Page 59

She paused, her expression torn. “No signs of abuse from external forces during his childhood, though I guess no one would know if he didn’t talk.

Not that it would excuse any of what he did, but at least it’d be a reason instead of Hendricks just being born wrong.

I don’t like saying that about any child. ”

···

Bram had never met a woman as deadly as this one, of that he was certain—and he was in the Cartel with Saffron and Eleri.

His J colleagues could kill, yes, but this woman, tall and with dangerous curves, she’d tear a man limb from limb and then mark her face with his blood.

The energy coming off her was violent and primal, and Bram felt punched in the face by it.

Her eyes flicked to him, dark and angry. “You the Psy who’s going to see what’s going on in Hendricks’s head?”

“Bram,” he said, wanting her to know his name. “And yes. I can also find out if he was in fact abused as a child.”

She jerked her head toward the door. “Well, go on in, Psy who looks like a linebacker and has a fancy-ass name like Bram.”

Even his strange, startling reaction to this falcon didn’t override his need to finish what Eleri had started, what she’d almost died trying to finish. He walked in behind Adam, aware of Dahlia remaining in the doorway after she hung the lantern on a wall hook.

Two other lanterns lit up the space, so they hadn’t left Hendricks in the dark as Bram would’ve done—but then, Bram was a twisted fuck after years spent trawling through the minds of serial killers.

Though Hendricks was tied to a chair, and wore purpling bruises on one side of his face from his apprehension, it was clear he’d been fed and watered.

His broken arm had also been set, then strapped to his chest and the chair. No doubt the falcons had made sure he wouldn’t bleed out from any other wounds, either. Not until they’d finished with him.

“Surprise,” the former deputy said, staring straight at Adam and ignoring Bram.

Adam Garrett didn’t play the psychopath’s game. “Bram.”

Bram went for the other man’s mind while Hendricks was still fixated on Adam.

Hendricks realized what was happening at once, began to scream and attempt to “punch” Bram with his telepathy.

But while he was strong enough to have killed unshielded human women, and caused a heart attack in a human man of some seven decades, he stood no chance against a trained Gradient 9.

1 J whose shields—even at their current levels—were titanium against his low-level Tp.

Bram slipped through Hendricks’s own shields—such as they were—with ruthless ease. And the mind he saw…it was unlike any he’d ever before walked. He’d been trained to take specific memories, but with so many years of experience, he could totally strip a mind of what it held.

The load wouldn’t overwrite his own memories, not if he was in conscious charge of the draw.

First, however, he said, “We found surveillance photos of a brunette teenager with a small upper arm tattoo in your apartment, alongside those of a Black girl around the same age with braids worn in pigtails. Who are they?”

Hendricks laughed. “Wouldn’t you want to know?”

Bram already did, because Hendricks’s disorganized mind had brought up the relevant memories on cue. “Roxanna Johnson and Imma Fehr. Stalked but not murdered per his memories.”

Hendricks’s eyes grew huge. “You’re like her, like my Eleri.”

Bram sensed Adam’s rage, but the falcon wing leader kept his calm as he sent the names through to Beaufort, who’d run them to verify Hendricks’s story.

Bram had already moved on, was asking about the other images they’d found. Hendricks was making attempts to evade him now, but only the rare psychopath had that facility—and those psychopaths were universally Psy.

Hendricks wasn’t Psy. But he wasn’t quite human, either.

By the time Bram finished, the other man’s head had flopped forward, drool dripping out of his mouth. “He’s exhausted himself fighting me,” Bram told Adam. “I think I have all of it, but I want to do two more reads to make sure we’re not leaving anything behind.”

Adam gave a curt nod. “Dahlia, make sure Bram gets the access.” He held up his phone. “Task force has already pinned down the locations of the first two girls you identified. They’re older now—around Hendricks’s age.”

“It tracks with what I saw; he began with stalking girls his own age. As for his bloodline…he’s got Psy in him, likely passed down through the generations.

No way to know if he’s descended from the Forgotten, or from human-Psy pairs pre-Silence.

Just under 1 on the Gradient, so he would’ve never linked to a biofeedback network, but I think as an unshielded child, he picked up thoughts—whispers, he calls them. ”

Adam’s mouth tightened. “Did it cause mental illness? Do we need to treat him as sick?”

“No. I’m getting the sense of a boy who began to understand his ability and who took sadistic pleasure in listening for people’s secrets.” A boy who’d had two adoring parents who’d have taken him to every doctor on the planet had he asked, but Hendricks had enjoyed his secret power.

“He had a lucrative sideline in blackmail as a teenager—that’s why he could kill with such weak telepathy. He honed it to its sharpest point. Fact is, he should’ve never been able to cause death; that he did speaks to how much effort he put into refining his ability until it became a scalpel.”

Bram made sure Hendricks’s memories were well compartmentalized from his own.

Later, he’d tell Adam that the serial killer’s DNA and memories should be analyzed and studied, because there might be other outwardly human or changeling children out there who were just Psy enough for it to be a problem, but not Psy enough that their minds would search for a biofeedback link.

Not every such child would be a Hendricks.

Some would be driven mad by the whispers…

and perhaps already had been over the centuries.

How many of the people in the asylums of old had ever been tested for minor Psy abilities?

Those in the Trinity Accord needed to be notified of the need for a new and wide-ranging testing regimen.

For now, he looked at the woman who’d taken his breath away. “I think in this case, you have to accept that he was a bad seed.”