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)
Might be the man just hated small-town life but was stuck here because he didn’t want to leave his mother alone. He’d gone to college a few hours away and could have an entire social group no one knew about. Adam had spotted his truck heading out of town for a few days on more than one occasion.
Well, shit.
Ice in his gut as he reached Eleri’s room. No light glowed beyond the windows, but he could hear movement through the door.
His heart kicked, his skin hot.
He hated this. He hated her.
The door opened even as he fought the driving urges of his body and told himself to turn back, get away from her. Whatever they could’ve once been, that chance lay dead and buried with the murderer she’d helped set free.
“Adam.” Her gaze was alert, her body clad in slim black suit pants and a crisp white shirt that she’d tucked into the pants. “I saw you.”
He followed her glance to see a tiny camera eye above the door. That definitely wasn’t standard issue at the inn. “You were awake.”
“I don’t sleep much.” The deep purple bruises under her eyes bore harsh witness to her words…but he hadn’t spotted them yesterday.
“And use makeup to hide the effects.”
“People focus on the wrong things otherwise.” She looked straight at him, the eye contact unaggressive because her gaze was so flat.
It enraged him, the distance of her, the lack in her. He wanted to shake her, tell her to stop being a ghost. He couldn’t fight with a ghost, couldn’t let his anger burn through a ghost. He needed a living, breathing woman who’d feel his pain, his grief, his fury at her.
“Your clanmate?” When Adam just shook his head, she added, “We only discovered two major pieces of information at the site.”
“The tire marks and the vehicle, yeah. I heard.” Leaning up against the outside wall, he tried not to draw in her scent and did so all the same.
It was as faded and flat as her expression.
“The chief of Raintree Enforcement just suffered a severe heart attack,” he said, even as the raptor inside him flared its wings in agitation. “He’s the most experienced officer in the area, probably knows everyone in town and any relevant history.”
Eleri’s hand tightened on the doorjamb. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Adam found himself hyper-focused on that betraying hand devoid of the thin black barrier she’d worn yesterday. The urge to touch her, see if she was real or a two-dimensional illusion, was so strong that his entire body pounded with it.
Chapter 13
Our ancestors made the decision to embrace Silence after a ten-year debate. It was no quick decision, no desperate grab at any offered solution. It was, they came to believe, the only viable solution.
What I find problematic is that no one in those ten years of debate brought up the possibility of such a regime fostering psychopathy in the populace. To be clear, I believe it must have been raised as a concern—nothing else makes sense in the context of such a huge and wide-ranging discussion.
Yet no official records of such concerns survive. Which leads me to the conclusion that those records were wiped by Councils past. Our history is a patchwork quilt with countless missing pieces.
—Excerpted from draft of upcoming PsyNet Beacon editorial (pending review for accuracy)
It took everything Adam had to fight the roar of need, to not attempt to initiate skin privileges with this woman who had always, always called to his wild changeling soul. “Can a Psy cause a heart attack in an otherwise healthy person?” he asked, his tone rough.
“Yes, but it’s not an ability so much as a side effect in most cases. It’s said that Tk-Cells can do so by exerting physical pressure on the organ, but that subdesignation is so rare that it might as well be a myth. Telepaths can do so accidentally when pushing at a mind in order to nudge their target into doing something—the strain can lead to myocardial infarction.
“But in most cases of attempted telepathic interference, it’s a stroke that leads to death, not heart issues. Actually creating a heart attack that passes all the medical tests? Very, very difficult and not something I’d expect from the kind of Psy who live in this town. It’d require Arrow-level training.”
Adam knew about the Arrows due to the Trinity Accord, of which WindHaven was a member. They were the Psy race’s most deadly soldiers, black ops pushed to the nth degree. “Yeah, we definitely don’t have an undercover Arrow in town, I can promise you that.”
Adam knew exactly who lived in Raintree, and had run background checks on all the Psy who’d moved in after the fall of Silence. “As for passing medical scrutiny—we’ll have to wait on the chief’s medical reports. On the off chance I’m wrong about the Psy in Raintree, you pick up anything problematic?”