"A compa.s.s." To find my way home. Heart breaking, she looked her fill of him as he finished hooking the charm onto the bracelet, and again, she asked herself who he was to her. Who had he been to her, this beautiful man who might be so deeply damaged as to be forever broken?

Chapter 15.

HE GLANCED UP, a lock of hair falling across his forehead, midnight dark against his golden skin. For a fleeting instant, she saw the boy he'd once been, all silky hair and quiet eyes, and she knew the memory was true. Her and Kaleb, whatever it was that tied them together, it had begun long before she was thirteen, begun when they were both children.

"Hurry," she whispered, helpless as her other hand rose to push that errant lock off his forehead.

He didn't move away, didn't repudiate her touch. "Eighteen." A second charm appeared between his fingers.

She twisted her head this way and that to try to see what it was as he hooked it into place, but he deliberately blocked her sight. She saw the reason why when he straightened. "An unsheathed blade." What he had become the day she vanished.

"Nineteen." He began to hook the charm on before she saw the telekinetic fetch.

A small home.

The rock that was her heart grew heavier. "Twenty."

"Twenty." This one, he let her see.

A tiny heart formed of a deep blue stone, so very beautiful it made her breath release in a sigh. "Sapphire?"

"Tanzanite." His eyes met hers. "Rare. Unique."

A frozen heart, she thought, her wonder swirled with a haunting sorrow. His heart or hers?

"Twenty-one."

An hourgla.s.s.

"Twenty-two."

A fragment of jagged obsidian, edges smoothed only enough not to cut her skin.

"Twenty-three."

A single, perfect star.

Frowning, she looked up at him. "I don't understand."

He hooked the charm into place. "Only this star matters." His thumb brushing over her inner wrist. "Should it be erased, no other has the right to live."

"I'd line the streets with bodies before I'd ever hurt you."

A wave of black rushed through her in a nightmare of understanding. "What's twenty-four?" she managed to ask through the roar, curling her wrist close to her chest.

"As yet undecided."

"I know what I want." This battle was one she had to win, not only for the future of the world, but for herself, for Kaleb, for what they might have been . . . what they could be.

A waiting silence from the man who would've annihilated an entire civilization in vengeance for her, ending the lives of millions, innocents and sinners alike.

"A sheath for the blade," she whispered.

The stars faded into black. "That might not be possible."

It can't be too late, she thought again. She refused to let it be too late, refused to believe he was forever gone, the damage permanent. "I want jewels on the sheath, bright and colorful." And hopeful.

"It'll require considerable work," he said softly, the obsidian of his gaze holding her own, "might even be an impossible task."

"Are you surrendering, then?" It was a question as soft. "Walking away?"

Kaleb's response held a possessiveness that might yet keep her a prisoner. "I will never walk away from you."

KALEB didn't go to bed after Sahara left his office following an interaction he hadn't ever thought would come to pa.s.s, not given what she'd learned of him, and the injuries done to her in the years of captivity. He should've known not to attempt to predict or judge her-Sahara Kyriakus had always had an unexpected and stubborn will. No other woman could've survived seven years in h.e.l.l and come out of it with the strength to challenge Kaleb.

He waited an hour to give her time to fall into deep sleep, before getting up and rolling down the sleeves of his shirt to do up the cuffs. Picking up his jacket from where it hung behind the study door, he shrugged into it. His choice of clothing was another mask-it gave people a certain impression of him, an impression he intended to use tonight to ensure Sahara's future safety.

No one was ever again taking her from him.

Ready, he discovered himself unable to leave before making dead certain she was safe and undisturbed in her rest. If he lost her now, after she'd returned to him at last, eyes of midnight blue holding a fragile trust he'd never again expected to see, there would no longer be any question about his sanity or lack of it. The world had no knowledge of the delicate hands that held its fate.

He made sure to position himself in the shadows by the door when he teleported into her room, not wanting to scare her if she wasn't lost in sleep. Fear in Sahara's eyes, he'd learned when she'd run from him earlier, burned worse than any acid Santano had poured on him when he'd been a boy. It was dangerous, that pain, could drown the world in blood, but Sahara had been the first, would always be the deepest, fracture in his conditioning.

It was a truth as pure and as inescapable as the wind.

