stephen.~Warm dry sheets slid across Stephen’s skin as he stretched out an arm. Most of the muscles in his body ached, and his eyelids felt sticky.“Oh hey, you’re awake,” said a soft familiar voice. A gentle hand rubbed his shoulder and he felt the delicious heat of energy trickling through his body, damping down the discomfort. He blinked, his vision blurry and had to squint to see who the touch came from. Claire Holden gave him a concerned smile. He stared at her dumbly. The room behind her slowly came into focus and it wasn’t a familiar one.“W-Where am I?” He asked.“My hotel room. What’s my name?”“Claire.”“Be more specific,” she said.“Dr. Claire Holden.”“And your name?”“Dr. Stephen Benford.” He dimly comprehended that she was asking simple neurological function questions.“What’s the last thing you remember?”“Um, going back to my hotel after the conference day ended. I stopped for a drink in the bar.” He wondered if that made him sound like an alcoholic. “Just one. I … think I was trying to figure out where to have dinner and then…”“Then what?”“I’m here. Now.” Naked, in bed with a woman I slept with, his brain continued, and then locked. They had had sex in his hotel room, hadn’t they? And he’d spent the whole of the following day at the conference and…he wasn’t even sure what day it was.“I suspect somebody drugged your drink. You showed up here about four hours ago, soaked to the skin, bleeding and not very lucid at all. I think you were at the tail end of the duration of action for whatever you were given.”“What time is it?” he asked.“Close to ten, Sunday morning.”He tried to do the math. “I lost twelve hours, no, more like sixteen.”“Yeah, that’s about right.”“How’d I end up here?” he asked.“I don’t know. From the fact your clothes are absolutely soaked, I’d guess you walked.”“How far?”“From your hotel, maybe three miles?” Claire replied.“Three miles in twelve hours…” his voice trailed off. He struggled to process the idea. Even walking slowly, that didn’t compute.“I suspect you were lost or sleeping in the rain on a park bench or something. You’re all bruised up, and you have a nasty gash in your head and you skinned both knees and your elbows. I think maybe you fell while you were wandering around, more than once by the looks of you.”“God.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I feel like somebody poured cement in my brain.”“Depending on whether you got hit with rohypnol or GHB or something else, it could be a couple of days for it to totally leave your system.” Her hand cupped his face. “I think I need to go tell the hotel that I want to extend my stay at least one more night. Step two, should probably be me collecting all your stuff from your hotel and hopefully doing the auto-check out thing so I don’t have to answer too many questions. You can stay here and sleep some more.”“I should come with you,” he said.“Stephen hon’, your clothes are completely and utterly soaked, along the lines of jumped in a swimming pool soaked. You were borderline hypothermic when you showed up. I don’t really think you want to be putting them back on.”The jumped in a swimming pool phrase rattled in his head. He could have, and he wouldn’t remember it. What other incredibly stupid things might he have done while drugged out of his mind? He searched his brain for clues and came up empty.“If you’re desperate to do something useful, grab your phone and figure out if all the texts and voicemails are something important or not,” Claire suggested.Reluctantly, he agreed.Claire quickly dressed and left.Stephen picked up his phone from the nightstand. There were two missed calls from Peter. Stephen was supposed to talk to Peter about a new hire that was slated to report to the Division P complex for training in just a few days. Two of the texts were “call me” requests from Peter. Those were followed by two from Danny Valentine, who managed the east coast half of Division P’s operations. Number five was from Jonas Nightengale who was slowly assuming much of the security responsibilities that Danny had been juggling against his other duties and the last one had been early that morning from Peter.R U OK? GETTIN WORRIED. U USUALLY CALL BACK N HR OR 2.Calling Peter back was definitely the first order of business. Stephen scrolled down through the contact list for Peter’s direct line and dialed.“Vithoulkas,” Peter answered.“It’s Stephen.”“Hey. Where the hell have you been? I thought we were going to have a conference call last night.”“There’ve been some problems.” Stephen said.“What kind of problems?” Peter’s tone was suddenly very concerned.Stephen told him what had happened in as few minutes as possible.“Fucking hell! Question one, are you okay?” Peter asked.“Basically, I still feel like my brain’s not hitting on all cylinders. Claire checked me out. I’m a little banged up but nothing serious.”“Question two, who do you think did this? Just somebody who thought you looked like an easy mark, business man in a decent suit and all?”“I wish I had an answer for you.” Stephen went silent. There was something else Peter was implying but Stephen couldn’t seem to grasp what. “Why else would somebody drug me?”“Because you’re Division P, just like Jamie Ketelsen.” Peter referred to one of their people that had been kidnapped and tortured.“But…” Stephen tried to absorb the idea that somebody might have attempted to kidnap him like had happened to one of P’s agents that also worked for the CIA.“I could be way off base, but it’s awfully coincidental. I’ll give Danny all the details you told me. You know he’s probably going to call you in a couple of hours and make you go through it all again.”“That’s fine. I wouldn’t expect any less of him.“Is Claire with you now?” Peter asked.“No. She went to the hotel I was staying in to get my stuff. I’m still feeling kind of off and she thought I’d be better staying here and waiting for her,” Stephen admitted.