by Nalini Singh
However, Santano Enrique had been no ordinary cardinal. He’d been an exceptionally high-functioning sociopath, one of the small minority whose aberrant brain patterns had been given free license by Silence. Enrique had escaped all the procedures set in place to detect such anomalous minds and become Council. Now it appeared that Kaleb had been far more than merely Enrique’s student. He’d been his protégé.
The NetMind’s recent slew of fragmented reports, especially in relation to the unknown serial killer, took on a new implication in light of this information. The last time they had had such problems, the NetMind had been under Enrique’s control.
Returning to the file, she saw that Kaleb’s power arc had also been unusual. Most cardinals followed a steady and predictable progression from ungoverned and unreliable to total control. Her daughter, Sascha, of course, had been a different story. It would have been far easier for Nikita to terminate the fetus as soon as the in vitro psychic tests showed the near-certain presence of the E designation. It was, in fact, what the Council had ordered in the early years of Silence. The ability of E-Psy to heal emotional wounds had been considered redundant in a race that had no emotion.
A decade later, they had discovered the Correlation Concept—a direct if not scientifically provable relationship between the number of latent E-Psy and the overall stability of the populace. In simple terms, the fewer the E-Psy, the more cases of sociopathy and insanity. Now E-Psy were brought to full term and forced to contain their abilities under several undocumented layers of conditioning. That was what had led to Sascha’s irregular development.
Nothing like that could account for the nature of Kaleb’s psychic growth. At ten years of age, he’d been as focused as an adult. His concentration hadn’t lapsed during the occasionally problematic period of adolescence, but evidenced a sharp decline at age sixteen. That would have been a cause for severe concern, except that Kaleb had stabilized within the month. Despite considerable testing, the M-Psy had been unable to find any evidence of psychic or physical trauma that could account for his relapse. In the end it had been noted down as a delayed adolescent reaction.
Nikita had reason to disagree with that diagnosis. Closing Kaleb’s file, she pulled up another. It had been opened after the Council became aware of Enrique’s sociopathic history. They were using all of their resources to make a list of past murders that may have been committed by the now-dead Councilor—in case he’d left behind evidence aside from any possessed by the changelings. Loose ends had to be stifled before they spoke.
She scanned the list they had to date and found it at once. A changeling female—a swan—had disappeared seven days before Kaleb’s logged decline. And the decline had begun approximately twenty-four hours after Kaleb returned from one of those unexplained absences, likely times when he’d been with Enrique.
Not a protégé. An accomplice.
This could become a problematic issue if Kaleb ever lost control of his murderous appetites. Until then, she’d continue working with him. Every one of the Councilors was a killer in some form. Kaleb simply did his killing in a less sanctioned way.
CHAPTER 42
An hour after he’d been forced to leave a distraught Brenna—she’d thrown him out when his nose started bleeding openly—Judd received the encrypted message from the Ghost. A simple list. Six names.
He called Brenna, audio only. The sight of tears on her face was disturbing to his senses. “I’m leaving my watch outside your door. Riley’s sending a replacement.” He’d already spoken to her brother about his suspicions and the other man was pulling together duty and leave rosters from the time of Brenna’s abduction. The data would help narrow their suspect base, but Judd’s sense of urgency said it wouldn’t be fast enough.
“I hope the bastard does try for me again—I want to flay him alive.” There were no tears, only a lacing of the most unadulterated anger.
“Be careful of everyone.” Riley had set tasks far from the den for those on their short list of suspects, but the killer could always sneak back in. It was also possible that he’d gained unauthorized access to the classified code and wasn’t a soldier at all.
“I will. Has the bleeding stopped?”
“Yes,” he said and ended the call. Not technically a lie. His nose wasn’t bleeding anymore, but other things inside him were.
D’Arn soon arrived to take over the watch and Judd left to deliver the names to Hawke. He was almost there when he saw Sienna limping out of a training room. She had a bruise on her cheek and her lip was promising to swell. A few months ago, he’d have discovered the name of the perpetrator and taken care of it. That was before Hawke—with Judd and Walker’s cooperation—had thrown Sienna into a training program designed to turn her from “tame housecat” to wolf. “Did you try to take on Indigo again?”
Sienna’s jaw became an obstinate line. “She keeps making me do exercises over and over. I wanted a bout.”
“And look where it got you.” Indigo walked out of the same room. Dressed in loose black pants and a gray T-shirt, she didn’t have so much as a hair out of place. “Good for me, though—helped work out the frustration from the crap I’m wading through.”
He knew she was referring to the drug situation, which she was now focusing on as Riley took over the murder investigation. “That bad?”
“Not if you compare it to the outside world, but I can’t believe how any of that poison got in here in the first place. We’re a goddamn pack. We look out for one another, get our strength from pack loyalty, not—” She glanced at Sienna’s interested expression. “I’ll fill you in later.”
Judd waited until the lieutenant had left before speaking. “Why don’t you follow Indigo’s training advice?”
Those night-sky eyes flashed. “They treat me like I’m a pup! I’m a cardinal who could kill them with one psychic hit and they expect me to do physical exercises more suitable for a child!”
