After the laughter, they spoke of her options, whether she might want to go back to school or if she'd prefer to do something less academic for a while. It was a valuable conversation, one that gave her plenty of food for thought.

"I was worried I'd be overwhelmed," she confessed upon arriving in the busy city by the water that was San Francisco, "but I love the noise and the color and the people!"

It was a couple of hours later, as they were walking into a small Italian restaurant for lunch-after stashing their shopping in the SUV-that three things happened in quick succession. Someone shot at Faith and missed, the bullet smashing a window; Mercy spun to cover Faith with predatory grace while yelling at Sahara to duck; and bony hands gripped Sahara around her upper arms.

Then the restaurant was gone, and she was in what appeared to be a small, empty warehouse, dust motes dancing in the streaks of sunlight slanting through the old wooden boards that made up the walls.

"I a.s.sume you're after the bounty?" she said in a calm tone in spite of her racing heart, stifling her first instinct-which was to call Kaleb. Since she wasn't dead or bleeding, it meant the man behind her, his gloved hands already off her skin, wanted her alive, so there was a chance she could defuse the situation without violence.

The kidnapper shifted to face Sahara. He was thin and relatively short, only two or three inches above her in height, but he not only moved with an economy that shouted skill, he had a gleaming black laser pistol in his hand. "The bounty is gone," she said at his continued silence, her own gun snug in the ankle holster covered by her jeans.

"I have a private client." Curt words that added to the impression of a honed professional. "As long as you cooperate, I have no intention of causing you bodily harm."

Glancing around the warehouse, she spotted an overturned crate a meter away. "May I sit?"

A brisk nod as, keeping her in his line of sight, he moved to a paper thin portable computer set up on what appeared to be a cheap card table.

"Are you checking to see if your client has wired the payment?"

No answer. But while he believed her docile and resigned to her fate, Sahara watched him. It soon became apparent that he was moving with a deliberate care she hadn't noticed at first glance. The man was weak, close to his limit-either he'd teleported her to a location far outside his range, or he'd had to 'port several times in close succession in order to pull off the shot at Faith followed by the grab.

"How," she said, working through her options, "did you locate me?"

"That knowledge can't a.s.sist you now."

"I'd like to know where my security failed." True, except she didn't need him to tell her. "An intellectual exercise."

A slight pause before, surprisingly, he gave her an answer. "According to my employer, it was certain NightStar would put you in a secure location. There was only an outside chance you'd be with your cousin, but I decided it merited forty-eight hours of my time. Since DarkRiver's territory is large, I determined to surveil the parking lot of the pack's city HQ with the intention of tailing Faith."

Chance, Sahara thought, was a tricky beast. "Luck is certainly on your side today." Rising, she took a few slow steps toward him, aware of his eyes tracking her every move, his fingers curved around the gun at his side. "May I?" she said and nodded at the water bottle beside the computer.

"Here." He handed it to her, confident of the protection afforded by his gloves.

That was his mistake and part of what made Sahara so dangerous.

A split second after her fingers brushed his, the kidnapper handed her his gun, his eyes blurry with confusion. "What am I doing here?"

"You got lost." Weaving a new memory for him, she sent him to sleep on the floor. When he woke, it would be with a recollection of an altercation that required he lie low for a week.

Sahara hated the idea of violating anyone's mind, but this bounty hunter had lost the protection offered by her abhorrence for mental invasion when he decided to abduct her. Slipping in and out of his mind as if it were her own, she logged on to his computer using his pa.s.sword and erased everything that referenced the deal, whether in his e-mail or in his bank accounts. It helped that he was organized, his mind filing the data about her in a discrete section, but it still took time.

Rather than attempting to overwrite the hard drive, she decided to take the computer with her. That meant another memory insertion where the kidnapper's phantom opponent in this altercation threw the small backpack containing his computer under a pa.s.sing truck, the pieces that remained fit only for the recycler.

Kaleb, she said afterward, conscious it was past midnight in Moscow. Are you awake?

Yes. What do you need?

For you not to kill someone.

He appeared beside her a second later, taking in the situation with a single glance. "Why shouldn't I kill him?" An ice-cold question.

"Because I've handled it. He's more useful to us alive." Once she'd touched a mind, Sahara could slip back in and take total control regardless of distance or time, turning the individual into a flesh-and-blood puppet who had not even a suspicion that his decisions weren't his own.

