Author's note: As I was reading AJ Sherwood's 'Jon's Mysteries' series, I keep noticing Tyson skulking around in the background. He intrigued me, and my own head canon started to grow around him. It ended up dragging in another minor character: Libby, cousin to Carol and Sharon, who was mentioned briefly in 'Jon's Spooky Corpse Conundrum'.

I got AJ's permission to take her characters and run with them. I'm trying not to completely take over them or write anything that would contradict the setup of AJ's universe, but I've already had a lot of fun playing with them, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

All the main Psy crew will have cameos, but not Mack and Brandon, who are off setting up their house together. Sorry for any inaccurate local details, I'm not American but tried to do some research. I'm not keen on the story title, so if anyone wants to suggest a better one, please do.

Tyson's Unexpectedly Romantic Criminal Trace n' Chase

Chapter One

Tyson

I sipped the last of my protein smoothie, put my travel mug back in the driver side cup holder, and locked up the SUV, heading into BNA's main terminal.

Berry Field Nashville only had one airport terminal, but four different concourses led into it, heading both to departures and from arrivals. I kept an eye on the floor as I made my way to the southern end of the main terminal, then loitered near the juncture of concourses C and D, not sure which gate the domestic flight from San Diego would exit from.

Things were pretty quiet this time of the morning, though several other people were also standing around, waiting for early flights to come in. When I looked, different scenes ranged around the terminal, like a series of movies each playing on its own screen.

A businessman in a suit holding up a sign, waiting to pick up a professional contact.

Old friends slapping each other on the back in greeting, sharing a joked that had them both nearly doubled over with laughter.

Grandparents kneeling down to embrace the grandkids who raced towards them, full of energy while their weary mother trailed behind them.

My gaze was drawn to the opening of concourse D, where a reunited couple laughed in pure delight as they came together, swaying gently in place while hugging each other close, pressing tender kisses to tear-stained cheeks. The sight made me smile, though I had to push down the usual pang of longing.

I might look like a tough guy on the outside, but underneath I was a softie and a hopeless romantic. Despite loving love, I had been single for a long time now. As much as I got a warm glow from seeing happy people in love, it made me wistful seeing what I had always wanted for myself.

I focused my attention on watching both concourses, snapping into work mode. Today I was one of those professionals picking up a work contact, though I was dressed in my usual smart-casual clothes that afforded me ease of movement rather than a stuffy suit.

As well as a colleague, the person I was picking up was akin to family, though I had never before met her in person before.

Carol and Sharon, two of my colleagues who were sisters, had a cousin coming into town to stay a few weeks. Technically it was a social visit, but Libby had accepted my boss Jim's offer to act as a consultant, helping us out with our ever-growing caseload. The arrangement would no doubt be profitable for Libby, and the business would benefit from the opportunity to employ a rare set of skills, if only for the two weeks she was visiting.

Even in our business, Libby's gift was unusual. And that was saying something.

Psy, the detective agency I worked for, specialised in cases that required psychics. Only two of our actual employees had psychic abilities. The rest of us supported them as anchors, or did the additional groundwork involved in working psychic cases, or had our own specialities.

I personally found psychics intriguing. During my time working for Nashville PD, I hadn't had much experience with psychics, though I had known plenty of police officers who disliked working with them. Some folks were sure that psychics were nothing but scam artists whose 'proven' abilities were faked and based on spiritual bunkum. Others, who had more ego than sense, believed psychics cut corners and used cheats to speed up the investigation progress, making old-school gumshoes obsolete relics of the past.

I had seen far too many positive results to disbelieve the ability of psychics. And it was stupid to feel like my job security as a detective was threatened. Sure psychics could pluck leads out of the ether that would take us mortals months to grasp, if we ever did; but someone still needed to follow up those leads and do the actual legwork. Psychics just meant the difference between going in completely blind, or starting already knowing which direction we should be looking in. Anything that improved success rates and helped ensure the safety of the general public was more than fine in my book.

