Privilege (Special Tactical Units Division 2)

He hesitated, but she had the right to know, especially since he was going to step away from her to do a quick surveillance.

“Someone’s following us.”

She dug her fingers into his arm. “Who?”

“I don’t know who. I only know that somebody’s—Bianca. I want you to stand right here.”

“No! Chay. Don’t—”

“Baby. I’m not going anywhere. I just want to take a fast look around, okay?”

He knew that was the last thing she wanted him to do, but she swallowed hard and whispered, “Okay.”

He gave her a quick kiss. She clung to him and he hated to let go of her, but he really didn’t have a choice. If there was the slightest chance he could get a look at whoever was stalking her…

Another quick kiss.

Then he stepped forward in the doorway, just enough so he had a clear view of the sidewalk.

Slowly, he scanned the scene before him. He missed the high-powered binoculars he’d have been using were he on deployment, but with a field of vision so reduced, his own eyes would probably be sufficient.

Nobody seemed suspicious.

Lots of people walking. Walking slowly. That was unusual by New York standards, but it was a warm Saturday night and, for the most part, nobody would be in a hurry. Cars and taxis moved briskly beyond the sidewalk. He didn’t pay them more than cursory attention.

You didn’t follow walkers from a moving vehicle.

His tension eased.

He must have been wrong. He was, once in a while. His ability to sense something before others did sometimes suffered from sensory overload. And this was definitely the place for sensory overload. The beep of horns. The rumble of car engines. The omnipresent background sounds of people walking and talking and laughing…

There!

Chay’s pulse quickened.

A tall figure. Thin. A mop of unruly brown hair that could easily be red in the proper lighting…

And then the figure was gone. Swallowed up by a clump of laughing pedestrians and there wasn’t a goddamned thing he could do about it without leaving Bianca alone.

No way was he about to let that happen.

One last look. Then he stepped back.

“Whom did you see?”

Her voice was steady, but he could hear the faint whisper of fear in it along with that telltale grammatical stiffness.

He slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Nobody,” he replied, and, hell, it wasn’t a lie. He hadn’t seen anyone, not clearly enough to identify. The man he’d glimpsed could have been the guy from Cuppa Joe’s as easily as it could have been somebody else.

“Honey,” he said gently, as they moved out of the doorway and began walking, “I’m going to be blunt. We need to talk.”

“Talk?”

He nodded. “I know how you feel about discussing your patients, but there’s no other way to go about this.”

“You really believe the man doing this is someone I’m treating? Because I don’t. The only one, the only possible one it could be, is a former patient, the one I told you about, and he’s in treatment. His doctor would surely know if he was causing this problem.”

Causing this problem.