by Nalini Singh
“That’s why I have a big, strong grandson to protect me.”
And that was how Dev found himself in the subbasement level, standing at one end of the table while the two women who meant most to him in the world looked across at each other. Physically, they couldn’t have been more different.
His nani was a tall woman with nut-brown skin and sparkling dark eyes. Katya was just barely of medium height, her skin almost translucent, though it had gained a little more color recently, her eyes a soft, wary hazel. His grandmother was tough, looked tough, her arms ropy with muscle. Katya in contrast, appeared soft. . . delicate.
An illusion.
The woman who’d walked through Sunshine, Alaska, without screaming was no weakling.
“So,” his grandmother said, “you’re the one who has my Devraj staying up nights.”
Katya didn’t turn to him, holding his grandmother’s gaze. “Actually,” she said, “I blame him for the sleepless nights.”
Nani laughed. “I like her, beta.” Reaching forward, she closed her hand around Katya’s. “You should meet Dev’s paternal great-grandfather, Matthew; he’s the one Dev gets the stubborn from. Old goat’s well over a hundred, but I haven’t yet seen him back down from a fight.”
Katya’s eyes widened. “Was he—”
A nod. “Yes, he was alive when Silence first came into effect. His parents, Zarina and David, were part of the original rebellion.”
Katya didn’t speak for almost a minute. “He would’ve been a contemporary of the very first children who were Silenced in the Net.”
“He remembers a cousin, said he saw him on the street years later, and it was as if the man’s soul had been wiped away.” The older woman shook her head. “Two different paths . . . though perhaps the paths are merging once again.” There was a troubled note in her voice. “But that’s not why we’re here—we’ve been discussing how to disable Ming long enough that you can get him to set you free.”
To her credit, Katya only blinked once. “We could render him unconscious, but that would defeat the purpose. If there is a key to unlock the shield, it has to be a telepathic one.”
“There’s also a high chance he could use the opportunity to kill you.” Nani’s tone was pragmatic.
Dev had already considered that. “Not if he knows that if she dies, he dies.”
“Which brings us back to the point of how to disable Ming.” Katya frowned.
And in that instant, Dev realized exactly what they had to do. Pacing from one end of the room to the other, he swept out a hand. “Leave that for now.” His every instinct rebelled against the plan his brain told him was the only possible answer. “We’ll need an exit strategy, too.”
“Make him meet you on your ground,” his grandmother suggested. “Turn him into the intruder—it’ll make it much easier for you to get away.”
“Getting him to come to us will be close to impossible,” Katya said. “He’s extremely security conscious.” When Dev didn’t reply, Katya looked up. And said, “Oh. You’ve already thought of the answer, haven’t you?”
He didn’t bother to lie. “Yes.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“Never—I planned to come up with another way.” Thrusting his hand through his hair, he walked over to pull her up from her chair. “I don’t like the idea of using you as bait.”
“It’s the best shot we’ve got.” Cupping Dev’s cheek, she made him meet her gaze. “We’re doing this.”
“Then you’re damn well obeying every order I give you. Understood?” His voice was pure frost, protective rage barely contained.
“Yes.”
Dev’s grandmother sighed. “That’s not the way, beti. With men like my grandson, you have to be disagreeable on principle.”
Laughing at the amused advice, Katya reached out to take the other woman’s hand, feeling so at ease it was as if she’d known Kiran forever. She never got that far. Her spine twisted into an unnatural shape as agony spiked down her body. The last thing she heard was her own high-pitched scream.
“What happened?” she asked Dev hours later from the hospital bed.
His cheekbones were razors against his skin as he gripped her hand. “Glen thinks your motor controls somehow shorted out at the same time that you had a problem with your nervous system.” His voice was ragged, raw with anger.
“The countdown’s speeded up.” Even if Ming gave them the key, even if that key unlocked the shield, even if it miraculously released the talons sunk into her brain, whatever was already damaged could never be fixed. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
He swore. But he didn’t let go of her hand, and she held on tight. Or tried to. “Please, I need to know.”