The idea of doing such a thing revolted her, but that didn't mean it wasn't true. Resulting from an unknown genetic mutation that meant it had no official cla.s.sification, her ability was one that would be the bogeyman of her race should they know about her. No mind was safe from Sahara's, no shield impenetrable, no offensive ability capable of stopping her if she got close enough just once.

She left behind no trace of her interference, the memories she implanted as real as true memories. And she was undetectable when she worked. Should she desire, she could make a Councilor dance to her tune, a CEO sign over his properties, a man slit his own throat while smiling. And while she'd never had cause to test how many minds she could control at one time, the trusted NightStar telepath who'd worked with her to understand her ability when it first came to light, had posited it to be in the triple digits.

It was the ugliest of abilities to have for a woman whose own mind had been torn apart, but she had come to terms with it during the periods of lucidity built into the labyrinth. The decisions she'd made and the rules she'd laid down for herself all revolved around a central question: If she ever had a child, could she look into that child's eyes without feeling ashamed at what she had done?

Nothing about her actions today breached that test.

"Who hired him?" Kaleb asked, his gaze on the kidnapper, the stars eclipsed by lethal black.

"I've handled it," she repeated rather than responding to the question and, when he didn't shift his gaze, decided to play hardball. "If you don't respect my wishes, I simply won't call you next time."

The line of his jaw remained a blade, but he turned his attention off the bounty hunter. "Who?"

"According to his memories, Tatiana."

"Impossible. She's exactly where I put her."

"Then someone in her organization smart enough to work out what I can do, and c.o.c.ky enough to deceive and undercut his boss." If the rumors about the other woman's rise to power were correct, it truly was a case of what the humans called karma.

Not wasting any further time or energy thinking about Tatiana, she looked into the face of the cardinal telekinetic who she knew was having to exercise harsh self-control not to send the man at their feet to an early grave. "Let's go home, Kaleb," she said, brushing her fingers over his jaw in a silent reminder of who he was to her.

Chapter 34.

THE FIRST THING she did once they were on the starlit terrace in Moscow was put down the laptop, borrow Kaleb's phone, having forgotten her own at the aerie, and call Faith. "I'm safe," she a.s.sured her cousin. "You? Mercy? Her babies?"

"We're fine. Mercy ate the paramedics alive when I made her get a checkup," Faith said with an affectionate laugh. "Then Riley turned up and she decided to cooperate because he was crazy with worry-but she was right. There wasn't a scratch on her and, in her expert former h.e.l.lion-child opinion, the pupcubs enjoyed the excitement."

Relieved, Sahara cut Faith off before her cousin could ask for her exact whereabouts, and promised to be home by the time night fell in San Francisco.

"You need to eat," Kaleb ordered when she returned the phone, pointing out the high-density nutrition bars that had appeared on the small table beside the lounger. "You're not healthy enough yet to afford to miss meals."

"I'm starving," she admitted and took a seat on the edge of the lounger. Kicking off her shoes and removing the ankle holster, she picked up one of the nutrition bars. "My ability might feel effortless, but it burns psychic energy." So did 'pathing to Kaleb, but she'd already worked that into her calorie requirements.

Leaning his back against the railing, Kaleb didn't speak until she'd finished the bar and washed it down with water. "You've become more confident about your power." His expression was shadowed, his voice icy with approval. "I never agreed with your distaste for it."

"I was young." She grinned when a second nutrition bar floated pointedly in front of her face. "And you've always been overprotective." Taking the bar, she tore it open.

"You matter to me."

So simple. So honest. So powerful.

Rubbing a hand over her heart, she shared her secrets with the one person who would never betray or use her. That he was the same man who planned to create an empire that spanned the globe was no contradiction. "My ability has matured." It had been erratic at sixteen, one of the reasons Tatiana had been able to imprison her mind. And once imprisoned, Sahara had been unable to break out-it turned out she could get through any shield except one created around her own mind.

It was her greatest weakness, a natural balance to the power she wielded.

No one could so easily entomb her now, but seven years ago, she'd been a scared girl and Tatiana a powerful adult telepath trained in psychic aggression. Enrique, too, must've played a role in her mental imprisonment-the nausea that roiled in her stomach at the mere thought of him was proof enough of that.

"Once I was trapped inside the shields Tatiana created," Sahara told Kaleb, "she suffocated my ability, too, except for short periods of 'freedom' when she wanted me to use it." The other woman's aim had been to break Sahara down until she was Tatiana's pet and could be trusted not to use her abilities against the other woman.

