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)
Eleri nodded. “Hero worship turned deadly when Jacques didn’t act as he needed him to act?” It wouldn’t be the first case of love turned destructive that Eleri had seen in her career; one of the first cases she’d studied during her training had involved a man who’d stabbed his lover—another man—to death in a frenzy of jealousy after discovering intimate photos of a third man on his comm.
“It’s possible. I’m going to put a watch on him.” Adam locked those strange, wild eyes on her again, the yellow inhuman and beautiful. “You can’t rely on Mi-ja to protect you if anything goes wrong with Dae—she’d do anything for her son, even bury a body.”
Eleri had long ago stopped being shocked by what people would do for those they considered their own. She’d lied with her silence for Reagan, hadn’t she?
Where’s the honor and justice in that?
Words she’d thrown at Reagan when she’d finally realized the duplicity that was part and parcel of being a J under the reign of the Council.
He’d given her a pensive look. “You’re a strong one, Eleri, to still have the will to ask such questions. Most of us forget them by the time we get to where you are in your training. It’s easier to forget, easier to just walk on without looking too carefully into the shadows.”
“Is that what you did?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” had been his answer.
Today, she just said, “I understand.”
Adam’s only response was, “Don’t forget your gloves,” before he turned and headed back down the stairs.
Eleri didn’t know why she’d stepped outside after he vanished from sight until several minutes later, when a large falcon winged overhead. It circled over her once before heading to the Canyon. To a place she’d never go, never experience, his home as far out of her reach as the sky that was in his every breath.
Her heart, that long-ossified organ, ached at that.
“Now,” she told herself, “it’s time for you to do the only thing you’re good at—and that might be useful.”
Don’t forget your gloves.
It meant nothing. He just didn’t want her disabled should the attack on his clanmate be related to her serial killer case. It was a sensible precaution.
And still, she tucked it away with all her hoarded memories of him.
Do you work at the court?
Not really. I’m an intern—I get paid a small stipend but my job is to learn, here and during our lectures. Are you a student, too?
Yes. Business with a minor in—don’t laugh—ancient epics like Beowulf. My mom…she loved old stories.
Eleri hadn’t known anything about Beowulf then, but she’d read the epic poem obsessively over the months that followed. Searching futilely for a way back to the boy whose eyes had gone so sad when he’d mentioned his mother, but who’d also looked at Eleri in a way that said she was special, that she made him happy.
Until she’d shattered his heart, destroyed his trust…and any hope of a future in the warmth of those beautiful wild eyes.
Chapter 14
Full board, including any vacation periods and weekends. Medical power of attorney has been assigned to the school. Invoice for year one has been paid in full. Future invoices will be paid in full on January 1st of each year until the child turns eighteen.
The family does not wish for any contact regarding the child except for the invoices—any disciplinary and medical matters are to be handled by the school.
—Note in intake file of Eleri Dias (age 6) at the Maxwelton Boarding School (21 November 2062)
Dae Park wasn’t in the diner when Eleri walked in to take a seat at the counter. “I was hoping to run into Dae,” she said to the proprietor, Sally, a tall woman with sharp eyes and striking bone structure under skin of glowing ebony.
“He tell his ma he was having breakfast here again?” Sally chuckled, her voice husky. “Honey, he’s a healthy young male trapped in a house with his mother—I ain’t never seen him for breakfast. I haven’t figured out who his lady friend is, but he’s surely got one. Good on him, I say—man finally broke out of his shell.”
Eleri dropped the subject, but she added this lie to the one Dae had told about Jacques and found him inching higher on the scale of suspects—at least when it came to the shooting. His humanity still placed him as an outlier on the Sandman suspect list unless she wanted to revise her opinion that it was a single killer rather than a pair.
“Thank you,” she said as Sally put her plate in front of her—it was the “Psy special,” a bland arrangement of bread spread with nutrient paste, along with a hot cup of an herbal tea with no discernible taste that Eleri could fathom.
“You mind if I ask you a question?” Sally said after returning from topping up a heavily bearded man’s coffee. “I always wondered if the memories you took as a J haunted you.”