by Nalini Singh
“Avoiding Nikita’s eyes?”
“Possible. Don’t forget, Anthony Kyriakus is also in the general area.”
“That’s right—he’s out by Tahoe.” And though Faith’s father kept a lower profile than Nikita, he controlled a vast network of foreseers—an immeasurable advantage over his enemies. “So what, you were just passing by, saw me?”
“Heard you were around, needed to talk to you and eat lunch.” A shrug.
“Funny how you hear things.”
“Yeah, funny.” The sentinel’s expression didn’t change, but Max had the distinct impression the leopard was laughing.
Max gave the changeling male a look that promised retaliation. “You have any specific addresses for these covert meetings?”
“A few—they tend to move around.” Pulling out a folded piece of paper from his jeans, Clay passed it over. “We’ve been keeping an eye on the situation, but since it’s accountants and teachers, we put it low down on the priority list.”
Glancing at the list, Max noted that none of the locations correlated with Tulane’s unexplained trips. “Thanks.” Finishing off his lunch, he tucked the slip of paper safely in his jacket. “I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.”
Clay put his empty drink bottle on the table. “How’s your J?” His tone said far more than the words.
“She can’t leave the Net.” Saying it out loud seemed to make it inescapably more real. “Ever.”
“Ah, shit. I’m sorry Max—we would’ve helped you if she’d wanted to defect.”
Max hadn’t been part of any kind of a family since River disappeared, but he understood what this was, understood the value of Clay’s offer. “Her telepathic shields are close to total collapse,” he found himself saying, the words torn out of him. “She’s 8.85 on the Gradient, so when they fail . . .” No place in the inhabited world would be safe for her. His Sophia’s amazing violet eyes would go black under an avalanche of noise—and then there would be only silence in his life.
Endless.
Relentless.
Forever.
Twenty minutes later, Max parked his car a block away from where Andre Tulane disappeared at regular intervals, and strolled down the cheerfully painted suburban street. The houses wore shades of bubblegum blue, candy pink, and meringue yellow, almost all with white trim. Human. Very human. The sole reason a Psy might wind up living amongst such brightness would be if there was some city ordinance that stipulated the colors in order to retain the area’s historical character.
Psy understood the value of architectural tourism.
Seeing an old lady tending her winter-quiet garden a couple of houses over, he wandered across. “A pretty face doesn’t do it for me,” she said without pausing in her task. “Never has—not since Bobby Jones broke my heart in junior high.”
Max didn’t much feel like smiling—time was slipping by so fucking fast—but he made his lips curve. “I don’t suppose you know who lives in number nine?”
“She’s never done anything to hurt anyone”—a suspicious glance—“so you leave her alone.”
Max frowned. “Human?”
Her snort was inelegant, her words acerbic. “You think a Psy would live on this street?”
Max made a decision. If it was the wrong one, it could tip off their quarry—but Max had just remembered something else he’d read in Tulane’s recent history and realized the answer to this mystery might be both logical . . . and utterly inexplicable. “Thanks for your help.” Turning away, he walked to the door of number nine and knocked.
The petite woman who opened the door had arms covered by computronic black carapaces and scars on her face that still bore a hard pink shine—vivid against the naturally mocha color of her skin. “Yes?”
Gut tight with the knowledge that he was right about Tulane’s motivation for visiting this house, Max showed her his electronic ID. “Ms. Amberleigh Bouvier?” It wasn’t a guess, not given her physical condition.
“Yes. What’s this about?”
“Could we talk inside?” He could feel the gardener glaring at him.
A hesitation before she nodded and led him down the corridor and into the kitchen.
“Is this about Andre?”she asked, taking a seat at the table set by the window. When he raised a surprised eyebrow, she continued, “I figured someone would come sooner or later, but I thought it’d be another Psy.”
Max leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb. “I need to know the reason for Andre Tulane’s visits.”
