The records of your birth were destroyed during a fire twenty-five years ago, unfortunately before they had been archived. We are very sorry to be unable to help you in your search.
Max and Sophia didn’t speak again until they were well on their way to the private garage where Nikita had stashed the vehicle the third presumed victim had been driving when she died.
“Is it just the disturbed that you have to be careful of?” Max’s mind was still reeling at the realization that this woman whose skin he’d wanted to stroke from the very first, whose body sang a siren song to his, might be forever out of his reach.
“Most cops,” Sophia said in a quiet, even tone that cut as deep as a scalpel, “carry as many nightmares as a J. Touching one would be akin to slamming a lightning bolt into my head.”
His hands clenched on the steering wheel as she continued to speak. “All Psy run the risk of becoming Sensitive, but Js tend to have the highest rates of actual onset. To counteract that, the Council once considered banning touch from the instant of birth, but there proved to be certain . . . undesirable consequences to such a course of action. Tactile aversion is taught to us as part of the final stages of our conditioning.”
Max thought of the hours, the days he’d spent locked in a dark box, without any hope of a kind touch when he was finally let out, and knew that no matter the horror, he’d been lucky. Because he’d seen pictures of twentieth- century orphanages where babies had been left to rot in their cribs. Those children had been damaged beyond repair. “I can’t see a Psy rocking her baby to sleep,” he said, feeling a tug deep in his soul.
He’d rock his child to sleep, no damn question about it. No son—or daughter—of his was ever going to wonder what was so wrong with him that his own parent couldn’t bear the sight of him. “What kind of touch,” he said, swallowing the knife blade of pain that was his past, “is permitted during childhood?”
“Nurses hold children during feedings, walk around with them at times. Contact is prescribed at the optimal level to ensure psychological health.”
It sounded so cold, so clinical. But the hell of it was, it was better care than he’d ever had. When he’d been very small and helpless, perhaps his mother had felt a surge of maternal love? But Max didn’t think so. Hate that deep, that violent, took time to grow, to mature.
A small light flashed once on Sophia’s organizer, snapping his attention back to the present. “Anything important?”
“No, just an update on one of my cases from the prosecuting attorney. We won.” She put a hand on the dash to brace herself as the car came to a sudden halt upon sensing the dog that had darted into the road.
Max scowled at the owner of the little terrier but let it go at that. Getting the car running again, he glanced to his left. “This is it.” Time to focus on the case—rather than his impossible fascination with a J who might go mad . . . might die, if he touched her.
“Do you know much about cars?” Sophia asked as they walked to the garage entrance, tugging at her gloves in a gesture she recognized as anxious. She couldn’t help it, her nerves abraded—the more she was around Max, the more she found herself thinking about the faint hope that had taken shape in the back of her mind when she’d read his file.
Max shoved his own hands into his pockets, his stride unconsciously graceful. It made another forbidden thought surface in the darkest, most secret corner of her mind—a thought tied to the whispered intimacy of sex. She’d never before considered the act, one that would tear apart the final fragile threads of her psyche, but today she found she didn’t want to die without seeing Max Shannon’s naked body move with that powerful liquid grace.
She was so consumed by the fantasy it took her a moment to realize he was speaking.
“. . . hoping to talk to the mechanic who actually went over it. If she’s not on shift, we’ll just take a look at the vehicle, come back later to talk to her face-to-face. I’m no expert on cars, but I want to read her.”
“Yes,” Sophia managed to say as they reached the entrance—to be met by a well-groomed young female in blue overalls. Her name tag identified her as the chief mechanic.
“Detective Shannon, Ms. Russo, please follow me.” With that, she led them toward an isolated and sealed workroom at the very back of the garage. “This was Allison Marceau’s car.”
Eyes on the crumpled wreck of what had once been a dark green sedan, Max blew out a surprised breath. The majority of cars these days survived most impacts with the passenger cage intact. This was so much spaghetti. “Car versus tree?”
“Out near Modesto,” the mechanic answered, heading to the computer station built into the large workbench at the back of the room. “She was discovered by the leopards after they heard the sound of the initial impact.”
Max made a mental note to talk to Clay, find out anything that may not have made it into the official files— Psy, and even many humans, had a tendency to disregard the acute nature of changeling senses. Could be the cats had scented something that could’ve caused the crash—maybe even caught a hint of another person in the vicinity. “You did the work on this yourself?”
“Yes.” She pulled up something on the screen in front of her. “According to the data stored in the onboard computer,” the mechanic continued, “Ms. Marceau didn’t brake but accelerated on the turn.”
Sophia stepped up beside the other woman. “That’s not in the file.”
“Councilor Duncan asked me to keep it out of the official record.”
Sophia glanced at him, her unspoken thought clear.
“Funny coincidence,” he murmured under his breath. “Is it possible,” he said, “that the car could’ve been rigged so that the brake was read as the accelerator by the computer?”
The mechanic replied with a positive answer, but said she needed more time to investigate. “The computer’s memory chip was severely damaged in the crash—it took me close to two weeks to retrieve what information we have at present.”
“Anything you find out,” Max said, writing down his cell code for her, “I want to know.”
Ten minutes and a few more questions later, Max and Sophia exited the garage into the crisp air of San Francisco. “Let’s walk. I need to think.”
“Alright.”
They were almost a hundred yards down the slight slope before he vocalized his thoughts. “Humans aren’t the only ones vulnerable to psychic attack. If the car’s systems prove clean, then Allison Marceau could’ve been coerced to do what she did.”
Sophia realized she was walking too close to him, close enough to feel the rough caress of his body heat. “The psychic control of the aggressor would have to be considerable.” His arm brushed hers, a hard, warm stroke. “Marceau was a Gradient 7 telepath.” A warning shrieked in her head, but she didn’t move away. “Her shields would have been airtight.”
“All you need,” Max said, his gaze distant, “is a crack, a fissure.”
Her arm burned where he’d touched up against it, and though she knew it for a psychosomatic reaction, the contact having been muted by the layers of clothing between them, she clung to the sensation. “I’m certain Councilor Duncan would’ve weeded out anyone whose conditioning was suspect.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“You’re thinking of Sascha,” she said, shifting a single dangerous inch closer to the living heat of him. “I wouldn’t consider that a parallel.”
“No?” His hair lifted in the breeze blowing off the bay, baring the clean, perfect lines of his face.
“Psy are almost obsessive about bloodlines,” she said, her thoughts buried in memories of a past that proved the truth of that assertion beyond any doubt. “It’s a loyalty unlike human loyalty; nevertheless, it is loyalty.” Compared to human love, Psy familial loyalty was a wintry, practical thing. And it was very much conditional.
Sophia had failed to meet those conditions as a child, and it had cost her her parents’ allegiance. Yet it seemed to have held for the Duncans, notwithstanding the very public nature of Sascha Duncan’s defection. “It may be that the Councilor protected her daughter because Sascha is her genetic offspring.”
Max gave a humorless smile. “Funny—Nikita’s about the coldest woman I’ve ever met, but she was probably a better mother than mine.”
It was an open door. And the lost, painfully lonely part of her wanted to walk through that door so
