Touch No Evil Read online

  TOUCH NO EVIL

  by

  J.R. Rain

  A.K. Alexander

  The PSI Series #4

  THE PSI SERIES

  Hear No Evil

  See No Evil

  Speak No Evil

  Touch No Evil

  Touch No Evil

  Published by Rain Press

  Copyright © 2018 by J.R. Rain and A.K. Alexander

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  About the Author

  Touch No Evil

  Chapter One

  Talk about a kick in the balls.

  Metaphorical balls, I mean.

  The man I’d been in love with for years, the one I thought I’d marry, the one who not only betrayed me, but betrayed the entire PSI team—is still alive.

  Alive!

  Simms told us John had been killed soon after showing us the video. I loved John so damn much, and to simultaneously find out he’d turned traitor and died was too much to process. I couldn’t figure out if I should be devastated by the loss... or furious that he played me. Truth be told, the conflict left me numb for weeks.

  I go back and forth, trying to figure out how John managed to convince me of his undying true love and devotion to our team. At the time, he’d seemed so genuine. Usually, my gut is able to cut through any deception or misinformation. In fact, I trust my instincts more than anything—I am a psychic spy, for God’s sake! But my gut, my heart, and my brain all failed me. Probably due to the storm of warring emotions.

  So, John’s miraculous return from the dead is one problem. But we’ve got a bigger issue. In a compound at an undetermined location, a man I once respected as a stand-in father figure is holding prisoners—a group of children between the ages of four and fifteen—at the same compound where my little sister was once locked up. Some of the kids are bioengineered; some, like myself, were kidnapped. But they’re all part of GEPSI, Grant Simms’ program to exploit and control psychics—GEPSI stands for Genetically Engineered Psychic Sensory Intelligence. It’s a mouthful, probably why someone came up with an acronym.

  Neither my team nor myself have been able to psychically probe the GEPSI stronghold, due to some serious shielding. We can’t even locate it, despite Hope and me having spent years inside. I guess if someone’s going to lock up powerful psychic children and use them as guinea pigs, they’d better have top-tier mental defenses in place.

  Our latest intel suggests a number of these children were recently moved from “the compound” to an alternate location somewhere in Rome. We’re confident it’s in Italy—Rome is a calculated guess. True, a certain amount of sketchiness surrounds all of it. The kids all possess various psychic gifts, the same sort of abilities my team and I have.

  We’re not entirely sure how long they’ve all been there, but Simms is raising them as psychic weapons. As he did with my kid sister before she escaped, he’s largely stealing their childhoods away and molding them into soldiers before they’re even old enough to shave.

  Our team’s been going by the acronym PSI, short for Psychic Sensory Intelligence. We’re a CIA department so secret that we sometimes joked we didn’t even have clearance to know about our own existence. I come from the same training program as these kids, only I’m not a kid anymore. I graduated. Back then, I didn’t really understand that I’d been a prisoner. At the time, it didn’t really feel like it to me. After my father was murdered and my mother landed in the hospital—okay, she went crazy—I wound up in Grant Simms’ care and he became almost a father figure to me.

  I’m what’s known as an audial psychic. It’s my specialty. My ability allows me to “hear” conversations from thousands of miles away. Well, hear anything really. It doesn’t have to be people talking. All I need is something to focus on, and I become aware of any sounds going on at a distant location.

  PSI agent Noah Kensington can read past history, experiences, relationships, and so on, from people or even from objects. Creepy, I know. But helpful. Another PSI teammate, Ayden Connors, can tell what is going on around the world in the here and now, and a bit into the future, too.

  Then there is—or was—John Herrel. He’s the man I love. Loved. John can heal physical and even some emotional ailments simply by touching people. But his betrayal cost him not only my trust and faith in him, but so much more. It cost me, too. Oh, how naïve I’ve been. Recent events continue to crack the armored shell I’ve built around my heart to survive. I can’t handle being simultaneously despondent and furious, so I push all my emotions aside and devolve even further into the cold, mission-focused tool Simms always envisioned.

  Is John a traitor? I’m not so sure. After what happened in Israel a few days ago, I start to question whether John really had gone over to the dark side. In fact, I think he saved my team’s ass when we were hunting down the Dead Sea Scrolls. Honestly, everything’s lately become a blur to me. For all I know, it wasn’t even John who saved us. But it sure as hell looked like him. Could’ve been wishful thinking on my part. Or maybe I’m not over him as much as I think.

  As if that hasn’t yanked on my emotions enough, I discovered I have an eleven-year-old sister named Hope Mitchell. Her mother’s not really her mother, and her last name is a total lie. When I told her about the woman pretending to be her mother, my sis confessed she wanted to go by Hope Cain. Yes, by my last name. Just thinking about that now gets me choked up. I really do have family.

