by Nalini Singh
"We'll find one," Miane said, and after a short conversation with Malachai, showed them four other images on the phone. "Can your teleporter go to any of these people? They're all missing, too, and it's possible they're being held in the same location as Persephone."
Zaira waited for Vasic's response once Aden sent through the request, her stomach tense.
"No," Aden said at last. "Either their features have changed in a substantial way--or they're dead."
Miane's anger was black ice. "Olivia wasn't scarred when she disappeared," she said. "Would that kind of a change destabilize a teleport lock?"
Aden nodded. "When it's that extensive, yes."
"The depth and degree of Jim Savua's Halcyon scars would've had the same effect," Zaira said, wondering if Jim's reaction to the drug had in fact given his and Olivia's captors the idea of destroying their victims' faces just in case BlackSea gained access to a teleporter like Vasic. "Persephone was likely left alone only because by the time the people behind this began to scar their prisoners, her face had already changed naturally."
Anger crackled in the air and it wasn't all coming from the changeling side.
"It appears your enemy has thought of every angle," Aden said into the tense quiet. "However, if you have any other missing packmates you want our teleporters to try to find, we're willing to make the attempt. A single mistake on their end could break things wide open for both the squad and BlackSea."
Miane inclined her head in regal acceptance of the offer. "Malachai will send you more photos, and we will share the information about Olivia's e-mail account so you can track from your end while we do it from ours." Her chilly gaze, which had gone to her lieutenant, shifted back to Aden. "We did not attack you and have no desire to make an enemy of you."
A strand of her hair escaping to slide against her face, she added, "You should also know that Jim was no drug addict. He lost two family members to a drug that was created by a sea changeling"--a tightening of her lips--"and that affects our biochemistry specifically. It turned him adamantly against drugs."
"It could also be argued that he had a genetic predisposition to addiction."
"Do you know your people?" A blunt question.
"I get your point."
"Olivia, too, was strong and healthy, with no tendencies toward mind-altering substances."
"Could she have built the poison bombs?"
"Yes. She's a chemist, a very good one."
Stepping out into a patch of moonlight, Aden said, "It appears your packmates were forcibly addicted to keep them on a short leash. Olivia was likely addicted after building the bombs--or the components at least."
Yes, Zaira thought, that made sense. Olivia's captors had used Persephone as the leash at first, but had wanted further control when they sent Olivia out into the world. In all probability, she'd come to the end of her expertise, and was thus rendered expendable. Now, so would her daughter be.
Screaming anger howling in her skull, Zaira knew there was a good chance Persephone was already dead, killed when her mother outlived her usefulness, but until she knew for certain, she would consider the child alive and a hostage.
"I would not sacrifice my people this way," Miane said in answer to the unasked question in the air. "I would not degrade them."
Zaira believed her. There was something undeniably ruthless about Miane, but her grief was real, as was her fury.
"The e-mail details." Malachai passed over a slip of paper.
Zaira immediately saw why he'd been able to get into his packmate's account so easily.
The password was "Persephone."
Looking up with her own fury a firestorm inside her, she said, "No child should ever be put in a cage."
"It appears we understand one another." Reaching into a hidden pocket, Miane retrieved a black card engraved with her name and contact details and gave it to Zaira. "Should you need to get in touch with me. Now, we must hunt."
It looks like you have made a political ally, Aden said as Miane and her guards left.
Zaira held the card so Aden could see it, too. I think she sensed that we are very similar in certain ways.
"You should take her up on her offer."
"For political purposes?"
"No, out of friendship. If nothing else, you will have a conversation with a woman rumored to be a mako shark in changeling form--though I'm not so certain she's anything so explicable."
Zaira slid away the card. "Friendship." She'd never considered the concept in relation to anyone but Aden, certainly never with anyone outside the squad. But she'd already broken countless rules. Why not this one, too?
