by Nalini Singh
He returned less than three minutes later, to find her seated on the bed, staring at the smear of blood on the carpet. She snapped up her head. “Is he—”
“Your father’s in emergency surgery, watched over by a temporary guard from one of my units in the area. I’ve notified Anthony, and NightStar’s people will be at the hospital within the next half hour.”
Hand shaking, Sahara went to thrust it through her hair when the iron-rich scent of blood hit her nostrils. Her fury reignited as she realized it was her father’s blood on her fingers. Shoving past Kaleb to the attached bathroom, she washed it off with jagged actions before wiping her hands clean. “I want to go to him.”
“You’d just be waiting outside surgery,” Kaleb said with grim pragmatism. “My man knows to contact you should there be a change in your father’s condition.”
She couldn’t bear the idea of her father slipping away just when she’d found him again. “I want—”
“The hospital has multiple exits and entrances; the risk of someone getting to you is much higher.” Hard words, no hint of tenderness. “You know Leon wouldn’t want you in the line of fire.”
Conscious he was right, she forced herself to think past adrenaline-fueled anger tangled with gut-wrenching worry and walked back to her own room—and to the body of the man who had nearly taken her father’s life. “Who was he?”
“A freelance operative, not a particularly adept one or Leon would be dead and you’d be in his grasp.”
“You tore his mind open? You know that compromises data,” she said, turning on him in a fury. “That was irresponsible and reckless.”
A shrug as false and as remote as his eyes were not. “I offered him a quick death in exchange for the information,” Kaleb said, as if speaking of a business negotiation. “He kept his end of the bargain; I kept mine.” Eyes of starless night pinned her to the spot. “It appears you have a bounty on you.”
“What? Who? Tatiana?” The other woman was in no position to give orders, but she had people who might well do so for her.
Kaleb shook his head and spoke the last name she had ever expected to hear. “Santano Enrique.”
Ice in her blood, choking up her throat. “He’s dead,” she forced past the sudden, overwhelming rage.
“It appears he has risen from the ashes.” Kaleb tucked her hair behind her ear. “He was involved in your abduction.”
Sahara knew she should follow that thread, should ask him exactly why a serial killer with a predilection for changeling victims had turned his attention to her, and whether Kaleb had had anything to do with it, but she couldn’t. The idea of bringing up the topic made her stomach hurt, her breath stick in her throat. Not yet. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to know, wasn’t strong enough to face the dark truth.
If Kaleb had betrayed her, the knowledge would break her.
“The bounty,” he said when she remained silent, “must’ve been a fail-safe in case of your escape.” Halting at the sound of the front door opening, he waited until Anthony stepped into the room.
The head of her clan examined the dead bounty hunter with an impassive expression before shifting his attention to Kaleb. “I assume you got the information we need before you executed him?”
Kaleb told Anthony the same thing he’d told Sahara. Anthony’s response was, “Not even the most bumbling bounty hunter would hunt a target for a dead man. Payment is everything.”
“Santano may have been a psychopath, but he was a smart one. The considerable fee for this bounty is held in trust by a certain mercenary organization. To be paid on delivery of Sahara Kyriakus—dead or alive—to either Santano or the current head of his operations.”
“Santano kept his interest in you quiet,” Anthony said to Sahara and hidden in the words was a question. “I never suspected him of involvement in your abduction.”
She spread her hands, not sharing the fact that Enrique’s protégé had apparently always been aware of her ability.
“NightStar has a leak,” Kaleb said at the same time.
“I’ll handle that situation.”
Kaleb inclined his head in silent agreement—Anthony had come by his reputation honestly. Unlike certain others in the Net, the other man did not mind getting his hands dirty. And if he failed to take care of the matter, Kaleb would do so. He’d permit no threat to Sahara to exist, much less live and breathe.
“You need to move immediately into a safe house.”
Sahara’s back went stiff at Anthony’s statement, her muscles rigid. “No. I won’t be caged again.”
