Bonds of Justice

CHAPTER 27

Four hours after Sophia pinpointed the location, the entire team, complete with a forensic unit, got out of their vehicles at the forested end of Fog Valley Track. Though the ground was currently clear, the air up here carried a touch of ice, the threat of snow lingering in the air.

“You, me, and Bart,” Max said to Sophia. “We go in, see if we can eyeball anything. If that fails, we send in the dogs.” It was just nudging five, but the winter sunlight was fading fast. It would’ve been more sensible to wait until the next day, but an unspoken thought united them all—they couldn’t bear to leave Gwyn alone and cold in the dark any longer.

Nodding, Sophia took the lead. “The undergrowth has gotten considerably thicker in the years since Bonner was here.”

“At least the path’s still negotiable,” Bart said, pushing a branch out of his way as he and Max followed Sophia’s shorter form. “It’ll be a bitch to process though once we find the grave.”

Max shot out a hand to grip Sophia’s upper arm when she stumbled over a rock. “Thank you, Detective.” A calm, even voice, but Max had felt the slight tremor in her muscles, knew his Sophie was hanging on through sheer, stubborn grit.

“Anything look familiar?” Dropping her arm, Max backed off, aware of Bart staring at him.

“Not so far.”

Bart nudged Max, his voice low. “You know Psy don’t like to be touched.”

“They also probably don’t like to fall flat on their faces.”

“True.” Blowing out a breath, Bart shook his head. “I haven’t called Gwyn’s parents yet.” The name fell easily from the prosecutor’s tongue—like Max, he’d come to intimately know the short life and lost dreams of each and every girl.

“Neither have I,” Max said, remembering Gwyn’s mile-wide smile, her long runner’s legs, with an anger that hadn’t dulled in the intervening years. “No use ripping the scab off that wound unless we can give them some peace.”

Sophia went motionless up ahead, her head angled toward a twisted old tree on the edge of the path. “I saw that.” It was almost soundless.

Max kept an eye on her as she stepped off the path and began to jog forward. Not more than five minutes into it, she jerked left and clambered onto a fallen log. But she didn’t step off on the other side. Reaching her, Max jumped up on her right, as Bart did the same on her left.

There was no need to ask her what she’d seen.

“It’s like the land died here,” Sophia said, her eyes on the lifeless patch of earth in front of them, which though bordered by the living beat of the forest, tiny shoots and greenery, was itself as browned and dry as dust.

As if Gwyneth Hayley’s lifeblood had soaked into the soil and turned it barren.

The forensic team worked deep into the night, under brilliant lamps. By midnight, they’d found only seven discrete bones, the others in all probability having been carried away by forest creatures, but amazingly, one of those seven was the skull. And there were teeth still attached to that skull.

A positive dental match was made on the spot using mobile equipment.

Sophia saw Max’s shoulders shudder and drop the instant after the forensic technician made his pronouncement. “I’ll do it,” he said to Bart Reuben.

Bart’s face was drawn, his eyes full of old pain as he acquiesced. “They trust you more.”

Letting the prosecutor walk past her and back to the site, Sophia went to stand beside Max as he moved away from the group and into the night-shadow of a giant tree with sweeping arms. “You’re calling her family?”

A nod, his face lined with angry sorrow. “I’d prefer to do it in person, but I have to make sure they get the information before it leaks to the media.” His fingers clenched on the phone. “It’ll tear them apart all over again.”

Hidden in the darkness, she dared lay her hand on his arm. “But it will give them peace—and Gwyneth a safe place to rest.”

Max didn’t reply, but he leaned into her touch. It threatened to shatter her.

Because Max Shannon was not a man who leaned on anyone.

As she stood there beside him, he coded in a number from memory and raised the phone to his ear. And then he did what had to be done.

The next two days passed in a blur. Sophia had another comm-conference with Bonner. However, he wasn’t in the mood to cooperate. “I’m enjoying my extra hour in the sun far too much,” he told her. “So obliging of the prison authorities to stick to their bargain with me.”

Knowing he’d string them along now that he had their attention, she didn’t squander her time and, instead, asked Max if there was anything she could do to assist him.

“Keep an eye on the Nikita situation,” he told her. “Go over the forensic reports as they come in, compare the results sent in by Nikita’s people against those of the independent lab we contracted.” As the lead detective on the Bonner case, he wasn’t only dealing with the families of the victims, but also the brass and the media; his eyes bloodshot with lack of sleep. “Did we receive the report from the mechanic on the crashed car?”

“Yes. She confirmed the computer was tampered with.” Sophia wanted to touch him, give comfort in the human way, but they were in the hastily thrown together “war room”—located in the closest Enforcement station to where Gwyneth Hayley’s body had been found. Activity buzzed on every side, crashing against her senses. “The second autopsy you ordered on the driver has also been completed. There were no drugs in Allison Marceau’s system.”