His eyes were tormented when he looked at her. “We took a scan of your brain. Parts have been permanently compromised. You’ll always have problems with your fine motor controls, your memories.”
That explained why her fingers didn’t quite grip right, didn’t quite feel right. Rage boiled within her, but she didn’t let it rise, afraid that if she did, it would be all she was, all she’d become. She loved this man too much to waste time on useless anger. “You won’t reconsider trying to take Ming?” If Dev died . . . no, she’d make sure he didn’t.
“No.”
“Then let’s put the game into play.”
CHAPTER 49
Judd slipped into the child’s room without anyone being the wiser. The boy stared at him wide-eyed as he shifted out of the shadows twenty minutes after the boy’s parents had finally gone to bed. If Judd’s intel was correct, however, both of them would be back to check on their son within the hour.
“Have you come to take me?” The child sounded both terrified and strangely glad.
Judd understood—in a way William’s loving parents never would. “No. I’ve come to see if I can help you.”
“You can’t. I’m a monster.” A tear leaked out of his eye, a tear he brushed off with an angry fist. “I hurt Spot.”
Crossing the room to sit on the boy’s bed, Judd raised a hand. “I need to touch you.” This would have to be a very delicate telepathic investigation. If he activated the wrong trigger, the boy would try to strike out, and while Judd was well shielded, there was no need to make the kid feel worse about himself than he already did. “Will you lower your shields?”
“Okay.” Dull compliance. As if he hurt so much, he’d given up.
Judd touched his fingers to William’s temple, his psychic senses arrowed to a fine point. Then he went looking. According to the notes Ashaya had shared, the doctors at Shine had found an unusual version of the Tk gene, but what Judd saw was blindingly familiar. It seemed the Tk-Cell mutation didn’t discriminate against the half-blooded.
This boy, this bright, beautiful young boy, was a murderer waiting to happen.
Judd’s jaw set. No way in hell was that future ever going to be. “I want to tell you something and I want you to listen.”
William nodded, but his eyes were dull.
Judd took the boy’s chin in his hands, made him focus. “I can do what you can do.”
“No one—”
Taking a pocket knife from his jacket, Judd flicked it open and ran the blade across his palm, releasing a thick line of blood. “Watch.” Piece by piece, cell by cell, he closed the wound, until nothing remained but the blood. Using a tissue from the bedside table to wipe it off—and ensuring the tissue ended up in his pocket so he’d leave behind no trace of himself—he showed the boy his palm. “I can do what you can do.”
This time, William’s eyes were anything but dull. “Can you fix me?” he whispered.
Once, Judd would’ve answered with a yes or a no. That was before he fell in love with a woman who saw no evil in him. “There’s nothing to fix. What I can do is teach you to control it. So you can use it for good things.”
“Like what?”
“Like putting broken bodies back together.”
He saw the boy consider that, his ted
dy bear clutched tight to his heart. “That wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Actually,” Judd said. “It’s better than that—it’s pretty damn good.”
A shaky smile. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. So, you ready for your first lesson?”
CHAPTER 50
Dev woke to the insistent beeping of his phone at two a.m. on the day they planned to corner Ming, very aware of Katya cuddled against him. Only when he felt her breathe did his heart settle into a steady rhythm.
Turning to the screen of the small comm unit on his bedside table, he flicked it on to find Jack’s shaken face looking at him. “Dev, William’s sitting here eating chocolate crunch cereal.”
Dev shifted his brain into gear. “Weird time for it, but that’s still good news, so why do you look like you saw a ghost?”
Shoving a trembling hand through his hair, Jack said, “Because my son tells me an Arrow came to see him tonight and started teaching him how to be good.”
“Damn”—Dev whistled softly through his teeth—“she came through.”