“There is no other option,” Anthony responded. “As long as the bounty exists, you stay a target.”
“Are you certain a safe house will provide any better protection?” Kaleb had no intention of allowing Sahara to go anywhere aside from the home he’d built for her in Moscow. “This hunter, inept and young, managed to evade your perimeter guards.”
“That will be investigated.” A flint-hard promise. “Our safe houses are fortresses.”
Sahara, hands fisted, shook her head. “No.” Backing away from them until her spine hit the wall, she began to bump her fists against it. “No. No. No.”
Recognizing the danger, Kaleb reacted before Anthony could figure out what was happening. “No safe house, no cage,” he said, cupping her face and forcing her to meet his gaze until she stopped bumping her fists against the wall, though she continued to rock back and forth.
You risk losing her if you push this, he ’pathed to Anthony as he released her. Her mind isn’t fully healed. It was why Kaleb had scared information from the intruder instead of permitting her to exercise her ability.
I can’t leave her unprotected.
I can protect her.
“So can the cats.”
Kaleb was still trying to digest that wholly unexpected statement when Anthony shifted to enter Sahara’s line of sight. “I’m sending you to Faith.”
Sahara’s body stopped moving, eyes of midnight blue shifting to Anthony. “Faith?”
“Even the best bounty hunter in the world won’t think to look for you in the midst of a changeling pack.”
“The connection with Faith,” Sahara began, her intelligence plainly pushing past the visceral reaction that had sent her tumbling back into her personal hell.
Anthony shook his head. “No one expected NightStar to jettison the most powerful F-Psy on the planet, regardless of her personal choices. That was business and expected. This is family.”
Kaleb knew Anthony wasn’t saying everything, but he could guess. NightStar had been very, very careful to maintain a line of demarcation between its business dealings with Faith and her lack of status as a member of the family—in public at least. Privately was another matter: Anthony remained in regular, direct contact with his daughter.
The latter suspicion was one it had taken Kaleb a year to confirm.
“You’re ready to trust the changelings with Sahara’s life?” The only reason he was willing to consider the proposal was because of Sahara’s response to the mention of her cousin—and because he knew Anthony was right about the prospect of any bounty hunter venturing onto DarkRiver land.
“If they accept her as family, the leopards will close ranks. With Faith certain to vouch for her, as well as Sahara’s broken Silence, there is no reason to assume they won’t treat her as one of their own.” Anthony’s next words were directed at Sahara. “You’ll be safe within their borders, and you’ll have the forested part of their territory to roam.”
That territory is vast, Kaleb added, sending Sahara a number of telepathic images. You’ll be as free as any leopard changeling, so long as you don’t go into a city.
Deep blue eyes met his before moving to Anthony. “Yes.”
“I’ll clear it with the DarkRiver alpha.” Anthony glanced at Kaleb. “You seem to be treating my territory as your own.” It was a warning.
Kaleb slid his hands into the pockets of his pants. “Would you rather I let her die?�
� he said aloud, even as he spoke to Sahara along their private telepathic channel. Why didn’t you call me?
I had it under control. I am a grown woman.
Anthony’s stare bore into him on the heels of Sahara’s tart reply, but Kaleb hadn’t been intimidated by anyone for a long time. “I can transfer Sahara to leopard territory.”
“Thank you but that won’t be necessary.”
“Very well.” He looked to Sahara. The knife was a nice touch.
Her scowl faded into a frown. Someone once told me I must always be prepared. I don’t remember who it was, but it was sound advice.
If only, Kaleb thought, she’d followed it when she was sixteen. But then, Santano had been a cardinal Tk, an adult male who found pleasure in the pain of young women who couldn’t fight back. Sahara had never stood a chance.
Chapter 24
SAHARA KNEW THE black-garbed man who stood beside her as the clock ticked over four a.m. was an Arrow. She also knew he was a teleporter, one with cold gray eyes and a computronic gauntlet on his left forearm. Yet regardless of the single silver star on the shoulder of his combat uniform that said he was aligned to Kaleb, Anthony trusted the male to transport her to DarkRiver territory.
