The Psy-Changeling Collection (323 page)

Her fingers clenched.

She forced them to open. It was no use being angry, no use railing at fate. Fact was fact—she’d gone through every manual, spoken to every one of her colleagues, all to no avail. Telepathic shields
could not
be rebuilt once they began to degrade from the core out.

“They use then discard us like garbage,” a fellow J had said to her.

“Why did you accept the position?” As an eight-year-old girl strapped to a hospital bed, Sophia had had no choice, but other Js did.

“It was the only available job.”

Sophia had understood. “Is it always the only available job when a J attempts to find work?”

“Yes.”

Fury had made her gut twist. “In the past, before Silence,” she’d dared ask, knowing the J opposite her would’ve been a historian if given the choice, “was it like this?”

“No. Js were only ever used in capital cases. Or if there was a hung jury where the crime fit certain parameters.”

The load, Sophia had realized, would’ve been spread, placing far less pressure on each individual.

“Js still went mad, still broke,” her colleague had continued, “but no more than the rest of our race.”

But now the Council used them up in order to consolidate its power. In light of that brutal truth, Sophia wasn’t sure she wanted to save Nikita, but Max was a good cop. He believed in justice, made her want to believe in it, too.

Her mind took that thought, connected it to a rumor tangled up in the information cache she’d begun to process while she got out the ingredients to prepare a breakfast drink of the hot chocolate Max had bought for her.
Interesting
. Leaving the milk unopened on the counter, she found a piece of paper and, taking a seat on the sofa, began to note down the relevant facts as she smoothed out the “lumps” of raw data.

The click of her door being opened was quiet, but it shattered her concentration. “Ma—” But it wasn’t her cop.

Her eyes took in the security override key in the woman’s hand, the Center badge on her lapel.
No
. She went to lower her PsyNet shields, send out a psychic mayday, but the woman’s male companion was already gripping her arm, slapping a pressure injector against the vulnerable skin of her neck, his naked hand mere centimeters away. Her concentration fractured—and they shot something into her bloodstream that turned her mind dull, sluggish.

“Useful that Js have such solid PsyNet shields,” the woman said, supporting Sophia under one arm while her partner took the other.

“Why is she on the rehabilitation watchlist then?”

“Her telepathic shields are all but gone. If she isn’t rehabilitated now, there’s a chance she’ll break on her own.” They began to head down the corridor. “And the death throes of the fractured are always so disruptive to Silence.”

Sophia tried to resist their hands, the way they directed her like a rag doll, but her mind was mired in thick fog, her body refusing to follow her commands. They “walked” her down to the garage level, each holding up half her weight. And the only thing she could think was that Max would never know how much she loved the scent of him.

Max jogged through
the doors of DarkRiver’s Chinatown HQ just as the skies opened up. “That’s some storm,” he said, shaking off the droplets that had managed to hit him.

“Forecast to clear sometime tonight,” Dorian said. “So, what’s up? Clay still shadowing that intern for you?”

“No, he had to switch with a guy named Emmett.” Who
had texted Max a few minutes ago to say that Asquith had arrived at work.

“That’s right.” Dorian clicked his fingers. “Clay’s holding a training session for some of the soldiers today.”

Max nodded. “I hear you’re good with computers.” What he’d heard was that the blond sentinel was an expert hacker.

Bright blue eyes blazed with an intelligence many people missed, being taken in by looks reminiscent of some teenage surfer. “Yeah? Where did you hear that?”

Max tapped the side of his nose. “You have your sources. I have mine.”

“I don’t work for free.” Dorian folded his arms and stared meaningfully at the box Max had carried inside. There was a very feline look of anticipation on his face.

“Thanks for driving Sophie home last night.” Max handed over the doughnuts.

“I was working late anyway.” He opened the box, drew in a long breath. “What do you need on the computer front?”

“Anything you can dig up about a Psy named Quentin Gareth during a particular period almost twenty years ago.” Taking out a notepad, he jotted down the details of the six month gap.

Dorian took a bite out of a jelly doughnut. “Good call, coming to me,” he said after swallowing. “Psy often forget about the Internet. Lots of stuff cached all over the place.” Taking the torn off piece of notepaper, he slid it into a pocket. “I’ll do the search now—have a few minutes free before a meeting.”

