Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“You were a cop, right?” Adam said without warning.
Glad for the distraction, Max turned to look at the other man. Adam’s profile was sharp, his skin tense over his bones. “Yes. I run security for Nikita Duncan now.” That turn in his life, he could’ve never foreseen. But like Sophie, he went toe-to-toe with his boss when required and never once had he deviated from his ethical principles.
Nikita knew she couldn’t push him. She could fire him but she hadn’t. Which also said something about her. Complicated. Definitely complicated. “Why?”
“You armed?”
“Always.” He had the required permission to carry inside the hospital as the global head of security who oversaw the security setup of all the J units. Despite how he’d described what he did to Adam, his job had long ago altered from protecting Nikita to managing a vast network of security personnel under her banner.
“Look after her,” Adam said, his eyes on Eleri. “That was her friend Bram on the phone—the team ripping apart Hendricks’s home found a number of disturbing photos. It’s possible everyone was wrong and he did have earlier victims who haven’t been discovered—I need to go talk to the asshole.”
Max didn’t point out that Deputy John Hendricks had supposedly disappeared into the desert after having crashed his car into a ditch. One of Max’s closest friends was a changeling—he knew how justice worked for the primal race and, having seen what he had during his years in Enforcement, he didn’t blame the changelings for what some would call a brutal philosophy.
“I’ve been where you’re standing, Adam,” he said. “Complete with a bastard who was holding the locations of his victims’ graves hostage. I had access to a powerful telepath. I asked him to strip the killer’s mind.”
He held the other man’s gaze. “I know it isn’t the changeling way—but I’ll tell you that I’ve never regretted my decision. Fucker would’ve continued to manipulate and delay, continued to use every opportunity to cause harm.”
It had broken his heart to talk to those who waited for their loved ones to come home, to tell them that they never would, but he also knew he’d given them a painful peace. No more wondering. No more questions.
The terrible gift of being able to give their lost a loving farewell.
Adam’s eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t have thought of that as an option,” he admitted. “But you’re right. Eleri told me Hendricks likes to play games—he’ll love it if we come to him with questions that give him the upper hand.”
A curt nod, as if the falcon leader had come to a decision. “You’ll watch over Eleri?”
“You have my word. Go find out what the bastard knows.”
But Adam looked through the glass again. “Sophia.”
“I’ll have to wrangle her into resting at some point,” Max acknowledged, “but she’s not planning to go far. The staff’s already told her she has a berth in the room they keep for staff. I’ll keep watch over Eleri till you return.”
Adam hesitated for a long second, touching his fingers to the glass of the window. Whatever he said to Eleri, it was silent, but Max felt the power of it all the same.
No, Adam Garrett and Eleri Dias weren’t just acquaintances or even colleagues.
Max knew what hell it was to worry about the woman you loved, what it was to wait for her to wake up. He and Sophie, they’d gotten their miracle, but Eleri wasn’t Sophie. Eleri’s mind wasn’t woven into the PsyNet like Sophia’s.
Eleri wasn’t even in the Net any longer.
And the twin neosentience that had saved Sophia’s life was diminished and wounded, barely hanging on as the PsyNet continued its inexorable collapse. Max had stayed awake night after night tracking the collapses. Because the very thing that had saved Sophie’s life could now end both her and their child.
Sophia could never leave the PsyNet, could never defect into a changeling network like Sascha Duncan or Faith NightStar. Sophia was part of the Net itself, her being anchored into its very fabric. If it crumbled, she would fall.
Max forced himself to breathe.
They had time. The blue spiderweb that had infiltrated every fracture and through line of the Net had bought them that time. Enough to figure out a long-term solution. Because being on Nikita’s most trusted team meant he wasn’t like the vast majority of the public: Max knew the blue spiderweb wasn’t a fix but a patch.
The PsyNet was far from safe.
So yeah, Max Shannon understood Adam Garrett’s fear all too well.
Chapter 39
I suppose I could tell someone…nah, why would I do that when I can use it? Now that I know what the whispers are, it’s not annoying. No, now it’s interesting.
—From the notebook of John Hendricks (age 12) (circa winter 2069)
Bram was waiting for Adam near the turnoff to the Canyon, his own dusty vehicle parked to one side of the night-draped road. Not wanting to be wiped out by the time of his arrival, Adam hadn’t flown on the wing. Instead, he’d managed to get a commercial jet-chopper flight into Raintree, landing on the high school’s sports field under the blaze of the football lights the school had switched on for him.