“Makes sense if the car was the weapon.” He glanced quickly at the report. “Even if she sent out a telepathic scream, it wouldn’t have been noted as anything suspicious.”

“It might be better if I went back. I can deal with things—”

“Stay.” It was a single quiet word, but it carried a thousand unsaid things.

Bound to him now by threads she didn’t quite understand, but that had become the defining truths in her life, she stayed—setting herself up in her hotel room, away from the constant storm of the war room.

To everyone’s surprise, the Council dispatched several Ps-Psy to help with the search around what had been dubbed Bonner Site #1. “Psychometrics sense the imprints of the past,” Sophia explained to Max when he asked for a quick précis. “They usually work verifying the age and provenance of works of art, other expensive objects—but I’ve heard it said that some can also pick up ‘echoes’ of events that took place in a particular location.”

“I had a look at the title of the land,” Max told her a few hours after the psychometrics arrived. “It’s owned by a Psy conglomerate and earmarked for development.”

That, Sophia thought, made much more sense. “They don’t want any unanswered questions lowering the value of the land and subsequent development.”

“Not that it matters why they’re here. Tanique”—he named one of the Ps-Psy—“already located two of Gwyneth’s bones almost half a mile from the gravesite.”

That was one of the few conversations they managed to have in the bleak, exhausting hours that followed. It was on their last night at the search base—right after it was announced that no evidence of further bodies had been found within a mile-wide radius of the site—that she discovered something interesting.

She’d been digging deep into the backgrounds of all the individuals of interest, tapping her connections in Justice when necessary. The aristocratic Quentin Gareth came across as a ruthless businessman, but seemed otherwise clean. Andre Tulane, in contrast, had repeating weekly meetings that she could tie into nothing official, while the intern, Ryan Asquith, had a note on his file that meant he’d been reconditioned within the past year as a result of a court order.

All merited further investigation, but the most interesting data resulted from a logarithm she’d been running on news uploads at around the time of the killings: Councilor Kaleb Krychek had been in the relevant area at the time of every single murder. He’d even been snapped by the San Francisco Gazette—leaving an early morning meeting with Nikita—on the day Edward Chan had a knife thrust into his heart.

“It ties up so neatly—but at the same time, it doesn’t make sense,” she said to Max the next day as she finished locking up her bag for the return trip to San Francisco. With the families of all the victims having been notified of what was happening behind the scenes with Bonner, and with no hope of finding any further remains, Max had decided they needed to turn their attention back to Nikita’s situation.

“Isn’t Krychek a telekinetic?” Max asked, shadows under his eyes from the lack of sleep.

“Exactly—and he’s teleport capable.” It hurt her to see him hurting—she couldn’t wait until they were home, where she could wrap her arms around him, give him the surcease he’d given her so many times. “He would’ve been smart enough to teleport in to do the kills while he wasn’t officially known to be in the region.”

Taking her bag and slinging his own duffel over his shoulder, Max headed to the elevators as she pulled the door to her hotel room closed. “From what I know of Councilor Krychek,” he said as she came to stand beside him, “he’s a stone-cold operator. I can’t see him wasting time with the theater of a fake suicide.”

“I’ve never heard a confirmation, but there are constant whispers that he was raised by a sociopath, that he’s a murderer at heart.” She’d seen Krychek once—on the other side of a hotel lobby—but his presence had made her alter her route, take the long way to her destination in order to avoid him. It had been self-preservation, the otherness in her recognizing an intelligence as lethal—and far, far colder.

Max rubbed his hand over the jaw she’d watched him shave a few minutes ago when she’d gone into his room ostensibly to talk about the case. The experience had been starkly, beautifully intimate. “The pattern’s too political for a serial killer,” he said, waiting until she stepped into the elevator before following. “That kind of a sociopathic drive wouldn’t have allowed him to keep his urges leashed to the extent of only committing murders on the verge of a big deal.”

“There’s another rumor that might be more apropos,” Sophia said, curling her fingers into her palms to keep from touching the smooth skin of his jaw, breathing in the fresh pine of his aftershave. ”That Nikita and Krychek have some kind of an alliance.”

“Now that fits the pattern,” Max murmured as the doors opened at the garage level. Heading to the vehicle they’d rented at the airport, a vehicle that had spent the entirety of the past forty-eight hours sitting in the garage—Max having had access to an Enforcement car, while Sophia remained in the hotel to work—he dumped their bags in the trunk. “Someone’s trying to cause suspicion between the two.”

“Do—” She was cut off by the beeping of her cell phone. Pulling it out, she said, “Sophia Russo.”

