Page 8

Adam stared at her. “Did you pull that out of your ass or do you have actual proof?” He was being aggressive far beyond anything those who knew him would ever expect, but she was lucky he hadn’t given in to his falcon’s urge to shred her the instant he saw her.

The wild creature that was his other self could forgive many people many things, but never her. Not her .

“You knew at once, didn’t you?” he said before she could answer. “I saw it on your face.”

She didn’t startle at the apparent non sequitur. “Yes,” she said again, with no attempt to downplay her involvement in a terrible miscarriage of justice. “I knew Reagan was lying the instant he began to speak.”

“Why shouldn’t I kill you here and now?” He focused on the haze of red across his vision, because rage he could handle.

The problem was what lay below, the vulnerability so huge that he’d had to wall it off from his conscious mind all these years so he could remain the brother his sister knew and loved, so he could be a strong and affectionate and generous wing leader.

So he could be Adam and not a broken shadow of himself.

“I could rip you to pieces, throw those parts in the desert. No one would ever know what happened to you.” It was a vicious threat, and he’d made it because he wanted to incite a response—any response.

The emotion inside him was a serrated and massive pressure defined by two moments that had forever altered his future. One in that hallway that had lit up his bleak world…the other in the courtroom that had destroyed it.

“If you kill me now,” she said, with not even a flicker of an eyelash to show that she might be affected by either his words or her own, “you’ll be putting multiple innocent young women in danger.”

Adam made a sound deep in his throat that not many people ever heard from a changeling falcon and survived.

At the same time, he heard the clunking engine of a familiar car starting up.

Mary had finished her daily morning chat with Mi-ja and would now make her ponderous way to Main Street and the local grocer to pick up what she needed to make that day’s lunch and dinner.

“We can’t have this conversation here,” he said, not sure how he was even managing to sound so rational when she’d smashed into his life all over again. “Go to the end of Main Street, turn left, then take the first right to the very end. I’ll be there.”

He got in his car without waiting for a response.

When he checked in his rearview mirror, she was still standing on the road, staring after him. His chest shuddered, his falcon wanting out, wanting the freedom of the skies…wanting her.

···

Eleri knew it would be an intensely stupid idea to get in her vehicle and follow a man who’d made it clear that he was a breath away from tearing her head from her neck.

She also knew it’d be even worse to do so without alerting anyone else as to her whereabouts.

She’d made a commitment to Sophia, to the Quatro Cartel, to the victims of the Sandman.

But her debt to Adam Garrett was a huge thing that predated all else.

If he wanted blood, so be it.

Turning on her heel as his car disappeared around the corner, she walked to her own and got in. A small red vehicle was just crawling out of the inn’s drive as Eleri took the first corner. A ripple shimmered over and around her mind at the same instant.

Minor incident on the PsyNet.

It was easy to identify, given the events of the past year.

The psychic network on which the vast majority of Psy on the planet depended for their survival had stabilized after the incident two months past, when a mind none of them could see had tangled the entire network in a spiderweb that acted as a fine glue.

That glue, however, wasn’t foolproof—because it waited for consent before attaching minds into the web, which left a number of unbalanced individuals as free radicals in the system.

It also had a use-by date.

The majority of the population didn’t know the latter; they were relieved at the apparent solution and had begun to make plans for the future again.

Unfortunately for the J Corps, they didn’t have the option of that happy delusion; something in their brains meant they could see the gradual decline in the Net’s inherent power.

Since most working Js had been through at least one reconditioning, however, they hadn’t been sure they weren’t just imagining things and had kept their observations to themselves for a considerable period.

It wasn’t as if there were a way to measure psychic output on the PsyNet, yet Js were convinced the output was inching closer to flatline with every passing day, albeit at a slower pace than before.

It was Sophia who’d found the answer. “We’re not imagining it,” she’d said. “Nikita confirmed it for me. The fix is temporary and the loss of PsyNet integrity expected. Our reports have helped put a timeline on that disintegration.”

She’d rubbed a protective hand over her belly, fine lines around her mouth. “We can’t allow the information to get out—it would cause widespread panic and further speed up the loss of integrity.”

The J Corps had kept its silence.

They—each and every one, Sophie included—were viscerally aware of the young Js who stood a chance of survival in this new world. A world where Js weren’t pieces of meat to be used up and thrown away. But to thrive, that new world needed the PsyNet to not only exist, but be healthy.

Eleri wasn’t sure the latter was possible, but no J was going to do anything that might screw up even the small bit of hope currently flowing through the psychic highways of the Net.

Raintree’s Main Street was active with people coming in and out of the various business premises, what traffic there was keeping to a slow speed because pedestrians kept crossing without looking—but all raised a hand in thanks to the vehicles that stopped for them.

A few drivers gave a honk in return that was received with a smile, and some even pulled over to chat.

She found herself wondering if Adam Garrett had such friendly interactions with the locals.

She couldn’t see it given their own exchange—but then, he had a reason to be unfriendly with her.

He’d been a different person during their very first meeting; his eyes had warmed from within as his lips curved, his body angled in a way that had felt oddly protective despite the fact that they’d been standing opposite each other.

Logic told her that she was lucky to have survived this latest encounter—and that same logic said that she was driving to her own death.

So be it.

All her private files on the Sandman were backed up to the Quatro Cartel’s private storage system. If she died with her last task incomplete, Bram, Saffron, and Yúzé knew to push that data to her colleagues on the Sandman Task Force.

She turned left at the end of Main Street as instructed, then took the first right some way down.

The houses disappeared within a few short minutes, the greenery falling away in the next few, as she left Raintree’s microclimate behind to emerge into an arid landscape of browns and reds canopied by a searing blue sky.

But the desert vistas on either side of the narrow road came to an abrupt halt against a sweeping rise of rock and stone ten minutes later.

Adam’s car was nowhere in sight. The only signs of life were the cacti that stood sentinel in the desert behind her, not a single pair of wings in the sky, not even an insect’s breath stirring beneath the winter sun.