Shards of Hope

by Nalini Singh

  That didn't mean he couldn't step temporarily into Aden's shoes, especially when his friend was battling to save a relationship that was the only private, personal, selfish thing in his life. Aden had given everything to the squad--it was time they stood for him and gave back.

  So Vasic gave orders designed to make sure neither Aden nor Zaira would be disturbed. Mica in Venice was more than competent enough to cover for Zaira for now, while Nerida, Cristabel, and Axl could handle operations in the valley, and Amin had charge of the Blake team. Anything else was to be directed to Vasic. He'd decide whether or not it was an emergency that warranted disturbing Aden.

  Arriving in Nikita's high-rise office in San Francisco a bare five minutes after his conversation with his best friend, he found she'd been shot while standing in front of the plate-glass window that looked out over the glittering city. She'd have been dead except for the fact that the glass in her building was all heavily reinforced. It had slowed the momentum of the bullet to the extent that when the projectile hit Nikita's forehead, it only penetrated skin and bruised bone before falling to the carpet.

  The shattering glass, however, had moved too fast for her to avoid. It had sliced her arms and upper body, including a jagged cut to her abdomen and one to her throat that had sprayed the walls in blood. Nikita's aide, Sophia Russo, had heard the shot and run inside. Seeing the carnage, she'd ordered a young and relatively weak Tk on the Duncan team to teleport Nikita to the nearest hospital.

  That happened to be a public one with an experienced M-Psy on duty who'd begun work on Nikita right there in the parking lot that was the only location lock in the young Tk's mental files. An hour later, Nikita was still in surgery.

  "The bullet is the same type as that used by the assassin who tried to hit Aden," Vasic told Krychek, who'd also arrived on the scene. Vasic had picked up the bullet only after recording the blood-splattered site so Aden could see the scene exactly as it had been.

  "Is the assassin talking?" Krychek asked. "If not, I can intervene."

  The squad had telepaths of their own who could break shields, but it hadn't been necessary in this case. "He's talking. He knows nothing." Vasic had asked Axl to confirm that with a telepathic scan--at 9.7 on the Gradient, there were few untrained individuals who could hide their secrets from Axl.

  The shooter was lucky he was Psy; he'd been able to consciously lower his shields so Axl could do the scan without causing harm to his brain. Any other race and Axl may have had to force it, causing permanent damage. "He was hired to make the hit and paid an exorbitant deposit to offset the risk involved in targeting an Arrow."

  "A contract killer?" Krychek looked at the shattered glass streaked with Nikita's blood. "An intelligent enemy."

  "Yes." The fewer people in the inner circle, the fewer people who could leak data. "The more we learn, the more it confirms we're not dealing with another fanatical group like Pure Psy--this is far more strategic." Vasic knew Aden had shared his theory of a shadowy puppet master intent on fostering disorder, with all of the Ruling Coalition so that they could head off possible clashes between different groups. He'd also told the changeling alphas with whom he had contact, as well as informing Bo.

  "Aden and Nikita," Krychek said, "have only one common denominator."

  "The Ruling Coalition."

  "The sudden rumors about Aden's competence have to be part of a fallback plan."

  Vasic shook his head as he hunkered down to examine the way the glass had shattered. "I think it was part of the assassination plot itself--what better way to prove Aden's lack of power than by shooting him in broad daylight?" Everything about the attempts on Aden's life indicated a motive beyond his death, and that motive was to demoralize and humiliate the squad.

  Someone did not want the Arrows around to disturb or stop their future plans.

  Krychek's cardinal eyes scanned the blood on the walls. "Will Aden respond to the rumors?"

  "The squad doesn't publicly explain itself." Vasic knew Aden would answer the allegations when the time was right, but not by stripping the shield of distance and dark secrecy that kept the squad's vulnerable safe.

  Rising to his feet, he looked to Max Shannon, Nikita's security chief having just returned to the office. "News?"

  Face set in brutally hard lines, Max said, "Shooter was in a room in the high-rise directly across, as I suspected. I found the actual tenant bound and gagged in the bathroom." The human male, who'd been a cop before he agreed to work for Nikita, put his hands on his hips.