Chapter 52
DEVRAJ SANTOS WAS on the phone with one of Aden's people, hammering out details of the training protocol they were creating for the fiercely strong and unique psychic abilities now appearing in the Forgotten population, when Aubry ran into his office. Dev took one look at the urgency on his normally laid-back vice director's face and cut the conversation short.
"What is it?" he asked Aubry.
"There's just been a kidnapping attempt against five of our children."
Dev's anger was an arctic thing. The Forgotten had been through this once before, would rise up in bloody war to stop a second wave of innocent death. "The ones with SnowDancer and DarkRiver?" The two packs had offered safe harbor for gifted Forgotten children who needed to grow into their strength away from covetous eyes.
"Safe." Aubry flipped an organizer toward him, his Texan drawl having turned clipped and hard. "These five are too young to relocate, were playing together in a small park when a fucking assault force came after them."
Taking the organizer, Dev flipped through the images from the scene. "Injuries?"
"Kids are scared but safe. All three of the parents who were shooting the breeze while the kids played are down with severe wounds." His hand tightened, tendons pushing up against the deep brown of his skin. "The adults confirmed the attackers were Psy, and that they had a symbol on their uniforms that traces back to the Marshall family."
"How are the children safe if this was an assault force?"
"Luck," Aubry said, voice grim. "Tag and Tiara were armed and close enough to respond to the telepathic cries for help. Otherwise, we'd be looking at dead parents and abducted children."
In spite of his anger, Dev could see what Aubry couldn't, blinded as the other man was by the terror and pain he'd witnessed at the site. "Why would the team wear identifiable gear, Aubry?" It went against every tenet of black ops. "Especially that of a prominent family?"
"Stupidity? Arrogance?" Aubry ran both hands over his clean-shaven skull, his eyes glittering. "Tiara and Tag shot a couple of them, so we've got blood at least, even if they all escaped. Fucking cowards."
Dev walked out with Aubry, heading to go see the injured and the scared, but his mind continued to pick holes in the believability of the scenario. Yes, a number of Psy had proven they'd cross any lines to obtain power and Dev's people were starting to display some very unusual ones, but the Marshall family was a business empire, not a military one.
"Don't forget," Katya said to him that night as they stood on the balcony of their apartment in a soaring high-rise. "The 'Marshall' part of their name comes from Marshall Hyde. The family changed its surname to his first name when he first rose to power in the Council. Ruthless is their nature."
"But the Marshalls are smart." The family group was a significant force in the financial world. "This wasn't smart--if I know their identity, I can launch a retaliatory attack."
Katya nodded slowly, the wind pasting strands of her fine blonde hair to his shirtsleeve. She'd grown it out until it now reached the middle of her back, and every so often, she'd smile at him and hand him a brush in memory of the time when he'd carefully untangled her hair though they'd been strangers to one another.
"Yes," she murmured. "The Marshalls never pick fights unless they know they'll win."
Sliding his arm around her, he tucked her
to his side. "My gut tells me that, no matter what, there was always meant to be at least one survivor who could point us toward the Marshalls."
A frown of concentration on his wife's face, her skin gilded gold by the sun she'd been getting as she helped play babysitter to a friend's young and active children while the friend and her husband took a long-overdue honeymoon. "Maybe the Forgotten and the Marshalls have a common enemy," she said at last. "Could be you're supposed to get angry and eliminate them."
Dev ran his fingers desultorily over her nape, satisfaction uncurling in his gut when her eyes closed, a sigh of pleasure escaping her throat. "It's also possible the family was arrogant enough to think they didn't need subterfuge, that it'd be an easy snatch."
"How do we find out which?"
"Pax Marshall and I are going to have a conversation." Pax might have a rep as a stone-cold bastard, but if he was behind this, he had no idea who he was baiting.
Chapter 53
FRUSTRATED BY THE inability of their tech people to trace the e-mails Olivia had received back to an identifiable source--even more so after Vasic confirmed he couldn't lock on to any of the people BlackSea had tagged as missing--Zaira went to speak to the team she'd charged with pinning down Olivia's life prior to the moment when she'd been captured.
