by Nalini Singh
Anticipation thrummed through him—his body didn’t seem to want to accept the fact that the woman was more likely to freeze his balls off in the night than consent to tangle with him in the male/female sense.
But Max had stopped being ruled by his hormones around the age of sixteen, no matter that this J with her night-violet eyes full of secrets tugged at him in the most visceral of ways. Using the time he had before his flight boarded, he’d made a few phone calls, including one to Bart Reuben to get an update on Bonner. The prosecutor had had nothing new to report on that front, but when Max mentioned he was going to be working with Sophia, he’d said, “I got curious about her, did some digging.”
Max had been startled by a sudden—and forceful—surge of possessiveness. “Why?”
“Those gloves,” Bart had replied. “I realized I’d seen them before, on a J I worked with a long time ago. I know they mean something, but I haven’t figured out what yet. However, I did find out something else very interesting.”
Fighting off his unexpectedly strong response to the idea of Bart investigating Sophia, Max had forced his tone to lighten. “You going to make me beat it out of you?”
“No, a bottle of single malt whiskey will do.” He’d been able to hear the laugh in his friend’s voice. “Seems like over the past year, our Ms. Russo has developed a curious little habit of being in close proximity to some very nasty people who decided to mutilate themselves in creative ways.”
“That’s not surprising, given how long she’s been a J.” A cop would have to be willfully blind to miss that occasionally homicidal “quirk” of J psychology. It was always impossible to prove anything, of course, even if a cop felt so inclined given the nature of the individuals the Js invariably targeted, but the Corps policed itself very effectively—it wasn’t good for their image to have their people start going nuts in public.
Even as the thought passed through his head, Max had found himself disturbed by the idea that Sophia Russo might be going slowly insane. “Why hasn’t she been yanked from active duty?” It had come out harsher than it should have.
Bart, thankfully, hadn’t noticed. “She’s very, very good at her job,” he’d replied. “But she’s reaching her use-by-date. One of these days, she’s going to disappear just like every other J I’ve worked with over the years.”
Now, as the car entered the hilly streets of San Francisco proper, Max thought of the last words Sophia had spoken to him, and he felt a low burn of anger in his gut at the idea of her having a “use-by-date.”
Sophia took a seat across from the exotic-looking woman who might well sign the order for her rehabilitation once she was deemed obsolete. It should have concerned her, if only on an intellectual level, but Sophia wasn’t affected by much at present.
So soon after a reconditioning, with her mind piercing in its clarity, the facts were undeniable: her shields against the PsyNet were rock solid—for the simple reason that all Js were drilled remorselessly until they mastered that skill—but the shields that protected her on a day-to-day basis, her telepathic protections, were paper-thin. Any number of occurrences could incite a devastating mental wave.
Results could range from shock and psychic disintegration to death.
Councilor Nikita Duncan raised her head from the file on her desk as Sophia was thinking she’d prefer a sudden and total death over a psychic collapse. Far better that it all end in a sudden, bright burst of agony, than to find herself weakened and at the mercy of those who had none. She’d been helpless once in her life—never again would she allow herself to be in that position.
“Ms. Russo”—Councilor Duncan’s voice was precise—“I believe you had a court appearance this morning?”
“It was at nine,” Sophia said without pause. “I was finished and on my way here by ten thirty.”
“So you’ve had a chance to read the file I e-mailed to you?”
“Yes, I went through it on the airjet.” What she didn’t add was that she’d spent the majority of the time looking at the small digital image of the man she’d be working with, a man she’d never expected to see again in the course of what remained of her lifetime.
The photo had been taken earlier this year, and there’d been something in it that said he’d been laughing just before the photographer pressed the shutter, those uptilted eyes lit from within. She’d found herself fascinated by the difference between that image and the grim-faced man she’d met outside the interrogation room in Wyoming.
“Do you have any questions?” Nikita asked.