Jack wasn’t listening, his attention fixed on something to his right. “I’ll be there in a second, sweetheart.” Returning his attention to Dev, Jack shook his head. “Melissa’s just sitting there, petting his hair like she’s afraid he’s going to disappear. But he keeps on smiling.”
“The Arrow isn’t a threat to William,” Dev said, knowing Ashaya Aleine would never harm another mother’s son. “I have a feeling he has to worry about his own name getting out—that’s probably why the night visit.”
“I don’t care if he wants to visit at three in the fucking morning if he can do this for my son.” A shaky laugh. “I’ll do whatever the man wants. All you have to do is tell me.”
Three hours later, Dev called Jack back. “He wants you to move to San Francisco.” The information had been relayed through Dorian.
“Man’s got family to protect,” Dorian had said. “Less people who know what he can do the better. I didn’t even know before he decided to tell me today.”
Dev raised an eyebrow. “This guy sounds secretive.”
“I’d have him at my back anytime.” A steady gaze. “He’s determined to help that kid—determined enough to share a secret he’s kept for a hell of a long time, so if I was you, I’d do exactly as he says.”
Now Jack didn’t hesitate for even a second. “I’ll start packing.”
Hanging up, Dev met the eyes of the woman who’d just exited the bathroom. “Come to bed.”
She didn’t argue, but as she walked across the room, he saw something that made his spine knot. “Your balance is off.”
“Yes.” Sliding into the bed, she ran her fingers down the roughness of his jaw. “But I don’t want to talk about that right now. Love me, Dev.”
And because he could deny her nothing, he did as she asked.
If Dev had allowed himself to acknowledge the enraged helplessness that twisted around his mind in a thousand coils, he might’ve done something stupid. As it was, he compartmentalized. It was a skill he’d gotten very good at as a child. The machines, the metal, usually helped, but never when it came to Katya. She reached too deep, made him feel too much.
“I didn’t think the non-Silent could do that,” Katya said to him that evening as they discussed the final preparations. A bare two hours remained. Dev would’ve preferred a longer lead-up, but not only would Ming be in the city today, but the longer they waited, the more Katya would lose of herself.
“Do what?” he asked, looking up from his sketch of the location where they planned to lure the bastard.
“Shut away emotional responses.” Rising from her seat on the sofa in front of him, she walked over to sit on the arm of his chair. “You’ve gone cold.”
His slid his own arm around her waist in an instinctively protective gesture. “It’s necessary.” Tugging gently, he brought her into his embrace. “A soldier can’t operate unless he’s completely focused on the target.”
“How long were you a soldier?”
“Few years after high school.” He frowned and annotated a gap in the net of snipers he planned to have cover the meeting spot. “I decided it’d be the easiest way to get the kind of training I needed.”
“Needed for what?” A warm hand along his nape, a kiss pressed to his cheekbone.
“Katya.” It was meant to be an admonishment, but he was lost the instant he met those hazel eyes. Groaning, he pulled her down with a hand on the back of her head and bit at her lower lip in sensual punishment. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
Her gaze darkened to jade shot with tiger’s-eye. “Let me.”
“I can’t.”
It took her long minutes to release a sigh. “I don’t want to lose you.”
He looked at her, waiting for her to understand.
“No,” she said after almost thirty seconds of silence. “I wouldn’t choose safety either if it was you.”
He kissed her for that, for accepting his need to protect her, keep her safe.
Afterward, she nuzzled into his throat. “Just a few minutes.”
“Just a few.” He needed to have every piece in its absolute accurate place or it would all turn to shit. If they worked it exactly right, the Councilor would find a physical meeting more expedient than a psychic one. Because a meeting on the psychic plane would leave Katya ultimately vulnerable—Dev was sure Ming had a hidden back door into her mind, one that would allow him to easily skirt the shields he’d put in place and take anything he wanted.
“Is it all from being a soldier? Your ability to compartmentalize?”
Shadows whispered at the back of his mind, voracious and grasping. He fought their attempts to drag him back into the grief-shrouded past. “Why?”