"The trail goes dead in Milan," Mica told her, after running through the data they had to date. "It's as if she appeared out of nowhere a month ago."
"Or out of a holding facility." Pulling up the photograph of Persephone, she examined the child in detail, fighting her anger to think clearly. "She's not thin enough to suggest she's been mistreated a long time."
Mica nodded. "Mother and daughter held together until the mother was dropped off in Milan?"
"Yes, I think so." Zaira stared at the image of the little girl who clutched at her doll and could feel her fear, her confusion at what she'd have seen as abandonment. "Focus on Milan. Use facial recognition software. Unless she was teleported in, which in itself will tell us something, she will have used transportation at some point."
Leaving Mica to organize the detail-oriented task, she realized that hovering would achieve nothing. She'd already sent search algorithms out into the PsyNet in case Persephone's abduction had been mentioned there, and she'd touched base with Miane Leveque to see if the water-based changelings had any further data.
The answer was no, though Miane intended to return the next day to speak to Olivia again, once the medication had had a chance to further clear her system.
In the interim, Zaira needed to do something to burn off her anger and she owed the teenagers in the valley a martial arts lesson. She'd canceled it the day before, part of the fallout from the attempted attack on the compound, but it was important she fulfill her commitment today--because Persephone wasn't the only child about whom Zaira was concerned.
Beatrice remained on her mind.
She made sure to make eye contact with the seventeen-year-old once the class assembled under the valley sunlight. The brown-haired girl had taken position on the periphery of the back row and couldn't seem to hold the contact.
Not pushing the issue, Zaira took the class through the advanced training session. For the first time, she didn't only correct mistakes, she made sure to offer praise for tasks well done. That didn't come naturally to her, but she was learning along with her students. The teenagers didn't react to her change in tactics as openly as the much younger Tavish had, but they lingered after the session to speak to her in a way they'd never before done--like flowers parched of sunlight, then given just a ray.
A single act of kindness, she thought again, could change a life.
"Beatrice," she said when she saw the girl about to break away. "Stay. I want to speak to you."
"Yes, sir."
Finishing her conversations with the other trainees without rushing them, Zaira went over to the teenager. "Walk with me."
Zaira led the compliant girl toward the trees beyond the training area. It was a significant distance but Zaira didn't push the speed. The gentle pace was good for Beatrice, would further stretch out her muscles. Only once they were far enough from the compound that no one could overhear them, did she say, "Who beat you?"
The teenager froze, her eyes skating away as her skin paled. "No one."
"Beatrice, I can tell by the way you move, the way you moved during training." She well remembered how her own muscles had felt after a beating, how every movement had become agony. Beatrice was past that first excruciating stage and into the aching stiffness. "Who beat you?"
The girl stood mute, her eyes huge.
"You feel loyalty?"
A nod. "He has been . . . kind to me."
"He may simply need an education in our new protocols." Zaira stifled her instinctive and aggressive protective response because she knew not all the older teachers fully understood the changes in the squad. "Physical torture of any kind is now unacceptable--that means we won't torture him, either."
Zaira would also make sure she didn't go near him, because if she did, she'd smash his bones to dust. "He'll simply be retrained."
Beatrice squeezed one of her hands with the other.
"You are now part of my family," Zaira said. "As such, I have responsibility for your well-being."
"Wh-what?"
Zaira realized Walker and Cristabel must not have had a chance to interview Beatrice yet. However, given Beatrice's physical state, any further delay was no longer an option. "You are now part of my family unit," she reiterated. "That means you are mine to care for. Mine and Aden's."
A tremor went through Beatrice's body. "Why?" she whispered. "I'm not special. Not like you or Aden."
Zaira touched her hand to Beatrice's cheek in a conscious gesture of affection. "We're all special to the people who are our own."