"But the enforced concentration of my power," she continued, "had the effect of accelerating my growth in a way Tatiana never suspected." Sahara had hidden the development in the labyrinth, aware Tatiana couldn't stand the insane chaos. "I no longer have to touch skin for the initial contact-I just have to be close."

"That eliminates a dangerous vulnerability," Kaleb said, his tone so arctic, she knew he was thinking about the ugly thing that had happened to her. "Previously, if someone managed to incapacitate your body, it rendered you helpless, so long as he made certain not to accidentally touch your skin."

Shivering, she hugged herself. "Please sit by me. I can't stand to see you alone in the dark."

He came to her, but rather than sitting on the lounger beside her, he sat down in front of her, his back against her legs. Spreading her thighs, she tugged him closer, her fingers weaving through the silk of his hair.

"I am," he said quietly, "more at home in the dark than the light."

"I know." It was a painful wonder, to sit with him under a diamond-studded sky and know that he was hers. For this moment, the civil war, his broken conscience, her suspicions of the indefensible lines he might have crossed, none of it mattered. There was only the velvet night and the primal warmth of him so close. "It's the aloneness I can't stand."

Picking up one of the hands she'd dropped to his shoulders, he brought it to his mouth, pressing a tender kiss to the center of her palm. "I can feel you inside me, always."

Her eyes burning, she leaned down to wrap her arms around him, her cheek kissing his. "I did discover something else deeply problematic," she told him. "The telepath who helped me with my training didn't realize it, and neither did I, possibly because all my tests were on willing subjects." Sitting back up, she began to play her fingers through his hair again. "I take no risks when I enter a mind, rifle through memories and rearrange or erase them, or when I insert new ones."

Kaleb ran his hand along the back of her calf. "That's not why Tatiana wanted you. She can penetrate shields herself, though compared to your scalpel, she's working with a hammer and chisel."

"No, it was the mind control, of course." Tatiana could do that, too, but for her it meant a twenty-four/seven commitment that drained her psychic and physical energy to the point of leaving her a skeletal sh.e.l.l. And that was to control a single mind. "She planned to use me to rise to greater and greater power."

Insidious as her ability was, it meant all the more when Kaleb leaned back into her stroking hands. He had never once flinched from her after she admitted what she could do. All he'd asked, she remembered as her fingernails sc.r.a.ped gently over his scalp, was that she never go inside his mind.

"I don't want you to see what I've done."

It was a promise so embedded in her psyche, she hadn't been tempted to break it even when she hadn't known herself, Kaleb's trust a precious jewel that could never be replicated.

"What," he said now, his eyelashes throwing shadows onto his cheeks, he'd relaxed so totally, "did you discover?"

A curling warmth deep inside her, Sahara leaned down to press a soft, sweet kiss to his jaw. "In the early days after my abduction, Tatiana would disguise me, then manipulate a situation to get me close enough to an individual to take an initial imprint. Then sometime later, she'd ask me to slip into that individual's mind and make them do a small thing, silly even." She swallowed. "I justified each as being a harmless test in order to buy time."

Kaleb's eyes stayed shut, his hand slipping under the hem of her jeans to close around her bare ankle. "You made choices that kept you alive." It was clear he saw no reason for her to feel guilty.

Rubbing her cheek against his once more, she said, "What it took me too long to realize was that each time I returned to a mind to control it, I lost a piece of me." And she had no way of controlling the memories that would be erased. "If I'd continued, I would've eventually ended up a blank slate, a weapon for Tatiana to direct at will." Shuddering, she tightened her arms around Kaleb.

His lashes lifted, eyes of stunning obsidian looking into hers. "Are you certain about not torturing Tatiana? I can break her for you, make her beg."

Sahara knew that to be a deadly serious offer. A tiny part of her was tempted-she wasn't a saint, and Tatiana had brutalized her to the point where she'd forgotten what it was to be a sentient being-but the temptation was nowhere near the depth of her feelings for Kaleb. He lived in the dark, but she wouldn't allow him to be swallowed by it, wouldn't use him as Tatiana had intended to use her.

"No torture." Sitting up again, she began to ma.s.sage his shoulders for the sheer pleasure of touching him. "We need to concentrate on discovering the ident.i.ty of the person who orchestrated the kidnapping attempt.

"I'll take care of it."

"I have the right skill set to discover the truth without anyone being the wiser," she said in response to Kaleb's flat statement. "I'm certain it must be one of the guards, since no one else was close enough to work out what I can do-and I have no problems with infiltrating their thoughts." Not given their active partic.i.p.ation in Tatiana's evil.

