“I should know better than anyone that memories are never gone,” she said in an echo of his own thoughts, “but even I, it seems, have some delusions left.”
Raising his hand with a slowness that gave her plenty of warning, he began to play with a lock of her hair. She went preternaturally still, but she didn’t stop him. “Memories aren’t always vicious,” he said, speaking to both of them. “I’ll remember the softness of your hair each time I smell your shampoo. Let’s see, vanilla and”—he paused, took a long, indulgent breath—“below it, some kind of a flower?”
To his surprise, she answered. “Lavender soap. I use it on my body.” Then she lifted her own hand, hesitated.
He bent his head in invitation, his heart kicking against his ribs.
He couldn’t control the shudder that rippled through him. The leather-synth of her glove was warm with her body heat, the pressure so slight as to be nonexistent—but it held him captive, slave to her desires.
“This,” she whispered, tracing the shape of his mouth, “will be a good memory.”
It was tempting to surrender to the pleasure, but she’d come to him with nightmares in her eyes. “Tell me about your dreams.”
“You said your mother hated you,” she said, the harshness of the words nullified by the delicate way she stroked over his lower lip, as if fascinated by the feel of him. “Mine rejected me as absolutely.”
The hunger to hold her strained at every one of his muscles, the butterfly flirtation of her touch fuel to his instincts. “Why?” The cop in him said this was important, that it held the key to understanding her.
“I was imperfect.” Dropping her hand, she took a step back. “We should begin the drive to Nikita’s.”
Neither of them spoke again until they were in the car and on the road. “My knowledge of Nikita is based on what I’ve seen in the media,” he said as they merged into the morning traffic. “She comes across as intelligent, a cut-throat businesswoman.”
“I agree.” Sophia felt her muscles relax at the realization that Max didn’t intend to press her to take the next step in this unforeseen, unpredictable dance. The part of her that had been waiting for him for a broken, tormented eternity wanted to rush, to race, but the simple fact was, she didn’t have the capacity to process anything more than what they’d already done. Not yet. “Nikita also seems to be one of the few high-level Psy who thinks in truly global terms—she is, as far as I know, the solitary Councilor who has such close ties with a changeling group.”
“I heard that Anthony Kyriakus is still subcontracting foreseeing work out to his daughter, Faith.”
Sophia nodded, having followed the news of Faith NightStar’s defection. Foreseers were rumored to be even more mentally unstable than Js—and yet Faith had survived. Though Sophia had always known that any such defection was out of the question for her, her mind woven inextricably into the fabric of the Net, Faith NightStar’s survival had seemed a victory for all of them who were labeled mad and had their lives erased from existence.
“Yes,” she said in response to Max’s question. “Anthony is also involved with the changelings, but according to my research, Nikita was the one who took the first step into such an arrangement when she formed a business alliance with DarkRiver’s construction arm.”
Max switched lanes, his brow furrowed in thought. “Could be something there,” he murmured, and she could almost hear his brain working, making connections with a speed that many Psy, certain of the superiority of their mental abilities, would find extraordinary. “Any more details on the construction deals?”
Forcing herself to look away from the clean lines of his profile, the sleek strands of black hair that glimmered with hidden red highlights in direct sunlight, Sophia checked her data. “It looks like her firm is gaining changeling housing contracts not only in the U.S., but also internationally. The murders may be motivated by professional rivalry.”
“It would fit.” Max tapped a finger on the steering wheel. “Each of the victims died on the verge of a major deal.”
Surprised, Sophia quickly skimmed through the relevant parts of the file and realized he was right. “All three were linchpins, bringing something unique to the table,” she said out loud. “Their deaths derailed the entire process in each case.”
“Nothing obvious connects the three deals,” Max said. “We need to find out if there’s a link beneath the surface, if one particular competitor benefits with Nikita effectively out of the run—” A beeping interrupted his words. “That’s my cell.” He nodded at where it sat in the holder on the dash. “Can you check the caller’s name?”
“Of course.” Picking it up, she glanced at the ID . . . and felt her mind go quiet, cold, the otherness stirring to life. “It is the prosecutor, Mr. Reuben.”
CHAPTER 14
I can only show you what the defendant did in that room ten months ago. To ask me whether or not he is a monster is to presume I have an intimate knowledge of monsters.
Mouth a grim line, Max brought the vehicle to a stop in the half-empty car park of a restaurant that hadn’t yet opened.
Listening to his end of the conversation, she’d divined the reason for the call by the time he hung up. “Bonner wants to talk to me again.” The thought of trawling through that mind full of malice made her entire body stiffen in revulsion.
Because he might just be the final weight, the one that would cause her shields to shred beyond any hope of repair. And Sophia wasn’t ready to have her brain crushed, her psyche, her personality, wiped from existence. Not when she’d just found Max, found this man who made the cold, dark places fill with light. Clenching her fingers on her organizer, she fought past the whispers of vengeance that seemed to originate in the dark tendrils snaking through her mind and soothed the otherness back to sleep.
“Bastard says he’s got something to share, some memory he’s apparently been able to dig up.” Max braced his arm on the back of her seat, playing with a strand of her hair as he’d done in the apartment.
She didn’t pull away. They had trust between them now, a fragile thing born in the electrical storm of their first real touch. “I suggest that this one time, we let him play his games.” No matter her hunger to
“If we play it right,” she said, remembering three other young lives that had been willfully erased from every mind but her own, “it’ll only increase his frustration, make him more malleable.”
Max’s eyes filled with raw, edgy emotions she’d never get the chance to study, to truly know. Not in this lifetime. So she asked, “What are you thinking?”
“That it’s a pity torture is illegal.” A visceral anger in every world. “We’ll set up a comm-conference. We’re not traipsing up to him so he can have a convenient memory lapse.”
“The comm systems at our apartment won’t have the necessary encryption.” Sophia’s own anger was a colder thing, a thing that saw nothing wrong in taking an eye for an eye, a life for a life. “We could ask Enforcement if they have a secure link.”
“Their system was pretty good last time I was here.” Releasing her hair with a little tug that made her scalp prickle with sensation, the ice thawing in a flare of white-hot heat, he rubbed at his jaw. “But they have leaks.”
