The Psy-Changeling Collection (313 page)

Sascha grinned
as Lucas stopped at a small corner shop to buy her an ice cream. “Thank you, Mr. Hunter.”

“You’re welcome, Sascha darling.” He shook his head as they pulled away from the store. “I don’t know where it all goes.”

She took a contented bite of her chocolate-coated chocolate ice cream. “Don’t make me mad.”

He shuddered. “I think you’ve fulfilled your quota of crazy today.”

She made a face at him, able to hear the cat’s humor in his voice. “There is no quota, not once you start carrying around a bowling ball in your belly.” A little pat to reassure the baby, who appeared to be fast asleep. “Not that I don’t adore our little bowling ball.”

A fond glance from the cat beside her. “Why are we going into work?”

“Because they need you to sign documents.” Savoring the delicious treat, she sighed. “It’s such a beautiful day.”

“Let’s take a drive through the Presidio before we head in,” he said, referring to the forested region just outside the city. “You can find a nice sunny spot to eat your ice cream while I take a nap.”

She shot him a laughing glance, warmth filling her body at the remembrance of exactly why he was so sleep-deprived. “Are you complaining?”

“No”—a wicked smile—“I’m planning my revenge.”

Max and Sophia
had gone over every piece of evidence related to Nikita’s case twice by the time they were twenty minutes into their flight. “What are we missing?” Max
muttered, frustrated at the feeling that they were being blind to something critically important. Bonner and his twisted games just didn’t fit.

The vanilla of Sophia’s shampoo whispered across his senses as she bent her head over her organizer, an invisible caress. “Whatever it is, it must be taking place soon if they came after us in such a high-risk location.” They’d both realized the bomb could’ve been planted anytime in the past forty-eight hours. Which meant—“We have to work on the assumption that the timeline has to be very, very short by now.”

“A strike anytime soon will break the pattern of murders before a big deal.” Max had spoken to Nikita prior to boarding the airjet, reconfirmed that nothing was even close to final. “Why?”

“Something’s made them push their schedule forward.” Her thigh brushed his.

The fleeting touch was a balm, centering him. “Nikita’s people—anyone who’ll be out of easy reach for a long period?”

Sophia tapped the screen of her organizer with quick motions. “Prague, Berlin, Tokyo, hardly out-of-the-way locations. And any who are going are coming back within a week or two at most.”

“It has to be an issue of access,” Max muttered. “And for some reason, they were worried we’d figure it out—”

“
You
, Max.” Sophia’s eyes turned an intense, incredible night violet. “They were worried you would figure it out—you’re the wild card in this situation, a human whose thought processes they can’t predict.”

“Okay, so a target a Psy wouldn’t immediately think of, coupled with a deadly—” Ice crawled through his veins, right to his heart. “
No
.”

“Max?”

“Where the hell did I see it?” Reaching into the seat pocket in front of them, he pulled out the entertainment module. “They were flashing the selections on the big screen when we boarded, remember?”

“Yes, but what did you—”

“There!” He stopped on the front page of a national tabloid. The headline was:
Scoop! Sascha Duncan Pregnant!
Below that was another headline in a slightly smaller font:
DarkRiver Alpha Keeps Pregnant Mate Captive!

Max put down the module. “Bastards are afraid the cats really are about to put Sascha into hiding.”

A sick feeling bloomed in the pit of Sophia’s stomach as she remembered the glowing warmth of Sascha’s presence. The E-Psy was something incredibly good, something their race needed to protect, not harm. “Our cell phones won’t work.” As a result of accidents in the twentieth century, all devices were now automatically blocked while an airjet was in the sky.

Max was already rising. “I’ll talk to the steward, get an emergency call out.”

“Wait,” Sophia said. “That’ll take too long. I’ll do it on the PsyNet.” Though she was a very strong telepath, her shields were viciously degraded. If she attempted to send that far without the aid of the Net, they could collapse, killing her before the message reached the intended recipient.

“You do it on the Net, I’ll make the call, cover our bases.”