"No."

Sahara argued with rational calm, then in a furious temper, but Kaleb was immovable. "I will not permit you anywhere near someone who might cause you harm."

Making incoherent sounds of frustration, she nonetheless admitted this was one battle she had well and truly lost. Kaleb was never going to be a man she could control, and she couldn't expect to win every argument-but there was one point on which she had no intention of budging. "Promise me you won't return to the warehouse and execute the bounty hunter."

"Since you can't take control of him without causing permanent damage to your memories, your line of reasoning about him being more useful alive is no longer valid."

That was why she had to get a promise. "Forget about that. I don't want his death on my conscience."

A small pause. "I won't go back and kill him unless he proves a renewed threat."

"That, I can accept." Her breath caught as he changed position slightly, his shoulders brushing the sensitive skin of her inner thighs-just as his cell phone rang.

Answering it, he listened then said, "Time?" A slight pause. "I'll be there." He slid away the phone without further words.

"A meeting?" she asked, using her hands to ma.s.sage the heavy muscle of his shoulders again, having sensed his pleasure in the act before they'd begun to argue. "It must be an important deal for an in-person discussion."

"It's not business," Kaleb replied, angling his neck to the side so Sahara could reach a tight spot. No one else would he allow this close to his jugular. But Sahara? "Harder," he said, undoing two more b.u.t.tons on his shirt so she could slide her hands inside the open collar.

"Like this?" It was an intimate question as she exerted just the right pressure.

"Hmm." Stroking his thumb over the curve of her anklebone, he let his eyelashes close, his body languid. It was a state he only ever found with Sahara, and in all previous instances, it had been after s.e.x.

"There's a small bottle of oil on the bathroom counter in the aerie," Sahara said softly, continuing to touch him with a sensual possessiveness that made even the part that lived in the void, dark and violent, turn lazily quiescent. "It was part of the pack of toiletries set out for me. Can you get it?"

Catching the detailed telepathic image she sent to him, of the bottle and exactly where it was in relation to the rest of the bathroom, he retrieved it without effort. An instant later, a scent he identified as vanilla drifted onto the air, Sahara's hands no longer on his skin. "Take off your shirt so I don't get oil on it."

Kaleb had no desire to move, but he did as she asked. The feel of her warm hands on him, the oil making it easier for her to glide over his skin, dig deeper into his muscles, was his reward. Tactile sensation, he thought, had certain addictive qualities. But only when it was Sahara whose thighs bracketed his shoulders, Sahara whose voice was a murmur in the dark as she told him of the pleasure she found in touching him.

"In your reading on current events," he said several minutes later, before his increasing arousal could blur his senses, "did you come across references to an insurgent named the Ghost?"

"You want to talk politics now, when I'm doing my best to seduce you?"

The husky, laughing question had him tugging at her arm until she got the message and came around to straddle him. "You have no need to seduce me." He was hers. Always. "The process, however, is enjoyable." True physical intimacy, he thought, had far more nuances than he'd previously understood, having conflated it automatically with s.e.x.

Sahara's lips curved. "I'll just keep going, then." A slow kiss as proprietary as the hands she returned to his shoulders when she drew back. "As for your question . . . according to several Beacon back issues," she said, a thoughtful cast to her expression, "prior to the Council's dissolution, the Ghost was responsible for a number of information leaks that put the Councilors into the position of having to explain themselves.

"He was also," she said, running her thumbs down the tendons in Kaleb's neck, "rumored to be involved in the explosion of a lab that was allegedly working on a bioneural chip to force people to be Silent." Sahara shivered, clearly horrified by the idea. "My impression is that he's responsible for fomenting dissent in the Net against the entire Council superstructure, fracturing their power base from the inside out-and that his goal is the fall of Silence."

"Yes." Kaleb was unsurprised she'd already managed to gather so much data-Sahara Kyriakus had been born with a mind both thirsty for knowledge and able to process it at high speeds. "The Ghost is a dangerous individual to anyone in power."

Sahara's hands went motionless, the deep blue of her eyes troubled. "Kaleb, you can't hurt this person. So many of your goals align with the Ghost's-this rebel is fighting against the rot at the core of our race, and so are you. You can work together."

"There can't be two powers in the Net, Sahara." It would only fracture and divide the populace. "The Ghost has a stay of execution for the present, but his time is coming to an end."