“Not at this stage—the assignment appears straightforward.” Other than the fact that she’d been paired with a human who made her think thoughts that weren’t only impossible, but so outrageously impossible that she wondered if she was already walking the cracked and twisted road to irrevocable insanity.
Nikita’s eyes turned into pieces of jet, hard, cutting. “Before we continue, I want to make one thing explicit—I don’t want any ‘incidents’ while you’re in my employ.”
“I don’t know what you’re referring to, Councilor.” Sophia kept her face expressionless—it was a fiction, but it was a fiction that would keep her alive a little longer. Long enough to speak to Max Shannon again, to find out what it was about him that made the last forgotten slivers of her soul, her personality, shimmer with unexpected fragments of light. At the same time, the otherness whispered that he was smart, that he’d discover everything about her and turn away once he knew. It would hurt. And the broken girl inside of her, the secret hidden beyond Silence, was tired, so tired of hurting.
“I’ve said what I have to say,” Nikita said after a small pause. “Break the rules and you’ll pay the price.”
Sophia knew enough of Nikita to understand that that was no idle threat. The Councilor was rumored to be a viral transmitter, able to infect minds with the most fatal—and if she chose, viciously painful—of psychic weapons. “Understood.” Rising to her feet, she picked up her organizer. “I do have one question that doesn’t relate directly to the case.”
Nikita waited.
“According to my immediate supervisor, you specifically requested me.” Sophia hadn’t been aware that Nikita even knew her name. “Was there a reason for that?”
“It made more sense to use you than to take a fully functioning J out of the system.” Cool, pragmatic words.
Except for one thing.
Sophia knew Nikita was lying.
Max’s mind had circled back to Bonner by the time they arrived at the apartment—having stopped to pick up a few supplies on the way. Forcing himself off the topic, if only to deny the bastard the satisfaction of knowing he’d once again got everyone dancing to his tune, he looked around the apartment while Talin played with a Morpheus who was still miffed at his recent imprisonment. But judicious use of cat treats and Talin’s stroking hands seemed to be bringing the sulking beast out of it.
“Nicer place than I expected,” he said to Clay. Big bedroom, living area, kitchen, and bath. And he had windows. “Guess being a special investigator pays more than being a detective.”
Clay walked to join Max at the window near the dining alcove. “Good view from here. We’ve had a lot of heavy fog in the mornings, but it makes for some spectacular sun-rises.”
“Yeah.” Lowering his voice, Max asked, “How’s Jon?” The teenager had been kidnapped, held in a Psy lab, and tortured before being rescued. Last Max had heard, he was giving Talin and Clay fits with his tricks.
Clay grinned. “Still a smartass teenager.”
“So, normal?”
“Yeah. He’s got a crush on one of the young dominant females—poor cub. He doesn’t realize how nice she’s being to him by not kicking his ass.”
Max grinned, relief a crushing wave inside him. “I bet she thinks he’s adorable.”
Clay snorted. “I think it’s more a case of ‘aw damn, he’s a baby, I can’t hurt him.’ ”
“Ouch.” Max winced, feeling for the kid. “That’s got to bite.�
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“Uh-huh.” A very feline look appeared on Clay’s face. “But, you know, he’s determined as hell. A few years down the track and who knows.”
“Max?”
Glancing around at Talin’s voice, he saw Morpheus purring in her lap. Ungrateful alley cat never purred for Max. All he got was sniffs and snarls. “Yeah?”
“Do you want me to take him home with us?” Worry marked her expressive features. “He doesn’t look like an inside cat.”
Max scowled on Morpheus’s behalf. “Damn right he’s not. He’ll find a way out of here within the day.” And probably come home with a few new scars to add to his already prodigious collection.
Talin scratched the traitorous cat behind his ears. Morpheus’s eyes all but rolled into the back of his head. “Well,” she said, sounding dubious of Max’s claim, “if he starts to pine for some greenery, you know where I live.”