“Penance,” Amberleigh said in stark response. “His car blew a fuse and he lost control of it on a rainy night six months ago. Unfortunately, I happened to be on the curb when he drove over it.” Amberleigh shook her head, her cropped hair blue-black in the sunlight. “I don’t understand it myself, so I can’t expect you to. Everyone—even I—agreed it was an accident, but he said he was responsible, so he paid all my medical bills, made sure I got the best treatment.”
“Your arms?”
“They’ll be back to full strength in another couple of months.” She touched her face. “And these scars are going to be all but gone after they heal enough to begin laser treatments.”
Those treatments, Max thought, hadn’t been around when Sophia had been a child. He might’ve asked why she hadn’t taken advantage of them as an adult, but he knew the answer—it was a quiet, powerful rebellion. Sophia wanted to remember the past, remember the three children who’d been lost. He was fucking proud of her for finding a way to speak even in Silence. “Why does Andre still come to see you?”
“To do any work around the house or yard that needs to be done.” Amberleigh sounded bewildered, her eyes huge in that small face. “He doesn’t speak more than three words to me, but by the time he’s done, the lawn is mowed, anything broken is fixed, and my car’s running smooth as Irish whiskey.”
Max didn’t need to hear any more. Whatever the demons that drove the quiet black man, Andre Tulane was deeply entangled with a human—in direct violation of Pure Psy’s aim of absolute racial Purity.
In the Pure Psy world, Max thought as he stepped out into the crisp afternoon air, a human cop would never meet, never love . . . and never lose a violet-eyed J.
CHAPTER 37
There’s always a price when you begin to ask questions. Sometimes, the answers aren’t what you hope to find. And sometimes, there are no answers.
—From the private case notes of Detective Max Shannon on the file labeled “River”
Clay, having driven straight from lunch to take up a watch position around his alpha pair’s home, looked at Sascha as they walked outside her and Lucas’s cabin. He wasn’t as close to her as some of the other sentinels, but he deeply respected the woman his alpha had chosen. She was strong, and she made their pack strong.
“I didn’t say anything to Max,” he said, continuing a conversation they’d had on the phone on his way over, “didn’t want to get his hopes up. But can Noor help Sophia?” His adopted daughter—the owner of a great big chunk of his heart—was part human, part Psy. She’d also formed a soul-deep friendship with another gifted child, Keenan. And that amalgamation of factors had created something amazing.
Sascha put a hand on his arm to steady herself as they stepped over a fallen log, easy with claiming the skin privileges that were a packmate’s right—but that she’d never presumed on until Clay had told her it was okay. “I asked Faith to see if her father could get us Sophia’s medical scans after you called.”
Anthony Kyriakus, Clay thought, was an enigma, a Psy Councilor with an apparent heart. “He came through.”
A quick nod, a tendril of rich black hair escaping her braid to curl over her cheek. “Tammy, Ashaya, and I all had a look at them.” Her expression was bleak when she glanced up. “According to those scans, her organic brain is fine.”
Ah, damn. “That’s what the kids fix, isn’t it?”
“As far as we know—yes. But the fact is, we’re learning as we go w
ith Noor and Keenan.” She caught a leaf that had floated down through the gold-hued forest light, worrying it between her fingers. “Js have also been a mystery since the dawn of their existence. My best guess is that the damage is psychic and cumulative. When I met her . . . I sensed this incredible will containing a vast pain.” Her voice was taut, her bones strained against her skin. “Her shields aren’t broken—they’ve been worn away by a thousand slow drips of acid.”
Clay shoved a hand through his hair. “Is there anything that can be done?” He wanted to help the cop who’d been a friend to his mate when she’d been alone, who’d shed blood in the hunt to find a monster experimenting on vulnerable children like Noor.
Sascha looked so distressed, he knew the answer before she spoke, this empath with her huge heart. “I was going to try to see if I could do something on the psychic level, but according to a note in her file, she’s a minor anchor.” A single tear streaked down her face, her sorrow so heavy he could feel it in his bones. “She’s mainlining the Net—and that Net is slowly going insane.”