“I’ve been sent the image for the transfer.” The Arrow looked up from the small screen built into the gauntlet. “Are you ready?”
Sahara had never once hesitated with Kaleb, but she had to take a deep breath before nodding when it came to this Arrow with his steely eyes that seemed as distant as light on a storm-dark horizon. If Kaleb was at times encased in black ice, this man was as chill as frost, his Silence metallic in its perfection.
He was, however, as fast as Kaleb—and since he wasn’t a cardinal, he had to be one of the extremely rare true teleporters, designation Tk, subdesignation V. While those of subdesignation V were telekinetics, with the attendant abilities depending on their level of power, it was said they came out of the womb with the ability to ’port, no practice or study necessary, the talent independent of their standing on the Gradient.
As a girl, she’d once heard that Tk-V children were GPS chipped as babies. Sahara didn’t know if that was true, or only a story made up by young Psy who had never met anyone from the near-mythical subdesignation V, but it made sense. Like all telekinetics capable of teleportation, they had to have steel-trap geographic memories. So a baby or a toddler could conceivably teleport himself to a random location he’d glimpsed from a car, for example, then become too distressed to teleport back home.
Now the teleporter, a man she simply couldn’t imagine as a child, glanced around the pine-needle-carpeted clearing made distinctive by two royal blue scarves hung from thick branches. He inclined his head at the woman with hair of scarlet silk who ran toward Sahara, then was gone.
“Sahara. It’s really you!” Cheeks stained with tears, the lovely woman cupped Sahara’s face, her smile luminous through the wet. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Faith.” It was a whisper as she took in the woman her remote, composed cousin had become. Alive and stunningly vibrant. “You’re so beautiful.”
A startled light in the cardinal starlight of Faith’s eyes before she gave a small cry and removed her hands. “Forgive me. I didn’t—”
“It’s all right.” Sahara took the slender hands that had touched her with an unhidden affection that made her throat thicken, brought them back to her cheeks. “My Silence is far more than broken.”
Wrapping her arms tight around Sahara, her cousin whispered, “I never forgot you,” into a quiet filled with the music of a thousand leaves rustling in a passing wind. “Father . . . it wasn’t until after my defection that he told me about your abduction, and that the family had never stopped searching for you.”
Returning Faith’s embrace, emotion burning her eyes, Sahara said, “I know you tried to find me, too, through your visions.” It was something her own father had shared with her that first day they’d spent together.
A shaky breath as Faith drew back. “I’m so sorry about Leon. He was kind to me whenever our paths crossed.”
“He’s strong, he’ll be okay.” Sahara refused to believe in any other outcome. “He didn’t give up on me, and I won’t give up on him.” A future without her father’s big, solid presence in her life was incomprehensible.
“If it helps,” Faith said, “when I look into the future with Leon as a focus, I constantly see him in his clinic, talking to a patient, or at his desk. I feel no sadness, no sense of loss.”
Sahara squeezed her cousin’s hand. “Thank you.” To hear that from the most gifted F-Psy in the world was no small thing, the glimmer of hope one she held on to with both hands. “I’m sorry, too,” she said softly, “about Marine.” Faith’s younger sister had been a cardinal telepath, her studies rarely crossing with Sahara’s, but they’d been cousins all the same.
Sadness in Faith’s eyes, her fingers brushing Sahara’s cheek. “Marine lived an extraordinary life, did things I only found out about after I was no longer in the PsyNet. She left her mark.” Unhidden pride, a waterlogged smile. “I like to think she would’ve cheered and said ‘Finally!’ when her toe-the-line sister rebelled at last.”
Sahara’s responding smile was just as shaky. “I’m so happy you made it out, Faith, that you have a life full of joy. Thank you for inviting me into it.”
“You can stay forever as far as I’m concerned.” Tender warmth in every word. “We can finally be friends as we always wanted to be.”