“That was probably a good idea. I’ll talk to you later today.”After Stephen hung up, he shuffled off to the bathroom, and took care of business. The huge mirror there displayed several large bruises, one on his hip, one on his ribs and one on his forearm. He glanced at skinned knees and elbows too. Everything pointed to a spectacular wipeout somewhere. Considering how off-kilter he felt even now, it didn’t take much imagination to imagine himself staggering along through the rain like a drunk and slipping on some slick surface.Getting up and moving around seemed to be aggravating the dull headache behind his eyes. Was that from the drug or from whatever he’d bashed his head against? ~Wrestling a wheeled suitcase and a laptop case through the door, Claire went through the checklist in her head. She’d carefully collected everything from Stephen’s hotel room and done an auto-checkout, extended the stay for her own hotel room and swung by a pharmacy to buy some first aid supplies for a more thorough cleaning of the gash in his scalp. The bathroom light was on, but Stephen wasn’t in there. She found him in bed. Claire stood looking at his sleeping form for a long moment. There was something inherently nice about seeing him sleeping in her bed despite the circumstances, but then she ruthlessly squashed down the fledgling emotion. He was a friend and a colleague, the sex had been awesome and that needed to be the extent of it.She sat on the edge of the bed and laid a hand on his back. He stretched a little and rolled over to look at her.“Feeling any better?” she asked.“Less loopy, but everything hurts more.”“That’s something I can fix.” She curled her hands around one arm, cupping his skinned elbow. A flare of her Talent began mending torn skin and the bruised tissue beneath. As a side note she damped down the pain in the rest of his body while she worked. He lay still as she progressed from one elbow to the next and then to his knees. The laceration in his scalp would have to wait for a few more minutes.She glanced up at his face. His eyes were closed and he looked more vulnerable than he had when he first woke up in her bed hours ago. Maybe it was because he was more coherent? She allowed a tiny thread of awareness to brush against his mind. His shielding was absolutely minimal, and she could tell he was frustrated with his admission of pain.“Even if you remembered where you fell or how, it still wouldn’t make it hurt less,” she said. “Maybe.”She allowed herself a small sigh. The emotional part of his pain wasn’t something she could fix. “Come into the bathroom. I want to make sure your head wound is good and clean before I seal it up.”He slowly got out of bed and walked into the bathroom.Claire motioned for him to sit on the toilet lid and used the gauze and alcohol to clean the short deep gash, blocking Stephen’s pain perception as she did so.“Can you see bone?” he asked.“Uh no, it’s not that bad.” She was amused at his over blown worry about the laceration.“Would I be screaming if you weren’t doing your thing?”“Maybe. I suspect it would be pretty uncomfortable. Okay, I’m going to seal it shut now.” ~Sitting at the desk in the hotel room, Stephen spoke to one of the airline personnel on the phone, trying to reschedule his flight. He’d originally been slated for an 11:30 am flight back to Virginia, but had obviously missed it. The woman on the phone said she thought she could get him on another flight at nine that evening. He glanced at his watch. That gave him about three hours before he needed to be at the airport. “What are you going to do with your suit?” Claire asked, pointing to the pile of soggy clothing on the floor.“Leave it. As completely soaked as it is, I don’t think it’ll ever look decent again. It’s wool. It’s probably likely to shrink in weird ways even if I was willing to tote it home, then there’s the added weirdness of trying to explain to TSA why I have soaking wet clothing in my suitcase.”She crossed the room and stood before him, cupping a hand against his face. “What about you? Are you going to be okay traveling alone?”“One thing for sure I’m not going to be drinking anything I didn’t open myself for a while.” He felt the subtle brush of her mind across the surface of his. “Why? Do you have doubts about my mental acuity less than twenty-four hours after getting roofied?”“Only slightly. Do you?”“I’m not sure. I still feel really tired, but I can’t tell whether it’s lack of sleep, or leftovers from the drug.”~When the time came for Stephen to leave for the airport, Claire followed him to the door of the hotel room. That was as far as she was willing to go, because if she went further she was going to be tempted to follow him all the way back to Virginia like some damn lost puppy.“Is there going to be somebody at the other end to pick you up?” she asked.“I suspect Danny Valentine will be waiting, with more questions too.”“Good, about the waiting part; maybe not so much about the questions.”“Keeping tabs on all of his people is part of his job.” Stephen cradled Claire’s face in his hands. “I hope I’ll see you again.”The steady warmth of his skin against hers was making suggestions to her heart that her head was vehemently opposed to. She didn’t do relationships. They just led to getting stabbed in the gut and nearly bleeding out on your kitchen floor. Casual was best. “If you ever make it to the L.A. area, I’ll make sure to show you a good time.” Was that a flicker of hurt she felt from him? Fuckfuckfuck. Friends with benefits was all she was willing to offer. Anything more was just…too damn dangerous.“I might take you up on that.” He kissed her softly and walked out the door. ................
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