Clay released fisted hands to reach out and close one over Sascha’s shoulder. “Did she ever have a chance?”
Sascha’s fingers gripped his in painful sympathy. “No.”
* * *
Max returned to his apartment to discover that Morpheus had defected for good. The well-fed cat was purring happily on Sophia’s coffee table when she let him in. “I missed you today,” she said with a smile, but he saw the shadows under her eyes, the new lines of strain on her face.
Heart tight with the force of what he felt for her, he waited only until the door was closed before cupping her cheek, before taking her mouth in a kiss that held as much savagery as tenderness. She responded with a moan low in her throat. “Max, wait.”
He bit her lower lip, furious with her for what she would soon do, the betrayal she would soon commit.
Her eyes shimmered. “Max.”
It wasn’t the tears that stopped him. It was the way she said that, the way she looked at him. Not afraid of him, but for him. “What is it?” He gripped her hips, unable to let her go.
She dropped her forehead against his chest for a moment. “Will you hate me, Max?”
“Every moment of every day.”
“Good.”
Anger whiplashed inside him, at this woman who needed him to remember her. Didn’t she know he’d never forget? “What,” he said, his voice rough with rage withheld, “did you want to tell me?”
A long breath and she raised her head. “While I was in the Net, I did some searches outside the parameters of the case.” Those unusual eyes shifted away, then back. “I found some information for you.”
He wasn’t used to this kind of evasion from her. “If you don’t know that I’ll stand by you—”
Her fingers on his mouth. “I know.” Glittering eyes, a tone that left no room for doubt. “I don’t want this knowledge to hurt you . . . and I know it holds the capacity for enormous pain.”
He took her hand, kissed her knuckles. “I’m tough. I’ll survive.” That’s what he did—survive. But this scar, Sophie’s scar, was never going to heal.
She placed her hand on his cheek in gentle affection, and he knew she understood what he hadn’t said, the hurt he hadn’t vocalized. “River may have been alive as of two years ago.”
His heart stopped. When it kicked out again, he found himself shaking his head, his hands clenching on her—he’d searched for River ever since he became a cop, through every known database and come up blank. “Why would there be anything about him on the PsyNet?”
“His path crossed with that of a human researcher doing a study on adults who’d been drug addicts as children.” Gentle words, a worried gaze. “That researcher’s paper was footnoted—and linked to—by a Psy scientist’s paper on Jax addiction.”
“Where—” he began, but Sophia was already pulling away to pick up a sheet of paper from beside Morpheus’s purring body. Taking the printout, he went straight to the part she’d highlighted.
There it was. River’s name in black and white. The citation noted that the subject had been free of addiction since his fourteenth birthday, when he’d voluntarily entered a program run by a charitable organization.
“Max.” Sophia’s fingers closing over his wrist.
It was only then that he realized his hand was trembling. “They just used first names—this could be someone else altogether.”
“It’s an unusual name and coupled with his age at the time the paper was written, and the addiction . . .”
His mind wasn’t working too well. He looked up, to see her holding a small piece of notepaper. “What’s that?”
“The phone number of the researcher who wrote the original article. He’s currently lecturing at the University of the South Pacific and is stationed in Vanuatu.” There was a near-painful hope in her eyes. “You should be able to get him in his office a little later on, check if it’s your brother.”
Reaching forward, he tugged her into his arms, crushing the feminine softness of her to him, burying his face in her hair. “You don’t know what this means.”
Her fingers dug into his back, her emotions as clear as if she’d spoken.
“You do, don’t you?” he whispered against her ear, the scent of her a balm across his ravaged soul. “You know exactly what this means.”
“Family, Max. You’ll have family.” Fierce, hopeful words. “You won’t be alone.” After I’m gone.
Max clenched his hand in her hair, drawing back so he could look down into her face, so he could speak with his lips against hers. “We,” he said. “We’ll have family.”