The room was pitch-black, but his eyes had learned to adapt in the darkness of his childhood, and he had no trouble seeing her. Risking going closer when her breathing proved quiet and steady, he saw her face was turned sideways on the pillow as she lay on her back, the black strands of her hair silky and thick across the Egyptian cotton of the pillowcase.

It was the best money could buy. He'd made certain of it.

Hand rising, he almost touched the sleep-warm curve of her cheek before realizing it would wake her . . . scare her. He couldn't risk that. Not now, when she'd remembered just enough to trust him on a basic level but not enough to brand him the monster he knew himself to be.

"You are what I made you. There is nothing else."

Visions of blood, bright and hot, spraying across his retinas, he teleported out and manually checked every door and window. Rerouting the perimeter alarms to feed into his cell phone once he was satisfied the house was secure, he made sure the siren remained active. If a breach did occur, he didn't want Sahara caught unprepared. The filleting knife she'd hidden under her pillow would work fine as a weapon if he was delayed by a second or two, especially since he'd quietly sharpened it until it would take only a single swipe to sever the carotid or jugular.

Security check complete, he looked in a mirror to confirm his mask remained in place, hair combed neatly and suit jacket b.u.t.toned, before accessing his Tk to build the framework for a teleport more complex than his usual split-second shifts. As the search for Sahara had thrown into dark focus, his ability to lock onto people wasn't foolproof. If the individual in question didn't know who she was, the attempt would fail. It was no coincidence the enemy Tk had found Sahara after she came out of the labyrinth.

A small number of telepaths in the Net-not necessarily the strongest, but the most intelligent-had figured out that weakness, too. If Kaleb had to guess, he'd say that was how the entire Lauren family, now part of the SnowDancer wolf pack, had ensured the success of their defection.

Tonight, he had to locate another individual who understood telepathic camouflage: Tatiana Rika-Smythe, fellow ex-Councilor and a woman who knew how to lay false trails so complex, it had taken him years to navigate the twisted pathways and retrieve Sahara . . . and days to unravel the blueprints of the psychic vault that had concealed Sahara's mind, hidden her from him.

He'd taken the blueprints apart piece by piece, and the more he saw, the more he'd recognized Tatiana's meticulous brand of psychic construction. "Do you know the name of the person who held you captive?" he'd asked Sahara earlier that night, as she sat curled up in the chair across from him, the star finally on the bracelet where it belonged. "The one in charge."

A shake of her head. "I was always blindfolded, my psychic senses leashed, and my hands tied when she came to visit."

She.

Another nail in the coffin, but it wasn't enough. The fact that he'd identified the man he'd executed today as being attached to one of Tatiana's sh.e.l.l companies was even more persuasive, but Kaleb needed to be certain beyond any doubt before he meted out this punishment. Baiting the trap, however, required only a little effort.

Tatiana had been very, very careful about protecting the location of her bolt-hole, which was why Kaleb had concentrated his attention on her finances. As expected, she had a multilayered and profitable empire. He'd long ago stripped away the phantom corporations that owned her a.s.sets per the official records, then sectioned the properties into business and personal.

He'd known her hidden base of operations would be in those files-Tatiana's biggest weakness was that she couldn't let go of anything she owned, not even to a sh.e.l.l company of which she had full control. Dig deep enough and her name always turned up as the true owner. That digging required considerable patience-and when it came to punishing those who had kept Sahara from him, Kaleb had an endless amount.

Australia had flashed up multiple times in his initial search, but he'd disregarded it as Tatiana had previously retreated to a remote part of that country. It would be unlike her to choose the same location twice. Only later had he considered the fact that Tatiana was intelligent and cunning enough to play everyone by doing exactly that. If not the same exact place as her previous headquarters, then close enough to it that she'd have access to the infrastructure she'd already put in place.

After that, it hadn't taken him long to discover the hidden property two miles from her known base. Getting an image he could use for a teleport lock had cost him over a hundred thousand dollars, but the man he'd turned in her employ had come through. Using that image to 'port himself to the fringe of the property, his Tk strength unshielded, he scanned the area bathed in the misty gray of early morning.

A single light burned in the apparently ordinary cottage set in the midst of a huge plot of land, the house surrounded by spa.r.s.e native foliage. He saw footprints that suggested animals had pa.s.sed near his current position-kangaroos from the shape-but the area closer to the house was apt to be alarmed and set with b.o.o.by traps.

