by Nalini Singh
“It’ll require considerable work,” he said softly, the obsidian of his gaze holding her own, “might even be an impossible task.”
“Are you surrendering, then?” It was a question as soft. “Walking away?”
Kaleb’s response held a possessiveness that might yet keep her a prisoner. “I will never walk away from you.”
* * *
KALEB didn’t go to bed after Sahara left his office following an interaction he hadn’t ever thought would come to pass, not given what she’d learned of him, and the injuries done to her in the years of captivity. He should’ve known not to attempt to predict or judge her—Sahara Kyriakus had always had an unexpected and stubborn will. No other woman could’ve survived seven years in hell and come out of it with the strength to challenge Kaleb.
He waited an hour to give her time to fall into deep sleep, before getting up and rolling down the sleeves of his shirt to do up the cuffs. Picking up his jacket from where it hung behind the study door, he shrugged into it. His choice of clothing was another mask—it gave people a certain impression of him, an impression he intended to use tonight to ensure Sahara’s future safety.
No one was ever again taking her from him.
Ready, he discovered himself unable to leave before making dead certain she was safe and undisturbed in her rest. If he lost her now, after she’d returned to him at last, eyes of midnight blue holding a fragile trust he’d never again expected to see, there would no longer be any question about his sanity or lack of it. The world had no knowledge of the delicate hands that held its fate.
He made sure to position himself in the shadows by the door when he teleported into her room, not wanting to scare her if she wasn’t lost in sleep. Fear in Sahara’s eyes, he’d learned when she’d run from him earlier, burned worse than any acid Santano had poured on him when he’d been a boy. It was dangerous, that pain, could drown the world in blood, but Sahara had been the first, would always be the deepest, fracture in his conditioning.
It was a truth as pure and as inescapable as the wind.
The room was pitch-black, but his eyes had learned to adapt in the darkness of his childhood, and he had no trouble seeing her. Risking going closer when her breathing proved quiet and steady, he saw her face was turned sideways on the pillow as she lay on her back, the black strands of her hair silky and thick across the Egyptian cotton of the pillowcase.
It was the best money could buy. He’d made certain of it.
Hand rising, he almost touched the sleep-warm curve of her cheek before realizing it would wake her . . . scare her. He couldn’t risk that. Not now, when she’d remembered just enough to trust him on a basic level but not enough to brand him the monster he knew himself to be.
“You are what I made you. There is nothing else.”
Visions of blood, bright and hot, spraying across his retinas, he teleported out and manually checked every door and window. Rerouting the perimeter alarms to feed into his cell phone once he was satisfied the house was secure, he made sure the siren remained active. If a breach did occur, he didn’t want Sahara caught unprepared. The filleting knife she’d hidden under her pillow would work fine as a weapon if he was delayed by a second or two, especially since he’d quietly sharpened it until it would take only a single swipe to sever the carotid or jugular.
Security check complete, he looked in a mirror to confirm his mask remained in place, hair combed neatly and suit jacket buttoned, before accessing his Tk to build the framework for a teleport more complex than his usual split-second shifts. As the search for Sahara had thrown into dark focus, his ability to lock onto people wasn’t foolproof. If the individual in question didn’t know who she was, the attempt would fail. It was no coincidence the enemy Tk had found Sahara after she came out of the labyrinth.
A small number of telepaths in the Net—not necessarily the strongest, but the most intelligent—had figured out that weakness, too. If Kaleb had to guess, he’d say that was how the entire Lauren family, now part of the SnowDancer wolf pack, had ensured the success of their defection.
Tonight, he had to locate another individual who understood telepathic camouflage: Tatiana Rika-Smythe, fellow ex-Councilor and a woman who knew how to lay false trails so complex, it had taken him years to navigate the twisted pathways and retrieve Sahara . . . and days to unravel the blueprints of the psychic vault that had concealed Sahara’s mind, hidden her from him.
He’d taken the blueprints apart piece by piece, and the more he saw, the more he’d recognized Tatiana’s meticulous brand of psychic construction. “Do you know the name of the person who held you captive?” he’d asked Sahara earlier that night, as she sat curled up in the chair across from him, the star finally on the bracelet where it belonged. “The one in charge.”
A shake of her head. “I was always blindfolded, my psychic senses leashed, and my hands tied when she came to visit.”
She.
Another nail in the coffin, but it wasn’t enough. The fact that he’d identified the man he’d executed today as being attached to one of Tatiana’s shell companies was even more persuasive, but Kaleb needed to be certain beyond any doubt before he meted out this punishment. Baiting the trap, however, required only a little effort.
Tatiana had been very, very careful about protecting the location of her bolt-hole, which was why Kaleb had concentrated his attention on her finances. As expected, she had a multilayered and profitable empire. He’d long ago stripped away the phantom corporations that owned her assets per the official records, then sectioned the properties into business and personal.
He’d known her hidden base of operations would be in those files—Tatiana’s biggest weakness was that she couldn’t let go of anything she owned, not even to a shell company of which she had full control. Dig deep enough and her name always turned up as the true owner. That digging required considerable patience—and when it came to punishing those who had kept Sahara from him, Kaleb had an endless amount.
