The main room opened to another: a formal dining room, complete with a glittering crystal chandelier. Beyond that was a gleaming kitchen she didn’t approach; she turned instead the other direction and found a master suite right out of Architectural Digest. A curving staircase led her to the second floor, where the dramatic strains of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor for organ playing through wall speakers teased a wry smile to her lips.
Phantom of the Opera music. Someone had a sense of humor.
She recognized the Monet above the fireplace, the Renoir above the sofa in the sitting area, the exquisite little bronze Degas ballerina on a lighted stand against one wall. A profusion of white roses scented every room, bursting from vases of bone china and marble, and after so many years of smelling nothing but antiseptic and dead air and the sour human smells of the man who came to visit her on Thursdays, the lush perfume of fresh flowers was so welcome she had to stand still for a moment, inhaling greedily, drunk with the unexpected pleasure of it.
She’d had money once, a great deal of it, and knew that every piece of art and furniture in this place had been carefully selected by someone with a vast amount of wealth, and perhaps an even greater sense of style.
But it was the view that really moved her.
One entire wall of the second floor was composed of windows, floor-to-ceiling glass that showcased in the most brilliant, stunning detail the long white strip of sand and the glimmering ocean that loomed beyond. The sky was ablaze with purple, lavender, and crimson, the most spectacular sunset she’d ever seen. As she watched, a pod of dolphins broke the surface of a cresting wave, sailed weightlessly for a heartbeat, then sliced back into the water, disappearing without a trace.
The sight made moisture well in her eyes. She’d swum as a dolphin only once, but it had been one of the greatest joys of her life.
Where on Earth was this place?
Behind her, someone said, “I knew you lived by the beach when you were a young woman. Venice, wasn’t it?”
She whirled around, stunned that she’d been so engrossed she hadn’t even heard anyone enter. There stood a man, tall, slender and sophisticated in a beautifully cut suit of deepest royal blue.
“Jenna,” he said warmly, his voice a rich, seductive baritone, “I’ve wanted to meet you in person for so long.”
He was neither handsome nor ugly, but rather . . . interesting, with the kind of features that wouldn’t stand alone well under close examination—his nose was too long, his lips too thin, his hairline asymmetrical—but when brought together managed a pleasing, oddly trust-inspiring harmony. It brought to mind a respected newscaster, or a beloved character actor rather than a movie star. He was slightly stoop-shouldered, and his close-cropped pale hair and veined hands belied the age his smooth facial skin tried to hide, but he exuded the robustness and vitality of a far younger man.
You’re seventy if you’re a day, thought Jenna. Vain bastard.
The color of his suit perfectly matched his eyes. She wondered if it was intentional.
“Funny,” she said, “I would have thought you’d choose the word torture instead of meet.”
He ignored that and moved closer with a slow, easy stride that telegraphed he had no fear of her. He didn’t smell of fear, either. Surprisingly.
“Technology,” he said as he searched her face, correctly guessing her thoughts. “There are as many things in this suite that can kill you in an instant, if I deem it, as there are flowers in that vase.” He gestured to a nearby urn dripping roses.
“Only ninety-seven? In all this space?” She looked around. “I’d think you’d want a little more coverage per square foot.”
The man frowned at the vase. “There should be one hundred roses in that vase. In every vase.” He didn’t seem at all surprised that she was able to calculate the exact number in a passing glance.
“Guess the florist miscounted. Are you going to chop off his head? Or just stick him with a few electrodes and turn up the juice?”
Her withering tone didn’t rile him. Instead, he offered her an apologetic smile. It actually looked sincere. “I regret the necessity of using force on you, Jenna. I’m not a violent man. But you must admit, it was only when you yourself provoked it.”
“Strange how I wouldn’t like being a prisoner. It’s such a wonderful way to spend one’s life.”
Was that smile of his now admiring? He lowered his head and looked at her through his lashes, something she’d only ever known simpering heroines in romance novels to do. “He said you were a spitfire,” he murmured, and she grimaced at the thought of Dr. Evil describing her that way. It sounded much too . . . chummy. And grossly familiar.
He shook his head. “Please forgive me. I haven’t properly introduced myself. I’m Sebastian Thorne.” He had the nerve to proffer his hand.
Jenna said quietly, “I know who you are. And I’m sure you realize I can easily crush your hand if I wanted to. Or a whole lot of other things I doubt you’d appreciate having crushed.” She managed not to glance at his crotch, but only just.
Without lowering his arm, he said, “Yes, my associate now cooling on the floor of your cell is proof enough of that. However, you’d be dead before you could do any real damage to me. And I think you’re going to want to stay alive to hear my proposition.”
Still not afraid, just calm, cool, confident. She almost envied him his composure; she herself was feeling the first stirrings of an array of unpleasant emotions. He didn’t seem to care one whit she’d murdered his associate. Another “subject,” no doubt.
“You can’t really think I would shake the hand of my arch enemy.”
His brows pulled together. He lowered his arm, looking—the asshole!—wounded.
“There’s no need for us to be enemies, Jenna. In fact, I’d like to think we can become good friends.” He walked slowly to the windows, and clasped his hands behind his back as he contemplated the view. His tone offhand, he said, “As Leander and I have become.”