“Call me on my cell if you have anything. I’m heading to Nikita’s.” But he’d only gotten to the door when he got a call from the head of the manhunt team. “Doctor’s been found.” Fury and pity intertwined. “We were right about the time and method of death. At least he didn’t torture her.”

It was, Max knew, a small mercy. “Was she found near the private airport where you think he boarded a jet?”

“Yeah. Parents are refusing to tell us where the jet might’ve gone. The filed flight plan says it’s heading to Greece, but that’s a load of bullshit. Air Control hasn’t got it on its systems, which means the Bonners were fucking
ready
with a plane designed to evade radar.”

Anger burned through Max’s veins. “I’ve put a watch on some offshore accounts I know are his.” Without a warrant and with the help of friends in the computronic crimes branch of Enforcement, but if it would help catch the Butcher before he killed again, Max wasn’t going to sweat the ethics much. “He hasn’t accessed them yet—his mother’s probably supplying him.”

“Bart’s working on a warrant for her financials.”

“Sightings?”

“Through the roof.” A harsh sound. “People jumping at shadows—you know how it is.”

“We’ll get him,” Max said, able to hear the other cop’s frustration. “We did it once; we’ll do it again.” Hanging up after a few more words, he ran out to the car, the rain pelting against his body. Shrugging off his wet suit jacket, he was driving through Chinatown when he realized he’d forgotten his security keycard—which allowed him full access to the Duncan building—at Sophia’s apartment. Figuring it’d be quicker to pick it up than have it reissued, he thrust a hand through rain-damp hair and turned homeward.

“Sophia?” he called out as he wandered into her bedroom. The keycard was on the dresser where he’d put his wallet the night before, but the bedroom proved otherwise empty. “Sophie? You in the shower?” However, when he knocked, the door swung inward.

Worried she’d decided to head out in spite of Bonner’s possible presence, he pulled out his cell phone and placed a call to hers. It rang in the living area.

Ice crystals formed in his blood.

Closing his cell, he began to scan the apartment with the eyes of a cop. The food preparation area was clean except for the unopened container of milk on the counter. He stilled. Sophie was hopelessly neat, but it
was
possible she’d forgotten to tidy it away while distracted by something.

Living area undisturbed. Organizer on the coffee table.

And the bedroom, when he returned to it—

His head snapped back to the organizer. Sophia might forget her cell phone, but she was
never
without that computronic device. Gut clenching with a fear so visceral he couldn’t afford to feel it if he was going to function, he ran out of the apartment and straight to the security hub at the heart of the building.

Entering using the override Nikita had programmed into his key, he had the Psy guard rewind the corridor feed. “Stop! Who are those two?”

The guard enlarged the view. “The facial recognition software places the female as an M-Psy attached to a local branch of the Center, while the male appears to be a security expert.”

Max shoved down his raging worry, focusing only on the lethal clarity of his anger. “Why were they allowed up?” he asked, his tone a whip. “I fucking warned you all that she could be a target!”

The guard was already accessing the security log. “According to this, they had an authorization which overrode our—”

“Bring it up,” he interrupted. “The authorization!” It was a snapped command when the man didn’t immediately understand.

The screen filled with a crisp document mandating the removal of Sophia Russo, Designation J, to the Berkeley branch of the Center for Comprehensive Rehabilitation.

Rage burned an inferno across Max’s skin, but his mind remained mired in ice. “What does that mean?” He pointed to what appeared to be a coat of arms or an emblem of some kind on the bottom of the page—a small square of black overlaid with a web.

The security guard went unnaturally still. “That’s Councilor Henry Scott’s new emblem.”

Max was already coding in a call to Nikita as he ordered
the guard to send the location of the Center to his phone. “Nikita, Henry Scott is having Sophia rehabilitated,” he said the instant Nikita answered, knowing Henry’s interference would ensure Nikita’s cooperation. Councilors, he’d learned, were as territorial as changelings. “She was taken an hour ago.”

Nikita didn’t ask useless questions. “Which branch?”

“Berkeley.”

“Wait.”

He was in the car and screaming out into the rain-dark city by the time her voice came back on the line. “They haven’t yet reached the Center.” A pause. “They should have according to the time frame you’ve given me.”

