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)
“We’ll have to ask Beaufort,” Whitten said. “Only he or the chief can authorize that.”
Eleri nodded, leaving it at that. It didn’t really matter; she had ways to get the files without authorization. Because it turned out that a woman who hunted serial killers with great success had a hell of a lot of contacts who owed her favors.
She glanced at the gloved hand she had on the table.
Not long left for her to collect on the favors. Might as well cash in one now.
Don’t forget your gloves.
She polished the memory of their morning interaction, made sure it was in high definition before she stored it carefully away. Because while her memories were only eidetic when it came to the traces she took, she’d never forgotten a single detail of her interactions with him.
Never wanted to forget.
• • •
It was three hours later when she returned to the inn. She’d spent the time working her imaginary cold case while making contact with the Psy residents of the town. Still no red flags, but the Sandman had been flying under the radar because he was good at hiding his true face. She planned to dig into each and every person to whom she’d spoken.
Having already used her mobile comm to check her security system, she pushed open the door…and felt her boot press down on something that crackled softly. Lifting her foot at once, she looked down to see what looked to be printouts of online articles. She crouched down so she was close enough to read the headlines without having to touch the paper.
The Sandman Strikes Again!
Missing woman identified as Kriti Kumar, an engineering student from ASU.
Breaking News: Body discovered!
Vivian Chang’s Parents on Why They Still Have Hope
Rumors of a Serial Killer in Arizona!
They were all like that, every single printout that she could see. Someone had gone to great lengths to find articles on the Sandman going back all the way to the beginning. That interview with Vivian’s parents, for one, had been right back at the start, when she’d been a missing person.
But that wasn’t what held her attention: it was the printout in the center of the haphazard mass—of an article that included a black-and-white image of the location where Eleri had discovered Sarah Wells’s body.
She was standing next to Tim, the two of them in conversation.
The person who’d slipped the printouts under her door had drawn a smiley face next to Eleri’s image.
Chapter 15
This is a common misconception—and understandable, given the relatively recent “return” of Designation E to the PsyNet—but no, empaths do not all function much the same.
The E designation carries multiple subdesignations, some of which we may not discover for years, or even longer. We have almost no historical resources to mine, for the Councils of Silence took great care to wipe empaths from the world.
—PsyNet Beacon: Response to reader question by Jaya Laila Storm (medical empath and Social Interaction columnist) (7 June 2083)
As the first empath to wake to her nature in this generation, Sascha had known that she wasn’t the right E for the job the instant the WindHaven healer contacted her. Jacques needed a specialist E, one with the ability to reach a comatose mind.
“I’ll find you the best person,” she’d promised Naia, then immediately got to work.
Her first choice, Jaya, proved to be in a mandated recovery period after almost burning herself out, but the other woman recommended another E—a young male named Hanz.
When Sascha met the empath at the nearest airport to falcon territory, having been led to him by her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter—who was holding a print of the ID photo Jaya had sent them—the youth turned out to have a German accent that went perfectly with his name, skin a darker hue of brown than her own, floppy dark hair, and hazel eyes that looked unseeing out at the world.
Sensors ringed his fingers.
She assumed he’d lost his vision in an accident as a teenager, for the Psy hadn’t been forgiving of any kind of obvious physical difference when Hanz would’ve been born.
“Hi, Hanz! We’re here!” Naya piped up and touched her fingers very, very lightly to the back of one of his hands before withdrawing.
Sascha’s daughter knew not to touch Psy without permission, but she seemed to have made a rapid calculation in that terrifyingly smart little brain that Hanz might need a physical reference to her presence. He didn’t, of course; he could have sensed them with his empathic ability.
“Hallo, ‘we,’ ” Hanz said before Sascha could introduce herself, his lips curved in a smile and his head directed unerringly down at Naya’s diminutive height. “That’s quite an unusual name, ja?”
Naya laughed, a huge and delighted thing. Sascha had moments when she worried her daughter—half-changeling, half-Psy—would feel constrained by living outside the sprawling vastness of the PsyNet, but then she’d hear Naya laugh and it’d all melt away.