oO0Oo

Shawn had driven blindly for hours and was a little surprised to find himself alive and approaching the beach near the pier as the sun rose. While his body may have gone through the motions of driving, his mind had been elsewhere.

He had been reliving his time with the CIA; running through memories he'd shoved so far into the dark recesses of his mind he'd hoped never to see them again.

The memory that had stood out the most was the day he'd left New York. He'd stayed at the hospital until he knew Mia was out of danger. He remembered their final conversation as if it had happened yesterday:

Mia, still weak and lying in her hospital bed had argued, "Shawn, you're too good to quit. We need… I need your help."

He'd shaken his head and responded, "I can't do this anymore. And it's not just because of what I did to Bolibar—although that would be enough… You're an empath. You may know what people are feeling but you don't know why. You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

He'd taken a deep breath and tried. "Imagine you had a pair of glasses that could see people, see through them. Into their hearts. What they've done. The parts that are locked down so deeply, even they are afraid to see. You see them. You carry them. Until the only person you can't see anymore is yourself." He'd looked into her sad eyes and declared, "If I don't stop, I'll disappear completely."

She had tried to guilt him into staying. "I know what it's like to live with something no one else has. No matter what it feels like, it's a gift. And you have a responsibility whether you like it or not. It's wrong for you to leave."

Shawn had responded drily. "Let he who has no sin… Fairly certain that isn't you." And with one last look, he'd turned his back on Mia and the CIA and disappeared into the night.

Now he was here, under the pier, once again using his gifts to find and stop a terrorist. He'd blindly driven to this spot because he knew. He knew Naijar was here. He knew why the man was intent on killing innocent civilians. He even knew exactly where the device was and how much time was left.

Naijar had timed it so that the pier would be full of festive party goers: families, groups of teenagers on school holiday, couples on dates, retirees…

What Shawn didn't know was how to stop him without 'reaching' inside his chest and murdering him in cold blood.

He had one hour and eight minutes to figure it out.

His phone kept vibrating. Why didn't they understand that at this point, they really didn't need his phone in order to communicate with him? Mia was the only one who really knew, and she wasn't using it. She and Lassiter were on a wild goose chase to the college. Well, that was fine with him. He didn't want them here anyway.

He would do this alone.

No one else would be hurt.

No one else would die.

He turned his phone off.

A vision of Mia falling, her chest marred by a splash of red flashed across his memory. He blinked it away.

Gus and Juliet would be heading in his direction soon. He needed to have this all wrapped up before they arrived. Now if only he could figure out a plan that didn't involve murder.

Abeed Naijar had his reasons. Shawn didn't agree with them, obviously, but he understood them. In spite of becoming citizens and raising their children in the good old USA, the Naijars had kept close ties with family back home. Many of them—so many that it made Shawn's heart ache—had been killed in the fighting in the Middle East. Some were killed by one side some by the other—it didn't matter. In their eyes, the US forces didn't seemto be helping much, quite the opposite. In fact, they blamed the US for quite a bit of their personal pain.

The truth rarely mattered in cases like this.

Abeed's two brothers had joined the military in order to pay for college – never expecting to see action. They had both been killed in the country their parents had worked so hard to escape.

So much violent death – so much anger – so much pain – so much sadness – it had to come out somehow. Sadness always did. And sometimes, as Shawn himself had experienced, sometimes tears were not enough.

So Naijar had built his own WMD. He was determined, Shawn knew, to detonate it – killing himself, the families on the pier, and everyone in a five mile radius. Shawn searched his mind for a chip in his plan, an imperfection in his determination, anything he could use to convince Naijar not to do this horrible thing.

He couldn't find it.

He turned his mind toward the timer. Forty-three minutes now. Time flies when you're having fun. Except he wasn't. The people above his head were. They were having a wonderful, carefree time. They didn't know they were about to die. Remembering his CIA training, he tuned out their thoughts.

He closed his eyes and 'saw' Naijar. The man was pacing, impatient, angry. The sounds of joy above him—to his ears—so horribly unfair.

Juliet and Gus were on their way. He tuned them out too. Their frantic worry for his safety would only distract him.

He had to stop Naijar alone. But how? He'd searched the man's mind for anything he could use to talk him down. But there was no fear, no sense of self-preservation, no hint of regret about what he was going to do.

He wouldn't be able to talk him out of it.

He had no tools, no way to restrain him. He could knock the guy's head against one of the pier supports, but he didn't trust himself not to bash his skull in.

He didn't know enough about the device to disable it. He'd be just as likely to set it off himself. And if that happened – if the device went off – he knew what he would have to do to contain the lethal gas.