Everything inside her ground to a halt.
Leander! Leander! Leander! It began slapping against the inside of her skull, that name so long unspoken aloud, the name of the man she loved more than anything else in the world, and always would, regardless that she hadn’t seen him since she came to this place. He’d been ripped from her arms in that hellhole jungle in Brazil, both of them wounded and no longer able to fight, and she hadn’t seen him since.
He was here, somewhere nearby? And had been, all this time? And—she swallowed back the acid taste of bile in her throat—Sebastian Thorne and he were friends?
It was a trick. A lie. It had to be.
Only the thing was . . . he didn’t smell like he was lying. Everything in his posture and scent and bodily functions said he was telling the truth.
Very slowly, Jenna lowered herself to a nearby chair, just looking at Thorne. Waiting silently, while the animal inside her screamed for blood.
Still to the windows, he said, “One of my Enforcement operatives in New Prague captured one of your kind three weeks ago. Name of Alejandro Luna.” He turned his head and peered at her, his blue eyes as fathomless as the deepest reaches of space. “You know him.”
She did. Once the Alpha of the Brazil colony, Alejandro had been bested by his half-brother Hawk in a ritual power challenge. Alejandro disappeared into the jungle in shame just days before the attack by Thorne’s men, and she never knew what had happened to him.
“He was quite the fount of information, that one,” Thorne added with a faint, knowing smile, making Jenna’s skin prickle with dread.
She’d met Alejandro a lifetime ago when she’d gone to Sommerley in search of answers about her father’s disappearance. She hadn’t known what she was then, had only had her dead mother’s cryptic warnings of “If they ever find you, run,” as a guide. She’d been living in the human world with a human mothe
r back in the days when all that meant was that she was different, not marked for death. In the days when what she wanted more than anything else in the world was to solve the mystery of what had happened to her father, and had followed a beautiful stranger named Leander all the way to England to find the answer. Alejandro had visited them there, as had the Alphas of the other colonies, as they tried to determine if she was friend or foe.
So yes, she knew him. And he knew her.
He knew all about her.
Thorne said softly, “Tell me the locations of the rest of the Ikati, and you and Leander will be reunited. You can live here,” he swept out his arm, “in luxury and peace for the rest of your lives. With your daughters.”
Her heartbeat, loud as thunder. Tremors in her arms and legs, her mouth as dry as bone.
“We already know the whereabouts of one of your daughters. Lumina, she calls herself. She’s incredibly powerful, that one. Blew up a good portion of New Vienna the other day. She escaped, but we’re tracking her.” His gaze flicked to the collar around Jenna’s neck. He met her eyes again. “It’s only a matter of time. But you can expedite that process, because you know exactly where she is, don’t you? And where your other daughter is. And where each and every single Ikati on the face of this Earth is, right at this very moment.” His voice had grown softer and softer, until his final words were so hushed they were nothing but a breath of air past his lips.
“Don’t you.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact, because one of her many Gifts was that of Sight, and it allowed her to not only See inside people’s minds with a touch, but also to locate any living creature anywhere who had even a small percentage of Ikati Blood flowing through his or her veins.
Without the collar, she could See. With it, she was blind.
“You’re lying,” she said in a tremulous voice, watching him, smelling him, looking for any tic or tell that what he was saying was false.
There was none.
“I believe you can ascertain perfectly well if I’m lying or not,” he answered, still with that intimate whisper. “My offer is genuine. When Alejandro told us what you could do, I had this suite constructed in less than two weeks. Everything you can ever need is here; most anything you desire will be provided to you, you have only to ask. Your freedom will be restricted, of course, but I had my engineers design this interactive data screen specifically with you in mind. I call it the Oracle. It’s operated solely by voice; just tell it what you’d like to see and you can go anywhere in the world.” Without taking his gaze from her, he raised his voice and said, “Phuket.”
On the screens she’d thought were windows, a crystalline lagoon appeared, dotted with colorful canoes. Beach, sand, craggy cliffs covered with trees, fluffy white clouds freckling the sky.
“Fiji.”
A sun-bleached dock stretched over blue water. A thatched hut sat empty on the sand off in the distance. More fluffy clouds.
Thorne smiled. “It’s all pre-Flash imagery, of course. We had to really dig deep to recover all the data. It works for any spot on Earth, but since you grew up near the beach . . .” He shrugged. The casual smugness of it made her want to kill him so badly she had to bite her lip, hard, to distract herself.
Because what if—what if—what he’d said before was actually true? About Leander? About the girls?
Jenna closed her eyes, fighting hard to maintain her control. She didn’t want this man to see her fall to pieces. She stayed like that for a silent count of ten, until Thorne said something that made her open her eyes.
“Your daughter is lovely, Jenna. She obviously gets that from you.” He reached inside his jacket, withdrew an envelope and stood there fingering it, staring down at her with a predatory light in his gaze. “Would you like to see a picture of her?”
A sob stuck in the back of her throat. She raised a hand and covered her mouth, afraid of what would come out. A sudden hot prick of tears flooded her eyes.