“Morpheus’s favorite hobby involves garbage cans—I think he’d have an aneurysm in a forest,” Max muttered. “Is he really purring?”
“Of course he is. I know how to treat cats.” A sultry glance aimed solely at her mate.
Max rocked back on his heels, feeling like a voyeur and—if he was honest—a little bit envious as well. He’d give his right arm to be loved like that . . . to love like that. But fact was, he wasn’t capable of that depth of vulnerability, and he was honest enough to know it, to never make promises he couldn’t keep.
One woman had kissed him on the cheek as they parted and said, “You threw away the key to your heart a long time ago, didn’t you, Max?”
He’d smiled that night, because she was a woman he respected, a woman who remained a good friend, but afterward, he’d wondered—had he thrown it away or had the lock become permanently warped, incapable of opening?
The discreet chime of the doorbell silvered into the air, into his thoughts. “I’ll get it.” Walking across, he opened the door.
And knew he’d been waiting for her since the second he set foot in this city of fog beside a sparkling bay.
CHAPTER 6
Any skin-to-skin contact with a human or changeling, even a Psy with inadequate shields, may destroy what remains of your telepathic protections. Avoid all physical contact.
—Advisory letter to Sophia Russo from the J Corps Medical Division
Sophia was unprepared for the visual impact of Max Shannon, no matter that she’d met him previously. He was the kind of man some women would want to own, she thought, having run across such females in the course of her career several times. They would see him as a trophy, a prize to show off—never realizing that they were attempting to leash a vicious storm.
Though Max was beautiful, what saved him from crossing the line into a more delicate prettiness was the obdurate hardness of his jawline, the unflinchingly adult expression in his gaze. Those eyes said that Max Shannon had looked into the void—and come away with a piece of it in his soul.
Then he spoke, drawing her attention to those well-shaped lips. “Sophia.” He’d braced one hand on the doorjamb, didn’t pull it down to offer to her.
She appreciated the gesture—many humans took it as an insult when she refused to shake their hands, never realizing that the common courtesy could cost her everything. “I thought I should let you know I’d arrived. I’ve been placed in the apartment next door.”
Max glanced to his right. “That’ll make things easier.” Easy words, but his tone said something else.
“I won’t be spying on you, Mr. Shannon.” Something long dormant in her stirred at the challenge she read in him. “To be quite frank, your personal activities hold no interest for either me or Councilor Duncan.” Not quite the truth. Nikita might not care about Max Shannon’s personal life, but Sophia found herself compelled to know the man behind the enigmatic mask of an Enforcement detective.
The edge of a smile touched Max’s lips, but it was his eyes that mattered. They never lost that blade-sharp gleam that told her he was calculating her every move, her every act. “You just want me for my detecting skills, is that it?”
She didn’t know how to respond to the patently nonserious question—she’d been dealing with humans her entire adult life, but she’d never dealt with someone who evoked this odd . . . fascination in her. It had begun with the way he looked at her but was now a wholly independent thing. And the fact that it was already so strong so soon after a reconditioning, meant she had far less time than she’d previously believed before her telepathic shields sheared forever.
Someone spoke behind Max at that moment, and he turned, dropping his arm from the doorjamb. That was when Sophia saw the two other individuals in the room. A human female and a male who was clearly not human. She took a step back and to her left as the couple exited to stand to her right.
“Clay, Talin, this is my . . . partner”—a pause she knew had been intentional—“Sophia Russo.”
The man gave a nod, while the woman smiled. “Nice to meet you.”
Sophia nodded in response, wondering how this Talin could stand with such calm beside the male who was unquestionably a predator. And since this was San Francisco there were only two possible conclusions—only one once you factored in the way the green-eyed man had moved, with a fluidity at odds with the muscular size of him. “You’re members of DarkRiver?”
“You must be new to the city,” Talin said, tucking back her hair to reveal an ear adorned with a dangling earring made of irregular glass beads in the colors of autumn. “Most people recognize Clay.”