He'd rather not.

As he'd told Gus, the 'Firestarter' thing really freaked him out. He didn't like doing it. And the CIA'd told him it wasn't his best ability anyway – he had too little control over it – so they hadn't seen the value in pursuing it either.

Gus and Juliet were almost there, and Shawn reluctantly accepted that he would need their help after all. He would just have to keep things together until they arrived.

If he concentrated hard enough, he could simply hold Naijar still, paralyze him so he couldn't set off the detonator. Then, once Jules had him in cuffs, he would figure out how to stop the timer. No one would be hurt.

He got as close as he could to Naijar without being seen. He would have to time this carefully.

When Juliet and Gus were less than three minutes away, he reached out with his mind and concentrated. Suddenly Naijar couldn't move.

Shawn stepped out from behind the piling and Naijar's eyes widened when he realized what was happening. He opened his mouth. Shawn shut it for him. The stream of hate that was about to spew from the terrorist would not help anything.

"How do you turn it off?" Shawn asked calmly. He knew from his previous experience with the CIA that just asking the question would bring the answer to the man's mind.

A criminal might be able to keep his mouth shut, but it was another matter entirely to keep your mind from thinking the answer. And that was all Shawn needed.

He was concentrating so hard on Naijar and learning how to disable the weapon that he missed Gus and Juliet's arrival.

"Shawn!"

Gus's shout of desperate fear and worry startled Shawn. His concentration slipped just a tiny bit.

But Naijar was ready. He took full advantage of the slip, freed one arm from Shawn's control and grabbed the pistol that he'd tucked in his waistband. He pointed it at the intruders and fired before Shawn could stop him.

"NOOOO!" Shawn cried as he watched his best friend fall.

It was all happening again.

oO0Oo

"This is wrong," Lassiter said to the woman seated beside him as they sped, lights flashing and siren screaming, toward the college.

"What do you mean?" Mia asked.

Lassiter was thoroughly frustrated, not to mention angry. "I looked into what little information you gave us on my own time." He glanced at her. "You depend far too much on people with so-called 'abilities,'" he spat the word, "however useful they may be at times. You need to remember good old-fashioned investigation."

"What did you find?"

When this was all over, Lassiter knew he was going to have to take a personal inventory. He was going to have to accept the fact that while Spencer would never get his respect, he did at least deserve his acceptance as one of the team. The guy was good. And he was willing to sacrifice himself to protect his friends—'to protect and serve.' These were qualities that Lassiter could not dismiss. But he was never—ever—going to admit that Spencer was psychic—at least not out loud. This was one case where he would allow himself to ignore the evidence.

You didn't always need evidence. There was such a thing as a gut feeling. And that was what he now shared with the agent. "Your terrorist isn't interested in some stuffy old cops and politicians, no matter how great the collateral damage might be—they are not his primary target. This guy is full of hate. He's going after the happiest place in town and you know it."

When Mia didn't immediately respond, Lassiter took it as assent, grabbed the wheel and yanked them into a U-turn.

"This is a huge risk," she commented.

"Yes, it is," he agreed.

oO0Oo

Gus fell to the ground and Shawn lost any semblance of control. Without thinking, he started to run toward his friend—no other thought in his mind.

Naijar took off in the opposite direction, reaching into his pocket as he did so. He pulled out the detonator and hit the switch.

Shawn's mind was roaring and all he could see was Gus crumpled in the sand. But Juliet's voice somehow got through. She was shouting at him. He turned around just in time to see the device detonate.

"Hold your breath!" he shouted. He lifted his hands and did the only thing he could: He summoned every ounce of energy in his body and threw fire at the gas that was erupting from the canisters.

It worked. The gas was burning off.

But it kept coming. The canisters were quite large and Shawn began to worry that he wouldn't be able to get it all. He had so little control. He couldn't regulate or direct the flames. The only thing he could do was keep pushing.

His hands burned. His nose bled. Tears streamed down his face as the heat and light tortured his eyes. His whole body felt like it was on fire. But none of that mattered. Nothing else mattered. Even Gus was forced from his thoughts as he poured more and more flame on the deadly cloud.

His vision was tunneling. He was in so much pain.

He was tiring.

Unable to keep his feet, he dropped to his knees but kept the fire coming.

Still the gas erupted from the canisters.

He wasn't going to be able to get it all.

He was beyond exhausted, but he had to keep going.

He had to.

Blood began to trickle from his ears.

He didn't notice.

He kept going. Kept burning.

The roaring and pounding in his head grew. His vision shrank.

The world faded to black.

Shawn knew no more.

TBC…

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