  "The tenant said he woke from sleep to find a masked female holding a gun to his head; she told him he'd be fine if he didn't fight." His eyes took in both Vasic and Kaleb, and though Max was, on the surface, the least powerful individual in the room, Vasic knew it would be a mistake to treat him that way.

  The former cop not only worked for Nikita, Vasic had cause to know that Max had challenged her decisions on more than one occasion and won. Not many people could make that claim when it came to one of the most ruthless women in the world. Oddly, that fact increased Vasic's respect for both parties involved--Max, for remaining clear-eyed even in the face of Nikita's immense power, and Nikita for being unafraid to give a position of trust to someone who wasn't a yes-man.

  Vasic's instincts told him that Max's wife, Sophia, was cut from the same cloth as her husband. Yet Nikita had made the ex-Justice Psy her most senior aide. Neither appointment made sense to those who saw Nikita only as a power-hungry bitch who'd eat her own young to get to the top and to stay there.

  Those people seemed to have forgotten the child Nikita did have, the one she'd raised successfully to adulthood despite the fact that the child had been born into an environment hostile to her very existence. And according to Ivy, Nikita would coldly execute anyone who so much as lifted a finger against Sascha.

  "I've ordered a forensic team to go over the apartment used by the shooter," Max added. "I'm not expecting them to find anything--this shouts professional hit to me." Folding his arms over his white shirt, he nodded at Kaleb. "If this is about targeting members of the Ruling Coalition, you should be the primary target."

  Vasic agreed with Max; Krychek was unquestionably the strongest Psy in the Net.

  "Yet I haven't been under threat." Kaleb walked around the bloodied glass to meet Vasic and Max in the center of the room. "Anthony and Ivy?"

  "Safe." Vasic had made sure Ivy was always protected, while Anthony had been in the NightStar compound for the past three days to attend internal family meetings.

  "Could Ming and Shoshanna be behind this?" Max asked with a raised eyebrow. "Those two suffered a serious demotion with the fall of Silence."

  "If we accept that today's assassination attempts were part of the same large conspiracy," Vasic said, "then Shoshanna appears to have been targeted by this group. Anthony's said it's possible Ming was, too, but it could be a smokescreen to hide his involvement. The same with Shoshanna."

  "Both will probably have airtight alibis," Max replied dryly. "I'm fairly sure certain people lie as a matter of principle."

  "Of course." Kaleb's smile was arctic. "I'll check in on them anyway."

  Vasic didn't trust Krychek, likely never would. Not as he trusted Ivy or Aden or even Zaira. However, he'd come to understand certain things about Kaleb that permitted them to work together--like the fact that the deadly cardinal was devoted to the woman with whom he was bonded. And Sahara was deeply connected to the empaths, called many friends. Any destabilization in the PsyNet would impact those empaths, and that would feed back to Sahara.

  So in this circumstance, he could trust Krychek. "Thank you."

  Nodding, the cardinal telekinetic left.

  "Nikita?" Vasic asked Max as he prepared to 'port out.

  "No news yet." Lines around his mouth, the other man said, "Sophie's alerted Sascha. Nikita's tough, but the damage was catastrophic." He shook his head. "I'm not sure Sascha will get a chance to say good-bye."

  Chapter 62

 
ZAIRA WOKE WITH the subconscious awareness that she hadn't slept much. An hour or two at most. It was discomfort that had woken her--her eyes were gritty and her throat felt lined with sandpaper. What didn't hurt were the arms that held her close, warm and strong and intensely protective.

  Aden.

  Lying quiescent against him, she fought the urge to move, get something for her throat. Then Aden's hand slid up to that very place, curling gently around it. The warmth was soft, barely noticeable, but her pain eased almost immediately. "I always forget you have actual M abilities."

  Jaw rubbing over her hair, he continued to work. "Is that better?"

  "Yes." She turned in his arms, her eyes on the closed balcony doors, beyond which Venice lay cloaked in night. The world was hushed, not even the lap of the canal water breaking the veil. "I don't like crying."