He let her blow off steam—for some reason, Sienna’s conditioning had begun to fail almost immediately upon defection. That was going to become a severe problem, because her abilities were as lethal as she believed. Maybe more so.
“You’re no longer in the psychic world,” he told her, hardening his tone. “And the fact that this is a physical issue is an excuse. You have the same difficulty following orders in psychic training.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe because you treat me like a child, too.”
“Why do you think that is, Sienna?” He folded his arms—this was important. Family was important. It formed the basis of Pack. Brenna wouldn’t thank him if he neglected his responsibilities in this arena, no matter his need to return to her. “You’re a cardinal, you should be able to work that out.”
A sullen silence. He didn’t understand what was going on with his niece—she was the most unpredictable of the three minors in the Lauren family. It made no sense, not when she’d been arctic in her emotionlessness in the Net, enough so that she had already begun receiving placement offers. One overture had come from Ming LeBon himself.
“Building blocks,” he said when she maintained that obdurate silence. “Without a strong base, you’ll crumble the first time you meet someone smart enough to work out your lack of a foundation.”
She swallowed and looked him in the eye. “I’m seventeen now. Why won’t anyone treat me like it? The wolves get treated better!”
“It’s not discrimination and you know it. It’s the fact that you can’t follow orders, and right now, you can’t even defend yourself without killing someone.”
“You’re not so good at following orders either!”
He waited.
“I’m not an idiot,” she muttered. “I know you were an Arrow and I know Arrows are too valuable to be sentenced to rehabilitation.”
Her tone dared him to disagree, reminding him of another strong-willed female. “And?” He had to identify what she knew before he answered.
“They must’ve had some plan for you to escape rehab
ilitation.” She squared her slender shoulders. “A new identity, something!”
“The sentence was for everyone in the Lauren family,” he said, accepting that she deserved to be treated as an adult at least in this. To do anything else would disrespect her intelligence and spirit.
“Why?” she interrupted before he could answer. “I know my mother committed suicide and we had some incidents of instability in the family, but why sentence us all?”
Yes, she was smart. “We’re very strong as a group, Sienna. Before Kristine’s death, we had three cardinals.” That didn’t count his, Walker’s, or Marlee’s considerable powers. “We threatened someone powerful enough to get us wiped out.”
“I figured…” She looked up. “And you?”
“My name was removed from the family register at age ten.” The age at which he’d first killed. “My birth certificate doesn’t exist, nor do any medical records aside from those in the squad files.” Including a DNA profile that would send up a classified red flag if he was ever typed. “As far as the general Net is concerned, I don’t exist.” No Arrow did. “There was no need for a new identity. I wasn’t considered a Lauren.”
Her eyes widened. “Then why defect?” she whispered. “You walked into what should have been certain death.”
Looking into that bruised, confused face, he decided to tell her the truth. Because Sienna’s abilities, while very different from his own, sprang from the same dark core. “There is a line that, once crossed, can never be uncrossed.” He reached out to touch her hair. The dark red strands were soft under his fingertips. It was the first time he’d ever touched her in anything other than training.
“If I had let you all die while I remained safe, it would’ve pushed me over that line.” Because they’d been under his care. He might have been wiped from the official records, but he’d always existed to Walker, Sienna, Marlee, Toby…and Kristine. She’d been his sister and mother to this powerful girl. But unlike her tenacious, headstrong daughter, Kristine had broken irrevocably under Silence.
Sienna’s face turned heartbreakingly fragile. She gave a tiny jerk forward before stopping. And because of Brenna, he understood. Ignoring the damage it might cause, he tugged her into the enclosure of his arms. She was frozen for a long time and then he was sure she cried. As he held her, he felt things, his shielding close to nil. Warmth, affection…the protective love of a brother for his lost sister’s child. Sienna looked so much like Kristine, but until this moment, he hadn’t acknowledged the pain that caused him. The dissonance was an excruciating symphony of spiked hammers in his head.
“Does it hurt?” he asked, suddenly aware that that might explain some of Sienna’s behavior. She had martial talents like him, and unlike either Faith or Sascha. From everything he knew about how the other two women had broken Silence, he was almost certain that martial minds were conditioned in a unique way—particularly when it came to the strength of the dissonance. “The fragmentation of Silence, does it hurt?”
A slow nod. “I can’t be like before, but it’s as though my mind wants to force me.” Her voice was muffled against his chest, but he heard the incredible pain in it.
It put the final seal on the decision he’d made in the predawn darkness after leaving Brenna, devastatingly aware that he couldn’t give her what she needed to feel safe and happy. It broke something in him to fail her that way. “I’ll figure out a way to undo the pain protocols.”
“You know we can’t.” A whisper. “You and I…we need the pain to remind us to keep it under control.”
It.
Their different but equally destructive abilities. “Maybe we can make new rules for a new life.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” she whispered. “What if we hurt people?”
Images of bloodied and twisted bodies cascaded through his mind. “We won’t.” He only hoped he would be able to keep his promise…and that Brenna wouldn’t pay the ultimate price for choosing to give her heart to a rebel Arrow.