He forced himself to think, to focus. The rain hadn’t turned torrential until about twenty minutes ago—Nikita was right, they should’ve reached the Center by now. And then, suddenly, he realized that Nikita should’ve been able to contact Sophie on the Net. Everything stopped as he forced himself to ask, “Is she still alive?”

CHAPTER 41

“Her mind is
present in the PsyNet,” Nikita said, “but she’s not responding to telepathic hails.”

Relief mixed with a cold, cold anger. If the bastards had hurt her—“I need you to find out the make and model of the car the Center people were driving so I can ask Enforcement to put out an alert.”

“You’ll have the information in minutes. I’ve already notified the Center not to proceed with the rehabilitation order.”

Thanking her, he hung up. But he knew Nikita’s intervention wouldn’t help, not if Sophia had been taken somewhere else. They could’ve already—
No
. “Hold on, Sophie. You just hold on.” Opening his cell phone, he made another call. “Clay, I need your help.”

The changeling male turned out to be at an indoor training facility at least twenty minutes closer to the Center than Max. “I’ve got several soldiers with me,” Clay said, able to hear the incredible strain in Max’s voice. But he knew from
experience that the other man wouldn’t appreciate sympathy, only practical assistance. “We’ll head out now.” Hanging up, he pulled a team together, and they drove out into the pounding rain.

“Pretty isolated,” Kit said when they reached the road that led to the Center, his auburn hair appearing deep brown in the stormy light. “Visibility’s low.”

And getting lower as thunderclouds continued to roll in, their heavy weight making it seem as if it was late afternoon when it wasn’t yet midmorning. “This is the only way to the place.” The Psy had located their new lobotomy facility in an innocuous building set on a patch of fenced land that DarkRiver had kept an eye on, but hadn’t considered a threat because it had no obvious military or tactical function. “If they’re not on this route . . .”

“Stop!” Kit’s cry came at almost the same instant that Clay pulled the car to a halt, reacting even before the proximity sensors detected the overturned vehicle on the road.

Getting out, Clay held up a hand to the packmates following in the vehicle behind them and ran to the wreck. “I have a male on this side, injured—fuck, it looks like his throat’s been slashed.”

“Same here, except it’s a female.” Wiping the rain from his face, Kit looked at him over the top of the car as Clay rose. “She had an ID around her neck, with an
M
in the corner.”

Rain pelted Clay’s back in hard little bullets. “I’ll call Max, get him to send us the images—”

Max’s car screeched to a halt behind the second DarkRiver vehicle at that instant.

“Man.” Kit whistled, his lashes dripping rain. “The cop must’ve driven at three times the speed limit. I didn’t even know cars would let you do that.”

“She’s not in here,” Clay called out as soon as Max exited his vehicle, knowing from the white look on the cop’s face that that was what he feared.

Max peered into the overturned car as if to confirm Clay’s words. A second later, he bent, bracing his hands on
his knees, his white shirt so wet as to be almost transparent. “Thank God.” Shoving a hand through rain-slick hair, he rose to his full height. “Sophie looked like she’d been drugged. If she got out, wandered off . . .”

“Jamie, Nico, Dezi,” Clay said, pointing to the packmates who’d exited the second vehicle when Max came running over. “Do a sweep, see if you can find any trace of Max’s J.” The heavy canopy of trees around them could have protected the scent trail from the rain. “Kit, you, too.”

“Max,” Desiree said, her tone gentle. “Do you have anything of Sophia’s?”

Max blinked rain from his eyes. “I had a shower before I left home,” he said, obviously aware that intimate contact could leave a detectable scent, “just kissed her good-bye. The fucking rain’s probably washed away anything that was left.”

Frowning, Desiree stepped closer, her long, thin braids sleek ebony in the wet. “Do you mind?” At Max’s distracted nod, she unbuttoned the top three buttons of his sodden shirt and pressed her nose to his skin, taking a deep breath. To his credit, Max didn’t move. “Got it.” A fierce grin. “She’s in your skin, Cop.”

Jamie, Nico, and Kit repeated the process—the men choosing to take the scent off Max’s arm now that Desiree had confirmed it was in his skin—before they scattered. Max glanced at Clay, his gaze piercing even through the rain-lashed darkness. “Throats cut, what looks like oil across the surface of the road, this wasn’t a simple crash.” His words were practical, outwardly calm.