Nodding, she closed her eyes to ensure total focus and opened her psychic eye. She hadn’t tried to cross her new shields before today, but if they were hers, they should obey her—and they did, wrapping her in distinctive mobile firewalls as she exited out into the PsyNet.

Forcing herself to ignore the battering influx of information that was the endless river of the Net, she arrowed straight to Nikita’s mind. As expected, the Councilor’s shields were beyond impenetrable, but Sophia began to try to break them. It was the easiest way to ensure she’d get Nikita’s attention as fast as possible.

It only took a split second. “Ms. Russo.” Nikita’s icy presence. “People who attempt to hack my shields don’t usually survive.”

Sophia knew full well she’d risked infection from a
mental virus if the Councilor had laced her defenses with her own personal brand of poison. “You need to get a message to Sascha. We think she’s the next target.”

“Details?”

“Nothing concrete—but it’ll happen very soon.”

Nikita broke contact.

Dropping out of the Net, Sophia found that she was gripping the armrests so tight, her tendons showed white against her skin.

“Sophie, sweetheart, talk to me.” It was a soft-voiced command, meant to carry to her ears alone as Max returned to slide into his seat.

“I told Nikita.” She swallowed, realizing something too late. “I just hope she was the right person to tell.”

CHAPTER 29

One thing I’ve learned after so many years on the job—no one is simple, no one is one-dimensional. And still, people surprise me.

—
From the private case notes of Detective Max Shannon

Sascha’s and Lucas’s
phones both started beeping with the pack’s emergency code when they were two streets over from the HQ. Then the car phone started beeping.

“What the hell?” Lucas double-parked beside a bright magenta monstrosity that Sascha had been teasing him about buying.

“I’ll get mine,” Sascha was saying when she felt a telepathic knock on her mind. Firm, familiar.
Mother
. Her own telepathic reach was small, but Nikita’s was so wide, she’d hear Sascha’s weaker voice.

You may have been chosen as a target by my enemies
.

I understand
.

The methods they’ve used thus far suggest they do not have a teleport-capable telekinetic at their disposal
.

I’ll make sure I’m careful about my physical surroundings
.

Don’t forget about explosives
.

No
.

I’ll organize protection
—

Thank you, Mother
, Sascha said, emotion a rock in her throat,
but the pack will take care of me. I promise
.

Very well
.

Nikita’s mind dropped away, but Sascha didn’t take it for disapproval. Glancing at Lucas, she saw his green eyes had gone cat. “My mother just warned me I might be a target,” she said.

“I thought you were ’pathing to someone.” Starting up the car, he turned back the way they’d come, heading out of the city and toward their cabin. “Faith had a vision—that was your phone. Dorian cornered a sniper on his security rounds—that was my phone. And Clay got a call from Max before his own informants told him about another suspicious man in the apartment building facing the HQ—that was the car phone.”

Sascha blew out a breath. “Darling, you do realize that means the baby and I were never in any danger?”

Lucas squeezed the steering wheel as if he’d like to rip it off. “I’m not going to calm down for a while, so deal with it.”

Reaching out, she rubbed the back of her hand over his cheek. “Since we’re going home, I’ll have lots of privacy to pet you.” A nudge in her stomach, a thump in her heart. “And you can pet me back.”

The leopard shot her a quick glance.

“They would’ve hurt you, too.” How
dare
they!

Lucas took her hand, brought it to her lips. “The pack would’ve never let that happen.”

The cunning way her leopard had turned her words back on her when it suited him thrust past the anger to leave only a deep need to touch, to love, to cherish. “Take me home, Lucas.”

Max called Lucas
the instant they landed. “She’s safe?”

“We’re both fine—you the reason Nikita knew?”

“Sophie managed to pass on a message through the PsyNet.”

“Clay and Dorian have some intel out at our HQ that you should see—probably shouldn’t come over the comm lines.” A long, indrawn breath. “And, Cop—thanks.”

Hanging up, Max nodded to Sophie. “She’s fine. And we might have a lead.” He waited only until they were inside the car before reaching over to close his hand over her thigh, his palm separated from her skin by nothing but the material of her skirt. He understood exactly how feral the DarkRiver alpha was feeling at that moment. If Faith hadn’t warned them about the bomb . . . “I want to strip you to the skin and drive into you until we both scream.”