CHAPTER 43
He was sweating. It had taken him two hours to return to the den after Riley had sent him on some bogus training exercise. After Brenna was dead, he’d return to where he was supposed to be without anyone being the wiser. The perfect alibi.
He glanced at his watch and then at Brenna’s door. D’Arn was leaning against the wall, but the killer didn’t make the mistake of assuming the other soldier wasn’t aware of everything going on around him. Sights, sounds, smells. It was why he’d chosen this hiding spot, in the wrong direction for the air currents to carry his scent.
All he needed was three seconds with that bitch who just wouldn’t die.
He glanced at his watch again, knowing he’d never get a better chance. The Psy was gone and if D’Arn fell for the distraction, Brenna would be alone for at least one crucial minute. More than enough time to take care of business. Another glance at his watch.
Five, four, three, two…one.
D’Arn jerked to a standing alert as the alarm blared through the den. Coded for sound, this one screamed that something had happened in the nursery, something bad enough to require the declaration of a full emergency.
The killer smiled. He had placed the crude bomb to maximize chaos—by collapsing the entrance to the nursery—but had tried to ensure none of the pups would be hurt. He wasn’t a monster.
D’Arn started to run in the direction of the nursery, then hesitated. Brenna’s door opened. “Go!” she yelled. “I’m right behind you. I’m part of the comm team.”
The killer knew that, had seen the emergency roster. Brenna would now zip back inside to grab her emergency communications equipment before racing to the command center to direct operations inside the den.
“Move!” She slammed her door, but the killer knew she wouldn’t have stopped to lock it. If she had, he’d get her as she walked out, her concentration elsewhere.
D’Arn took off at a run, his instinct to protect the young overwhelming everything else. It was what the killer had counted on. The Psy were right—emotions made changelings weak, open to manipulation.
He stepped out as D’Arn disappeared around the corner. He had a very short window of opportunity—too bad he wouldn’t be able to choke the life out of her as he’d planned. He palmed the pressure injector full of one hundred percent Rush and reached for the doorknob. It turned without resistance.
One more second and it would be good-bye, Brenna Shane Kincaid.
CHAPTER 44
Judd was running full-tilt to the nursery, Hawke at his side, when his phone began to beep in an intense, irregular pattern.
It was linked to the alarm on Brenna’s door.
Screeching to a stop, he used every trick he had to focus despite the number of bodies moving past him. One second. Two. Too damn slow. There. He teleported out. Brenna’s door was closed. He pulled it off using Tk and sent the wide piece of plascrete smashing into the corridor, nearly mowing down another SnowDancer soldier.
Brenna was on the floor, bleeding from cuts on her lip and cheek. He went to pick up her attacker and throw him into the wall, but she shook her head slightly. He froze. The man whirled to face Judd, but he never got the chance to speak. Brenna swept out a leg and smashed him to the ground before jumping on his back and swiping her claws down hard enough to reveal flashes of bone.
The killer screamed.
Judd put him in a telekinetic choke hold. “You don’t have the right to scream.”
Brenna looked up as the man gurgled, desperate to breathe. “You were right—he was there.” A feral snarl as she held him down. “He was the reason I got into that van. He offered me a ride.” Gripping her attacker’s hair, she jerked back his head. “Let the bastard speak.”
Judd released his hold, aware of others arriving at the scene. “I can tear his mind open, download everything he knows. Of course, he’ll be a drooling mess by the end.”
Brenna’s captive coughed and tried to speak. “No. I’ll talk.”
B
renna jerked his hair harder. “So talk, Dieter.”
There was no mercy in her and Judd approved. This man had used his position to prey on those who trusted him. Judd remembered him squatting beside Timothy’s dead body, pretending to help, telling them how perfect the room was if you wanted to surreptitiously dispose of a body, how the killer had to be someone smart.
“I met him a few months before you got taken,” he coughed out, “Santano Enrique.”
Someone hissed in the doorway, sounding more cat than wolf.
Brenna dug her claws into his shoulder, scraping bone. Dieter’s scream was high and shrill, rising above the shriek of the emergency alarm, but she kept him conscious. “Did you give me up to him?”
“Yes.” Dieter coughed up blood and Judd realized he was crushing the man’s internal organs. He forced himself to pull back. This was Brenna’s fight.
“Why?” Betrayal laced her voice. “You were my brothers’ friend. You were Pack.”
“It was a straight business deal. He gave me Rush at a real low price. Made me rich.” Dieter didn’t try for Brenna’s sympathy, as if he knew he’d get none. “All he wanted was a favor now and then.”
“Like picking me up on the way to class,” Brenna whispered, tone raw. “Like telling me I was needed at the den. Did he come back from the grave and ask you to shoot Andrew, too?” Her next move was so fast, Judd almost missed it. She smashed Dieter’s face to the floor, hard enough to cause unconsciousness but not death. The alarm cut off at that same instant.
Getting up, she wiped the blood off her mouth with the back of her hand. “Elias, Sing-Liu,” she said to the two soldiers who’d stopped in the doorway, “take him to the lockup.”
Judd blocked the doorway. “I’ll take him.”