  Pressing his lips to her temple, Aden said, "You needed to cry."

  Zaira rubbed the spot over her heart. "I feel hollow inside, like I've been wrung dry." For the first time in an eternity, she felt as if she could think without the echoes of nightmare. "Do you think it's permanent?" Not waiting for an answer because she knew the answer and it wasn't something she wanted to face at this instant when she could have been any other normal woman, she turned back into him. "Let me see your lip, your cheek."

  Aden bent his head, allowed her to examine him.

  She made sure her touch was delicate, the kisses she placed over his bruises soft. "I'm sorry."

  "Apology accepted," he said, as if he knew how important it was to her that he do that, that he acknowledge she'd done something wrong and needed to apologize. She couldn't bear it if he simply expected her to lose control and harm him.

  Pressing her lips to his throat, she drew in the taste of him, the scent of him. "The PsyNet is buzzing. I can feel it." Yet she didn't open to the news feeds, didn't want the interruption. "Do you need to be somewhere?"

  "No." He held her face to his throat, his skin rippling in response to her kiss. "I'm right where I'm meant to be."

  The hollowness inside her filled with other, brighter things. With how he made her feel so important and so worth his time, his touch. The sensation was strange and part of her was scared of the lightness of it. The girl she'd been looked on wide-eyed, not sure who she'd become if she wasn't full of a tight knot of rage that colored her every interaction and choice . . . but she didn't fight it.

  Blind faith. And love.

  Undoing the buttons on his white shirt, she pushed it off his shoulders. He shrugged it off, but when she undid his belt, her knuckles brushing the hard ridges of his abdomen, he said, "I have a gift I planned to give you on our return from New York."

  The tortured and scared girl inside her dared step a little closer to the surface, her hope mingling with the adult woman's desire. "Where is it?" she asked, kissing her way across his chest as she did so.

  "Right pants pocket."

  Sliding her hand into it, she suddenly frowned. "Why aren't you wearing my gift?"

  "I attached it to the lapel of my suit jacket."

  Zaira remembered seeing that jacket hung on the back of his office door; he'd clearly forgotten to put it on before Nerida teleported them out. "I have it." She removed her hand from his pocket and turned again to the balcony side to look at her gift in the faint light coming in from sources outside.

  It sparkled.

  Pretty and delicate, it was a ring made of either white gold or platinum, the central stone a rectangular-shaped ruby with faceted sides. Diamonds dotted the band. The avaricious, possessive heart of her wanted it at once. "I can keep it?"

  Rising up behind her, he took her left hand and, tugging the ring from her grasp--to her scowl--slid it onto the finger next to the smallest one. "If you wear it on this finger."

  Lines formed between her eyebrows. Raising her hand to the light, she said, "What does it matter?" The answer came to her as the ruby glinted in the night. "Ivy wears her wedding band on this finger."

  "Yes." A kiss on her jaw that made her want to stretch out and surrender her body to him. "It means you belong to me. The ruby is for your fire, the diamonds for the strength of your spirit, the platinum for the sleek beauty of you in combat."

  Her fingers curled into a fist as the light, bright sensations inside her continued to expand regardless of the other, darker thing that lived in her and that didn't want to give up its real estate. Shifting over onto her back and trying not to think about the latter, she ran the fingers of her other hand down his jaw and over his chest. "Vasic wears a ring, too."

  Aden's lips curved slightly, his eyes lighting up. "You'll have to ask me to marry you to get me to wear a ring. The brooch will have to do in the interim."

  Zaira had never, not in a million years, believed she might one day get married. That was for other, better, less broken people. But now Aden had put the thought in her head and it was so astonishing that she didn't know what to say. So she kissed him, sliding her ringed hand to behind his neck to hold him close as she put up ferociously protective shields around the fragile new hope in her heart.

  Because the rage? It wasn't gone. Already she could feel it pooling in her belly again, the clarity of her earlier thoughts altering with its presence and the lightness inside her entangled with threads of a heavy, bloody darkness. Aden, I'm not fixed, she said, the words holding despair.

