Bonds of Justice (19 page)

“Any one of them could’ve done it,” Max said after the man left, “even Marsha. All she’d have needed was a couple of minutes while Sascha went to the bathroom.”

Sophia’s responding words were practical . . . even if her voice continued to rub across his skin in sweet, hot strokes. “Maybe. But according to my recollection of the interview with Sascha, they were together when she felt Edward die.”

Max frowned, thought back. “You’re right. I’ll confirm with Sascha in any case.”

Nodding, Sophia said, “We should listen to the audio made by DarkRiver.”

Taking out his cell phone, Max played the file. “Edward Chan’s bio said he grew up in France”—a sharpening of interest, the first scent of their prey—“so that’s got to be him. Which means Chan welcomed someone
back
into his apartment just prior to his death. The time stamp on this file fits the time line perfectly.” Getting up, he walked to lean back against the table beside Sophia, unable to resist running his finger down her arm. “The wording tends to clear Ryan Asquith, even if he is a telekinetic.”

She shivered but didn’t pull away, her hand dangerously close to his thigh. He wanted her to raise it, place it on him, go higher. Smothering a goan at the erotic image, he focused on her mouth instead. “Yes,” she said, her lips soft and lush, “Asquith only went inside the apartment at the end. But by the same token, he is the newest, least known member of Nikita’s staff.”

“Yes”—his own voice was sandpaper rough—“but he wasn’t working for her when the elevator charge was laid.” Remembering the note he’d written while she’d been out of the room earlier, he took it out of his pocket and dropped it into her bag, making certain to just barely brush the back of her hand. It was a silent continuance of their play, a dare.

Sophia parted her lips, but whatever she was going to say was lost as she sucked in a breath, a spread of black staining her eyes.
“Max.”

 

Sophia felt herself kicked into a memory retrieval with ruthless force. Except this was different. Not only the violence with which she’d been plunged into the memory, but her orientation within in. Usually, with other people’s memories, she saw what the individual in question had seen, looked through his or her eyes.

Here, it was as if she was an impartial observer, a third party wholly unconnected to the events playing out below—in what appeared to be a filthy alley crushed between two dirty tenement buildings.

They were children. Two boys. The dark haired one was painfully thin, his legs too long for his body, his eyes liquid dark in a face that was so beautiful, she knew he must’ve gotten teased for it—but he’d grown into that face, turned it savagely masculine with sheer strength of will. “You gotta stop this,” he said to the boy opposite him.

He smiled, that boy with his incredible lilac eyes and hair the color of ripe wheat turned to gold. If the first boy was beautiful, this one was a young god. His lips were flawlessly shaped, his skin porcelain, and his voice, when he spoke, as clear as the purest of bells. “Why?”

“Why?” The first boy, the boy Sophia knew, grabbed his friend’s arm, turning it over to reveal the ugliness of needle tracks. “If this is what it’s doing to you on the outside, what do you think it’s doing to you on the inside?”

The other boy smiled again and this time, Sophia caught it, that odd disconnection in his gaze, the stare of someone who wasn’t quite present. “It takes me flying, Maxie.”

“It’s fake.” Max’s hands on the other boy’s face, forcing the golden child to meet his gaze, his voice flint hard. “It’s just make-believe. You know that. When you crash, it hurts.”

A moment of strange clarity. “So what? What’s so good about our life? Huh?” The golden child cupped Max’s face in turn. “One of her men tried to touch me last night.”

Cold rage turned Max’s expression to ice. “I’ll kill him.”

Truth, Sophia thought, that was the unvarnished truth.

“It’s okay. Mum screamed and kicked him out.” He pressed his forehead to Max’s in a painful kind of affection. “She protects me. Why doesn’t she protect you?”

Thin shoulders sagging for an instant. “I don’t know, River.”

A vivid blackness, a connection being cut, and Sophia felt air whistling into her lungs in a violent, biting rush.

“Sophie! Look at me.” Max’s hand on her cheek, a tactile shock that made her eyes snap open.

He dropped his hand at once, white lines bracketing his mouth. “Talk to me.”