“Thank God I caught you—Max’s phone won’t go through.” It was an unfamiliar voice, trembling as if the speaker had run a hundred miles. “This is Faith NightStar.”

Getting into the car when Max opened the door for her, Sophia immediately realized the reason for the call. “You had a vision.” And the visions of a cardinal F-Psy were accurate to within a hundredth of a decimal point.

“Yes,” Faith said as Max snapped on his safety belt and went to put his thumbprint on the starter. “The car is rigged. Do you understand?” Frantic words. “Don’t start the engine.”

Max’s thumb brushed the ignition switch.

“No!” Sophia jerked Max’s hand away from the ignition with a wrench that had his head snapping toward her.

“Sophia!” Faith’s voice merged with Max’s demand to know what was going on.

“I’m fine,” she said to Faith, tremors shaking her frame. “We’re both fine. Here, you better speak directly to Max.”

Leaning back in her seat, she tried to get her heart to beat in a normal rhythm as Max had a short, sharp discussion with Faith. Closing the phone, he ordered her to step out of the car. Neither of them said a word until they were standing in front of the innocuous-looking vehicle.

“I’m getting the bomb squad,” Max said, using her cell phone to make the call when his own proved to have a flat battery. “They’ll be here in five minutes, tops.”

“So soon?” She had to focus on the mundane, on the practical . . . rather than on the fact that Max had come terrifyingly close to death.

Max touched her lightly on the back, and she realized just how much she’d missed the contact in the frenetic pace of the past two days. No one had ever told her that touch was something you became addicted to, the loss of it a hunger, an ache deep within.

“They work out of the same Enforcement building we used as a base.” His hand dropped away as an Enforcement vehicle drove into the garage. “Still, that was damn fast.”

Two men and one woman stepped out, all three in the protective gear of the bomb squad. “Tell me what you know,” the woman said.

“We got the heads-up from an F-Psy—” Max began.

“Foreseer?” The woman whistled. “I didn’t realize they made civilian predictions—heard it was all business.”

“Faith NightStar,” Max said. “She’s part of DarkRiver. She saw the car explode after I started the engine.”

“Hmm. Given current technology, it’s got to be some kind of a detonation message being sent to the actual device.” She was already moving toward the car, equipment in hand. “You two might want to clear the garage. You’re not wearing protective gear.”

Max nodded to the entrance ramp. “We’ll be waiting outside.”

“I’ll give you a yell soon as we locate anything.”

Faith paced across the beautifully lighted cave that was her home office, rubbing her hands up and down her arms.

“You cold, sweetheart?”

Looking up, she found Vaughn in the doorway. Her jaguar had a streak of white dust on his face, a rip near the bottom of his T-shirt, and was so wonderful she still couldn’t believe he was hers. “No.” But she walked into his embrace. “Hold me.”

“Hey.” His arms came around her, strong and warm, one hand gripping a chisel he’d clearly been using on his current sculpture. “I thought you said the cop and his J were all right?”

“They are.” She ran her fingers over the gritty dust that covered the skin of his arm. “But I still have this knowing that something bad is coming.” She hated the amorphous knowings even more than the dark visions. At least the visions showed her something concrete, something she could fight or avert. “It’s an emotional knowing—connected to someone who’s important to me.”

“Did you try the exercises you’ve been working on to fine-tune your control over your abilities?”

She nodded, sliding her hands under his T-shirt and to the muscled warmth of his back. “I can’t break through the veil. And Vaughn, it’s something really, really bad.” Ice filled her heart, coated her veins. “What if I can’t stop it?” What if she lost one of the people she loved?

Vaughn pressed his lips to her brow. “We discussed this. You’ll go mad if you take responsibility for every evil you can’t stop.” His tone was gentle but absolute. “You saved two lives today. Celebrate that.”

Raising her head, she met those golden eyes—eyes of a jungle cat made human—that had become the fulcrum of her universe. “It’s hard.” And part of the reason why so many F-Psy had gone irrevocably mad in the past—that need to save every life, avert every sorrow, could devour the unwary.

“That’s why you have me.” Lips against her own, intense protectiveness in the way his body curved over hers. “Let’s see if we can’t get you into a better frame of mind.” And then her jaguar was purring low in his throat as he peeled off her clothes. “It’ll come to you if you’re relaxed.”

She felt her heart lighten with sensual humor. Oh, how she needed him. His ability to play, to laugh, to love, made every darkness bearable. “So you’re stripping me naked for my benefit?”

A look so innocent, it would’ve done one of Tammy’s rambunctious twins proud. “Of course.”

Faith let him love her, let him comfort her . . . and hoped it would break open the deadlock on her mind. Because whatever was coming, it was a crushing, terrifying blackness that only ever meant one thing.

Death.