Primal Instinct. Janie Crouch

WITH MULTIPLE cups of coffee, Adrienne drove herself into San Francisco the next day. She needed the coffee after being awake most of the night—first packing and preparing for the trip, and then worrying about the toll it would take on her. The drive was relatively uneventful, but she found herself getting more and more uptight as she got closer to the city. Already she missed her little ranch and the serenity it offered.

      And she hadn’t even put herself in the clutches of the FBI yet.

      She turned the radio up in her old Corolla as she crossed the Bay Bridge and entered the city. She forced herself to sing along to some familiar song by an ’80s hair band. Singing helped her not to think too much and to ignore any buzzing she might start to hear in her head. With a population of nearly a million, Adrienne knew there would be people around the San Francisco area with malicious thoughts. There was nothing Adrienne could do about them, so she knew it was better to try not to hear them at all.

      Adrienne navigated the hills and multiple one-way streets San Fran was famous for and finally parked at the FBI field office’s parking garage. As she shut off her car, Adrienne braced herself to be bombarded by other people’s thoughts in her head or to at least hear a dull roar of competing voices. She was pleasantly surprised to find just the slightest buzz—almost nothing.

      Adrienne smiled. Evidently everybody in San Francisco must be having a good day or something. She didn’t mind, less of a headache—literally—for her.

      Upon entering the building, she was escorted up to the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program offices. She saw Conner Perigo as soon as she entered the main area. Dammit. The man looked just as good as he had yesterday. She had hoped she had imagined the thick black hair and gorgeous green eyes. But evidently not.

      Those green eyes were fixed on her as Agent Perigo’s partner, Seth, came over to meet her in the doorway.

      “Ms. Jeffries, we’re so glad you made it,” Seth said as he led her over to an interrogation room. The two agents sat in the pair of seats on one side of the table and motioned for her to sit in a chair across from them.

      Teams had obviously been drawn, and she wasn’t on theirs.

      “Not that I had much choice,” Adrienne muttered. “But it’s still okay to call me Adrienne.”

      She could feel Conner Perigo’s eyes on her. Adrienne resisted the urge to fidget in her chair.

      Agent Harrington smiled. “That’s good. Please, like I said yesterday, call me Seth.” He pointed at Agent Perigo. “And you can call him Conner. He promises to be on his best behavior today.”

      Somehow Adrienne doubted it.

      “Okay, Seth, Conner it is, then.” Adrienne decided she should try to make the best of the situation—not antagonize the agents, especially Conner. “But before we get started, I want your assurances that all charges or warrants or whatever against Rick Vincent will be dropped once I help you.”

      Conner spoke to her for the first time. “That won’t be a problem, Adrienne. Neither of us were thrilled with how that went down.”

      Adrienne looked at Conner, and he nodded. She believed him. Whoever’s idea it had been to use Vince as leverage, it definitely hadn’t been Conner’s. But that still didn’t mean he liked or trusted her.

      “Okay, Adrienne,” Seth said. “We’d like to get started right away. But to be honest, we’re not exactly sure how to proceed. Maybe you can provide us a little insight.”

      Adrienne took a deep breath. Might as well just get this over with. She had already made sure her purse contained a full bottle of ibuprofen. She would need most of it over the next few days.

      “What can you tell me about the case?”

      She watched as Conner and Seth—now in full FBI agent mode—looked at one another. Obviously until she proved herself and her abilities, they were loath to provide her with too much information.

      “We have a serial killer on our hands. The victims are all women—five in the past ten months,” Conner told her.

      Adrienne waited to see if there would be further information, but evidently that was all they felt comfortable sharing with her.

      “Okay, well, do you have anything from the crime scenes? Particularly anything the killer may have touched.”

      Seth responded this time. “There was no forensic evidence found at any of the scenes. Whoever the killer is, he’s very careful.”

      No forensic evidence made it more difficult for Adrienne to get any sort of clear bearings about the killer, but not impossible.

      “Do you have anything the killer might have touched, even with gloves on?”

      Conner and Seth looked at each other once again. She saw Conner give a slight negative shake of his head.

      Seth handed her an envelope that had been lying on the table. “We have some pictures of the crime scene. Will that help?”

      Adrienne nodded and took the pictures. She braced herself as she opened the envelope. Death scenes were always jarring. She took out the first set of pictures, slowly looking at each one. The dead woman in the picture had been left in what looked like an abandoned warehouse of some sort. Multiple stab wounds covered her body. Different pictures showed the poor woman at various angles.

      Three or four pictures in, Adrienne realized that, while she was horrified at what she was seeing, none of it was causing her any pain. Which was great, except for the fact that she also was not getting any insights or feelings from the pictures whatsoever.

      Adrienne went through the entire set of crime scene photos for the woman in the warehouse. She then looked through them all again to be sure.

      She felt nothing.

      Adrienne looked up to find Conner and Seth watching her intently. She didn’t know what to say—nothing like this had happened before when she had helped the FBI in the past. What was wrong with her?

      “Do you have pictures of any of the other cases?” Adrienne finally asked.

      “Yes. The ones you were just looking at is the first victim,” Conner replied as Seth got out another set to show her.

      First victim. Adrienne relaxed for a moment. Maybe the reason she couldn’t get any feelings from those pictures was because of the length of time that had passed between then and now. That had never happened to her before, but it seemed plausible.

      Adrienne tried to clear all thoughts from her head as she took the next set of photos. Another stabbing scene with a young woman. This time it seemed she had been left under a highway overpass bridge.

      Again Adrienne was horrified by the violence but felt nothing in terms of the killer’s thoughts, plans or motivations.

      This continued for the next hour as Adrienne pored over the photos again and again. Nothing. Her insight wasn’t working at all. Although the agents across from her never said anything, she could tell their frustration was growing.

      “I’m sorry,” Adrienne said, handing the photos back across the table. “I’m not getting anything from any of these.”

      Conner Perigo didn’t look a bit surprised. “Do pictures not work for you?”

      “They did in the past. The glimpses I would get from crime scene photos weren’t as clear as actually being at the crime scene or touching something the perpetrator touched, but there was always something.”

      “I see.” Perigo’s smug tone grated on Adrienne’s nerves. Obviously her lack of ability to perform here was just confirming what he had suspected all along—she was a fake.

      Adrienne sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes with both hands. On one hand she was happy her gifts weren’t working—it definitely saved her a literal headache—but on the other hand she desperately wanted to show Conner Perigo he was wrong.

      Adrienne