Sahara wanted nothing more than to accept the offer of sanctuary and just be, but she couldn’t do it under false pretenses. “I may be dangerous to your pack. Kaleb Krychek can find me at any time.”
The warm welcome in Faith’s expression didn’t falter. “We’ve already thought of that. Fact is, if Father is right and Kaleb is a teleporter who can lock on to people rather than simply places, he can find any of us.” Smoothing Sahara’s hair, she continued. “Still, he’s never shown any aggression toward the pack, and you’re family. If he does turn hostile, we’ll handle it.”
Even as Sahara’s heart warmed at Faith’s protectiveness, another part of her whispered that Kaleb had no family, no one to call his own, no one who would welcome him with the unconditional love with which Faith had welcomed her. “But,” she said through a deep sense of desolation mixed with anger at the parents who had given up a defenseless boy to a monster, “you will put me away from your vulnerable?” Kaleb might not harm her, but she couldn’t promise the same when it came to others.
“Yes.” Faith’s eyes were gentle as she said, “Don’t worry, Sahara. We’ve been playing these games a long time.” It was the firm reassurance of an older sister. “Your aerie is close to our place, but far enough away to afford you your privacy.”
“I have my own aerie?” The idea of a house in the treetops made the damaged girl inside her gasp in wonder.
“Yes, but only if you prefer it that way,” Faith assured her.
“I think I’d like my own place.” It felt disloyal to say that when Kaleb had built her a graceful, light-drenched home that sang to her soul—but that home wasn’t what she needed at this moment, wasn’t a place where she could stretch her long-stunted wings.
Kaleb was too protective . . . too much an addiction.
Her breasts ached at the memory of how he’d touched her, his eyes an obsidian storm. Every time he came near her, she wanted to dance in the storm. Even now, so far from him, the pine in the air reminded her of him with every breath she took. “Did your mate come with you?” she asked Faith, making the conscious decision to turn her concentration away from the cardinal who’d kissed her under a wolf moon.
Faith’s face glowed. “Vaughn.”
A tall man with amber hair caught neatly in a queue at the nape of his neck and eyes of near gold appeared out of the shadows. “It’s good to meet you at last, Sahara.” Quiet and deep, his voice was honey over her skin.
“I’m so happy to meet you,
too,” she said, fascinated by the way he moved as he pulled down the scarves that had acted as markers for the teleport; she’d never mistake him for either Psy or human.
“He’s magnificent, isn’t he?” Faith whispered, lips to her ear.
“Yes.” But no matter his golden beauty, he didn’t make her skin burn, her heart beat out of rhythm, and her soul hurt.
“Let’s get you home,” her cousin’s mate said, throwing one of the scarves around Faith’s neck, the other around Sahara’s.
The knit was soft against her skin and the pine needles thick underneath her feet as they began to walk. Sahara tried to take in everything at once, until Vaughn teased her gently about spinning her head off her neck. Liking this jaguar who was her cousin’s, Sahara made a face at him that caused his cheeks to crease in feline amusement, and continued to drink in the wildness around her.
When she turned her gaze upward, it was to see a stunning sky still dotted with countless stars . . . but her eyes kept being drawn to a star situated away from the others, lonely and hard and bright.
The canopy closed overhead a minute later, hiding the star from sight. It wasn’t long afterward that she stood in front of a tree so immense, she couldn’t see all of it. “Oh.” Running to the bottom of the forest giant, she stared up at the neat little house perched among the branches. It was connected to a second house by a pathway along a wide branch.
Light, yellow and rich, spilled from the windows of both.
“Who lives there?” she asked, pointing to the second one.
“No one,” Faith said, hand linked to Vaughn’s. “It’s for when you want us to stay over.”
“A guest treehouse!” Delighted, she sent the image of her aerie to the man who was that lonely star, ice hard and cold, the act coming from the same part of her that had turned to him when the world skewed sideways, finding aching pleasure in his touch, unrivaled safety in his arms. And she knew he was too deep inside her, meant too much for her to keep a rational distance, that it would be futile to try. Look!