Australia had flashed up multiple times in his initial search, but he’d disregarded it as Tatiana had previously retreated to a remote part of that country. It would be unlike her to choose the same location twice. Only later had he considered the fact that Tatiana was intelligent and cunning enough to play everyone by doing exactly that. If not the same exact place as her previous headquarters, then close enough to it that she’d have access to the infrastructure she’d already put in place.
After that, it hadn’t taken him long to discover the hidden property two miles from her known base. Getting an image he could use for a teleport lock had cost him over a hundred thousand dollars, but the man he’d turned in her employ had come through. Using that image to ’port himself to the fringe of the property, his Tk strength unshielded, he scanned the area bathed in the misty gray of early morning.
A single light burned in the apparently ordinary cottage set in the midst of a huge plot of land, the house surrounded by sparse native foliage. He saw footprints that suggested animals had passed near his current position—kangaroos from the shape—but the area closer to the house was apt to be alarmed and set with booby traps.
Retrieving the high-powered binoculars he’d slid into his pocket, he focused on the single square of light until Tatiana rose to get something, crossing the window, then back. Target confirmed, he worked with the binoculars until the focus was sharp enough to pick up a very specific knot pattern in the pine paneling opposite the window.
It was time to exact payment for seven years of Sahara’s life.
Since perception was often everything when it came to the dance of power, he slid away the binoculars. He wanted Tatiana to know he could find her wherever she went; wanted her to taste fear, acrid and acidic.
He wanted her to beg for her life.
Seated behind the desk in front of which he appeared, Tatiana had a gun pointed at his head before he finished the teleport, but he’d long ago worked out how to compensate for the split-second vulnerability that c
ame with entering an unknown situation. He avoided the laser fire with a fluid shift, then knocked the gun out of her hand, blocking her vicious telepathic strike at the same time.
“An unfriendly welcome for a colleague who wishes to talk business,” he said to the brunette, undoing the buttons on his suit jacket before taking a seat in the chair on his side of the desk.
Though Tatiana’s hazel-green eyes remained flat with suspicion, she didn’t attempt to go for another weapon. “What are you doing here, Kaleb? We didn’t have a meeting scheduled.”
“I came across an item I thought might be of particular interest to you.”
Relaxing into the black leather of her chair in a show of indifference, Tatiana picked up and tapped a stylus against the electronic blotter in front of her. “Really?”
Kaleb smiled and it was a calculated act. He’d learned to mimic the facial movement to placate the humans and changelings with whom he did business, but knew full well that it had the opposite effect on those of his own race. “Why such a violent welcome?” he asked, shoulders relaxed and arm lying loosely along the armrest.
“I wasn’t conscious this location had been compromised,” she said with just enough of a hesitation that he knew it had been as deliberate as his own actions.
Tatiana, he thought, would not pause at playing wounded prey if it got her what she wanted. “Ah.”
“How did you penetrate my defenses?”
“I’m a teleport-capable Tk, Tatiana,” he said with a gentleness that was a threat. “Do you honestly believe any security could keep me out if I wanted to get into a location, in the PsyNet or out?”
A flicker of comprehension, flawless olive-toned skin tightening over the razor-sharp blades of her cheekbones, but it wasn’t enough. He needed absolute and categorical confirmation of her guilt, because this punishment would fit the crime in ways Tatiana couldn’t comprehend.
“So,” she said, continuing to tap the stylus in an unsteady rhythm he guessed was meant to distract him—because Psy did not make such “unconscious” nervous movements, “the business you have to discuss.”
He smiled again. “I think you know.”
“This will be an interminable negotiation if you don’t put things on the table.”
Yes, Tatiana was clever, but Kaleb had expected the demand. “I have in my possession,” he murmured, “an item that may belong to you. It was retrieved by an Arrow”—a lie with just enough of a possibility of truth that she wouldn’t question it—“after he became suspicious of a section of the Net that was blocked off for no rational reason.”
“Really?” A thoughtful pause. “What makes you believe this item is of any value to me?”
“Your telepathic work is unmistakable in its complexity and dexterity.”
“You flatter me.”
“The truth is not flattery.”
Tatiana responded with a smile as practiced and as false as his own. “I’ve heard that you’re doing business with Nikita and Anthony as well.”
He shrugged, the movement another one he’d copied from the more emotional races, and answered with the absolute truth. “It makes logical sense to create and utilize multiple strategic partnerships. Unlike the changelings, we do not blood-ally ourselves to one another; fidelity is understood to be a fluid concept.” By some.
“That,” Tatiana said, putting down the stylus, “is why we’d make an unbeatable team. Neither one of us has any flaws in our Silence.”
Kaleb thought of the woman who slept in the house he’d built for her, of the man with a broken neck who had burned to ash in a crematorium incinerator hours ago, and knew his Silence was far more complex than Tatiana could imagine. “I insist on loyalty in my partners,” he said. “I do not believe you capable of it.” Even Nikita, ruthless as she was, would not stab him in the back as long as he kept his end of their bargain.