  My sister spent her whole life in the clandestine compound up until her escape. She shares the same gift as me—audial telepathy. It’s strange to have a sister I never knew about until recently, although she’s a product of bioengineering. Somehow, my former boss obtained my father’s genetic material and used it to create Hope, and who knows how many other children. For all I know, I may have a huge family out there. The thought isn’t entirely unpleasant. Anyway, Hope thought she managed to escape the compound, but the entire thing had been a setup to kidnap her.

  As if she hasn’t been through enough, right?

  You see, Grant Simms, my former father figure, lied to me. For years, he made me believe he cared about me, loved me, even—but it’s all been a façade. He embodies the worst kind of evil, the evil of a person who believes they act for the good of all and will do anything to accomplish his goals, even if it means sacrificing the innocent.

  Simms brought me into his clandestine world, trained me, raised me, protected me. But no more. Now, we are fierce enemies.

  Ironically, he’s the one who set me on a course that
revealed my sister’s existence. After Hope escaped his compound, he figured my team would swoop in, rescue her, and hand her right back over to be reinserted in his little prison-school. To him, she’s little more than an expensive weapon that’s been stolen and he wants back.

  Fortunately, that’s not how things played out. We saved her, and, in some strange way, she saved me, too. No, it’s not strange. After John’s betrayal, I’d almost given up bonding with anyone. My sister makes me feel human again.

  As if from far away, I hear Noah say, “Earth to Ky, come in, please. Are we going to play this card game or what?”

  I realize I have been drifting off into all this deep thought while sitting with my PSI teammates.

  “I think I’m drunk,” I say and put down the white cards I’m supposed to shuffle as the Card Czar.

  Ayden looks up at me and smiles. Noah shakes his head. A wine bottle stands in the middle of the small, square table. We’re holed up in a small hotel outside Vatican City playing Cards Against Humanity, and I’m certain that bottle in front of me is the third one to pull duty tonight, which could mean serious trouble later.

  “Coffee?” Ayden asks.

  “No,” I say. “Bed. We have an early morning mission. The maps, the Vatican, the kids, the cave crap somewhere, all that Dead Sea Scrolls stuff, and I have to check on Hope, make sure she’s being taken care of at the safe house. Not to mention, we don’t know who might travel through time and pop in from the past.” I point at Noah. “Like your wife. And—” I hiccup. “And, she’s a complete bitch.”

  “Ouch.” He cringes.

  Ayden nods at Noah and points a thumb toward me. “Ky might be drunk, but she’s right.”

  “You’re both drunk.” Noah holds up a finger. “And you both get mean when you drink.”

  “Except your wife really is some kind of freaky witch who can travel through time and covets my baby sister so she can change history,” I say, more than likely slurring my words.

  “No, Jacqueline doesn’t have her own time-traveling powers. She hitchhiked to the past by grabbing Hope when she was time traveling. And Hope ditched her in the past.” Noah pauses. “And, it’s Simms who wants to change history.”

  “Maybe. Truth is, we don’t know who wants it.” Ayden pours himself the rest of the bottle.

  I dwell on that particular bit of crappy news. Noah’s wife, who we all knew as Jacqueline or Echidna, has been lost in a true wrinkle in time. She’d tagged along with my little sister into the past, and the kid brilliantly stranded her in God-knows-when. Not that I blame her. Good for Hope. If someone kidnapped me and I had the power to stuff them into Father Time’s left nostril, I damn sure would have. But we have no idea if Jacqueline can find her way back. I mean, I don’t see how she could. She has no power to jump through time. But if she does somehow find a way, we have a big problem.

  And… ugh. I can’t keep my eyes open. Or keep thinking about this.

  I stand a little unsteadily. “See you in the a.m., boys.”

  Not to sound like an egotistical jerk or anything, but after spending so much time with Noah and Ayden, they’ve both admitted to having strong feelings for me. I also admit to myself that I have feelings for them, too. No, I’m not a slut, whore, or sleep-around kind of girl. Not even close. The last guy I slept with was the one I thought I would marry. John, the traitor. And, dammit, I still love him, which makes no sense. How can I miss someone so much while simultaneously wanting to kill him?

  Anyway, none of my feelings matter now. What matters is that I find the kids Simms plans to turn into human psychic weapons. And once we deal with him and shut down that horror, my little sister can finally have a life where she’ll know what it means to be free—and loved.

  The same heavy thought that made the three of us drink wine and play a card game of black humor instead of discussing the mess sprawled in front of our noses hits me again. It isn’t anything too bad, only the possible end of the world.

  See, my kid sister popped back in time and stole a previously unknown portion of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Since none of us could translate them, we sent pictures to an expert in ancient Hebrew to decode them. What he told us is why we killed three bottles of wine tonight.

  Our message from Logan Stevens: “The one of ultimate evil will be found to be a child born into power, as represented by the eagle. This child will come to understand that power in their twenty-first year.”

  Of course, we already determined that the eagle in those scrolls most likely represented the good old US of A, and we also determined that the president’s daughter was days away from turning twenty-one. Right, days. So yeah, we’ve got a whole heap of time to save the world. Not.