“There’s a sense about you . . . as if the need for control is ingrained into your soul.”
“One way to put it.” Releasing a slow breath, he ran his hand over her hair. “I told you my father killed my mother. What I didn’t tell you is that I witnessed the murder.” He kept his voice even, his words clear. That emotional stranglehold was the only weapon he had to fight the shadows’ insidious taunts.
“Oh, Dev.” A soft whisper, his pain echoed in her voice. “How old were you?”
“Old enough to understand that my father shouldn’t have his hands around my mother’s neck like that but not old enough to pull him off.” The memory haunted him every day of his life. If only he’d been stronger. But he’d been a slight boy of barely nine, his father a big man who outweighed him four times over. “He probably would’ve killed me, too, except that my mother managed to broadcast a telepathic scream for help.”
He could still hear the jagged shock of the door being broken open, the stamp of booted feet, shouting, then people thumping fists onto his mother’s chest and breathing into her mouth. Her chest had begun to rise and fall, feeding his hope . . . until he’d realized that she wasn’t doing it on her own, that she wasn’t really breathing.
“It took the rescuers ten minutes to realize I was in the room.” He’d been thrown into a corner by his father’s back-hand, had lain there dazed and bleeding as his world shattered in front of him. “I saw them drag my screaming, crying father from the room. Then I saw them pronounce my mother dead.”
Katya’s kiss was a benediction against his forehead. “Honed in fire,” she murmured. “Did your father suffer a psychotic episode?”
“Yes. And he never really came back. He spends almost all of his time in a room in a facility in Pennsylvania. It’s a nice place, lots of gardens, trees, real peaceful, but he only ever leaves his room when he’s forced to, or if I visit.”
“Do you visit him often?”
“No.” He closed his hand around her hip, his grip tight. “The adult in me, the reasoned being, understands that he didn’t do what he did out of choice. So I go. But then I see him, and I’m that child again, watching him snuff out my mother’s life. And I can’t go that last step—I can’t forgive h
im.”
“At leas—” Katya began, just as Dev’s watch beeped.
“This can wait,” he said, shamefully relieved. “It’s time.”
Forty-five minutes later found them sitting in a car outside a row of storage lockers located on the eastern edge of Queens, Katya at the wheel. Dev had chosen the location for two very important reasons—one, it was out of the way, lessening the chances of interruption, and two, it gave the snipers an excellent line of sight.
“Okay,” he said, checking his phone. “The business association dinner’s about to wind up. He’ll be on the road within the next ten minutes. Surveillance confirms the teleporter isn’t with him—this is our best shot.”
Rubbing her hands on her thighs, Katya looked at him. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“You have to, baby. If he decides to utilize a back door into your mind, he needs to see what he expects.” Reaching over, he pulled her out of her seat and into his lap. “Hopefully, his arrogance will have him accepting everything at face value.”
“I don’t want to share this with him.” She put her hands on his face. “I don’t want him to know how much you matter.”
“He won’t,” Dev whispered, the gold in his eyes electric in the hushed dark inside the car. “He has no comprehension of what it is to feel this much for someone.” He brushed her hair off her face.
She had no defenses against him. So she leaned forward and took his mouth in a soft, sweet kiss. Tenderness and pain ravaged her in equal measures as he put his arms around her. Taking the taste of him inside her mouth, she allowed him to seize the lead, to kiss her as if he’d never get enough.
Fire licked up her spine, passion rising even in the midst of chaos. When his hands slipped under her sweatshirt to move up her back, she shivered. Focusing only on the sensations, on the heat he could stoke so easily, she moaned in the back of her throat and moved her hand to his neck, playing her fingers over his pulse.
He nipped at her mouth, his own hands sweeping around to cup her breasts. Hunger rocked through her, but it was then, while he was distracted, that she dropped the pressure injector hidden in the sleeve of her sweatshirt into her palm. “I’m sorry, Dev.” Pressing the injector to the pulse in his neck, she pushed the trigger.