Of our two psychics, I tended to work with Carol most often. As a Reader, she could work remotely from Psy's meditation rooms, which held all the tools she needed to scry for clues. Carol's ability made me wish I'd been able to work several dozen of the PD's cold cases with her. She could pinpoint an object or person's location within a colossal range and with incredible accuracy, so long as she had some source to focus on. A few fabric fibres, a crumpled document, a blood sample - I had seen her find perps or victims with no starting point other than these seemingly mundane objects. She could do multiple readings in a row, tracking a person on the move or verifying facts based on multiple bits of evidence, before she began to tire and her anchor Sharon declared she needed a break. Watching her work was fascinating: she used ordinary maps, but her aura would mark them in glowing red with trails and directions until the inevitable x would pinpoint her target. It was almost like watching someone perform a magic spell.

Despite also being a Reader, Jonathan's psychic ability was very different, but no less impressive. Though he may not have an outwardly visible psychic aura, what he could do was incredible: he could see the auras of others, reading their emotions and personal history as though they were an open book. He was like a human polygraph and the world's greatest psychological profiler all in one. As possibly the most powerful Reader in the country, he could see guilt at a glance, detect falsehoods in the most innocent-faced testimony, see old crimes in meridian lines that had never been reported. A criminal hotline with its own extensive protocols had been setup just to accommodate how effective Jon was at detecting crimes before anyone else knew about them besides the perpetrator. When I wasn't verifying leads for Carol, I was investigating leads generated by that hotline, or following up Jon's interviews by procuring physical evidence to support his testimonies.

In the early days of my employment here, I had sometimes accompanied Jon to interviews. Given what he could do, a lot of people had it in for him. When I first met him as a PD officer, he'd had a knife sticking out of his side*. He had been stabbed by his own partner, so I could well imagine all the worse things actual criminals he had caught would love to do to him. I was pretty sure at least half the prisoner population in Nashville's various correctional facilities would rejoice at the chance to scratch his eyes out.

That wasn't happening any time soon though, not with Donovan now accompanying him everywhere.

Psychics typically had an anchor: someone who put their best interests first, took care of them and protected them. I had originally been hired as police consultant, but I had acted as Jon's bodyguard plenty of times, when the need arose (as it often did). Though I was more than happy to keep him safe as much as I could, I wasn't his anchor.

Being an anchor wasn't the same as being a partner, not in a professional sense. Anchors were bonded to their psychics on a soul-deep level, so psychic/anchor pairings tended to be between romantic couples or close family.

I liked Jon as a good friend, and I knew he was gay, but we had never been interested in each other like that. Sure, as a somewhat heteroflexible guy, I could admit he was attractive. But I had no inclination to romance him, nor did he have any desire to romance me, and being good buddies wasn't enough justification to sign up as a lifelong soulmate.

It was just as well, for two reasons.

One: Jon's ability was death to all electronics in his vicinity. He had killed four of my phones, three computer monitors, two fitbits, one smart watch, and a pair of expensive noise-cancelling headphones in the time I had known him. He was always extremely apologetic and offered to replace what he broke; but I wasn't prepared to live like a technophobe for the sake of hanging out with him, no matter how good of a cook he was.

Reason two: Donovan would likely squish anyone who got in between himself and Jon. That was particularly true now that the pair were engaged, and after Jon had been kidnapped by serial killing during a recent case. Once they got back from McMinnville, Donovan had followed Jon around like a puppy, ready to spring into attack dog mode if anyone so much as looked at him sideways.

It was both beautiful and bizarre, how deeply attuned to each other those two were. They were like the sickening stereotypical star-crossed couple from the schmaltziest romance novel. They moved around the office as a single unit, communicated with each other through their eyes alone, doted on each other adoringly when they thought no one was watching, snuck off to the storage room to make out when business was slow (I had learned to check to see if they were in their shared office before going to get a manila folder or a box of paperclips, having walked in on them more than once).

And they weren't the only ones who were amorous around the workplace. Garrett, our other police consultant, had been dating our IT guy Sho for almost a year. They were getting pretty serious; they had moved in together a few months ago, and it wouldn't surprise me if they announced their engagement any day now. They were both short in stature, but big in attitude: Sho, though slightly more reticent, had a biting wit that he unleashed around people he was comfortable with; while Garrett was well over two hundred pounds of army badassery and irrepressible attitude contained in a pint-sized frame.

They were a close second behind Jon and Donovan in the schmoopy stakes.