“Here,” he said softly, and removed a photograph from the envelope. He held it out between two fingers, and, for the first time in twenty-five years, Jenna broke down and cried.
The camera had caught the image of a young woman running. Her arms and legs were bent in a way that suggested she was moving fast, and at the exact moment of the shot, neither of her feet was touching the ground. Her hair—long, braided—streamed out behind her in a blurred streak of gold. Her face was turned toward the camera, suggesting she’d been just about to look over her shoulder, and Thorne was right: She was lovely. Lovely and fierce, because Jenna knew deep in her guts that this picture had been snapped when she was being chased, but there wasn’t a trace of fear in her eyes. If anything, she looked almost exhilarated.
Her baby. A grown woman now.
All those years, lost.
“It was taken by surveillance cameras so the quality is a little poor, but there are others.” He removed another photo from the envelope. This one was posed, official-looking, featuring a slightly younger looking version of the girl in the first photo staring directly into the camera.
“This is from her work identification badge. That’s how we discovered her; she didn’t seem to be able to keep her . . . powers until control.” His voice grew as gentle as his eyes. “Tell me where the Ikati are hiding, Jenna, and I promise you I will return your daughters to you. Unharmed.”
Fury flashed over her, scalding hot, and Jenna’s face burned beneath the stream of tears. He’d stolen so much from her—husband, children, family, home—the most precious things in any woman’s life, including years that could never be retrieved. And why?
Simply because he could.
She stood, not caring about her tears, the way her hands were shaking, or the way her voice broke when she vowed, “Someday I’m going to end your life, Sebastian Thorne. For every year you’ve taken from me, for everything you’ve done, one day I’ll watch the light go out of your eyes and then I’ll spit on your corpse. I will never cooperate with you.”
He slid the photos back into the envelope. He placed the envelope back into his coat pocket. He turned to the Oracle. “Bring up subject four-nine-eight-six.”
The wall of glass flashed black, then showed the interior of a cell exactly like the one she’d just left. A man reclined on the folding cot, his back against the wall, a leg folded beneath him, the other stretched out to the floor. Bare-chested and barefoot, lean and leonine, he was reading a book. Thick black hair brushed his broad shoulders, a week’s worth of beard shaded his jaw. The image appeared to be static, the man held so still, but then he turned a page of his book and Jenna fell to her knees on the plush ivory carpet and let out a scream of anguish so primal and raw Sebastian Thorne took a few steps back in alarm.
She sobbed, “Oh God—Leander!”
“You can put your family back together, Jenna,” said Thorne urgently. “Just tell me what I want to know and he’ll be transferred here immediately. As soon as we have your daughters, they’ll be brought here as well.”
Violent sobs wracked her body. She hugged herself, rocking, crying, unable to look away from the image on the screen.
Alive. He was alive! The love of her life and the father of her children was alive!
Or was he? Could this be another trick?
“How do I know that’s even him? This video could be years old! He could be dead by now!”
Thorne nodded. “Fair enough.” To the Oracle he directed, “Bidirectional audio on.” There was a short burst of static, then he said to the screen, “Good morning, Leander,” and the man in the video jerked up his head.
He carefully laid aside his book. “Thorne.”
The tone, pitched low and commanding, the British accent evident even in the single word he’d spoken; she’d know that voice anywhere.
Jenna couldn’t breathe. Her lungs refused to do their work. She only
stared at the screen, her mouth open, her face wet, her body frozen in place.
Thorne said, “I have someone here who’d like to speak with you,” and looked at Jenna.
She tried to form a sentence. She tried to think of the words that could convey the depths of her agony and wretchedness and longing, but in the end she came up with only one.
“Love.”
It was a hoarse whisper, but it was enough.
Leander leapt from the bed, his face transformed from wary to tormented, craving, disbelieving. “Jenna! Jenna!”
Thorne said, “Bidirectional audio off,” and Leander’s voice went silent, though she could see he was still calling out her name. She closed her eyes and bowed her head to block out the image of him stalking wildly around the cell, mutely shouting at the ceiling and walls.
“Why now?” she whispered. “After all this time . . . why now?”
She heard Thorne move to the other side of the room. He sat in a chair, crossed his legs. “Because now the Phoenix Corporation is approximately fifteen days away from replicating the specific aspects of your DNA that we’ve so successfully used in our patented medicines.”
When she raised her head and looked at him, he was smiling blandly at her, hands folded in his lap.
“Now, my dear lady, we don’t really need you at all. This entire facility can be shut down. And all four thousand nine hundred eighty-seven subjects in it can be terminated.”
Her lips parted, but no sound came out. On the screen behind Thorne, Leander upended a table, shredded the book, tore the thin mattress from the folding cot and ripped it to pieces in his bare hands.
“You can’t save them, but you can save yourself, and your daughters. And,” he glanced at the Oracle, watched for a moment as Leander took the single metal chair in the room and began slamming it against a wall, over and over, until it crumpled in his hands, “you can save him.” He turned his gaze to her again. “But if you don’t tell me where the rest of your kind are hiding, I will kill your entire family, and I’ll make you watch while I do. Then, of course, I’ll kill you.”
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