“Not here.” Her throat was shredded, lined with a million splinters. “Get me home. Please, Max.”

And somehow, he did.

Her knees buckled the instant they were inside his apartment.

“I’ve got you.” Catching her up in his arms—and being careful to avoid any skin-to-skin contact—Max carried her to the sofa. But instead of setting her down, he took a seat with her in his lap. “Shh,” he said when she grew stiff. “Let me hold you.”

“Max—”

“I need to do this.” A fierce whisper.

When he did nothing except hold her, she relaxed, laying her head on his shoulder. It was so tempting to place her hand on his other shoulder, but he was only wearing a fine cotton shirt and she wasn’t sure if the barrier would be strong enough. Not after the impact of what she’d seen, and with him so warm and solid around her, the scent of him an unambiguously masculine blend of heat, soap, and a fresh pine that she knew was his aftershave.

Drawing it in, she sighed, melting into his embrace. She could have cuddled into him forever, but she had to know, had to ask. “Who is River?”

Max froze at the quiet question, his heart punching against his ribs so hard, he half expected to see blood dot his chest. “My younger brother.”

Sophia stilled within his arms, but her question, when it came, was practical. Psy. “You have clear markers of Asian descent, while he was unquestionably Caucasian.”

The logical query calmed him, gave him an anchor. “He looked—looks exactly like our mother.” River had been her shadow and her mirror. And in the end that knowledge had broken his brother. “We had different fathers. His was as blond as our mother.” While Max’s was an unknown, a man who’d given him only the genetic heritage of another culture. “No one ever believed we were brothers.” But they were. They’d come from the same womb, grown up in the same hell.

“Is he—” A pause, a long breath. “You wanted to use the past tense.”

Another stab of pain, but he didn’t tell her to drop the subject. It had been so long since he’d spoken of River to someone who’d known him—and somehow, he knew his J did. “River disappeared when I was almost fourteen and he was eleven. He was so lost in the drugs by then that I know he can’t have survived long . . . but part of me wakes up every morning hoping that when I open the door, I’ll see him on the other side.”

Sophia shifted position, her gloved hand rising to curve hesitantly over the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, Max. I didn’t mean to invade your memories.”

“I thought my shield—”

She shook her head. “Most telepaths who are born with the ability to be Js often also have some latent or weak F abilities.”

Max frowned. “Foreseers see the future.”

“Usually, yes. But there is a small subgroup that sees the past. It’s termed backsight.”

He knew she was talking so factually because she’d read his pain, was trying to distance him from it the only way she knew how, his vulnerable J with a heart that understood how much memories could hurt. “You saw River in a flash of backsight.”

“Yes. It’s the first incident I’ve ever had.” Eyes haunted, she placed her hand on his shoulder. “If statistics hold true, that’s probably the single one I’ll ever experience.”

“You sound glad.”

“I’ve never felt so helpless,” she whispered.

“What did you see?” His heart twisted—there’d been no horror in her eyes, so perhaps she’d seen a slice of happiness.

“You and your brother in an alley. You were trying to talk him out of doing drugs.”

“I tried so many times.” Max dropped his head against her. “He was the one person I loved, the one person who mattered. But I couldn’t save him.”

“He was so young,” Sophia said.

“And damaged—so much that he couldn’t see any other way out.” Max wished he could go back in time, convince River that none of it was his fault. “He blamed himself for things over which he had no control.”

Her hand stroked his nape, soft, hesitant, but gaining in confidence. “He said . . . he said . . .”

And he knew she hadn’t missed out on the horror. “Tell me.”

“He said she didn’t protect you.”

The pain of the child he’d been speared through him. “It was as if my mother had two personalities.” One for each son. “As an adult, I know I could’ve done nothing to bring on the kind of hatred she felt toward me—but part of me still believes that I did something to make her treat me the way she did.” His voice broke.

Sophia’s breath whispered over his hair as she held him, as she, a woman born of a race with no emotion, gave him more affection than the woman who’d given birth to him.

Sascha lay curled up in bed around six that evening, tired though she’d done very little. But she didn’t feel the need to move—it was nice to lie surrounded by the warm, masculine scent of the panther who was her mate. Snuggling into his pillow, she opened up the text that was her own personal guidebook—and an endless source of frustration.

