“And you?” Max asked, watching her with a piercing focus that made her feel as if that quicksilver mind might uncover secrets she’d kept concealed for over two decades. “What about you?”
The otherness in her stirred, wanting to give him the unvarnished, deadly truth, but that was something she couldn’t ever share with a man who’d made Justice his life. “I’ll do my job.” Then she said something a perfect Psy never would have said. “We’ll bring them home. No one should have to spend eternity in the cold dark.”
Max watched Sophia Russo walk away with the civilian observers, unable to take his attention off her. It had been the eyes that had first slammed into him. River’s eyes, he’d thought as she walked in, she had River’s eyes. But he’d been wrong. Sophia’s eyes were darker, more dramatically blue-violet, so vivid he’d almost missed the lush softness of her mouth. Except he hadn’t.
And that was one hell of a kick to the teeth.
Because for all her curves and the tracery of scars that spoke of a violent past, she was Psy. Ice-cold and tied to a Council that had far more blood on its hands than Gerard Bonner ever would. Except . . . Her final words circled in his mind.
We’ll bring them home.
It had held the weight of a vow. Or maybe that’s what he’d wanted to hear.
Wrenching back his attention when she disappeared from view, he turned to Bart Reuben, the only other person who remained. “She wear the gloves all the time?” Thin black leather-synth, they’d covered everything below the cuffs of her shirt and suit jacket. It might have been because she had more serious scars on the backs of her hands—but Sophia Russo didn’t strike him as the kind of woman who’d hide behind such a shield.
“Yes. Every time I’ve seen her.” Frown lines marred the prosecutor’s forehead for a second, before he seemed to shake off whatever was bothering him. “She’s got an excellent record—never fumbled a retraction yet.”
“We saw at the trial that Bonner’s smart enough to fuck with his own memories,” Max said, watching as the prisoner was led from the interrogation room. The blue-eyed Butcher, the media’s murderous darling, stared out at the cameras until the door closed, his smile a silent taunt. “Even if his mind isn’t twisted at the core, he knows his pharmaceuticals—could’ve got his hands on something, deliberately dosed himself.”
“Wouldn’t put it past the bastard,” Bart said, the grooves around his mouth carved deep. “I’ll line up a couple of male Js for Bonner’s next little show.”
“Xiu have that much clout?” The trial of Gerard Bonner, scion of a blue-blooded Boston family and the most sadistic killer the state had seen in decades, would’ve qualified for a J at the trial stage but for the fact that his memories were close to impenetrable.
“Sociopaths,” one J had said to Max after testifying that he couldn’t retrieve anything usable from the accused’s mind, “don’t see the truth as others see it.”
“Give me an example,” Max had asked, frustrated that the killer who’d snuffed out so many young lives had managed to slither through another net.
“According to the memories in Bonner’s surface mind, Carissa White orgasmed as he stabbed her.”
Shaking off that sickening evidence of Bonner’s warped reality, he glanced at Bart, who’d paused to check an e-mail on his cell phone. “Xiu?” he prompted.
“Yeah, looks like he has some ‘friends’ in high-level Psy ranks. His company does a lot of business with them.” Putting away the phone, Bart began to gather up his papers. “But in this, he’s just a shattered father. Daria was his only child.”
“I know.” The face of each and every victim was imprinted on Max’s mind. Twenty-one-year-old Daria’s was a gap-toothed smile, masses of curly black hair, and skin the color of polished mahogany. She didn’t look anything like the other victims—unlike most killers of his pathology, Bonner hadn’t differentiated between white, black, Hispanic, Asian. It had only been age and a certain kind of beauty that drew him.
Which turned his thoughts back to the woman who’d stared unblinking into the face of a killer while Max forced himself to stand back, to watch. “She fits his victim profile—Ms. Russo.” Sophia Russo’s eyes, her scars, made her strikingly unique—a critical aspect of Bonner’s pathology. He’d targeted women who would never blend into a crowd—the violence spoken of by Sophia’s scars would, for him, be the icing on the cake. “Did you arrange that?” His hand tightened on a pen as he helped Bart clear the table.
“Stroke of luck.” The prosecutor put the files in his briefcase. “When Bonner said he’d cooperate with a scan, we requested the closest J. Russo had just completed a job here. She’s on her way to the airport now—heading to our neck of the woods as a matter of fact.”
“Liberty?” Max asked, mentioning the maximum-security penitentiary located on an artificial island off the New York coast.
Bart nodded as they walked out and toward the first security door. “She’s scheduled to meet a prisoner who claims another prisoner confessed to the currently unsolved mutilation murder of a high-profile victim.”
Max thought of what Bonner had done to the only one of his victims they’d ever found, the bloody ruin that had been the once-gamine beauty of Carissa White. And he wondered what Sophia Russo saw when she closed her eyes at night.
CHAPTER 2
Nikita Duncan, Psy Councilor and one of the most powerful women in the world, scanned the biographical data in the confidential file in front of her, pausing for a second on the attached digital image.
The human male had a distinctive face. Sharp cheekbones, skin that spoke of a complex genetic heritage, and eyes that hinted of a parent from central Asia. But it wasn’t Detective Max Shannon’s appearance that interested Nikita.
No, she was interested in something far more important—his mind.
CHAPTER 3
The patient is no longer connected to the PsyNet by a single biofeedback link—her mind survived by anchoring its entire consciousness into the fabric of the neural network. Any attempt at separation will lead not only to death, but to the total and complete destruction of her personality.
Sophia hadn’t slept for twenty-four hours when she walked into the ironically named Liberty Penitentiary the next morning, but no one could’ve guessed that from the crisp clarity of her tone, the smartness of her dress. She was taken directly to an interview room upon arrival. The assistant district attorney in charge of the case arrived a minute later.
Five minutes after that, she began the memory retrieval. Unlike Bonner’s, this inmate’s mind was full of nothing but forty years of living and violence. Some young Js got lost in the mess, but Sophia had learned to filter very well. She went directly to the memories of the day in question and took no more than the relevant minutes.
Humans tended to be suspicious of telepaths, and Js in particular, afraid the Psy would steal their secrets. The truth was, Sophia already had too many pieces of other people’s lives in her head. She didn’t want any more—especially the kinds of memories she was invariably asked to retrieve. In all her years of service, she’d found only four innocents. “I have it,” she said to the A.D.A.
Asking the prisoner and his attorney to wait, he walked her to the waiting area outside the warden’s office. “Could you project the memories to me?”
Nodding, she did as asked. This little telepathic quirk was what turned a Tp into a J. Most telepaths could transmit words and/or isolated visuals, but Js could not only retract, but transmit the entire memory in a continuous stream. This A.D.A. was human, his shields no barrier. That could have been a handicap in other circumstances—however, given that this case had no associated cost or benefit to the Council, he was safe from Psy coercion.