“I’ve never had a partner who deserved loyalty,” Tatiana responded. “You, however, would.”
“Now you flatter me.”
“Truth is the best defense.” The stylus in her grasp again, tap-tapping. “What do you want in exchange for the item?”
Chapter 16
“NOTHING YOU CAN’T afford,” Kaleb said, his blood calm and as cold as death as he gave Tatiana more rope with which to hang herself. “A piece of information.”
She waited.
“I want to know why you had the item in such a secure lockup in the first place.” No privacy, no air, blinding light. “Backsight isn’t, after all, a particularly useful ability.”
“Backsight? You’ve lost me.”
Clever, so clever, not to fall for his trap. “Exactly.” As if making a decision, he rose, doing up the buttons on his jacket as he did so. “It appears I was mistaken. The item isn’t yours—there is only one individual left to whom it could belong.”
Tatiana continued to maintain her relaxed pose, but he saw the fine lines form at the corners of her eyes. “Who?”
“Anthony, of course,” he said, well aware Tatiana utilized NightStar’s forecasting services on a regular basis to increase the financial status of her empire. She could not afford to be blacklisted. Not only would it put her at a severe disadvantage in the Psy financial world, but her current investments would dive in value once the news leaked. And NightStar—Anthony—would make certain it did. The F-Psy clan understood loyalty, too, in a way Tatiana never would.
The tapping paused, the tendons in Tatiana’s hand standing out against her skin. “No.”
“No?”
Eyes connecting with his, chips of agate, she nodded at the chair. “Perhaps we can do business after all.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” He sat down, waited.
Tatiana took her time in replying. “I acquired the item intending to use it as a hostage should NightStar ever attempt to blacklist me, but it was never needed.”
A lie, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the confirmation.
Tatiana gasped as she was shoved backward, her chair crashing to the floor as invisible manacles pinned her to the wall, her feet at least a half meter off the ground. One sleek black pump landed on the carpet with a dull thud, while the other drummed against the wall as she struggled to break free.
He hadn’t expected such useless panic from Tatiana.
Put immediately on alert by her uncharacteristic lack of control, he looked into his mind—and saw the insidious tendril that had already penetrated the first three layers of his shields. Slamming outward with violent force, he sealed up the surgical holes she’d created as a drop of blood, dark and viscous, dripped out of her nose.
“Very smart.” He’d made a near-fatal error in the grip of the black rage that lived below the shell of his Silence. Another half a minute and she’d have been inside his mind.
“What do you want?” she said when her ruse failed to distract him, her body now motionless and her voice frigid.
“I want to know why you took her,” he repeated, relaxing into the chair without ever taking one eye off his shields.
“She’s malfunctioning, of no use to you.”
Kaleb sighed. “That’s not the question I asked.”
“You can’t kill me,” Tatiana said in that same icily composed tone. “Regardless of the rumors of the Council’s demise, the psychic shock wave caused by the death of another Councilor will cause the Net to destabilize to a dangerous extent, especially given the current violence.”
“Yes, that’s true.” And Kaleb hadn’t yet decided if he wanted the Net to fracture on that level. “But there are worse things than death.” With that, he used his telekinesis to dislocate her left knee the same way Sahara’s had once been dislocated, according to the information caught by the scanner when he’d inspected her for tracking devices.
“I apologize,” he said after Tatiana stopped screaming. “Where were we? I believe you were about to answer my question.”
“She was given to me,” Tatiana gasped, her left knee beginning to swell
up.
“And who was your generous benefactor?”
“You know.”
He didn’t bother to warn her this time, simply dislocated her left shoulder exactly as Sahara’s had been three years ago. That piece of information he’d gained when he pulverized the mind of the pathetic excuse for a male he’d executed in the kitchen. His lack of restraint had cost him a large amount of useful data; the guard’s mind had broken split seconds after Kaleb smashed through his shields, leaving Kaleb a very short window in which to sweep up information, but he found he felt no remorse.
As he didn’t now, watching Tatiana’s head loll forward. She’d blacked out. “Weak,” he said, having stayed conscious through far worse as a seven-year-old. He gave her a minute, and when she didn’t awaken, picked up the glass of water on her desk without moving from his position in the chair and threw the contents into her face.
She came to with a whimpering jerk, wet strands of hair sticking to her skin and a glint of fear in her eye. Her Silence might have been pristine until this moment, her will ruthless, but for all her deadly cunning and strength, Tatiana Rika-Smythe hadn’t been trained as Kaleb had been. She didn’t know how to hold on to the conditioning—or a convincing reproduction of it—in the face of excruciating pain, with no end in sight.
Shivering from the onset of shock, she rasped out, “Santano Enrique gave her to me.”
Her answer was no surprise, but Kaleb had needed to hear it from her mouth. “Why?”
“We were . . . partners of a kind. He respected my ambition, and I respected the fact he’d cut my throat if I ever turned that ambition in his direction. We trusted each other.”
It was the ugliest definition of trust he’d ever heard. “Did you know she was mine when you took her?”
Tatiana shook her head. “No. I didn’t think he allowed you to pick victims.”