The girl's body began to shake. "I--I--"
Zaira hauled her into an embrace, acting on the instincts of the feral, broken survivor she'd once been. She was careful of the girl's injuries, but her hold was in no way tentative. That wasn't what Beatrice needed. "There's no cause for fear. I'm capable of killing almost every other Arrow in the compound." Sometimes a bigger nightmare was the only thing that kept other nightmares at bay. "Those I can't kill, Aden and I can together. No one can hurt you."
Gripping at her with desperate hands, Beatrice whispered, "I failed my mission."
"What mission?" Beatrice wasn't yet authorized for live missions, so if her trainer had taken her on one, he'd broken fundamental Arrow protocol.
"To get the scientist's daughter to speak and tell us the codes."
Zaira was aware of most of the major operations in progress, but had heard nothing of this. Connecting with Aden on their private and familiar telepathic pathway, she said, Is there a mission in progress to do with a scientist and the retrieval of codes of some kind?
No.
"Beatrice." Zaira gently tugged up the girl's head so she could look her in the eye. "This mission was not sanctioned."
Beatrice's face went bone white, her already unsteady breathing turning jagged and shallow.
"Don't be afraid." Zaira held the girl's face in her hands as she reinforced her earlier reassurance. "You've done nothing wrong."
"I hurt her." It was a shaken whisper, her shoulders hunched in. "But I didn't use the knife like he asked. I promise."
"I believe you." Zaira continued to look into Beatrice's eyes. "The error was your trainer's. You're not authorized for wet work." She used blunt words to reach Beatrice's Arrow training. "You know that."
"He said I was special." It was a lost sound.
"You are. You've come through the fall of Silence with the capacity to handle emotion without losing control of your abilities." No one had made a note in Beatrice's file about the latter, and it was the lack that Zaira had noticed. Because almost every other student had a note about disintegrating conditioning leading to psychic mistakes.
"You can show your peers the way, teach them how t
o stay disciplined even with emotion in their lives." Zaira herself might have been able to learn from the younger woman had it only been about power and emotion, but Zaira's problems resulted from the way she'd been treated as a child, the scars affecting her every action.
Beatrice's lower lip trembled. "I'm sorry."
"It's all right." Zaira kept her hands on the girl's face, thinking of how much such a touch would've meant to her as a lonely and abused little girl. "What's his name?"
Chapter 54
BLAKE WAS INTELLIGENT and he was trained. He was also starting to have doubts about Beatrice's suitability as a partner so he made sure to keep tabs on her. The instant he saw Zaira take her aside, he had a decision to make and he made it quickly. There was a chance Zaira was simply talking to Beatrice about training issues, but there was also a chance the girl would break, and if she did, he'd be dead within minutes.
Then there was the fact that Yuri had been watching him. He'd counted on the squad's belief in loyalty to shield him from suspicion in the death of the would-be terrorist, but it looked like he'd miscalculated. He'd only done the favor to create a marker with an individual with certain advantageous resources.
Now it was time to collect.
Stepping inside the office he was cleared to use when he came in to run sessions, he tapped a junior telepath who had enough Tk to be useful. Even if they were already suspicious of him, the alert would've gone out to senior personnel, not junior. The Tk appeared in seconds, confirming his belief. When Blake asked for a 'port into New York, the younger male hesitated. "Sir, that's at the end of my range."
"Aden has authorized it. You'll catch a jet back home."
"Yes, sir."
Once in New York, he didn't waste time killing the boy. Instead, he gave a short nod and blended into the bustling metropolis. His PsyNet trail was already secure; the squad couldn't hunt him on that level.
He was free.
Chapter 55
THE HUMAN FEMALE Blake had kidnapped was unconscious when Vasic led a team to rescue her. "She'll live," the teleporter told Zaira and Aden afterward, the three of them standing near one of the new houses in the valley. "A cut across one breast, psychological torture, but no permanent physical damage, though she would've died from lack of water within the next day."