“I’ve been to San Francisco before,” Sophia replied, intrigued by the odd shapes of the beads, the way they’d been put together. There was no conformity, no perfection. “However, I deal almost exclusively with humans and Psy.” Changelings had authority over all crimes that involved just those of their race.
“Sophia’s a J,” Max said, leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb.
She noted the corded forearms revealed by the rolled-up sleeves of his vivid blue shirt, noted, too, the easy grace with which he made even the smallest of movements—this man, she thought, was built along the sleek lines of the low-slung cars preferred by so many of the emotional races.
Her gaze clashed with his at that moment, and the question in them made her aware they were all waiting for something from her. Breaking the contact—which felt oddly, inexplicably intimate—she took a step to her left. “I’ll leave you to your visit. Detective Shannon, if you’d just let me know when you’re ready to start—”
“We can start now,” he interrupted, still in that lazy position against the doorjamb. If she hadn’t seen him in Wyoming, she might have been fooled into believing him “safe.” But she had seen him in that prison. Not only that, she’d read the file that chronicled his stubborn, relentless pursuit of the Butcher of Park Avenue. She knew the danger that lay beneath the languid charm.
“We’ll leave you to it, then.” The woman named Talin stepped forward to kiss Max on the cheek, breaking Sophia’s line of sight. “But I was hoping you’d have dinner with us,” she said, turning to include Sophia in the invitation.
Max glanced at his watch even as Sophia curled the fingers of her left hand into her palm. What Talin had just done, that easy contact . . . it had been ordinary. Human. And it had made Sophia brutally aware of the gulf between her and this cop whose presence, whose watchful eyes, fanned the fires of rebellion in her.
“It’s almost three now,” Max said, his voice low and smooth—and disturbingly abrasive against Sophia’s skin, “so how about dinner around seven? We should be ready for a break by then anyway.” A glance up at Sophia from those eyes that saw far too much. “That work for you?”
She didn’t know why she said, “Yes, that’ll be fine,” when she should have demurred from the social invitation. As her response to Max demonstrated with manifest clarity, she’d failed in her attempts to be the most perfect of Psy. But she was in no way similar to a human. She was, in all probability, even less “human” tha
n most of her brethren, her psyche having been worn away by the corrosive acid of the images stored in her brain.
Clay said good-bye then, his voice deep against Talin’s softer tone. As the couple left, the leopard male’s hand on his mate’s lower back, Sophia found herself the sole focus of Max’s perceptive near-black eyes, the eyes of a man who was used to stripping shields, unearthing the most deeply buried of truths. “Come on in,” he said, “unless you need to grab anything from your place? We should go over the details, make sure we’re on the same page.”
“Yes, I’ll retrieve my organizer.” The words came out calm, though her heartbeat had turned erratic. “It’ll take me only a minute or two.” Stepping to her door, she pushed through and picked up the small case she’d left on the coffee table. She should’ve walked straight back out, but she took a minute to breathe, to check her PsyNet shields for any minor fractures that might betray the swiftness with which her recent reconditioning had begun to degrade.
Satisfied that everything was holding for now and certain, too, that her secrets were safe from a cop who saw too much, she went to Max’s. His living area was empty. Assuming he’d gone to retrieve his own notes, she closed the door and took a seat at the small table in the dining alcove near the window.
She’d just opened her case when a huge black cat jumped onto the chair opposite, placed its front paws on the table, and looked at her with one gray and one brown eye. Physically startled, she nonetheless contained her reaction—that aspect of her conditioning was so much a part of her, it no longer took much effort to maintain.
The cat continued to stare at her.
Curious as to what the creature would do if touched, she extended a hand and brought her fingers to its nose. It sniffed at the leather-synth of her glove before proceeding to stare at her again.
“Ignore Morpheus.” Max walked back into the room and picked up the cat to drop him easily to the floor. The feline padded off, tail in the air. “He likes to stare people out.”