“
Max
.”

It took him three minutes of teeth-gritting control before he could begin driving. Neither of them said another word until they walked into the DarkRiver building. Clay met them in the lobby and led them upstairs to a meeting room, where Dorian was waiting.

The sentinel with his blue-eyed, blond good looks raised a hand. “Here’s the lowdown—the assassin I found ate some kind of a fucking suicide tablet. I haven’t seen anything like it outside of historical dramas.”

“I worked a case where a small cult committed suicide en masse,” Max said, his mind cascading with bleak images of small bodies curled up beside larger ones that should’ve protected, not harmed. “They used a wine laced with poison.”

“It speaks of fanatical devotion,” his J said, “rather than professionalism.”

“But he was a professional, too.” Dorian showed them some images on the comm screen. “His gear, the way he’d been waiting there long enough to have left DNA behind, if you know what I mean—the man knew what he was doing.”

“Where’s the body?”

Clay was the one who responded. “Enforcement morgue.”

“And the other one?” Max asked.

The sentinel looked disgusted. “He figured out we were
on to him and rabbited. I had to bring him down in a public area—Enforcement was there within a minute. He’s sitting in a cell not talking right now. No doubt he’s Psy.”

“There’s something else.” Dorian picked up what looked like a business card off the table. “This was left behind in the room where the second sniper was hiding.”

“That’s evidence.” Max scowled. “You’ve fucking contaminated the hell out of it.”

“Trust me,” Dorian said, “you don’t want that in the system. And we processed it.”

Max glanced down to see that the card carried a single line of text—what looked like a comm code. Turning it over, he read the handwritten note:
Sascha, DR HQ

“I recognize that code,” Sophia said in a quiet voice. “It’s Councilor Duncan’s private line.”

“Very well guarded,” Dorian said. “And available only to a select few.”

Max shook his head. “Nikita isn’t behind this. And the handwriting—the time’s missing.”

Sophia took it from his hand. “They were going to insert that once they’d hit Sascha, make it seem as if Nikita had given them the location and time.” She placed the card back on the table. “But the fact that they have this number further implicates someone in Nikita’s inner circle.”

“Another Councilor would also have it—or be able to get it,” Max said, eyes narrowed. “No question that Nikita has a mole inside her organization, but there’s a much larger power behind this.”

“I’ve already got our informants on alert for anything that might be related.” Clay said with a tightly held fury. “You need us, we’re there.”

Max tapped the card. “What did you find?”

Dorian’s scowl did nothing to lessen the sheer beauty of his face. “Only usable print was—surprise, surprise—Nikita’s.”

“They really thought you were going to fall for that?” Max had seen the way the cats operated—they were highly intelligent predators.

Dorian’s mouth went grim. “If they’d succeeded in hurting Sascha, we wouldn’t have been thinking too straight. The leopard would’ve gone for blood.”

And, Sophia realized with a chill in her heart, the ensuing carnage would have begun a war.

CHAPTER 30

Nikita thought long
and hard about her next move, considered, too, what it might betray. Nothing. If she was careful.

Picking up her cell phone, she input a code.

Anthony Kyriakus answered after a few seconds. “Nikita, this is unexpected.”

Yes, Nikita thought, it was. Though they occupied the same basic area of the state, their paths rarely collided. The NightStar empire was built around the foreseeing abilities so prevalent in their genetic line, while Nikita’s own company had a much more prosaic base in housing and design. But—“We do have certain commonalities.”

A pause. “Is this a Council matter?”

“No.” That left them with only one common thread, a thread they’d never before discussed. “Sascha was targeted by my enemies today. You may wish to ensure Faith’s safety.”

“I don’t think you’re doing this out of the goodness of your heart.”

Nikita had no heart. What she had were brains and a survival instinct that saw nothing wrong with killing, manipulation, and betrayal. But she wasn’t fickle. That was bad for business. “It strikes me,” she said, “that our aims have coincided more often than not in Council matters of late.”

“You’re allied to Krychek.”