Shards of Hope (9781101605219)

by Singh, Nalini

  “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 Levèque 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. Con
necting 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 to 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.”

  “He wanted Beatrice to kill her.” Zaira’s voice vibrated with withheld fury.

  Aden brushed his fingers over hers as they stood side by side. “He’ll pay for what he did.”

  Glancing to his left and down before looking back up, Vasic said, “None of the teleporters in the squad can get to him. Blake was well trained in telepathic cloaking.”

  It took Aden a second to realize his friend had looked automatically toward where his gauntlet had been on his left forearm before the amputation. You miss the gauntlet, he said telepathically while he considered how to track down the rogue and murderous Arrow. It wasn’t only that Blake was a threat to innocent people—he could do major damage to the squad’s reputation, which would feed back into the Arrows’ ability to live their lives.

  Winter gray eyes met his. I became used to having easy, immediate access to various systems. He took out a small organizer. I’ll adapt. A pause before he said, “I have the details of Blake’s office in the valley and his quarters at Central Command. I’ll check out Command first, since he spent more time there.” He teleported out.

  Able to sense Zaira’s frustration, Aden closed his hand around her own. “We’ll find him. He’s well trained, but he’s being hunted by the entire squad.” It was rare for Arrows to hunt their own, but when they did, the pursuit was relentless. “He won’t have time to catch a breath, much less do damage.”

  Fingers curling around his own, Zaira gritted her teeth. “I want to be part of the team hunting him. Right now, Persephone is out of my reach but I can do something productive about Blake.”

  “The operation is already under Amin’s command, and you have visitors in Venice to keep an eye on.” BlackSea had a dangerous advantage in the watery city.

  “I just feel like we’re losing the battle against evil.” She leaned her body against his on those words, and at that instant, Aden realized they had any number of eyes on them. Arrows and children.

  Weaving his fingers through her own, he looked down into her face. “You saved two lives today. Evil didn’t win there.” And it won’t win in our fight to be together.

  The fire flickered in her gaze. Raising her hand, she laid her fingers against his jaw.

  A public claim. A declaration of intent.

  • • •

  PAX Marshall was arrogant but he wasn’t stupid. His vehicle was an armor-plated tank. Safe in most circumstances. Except against a man who had the growing ability to control metal and machines.

  Waiting until Pax was on a quiet road outside of the Marshall estate in Vermont, Dev pulled over behind him, focused on the other vehicle’s engine . . . and Pax’s car stopped moving.

  He could see the Psy male attempting to reboot the onboard computer as Dev got out, walked to his car, and knocked on his window.

  Pax looked at him with cool blue eyes, a weapon no doubt in his hand, but he opened the door and got out. “Is this how you usually arrange a meeting?” he asked as he buttoned his dark blue suit jacket, his hands as elegant as his features and the cut of his blond hair.

  “A necessity.” Dev kept his hands in the open as Pax had done.

  Pax’s upper-class English accent was clipped as he said, “The necessity being?”

  Dev told him, watching his face for any indication of guilt or otherwise, but Pax Marshall had the expressionless face down to an art. “I see,” the other man said. “You realize I’m not lacking in intelligence. Why would I send in a black ops team emblazoned with our well-known emblem?”

  “Precisely because you’re smart—smart enough to run a double bluff.” Dev had done his research, knew that the reason Pax was CEO of the Marshall Group despite his youth was that he had a way of doing the unexpected, leaving his competitors stunned and off balance.

  “Then it appears we are at an impasse.”

  “Guess so.” He couldn’t get a read on Pax, but he knew one thing. “If it wasn’t you, I suggest you track down the perpetrators, or the next time, your plane might be the vehicle that stops moving.” Dev couldn’t actually affect objects that distant or large yet, but Pax had no need to know that.

  “Do you have the DNA pro
files of the ones who left behind blood?”

  Dev handed them over.

  Two hours after he and Pax parted ways, word came that all the men on that list, plus two others, had been found shot point-blank in the back of the head. Pax sent him a short message not long afterward: They were not ours and they knew nothing beyond the strict parameters of their mission, which was to abduct the children and leave behind a witness. Contractors should really take care when choosing clients. Your children are safe.

  Dev took everything the other man said with a grain of salt. The double-bluff possibility still applied; from everything Dev knew, Pax Marshall was ruthless enough to kill his own people to make a point.

  • • •

  ZAIRA spent the remaining daylight hours making sure she knew the exact locations of every water-based changeling in Venice. The task was complicated by the fact that they didn’t exactly stand out or call attention to themselves, but thanks to the groundwork laid by Arrows since the squad began, she had back-end access to a number of very secure databases. She also had a network of informants in the city.

  She’d started putting that network in place the instant she was assigned the Venice command. Marjorie and Naoshi had always assumed they’d be in command when Venice went active, but logistically, they couldn’t run Venice as a fully functioning base of Arrow operations and maintain the complex system of safe houses around the world. The latter was a task at which they were expert and that no one else could do. That, at least, was what Aden had told them—and it was all categorically true. Marjorie and Naoshi had long ago proven their exceptional ability to settle at-risk Arrows into safe new lives.

  What Aden didn’t point out was that his parents, despite their undisputable skill and position as initiators of the rebellion, were, in many ways, stuck in the past and in the old way of doing things. In contrast, Zaira, like many other Arrows who’d come of age with Aden, understood that while fear was a weapon, even better was information—and not just from Psy sources.