  Logan also told us: “The ultimate good will be born on the same date as the ultimate evil within the land of Gaul. The child’s neck will bear the mark of the Chi-Rho.”

  Yes, this is some Harry Potter-level shit, except this is real, and it’s happening now.

  In modern times, Gaul is now known as France. With this information, we’d gone to an expert in cryptology, coding, and much more. Logan Stevens is a genius. He was once John’s closest friend and one of his handlers when we’d initially start working together. He explained that the Chi-Rho, ☧, is a Christogram, a monogram symbol used by some Christians. It overlays the first two letters of the Greek word, Χριστός, meaning Christ in English. Although not technically a Christian cross, the Chi-Rho invokes the authority of Jesus, as well as symbolizing his status as the Christ.

  Our mission sounds pretty simple: find the ultimate good and the ultimate evil and stop them from doing whatever they’re going to do that brings about the end of the whole world.

  Oh, and I want to find John, too, if he really is still alive.

  That way, I can kill him.

  For good, this time.

  Chapter Two

  The next morning, I wake up to cursing. My cursing—and the mother of all hangovers.

  I sit up, grabbing my pounding head and hating myself all over again. Then again, waking up with a hangover is nothing new for me. How does that commercial go? I don’t always drink, but when I do, I drink hard? Okay, maybe that’s not the commercial, but that’s my reality. Yeah, I’ve got a few traits I’m not exactly proud of. I raise both hands to my face and massage my sinuses. This hotel probably doesn’t sell Advil. Ugh.

  “Jesus, Ky. Do you always roll out of bed cursing like a drunken sailor?” asks Ayden—his voice too close. Like, right next to me... in bed.

  I freeze. Oh, hell no.

  Like the victim in a slasher movie, I turn my head to look behind me, dreading what I know I’ll see... and stare at the lump next to me. A quite-naked lump.

  I didn’t. I couldn’t!

  I look down at myself. More nakedness. I grab the comforter and cover my front parts. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

  “What do you think?” he mumbles, his face pressed into the pillow, which is next to his handgun. Having a weapon nearby isn’t paranoia when you’re a covert agent in a foreign land. A drool string spreads out from his lip and across the pillowcase. Nice.

  Oh, screw this modesty crap.

  I swing my legs out of bed, take hold of the fitted sheet in both hands, and give it as hard a yank as I can. Ayden spins off the bed onto the wooden floor. Based on the thud, his landing is anything but graceful. He grumbles a string of curses and pulls himself up, clinging to the bed with one arm while cradling his head in the other. For a second, he looks ready to throw up, but he holds it in. Before he’s regained the ability to see straight, I wrap myself up in the sheet.

  “Holy shit, Ky. What was that for?”

  As I stand there, fidgeting with the sheet, I do a mental scan of my body. There doesn’t seem to be any physical evidence that I actually had sex last night. Or even recently, for that matter. No soreness, no pulled muscles, no obvious need for a shower.

  “For your creepy ass sneaking into bed with me.”

 
“This is my bed, Ky. Jesus. And you’re the one doing the sneaking. Naked sneaking, I might add.”

  I look around the room. His laptop is sitting on the small table, his pants are hanging over the back of the chair. A book by his favorite author, Ray Bradbury, is on the bedside table. The man has read The Martian Chronicles more times than anyone ever should. “I get more out of them with each reading,” he likes to say.

  All of this evidence adds up to one irrefutable conclusion: I am in Ayden’s room. Shit.

  “I don’t remember…” I say.

  “Of course not. I knew you wouldn’t. We both laughed about you probably not remembering in the morning.”

  The last thing I remember is staring at a mostly empty wine bottle in the middle of a bunch of cards. I think… our third bottle. “Did we…?”

  “Oh, hell no. Admittedly, I suggested something kind of along those lines, and you nearly broke my arm.”

  “Then, what was I—?”

  “You said you wanted someone to sleep with you, Ky, but not in that way. You wanted a warm body, an arm around you. I guess I fit the bill.”

  It comes back to me now. I slept on his hairy-ass chest the whole night, with his arm around my bare shoulders. Yes, he tried one more time to wrap his arm around something else, and, yes, I nearly broke his fingers. I grin at that. Mostly, he’s been a good boy. I grin at that, too. Hell, I might’ve been insulted if he hadn’t tried something.

  “Thanks.” I motion to the floor. “And sorry for that.”

  “Sure,” he says. “I’m always happy to help a friend. And then be punished for it.”

  “Any reason we’re naked?”

  “I sleep naked,” he says. “Apparently, you do, too.”

  “And you’re sure we didn’t…?”

  He waves me off with both hands. “Trust me, I wasn’t going to suggest it again.”

  I laugh and head to the bathroom. A quick check confirms we’ve been cuddle buddies only. Maybe a few weeks ago—hell, a few days ago, I might not have been so concerned if we fooled around. But now…