  You were never broken. There's nothing to fix.

  Tears fell again from her eyes, were mingled in their kiss. She wished she could believe him, believe her quiet boy who had become a powerful man, but where Aden had a faith that had taken the squad from the pitch-black of a subterranean existence to the sunlight of the valley, Zaira had always had blunt pragmatism. She knew even blind faith and the greatest love couldn't change a miswired brain.

  Chapter 63

  SILVER MERCANT WAS loyal to her family.

  It was at the core of every Mercant, that familial loyalty. "Politicians and kingmakers come and go but family is forever" had long been the family motto. That didn't mean Mercants didn't know how to be loyal to others, too. According to Silver's grandmother, once, long ago, the Mercants had been the loyal knights of a king. Many had died in battle to save that king, until only a lone Mercant knight was left and the king's enemies were slain.

  "That was when we were given land on which to rebuild our family."

  Silver didn't know if that was truth or old family legend, the time of kings so far in the distant past that she couldn't imagine it. What she did know was that the gene for loyalty--if there was one--ran strong in her family line. So strong that once they gave their loyalty, it would take a cataclysm to break that bond. It was why they didn't offer their allegiance lightly.

  Kaleb Krychek had, however, earned it.

  Not only had he kept his word in his dealings with the Mercants, Silver had watched him over a number of years and come to understand that Kaleb didn't turn on those who'd given him their loyalty, even when the people in question broke or got hurt or were otherwise unable to perform their duties. He treated his people as if they had worth beyond temporary usefulness. She was in no doubt that he'd chosen her as his aide because she was a Mercant, but she also knew that had she proven bad at her job, she'd have been demoted without hesitation.

  Instead, she'd been promoted to a position of sprawling responsibility, her task to act as the liaison between all three races in emergency situations. Her contacts--effectively Mercant contacts--had spread out across the world as a result of that promotion and had led to a decision that had never before been made in the past three generations.

  Kaleb Krychek was now considered a Mercant.

  Whether or not he was ever told of that decision remained Grandmother Mercant's decision, but from this point forward, he'd be treated as a member of the family unit. They'd already given him their loyalty, but now, no matter how bad the situation, they would never abandon him, would fight for him and with him to the death. Family always stuck together. It was
why the Mercants had survived where others had fallen.

  "Sir," she said, walking through the open doorway of his Moscow office an hour after Nikita Duncan was shot.

  He wasn't at his desk, but at the shelves on the far right wall, pulling out a hard-copy volume. She didn't understand why he kept those volumes when he had a direct link to the PsyNet, but even lethally disciplined cardinals had their peccadilloes. "Silver," he said. "Have you heard anything about Shoshanna or Ming on the grapevine?"

  "Nothing beyond the obvious--financial maneuvers and political games to consolidate power."

  Moving away from the bookshelf, he said, "You wanted to speak to me."

  "The matriarch of my family has recalled something that happened eight months ago that might have some bearing on today's events."

  "Nikita's shooting?"

  Silver inclined her head in the affirmative. "The matriarch was approached via anonymous channels and invited to join a small group of 'visionaries' who would nudge the world in the right direction."

  "Did Ena Mercant say yes?"

  "Of course." The Mercants liked information, and the best way to get information was to be in the thick of things. "But she was never again contacted. Her belief is that my connection to you was deemed too high a risk factor."

  "A pity," Kaleb said, cardinal eyes thoughtful. "If she is approached again, please let her know I have no argument with her joining the group."

  "The matriarch wouldn't take kindly to being given permission." Kaleb was now family, and as such, he had to understand family.

  "Ah." Kaleb folded his arms. "In that case, ignore that last request. I appreciate the information."

  "Would you like me to see what I can dig up on Shoshanna and Ming?"

  "Yes. It's always better to be armed before heading into battle."

  That, too, was why Kaleb fit into the Mercant family: he wasn't only powerful but mercilessly intelligent. "I'll begin now." Before leaving, she said, "Has there been an update on Nikita's condition?"