Her eyes filled with light, with untrammeled happiness. “Max.” She pressed a kiss to his jaw just as his cell phone began beeping.
It was Bart. “Bonner’s escaped.”
“How is that even possible?” Sophia stared at Max when he shut off the phone and told her what had happened. The prison was underground, all access points securely guarded. Even the emergency exits were set with pressure-sensitive alarms that would activate upon perceiving anything bigger than a field mouse.
Max’s anger was a cold, hard thing. “He had an ‘accident, ’ had to be taken to the medical bay. From the sound of it, he’d been working on the doctor for months. He must’ve convinced her he was innocent.”
“Even so”—Sophia couldn’t imagine the sly evil that was Bonner back out on the streets—“the doctor couldn’t have had the necessary clearance to get him out.”
“But she had access to tranquilizers—she took out the warden, then ransacked his office for the override keys.” Max clenched his jaw so tight, he could hear his bones grind against each other. “Manhunt’s in progress and they’re fairly certain he’s driving the doctor’s car.”
Sophia sat down on the arm of the sofa, her fingers digging into the fabric. “And the doctor?”
“If she’s lucky,” Max said flatly, “she’s already dead. If she’s not . . .” He knew Sophia understood better than anyone what Bonner was capable of, the pain that would be the doctor’s reward for being foolish enough to believe in a sociopath.
A quiet nod. “Do you need to join the manhunt team?”
“I can liaise with them from here.” Bonner was not going to fucking steal Max’s time with Sophia. And—“They have the numbers on the ground.” The team was huge and growing bigger by the hour. “What they need me to do is predict where Bonner might go, update the search grid as we get sightings.” The first thing that had come into Max’s mind had been Bonner’s twisted interest in Sophia. “Sophie, there’s a chance he’ll head to you.”
Sophia swallowed, nodded. “I’ll be with you the majority of the time, and when I’m not, I’ll be in secure buildings. I’ll take one of the security officers with me if I need to go out on my own.”
He loved her for not making him fight to protect her. “Right now, he’s on the ground, so there’s not much danger.” But if he managed t
o get on a flight . . . “I’ll alert Enforcement here, let DarkRiver know so their network can keep an eye out.”
“Why is Enforcement having such trouble tracking him? Wasn’t be embedded?” Sophia asked, referring to the transmitter all violent offenders had placed under their skin for the duration of their sentence.
“He managed to disable it soon after his escape—most likely possibility is that the doctor dug it out for him.”
Sophia took a deep, trembling breath. “Will she—the doctor . . . satisfy him for a period?”
Max’s stomach turned. “He’s been behind bars long enough to have built up his needs.” Refined his perversions.
“What can I do to assist?”
He didn’t want her anywhere near Bonner’s evil—she’d walked into the void enough for ten lifetimes. “Take another look at Quentin Gareth—I have this gut feeling there’s something we’ve missed. Especially with Tulane out of the running.” He told her what he’d discovered at Amberleigh Bouvier’s house.
“Interesting—the dynamics of Nikita’s workforce.” A reflective statement. “I’ll look at Gareth’s file now.”
As she did so, he hunkered down to cross-reference the location of the D2 penitentiary with Bonner’s known bolt-holes, sending the list to the manhunt team as soon as it was in any kind of shape. “He’s smart,” Max told the team over the comm line that he’d secured, after discussing the possibility that Bonner might try to get to Sophia, so that they could put alerts on the relevant routes. “I don’t think he’ll go anywhere near his old hidey-holes.” But the team would still have to check each and every one, just in case. “I’ve also sent you some properties I know were his, but that I couldn’t ever legally link to him—those were never in the police files, so he didn’t have a right to see them during the trial.”
“Fuck it, Max—why can’t he just die and do us all a favor?” The lead on the team, a man who was legendary for never losing his cool, broke for a second before taking a calming breath. “We’re sure the doctor’s already dead—dogs led us to a patch of forest not far from D2. Lot of blood.