However, she felt more hopeful of deciphering the oblique nature of some of the chapters today, after having spoken to a Forgotten empath, an elderly lady named Maya.

“Only cardinals could stop riots,” Maya had said in response to Sascha’s question, her trim figure active as she paced in front of her comm screen. “So I wasn’t taught how, but I have a vague memory of my grandmother talking about a ‘terminal field.’ ”

Maya hadn’t been able to dig up any memories of what the term might actually mean, but it was a start. With that in mind, Sascha was about to reread the section on riot control when she heard Lucas moving about in the living area. “Lucas.” She kept her tone soft, knowing he’d hear.

He filled the doorway, all green eyes and dark hair. Such a beautiful man, was her mate. Such a dangerous one, too, especially when the protective streak that had been honed in blood was riding him. “Do you have time to discuss something?”

His expression gentled. “Two minutes? I want to send this note off to Zara.”

“I’ll be here.” Watching as he left, she played with the spine of the Eldridge book.

“You need a better bedtime story.” Lucas prowled in to sprawl on his back beside her.

She raised her head instinctively, and he slid one arm beneath before turning to curve his big body around hers. It had become their favorite sleeping position.

“I’m not sleepy,” she said. “Just wanted to rest my feet.”

“I’ll give you a foot rub.”

Joy shimmered through her, an incandescent light. “Lucas, you do realize you’re spoiling me beyond redemption?”

“Don’t worry—I plan to ignore you once you give me my baby princess.”

She laughed, secure in the knowledge of his love. “Did you manage to talk to Sienna?” The teenager, part of a family of Psy defectors that had found sanctuary with the SnowDancer wolves, had been staying with DarkRiver on and off for the past few months.

“She got up to the SnowDancer den safe and sound.” A kiss pressed to the sensitive skin below her ear. “She’s a very good driver.”

“And Kit?” The DarkRiver male was a young soldier, a future alpha—and appeared to be forming an attachment to Sienna.

“He’s still down here.” Lucas sounded as if he was frowning in thought. “I don’t know if we have any right to say anything. They’re both adults.”

“I’m not sure if Sienna is thinking straight.” The Psy teenager had been close to the breaking point when she first came to stay with DarkRiver. She’d stabilized since then, but . . . “How’s Hawke?”

Lucas didn’t curse at the mention of the SnowDancer alpha, an indication of just how seriously he was taking this. “Seems fine, but it’s hard to read another alpha—we get pretty good at keeping our thoughts to ourselves when necessary.”

“Hawke and Sienna—there’s something there.” A raw, almost angry fury. “With Kit, it’s harder to pinpoint. I can sense something between them, but what, I can’t yet tell.”

“Kit would be the better choice for her,” Lucas said in a quiet tone that did nothing to hide the depth of his concern for everyone involved. “Hawke isn’t going to be easy on any woman he takes as his own. And the fact is, he lost the girl who would’ve been his mate as a child. I don’t know if his wolf will allow him to accept another female on that level.”

Sascha had no answer to that. Like changeling leopards, wolves mated for life. She’d sensed Hawke’s anger, his wolf’s tormented rage, but she’d also sensed Sienna’s anguish at her response to the SnowDancer alpha. And then there was Kit—gorgeous, loyal, strong Kit.

“Is that what you wanted to discuss?” Lucas took the book from her hand and put it on the bedside table before returning to hold her close again.

The imp of mischief that had awakened after she mated with Lucas made a sudden appearance. “No—did you hear the wolves are calling Mercy ‘their’ sentinel?”

A growl that made every hair on her body rise in primal response. “She might’ve had the bad taste to mate with a wolf, but she’s ours. They try to co-opt her, I’ll be giving you a nice, new Hawke-fur coat for your birthday.”

Unable to withhold her laughter, she patted his arm. “You’re so easy.”

“Brat.” But the panther was laughing with her. “You okay?”

She knew he was talking about Nikita, about the confused emotions in Sascha’s heart. “I’m getting there.”