Having so many romantic partners round the office, my inner romantic reacted much like it had to the happy couple at the airport: it swooned over the lovey-dovey displays of affection, then sulked that it didn't have someone of its own to be affectionate over.

I didn't begrudge Jonovan and Shoett for getting together, but I was starting to feel like the odd man out.

Carol and Sharon had one of those uncanny sibling bonds, so they tended to hang out together during break time as well as working hours.

Marcy and I had been on one date back just after I was first hired, but we had figured out we were better off as friends. We regularly regaled each other with war stories from our respective dating lives; though Marcy had a lot more of them since unlike me, she seemed to revel in the unpredictable nature of the dating scene, enjoying meeting new people all the time and perfectly satisfied with keeping things casual.

That left Jim, who had been married to his high school sweetheart for nearly four decades now. He and his wife Debra were verging on becoming empty-nesters, having raised three wonderful kids together.

Some people had all the luck, huh?

Ah, well. My luck could still change. I was in my late thirties, so I still had plenty of time to meet the love of my life.

And I shouldn't depend on having a romantic partner to complete me. I was healthy, had a job I found fulfilling, worked with good people who I considered to be friends, lived in a great house in a nice area, earned enough to be pretty comfortably well off. Sure it would be nice to have someone to share all that with; but since I didn't, there was no denying that what I had was still really good.

A few more people started to come down concourse C, shouldering bags or wheeling suitcases. I perked up, getting my head back in the game as I looked out for Libby.

Carol and Sharon had said that she resembled them enough that I shouldn't have any trouble recognizing her. I was sceptical, as I saw more than one woman with brown hair come off the flight, though none of them seemed to be our visiting psychic.

Then a tall, slim woman appeared round the angle of the walkway. As soon as I clapped eyes on her, I realized she must be Libby.

She had Carol and Sharon's colouring and the same heart-shaped face. However, her chestnut-brown hair was straighter and pulled up in a ponytail that was still sleek despite coming off a five-hour flight. Her skin was a few shades darker than her cousins and her hair had lighter gold highlights, as if she spent more time out in the sun. Her cheekbones were more prominent, and her hazel eyes had a slight upward tilt at the outside corners.

She was dressed in a similar smart-casual style to myself: a blazer over a simple white t-shirt, woven trousers that were form-fitting but looked like they were stretch material. The whole outfit looked easy to move in.

I approved; I did enough fieldwork that I prioritised comfort over style. When I was with the PD, I'd worked with consultants who did little more than push pencils, turning up at the precinct in over-tight pencil skirts or three-piece suits that cost more than a month of my salary. I had more respect for someone who dressed to do some actual work, rather than wore their pay check in a pretty effort to impress.

And it wasn't just the choice of practical clothes that impressed me. The blazer was tight enough that I could see the biceps beneath them were toned. The trousers were tailored enough to show off the shape of a defined calf. And the shoes peeking out from under the pants cuffs were some very high-end running shoes, a bit beat-up and out of place compared to the rest of the outfit. Those were definitely not athli-leisure sneakers; those were some serious running gear. I wouldn't have been surprised to see them on the feet of an Olympic-level marathon runner.

Seeing those shoes reminded me of what I had read in Libby's professional profile: she was a Kinetic Tracer.

Her psychic ability made sense as I watched her stride out of the gate, an oversized duffel bag slung over her shoulder. The way she moved was lithe, almost elegant, but what was arresting was the sense of purpose in each step. This was a person who was meant to move. She cut through the crowd of dawdling passengers like the prow of a ship through waves, each pace measured and assured. Her posture was relaxed, but there was a sense of rangy power within it. I imagined she could take off from a languid walk into a flat-out sprint in two seconds flat if she needed to.

As she approached along the concourse, she slowed, for the first time looking uncertain. She must have been told that I would be here to meet her, but she hadn't spotted me yet.

Remembering what Carol and Sharon had told me in preparation for this meeting, I walked toward her, waving to get her attention, then stopped when I was still three feet away from her.

"Liberty Palmer? Hi, I'm Tyson Parata. Welcome to Nashville."

* The stabbing incident was mentioned in 'Jon's Downright Ridiculous Shooting Case' by AJ Sherwood; see my previous fanfic, 'Jon's Severely Stabby Partner Pandemonium', for my own take on how Jon first met Tyson.