Retrieving the high-powered binoculars he'd slid into his pocket, he focused on the single square of light until Tatiana rose to get something, crossing the window, then back. Target confirmed, he worked with the binoculars until the focus was sharp enough to pick up a very specific knot pattern in the pine paneling opposite the window.

It was time to exact payment for seven years of Sahara's life.

Since perception was often everything when it came to the dance of power, he slid away the binoculars. He wanted Tatiana to know he could find her wherever she went; wanted her to taste fear, acrid and acidic.

He wanted her to beg for her life.

Seated behind the desk in front of which he appeared, Tatiana had a gun pointed at his head before he finished the teleport, but he'd long ago worked out how to compensate for the split-second vulnerability that came with entering an unknown situation. He avoided the laser fire with a fluid shift, then knocked the gun out of her hand, blocking her vicious telepathic strike at the same time.

"An unfriendly welcome for a colleague who wishes to talk business," he said to the brunette, undoing the b.u.t.tons on his suit jacket before taking a seat in the chair on his side of the desk.

Though Tatiana's hazel-green eyes remained flat with suspicion, she didn't attempt to go for another weapon. "What are you doing here, Kaleb? We didn't have a meeting scheduled."

"I came across an item I thought might be of particular interest to you."

Relaxing into the black leather of her chair in a show of indifference, Tatiana picked up and tapped a stylus against the electronic blotter in front of her. "Really?"

Kaleb smiled and it was a calculated act. He'd learned to mimic the facial movement to placate the humans and changelings with whom he did business, but knew full well that it had the opposite effect on those of his own race. "Why such a violent welcome?" he asked, shoulders relaxed and arm lying loosely along the armrest.

"I wasn't conscious this location had been compromised," she said with just enough of a hesitation that he knew it had been as deliberate as his own actions.

Tatiana, he thought, would not pause at playing wounded prey if it got her what she wanted. "Ah."

"How did you penetrate my defenses?"

"I'm a teleport-capable Tk, Tatiana," he said with a gentleness that was a threat. "Do you honestly believe any security could keep me out if I wanted to get into a location, in the PsyNet or out?"

A flicker of comprehension, flawless olive-toned skin tightening over the razor-sharp blades of her cheekbones, but it wasn't enough. He needed absolute and categorical confirmation of her guilt, because this punishment would fit the crime in ways Tatiana couldn't comprehend.

"So," she said, continuing to tap the stylus in an unsteady rhythm he guessed was meant to distract him-because Psy did not make such "unconscious" nervous movements, "the business you have to discuss."

He smiled again. "I think you know."

"This will be an interminable negotiation if you don't put things on the table."

Yes, Tatiana was clever, but Kaleb had expected the demand. "I have in my possession," he murmured, "an item that may belong to you. It was retrieved by an Arrow"-a lie with just enough of a possibility of truth that she wouldn't question it-"after he became suspicious of a section of the Net that was blocked off for no rational reason."

"Really?" A thoughtful pause. "What makes you believe this item is of any value to me?"

"Your telepathic work is unmistakable in its complexity and dexterity."

"You flatter me."

"The truth is not flattery."

Tatiana responded with a smile as practiced and as false as his own. "I've heard that you're doing business with Nikita and Anthony as well."

He shrugged, the movement another one he'd copied from the more emotional races, and answered with the absolute truth. "It makes logical sense to create and utilize multiple strategic partnerships. Unlike the changelings, we do not blood-ally ourselves to one another; fidelity is understood to be a fluid concept." By some.

"That," Tatiana said, putting down the stylus, "is why we'd make an unbeatable team. Neither one of us has any flaws in our Silence."

Kaleb thought of the woman who slept in the house he'd built for her, of the man with a broken neck who had burned to ash in a crematorium incinerator hours ago, and knew his Silence was far more complex than Tatiana could imagine. "I insist on loyalty in my partners," he said. "I do not believe you capable of it." Even Nikita, ruthless as she was, would not stab him in the back as long as he kept his end of their bargain.

"I've never had a partner who deserved loyalty," Tatiana responded. "You, however, would."

"Now you flatter me."

"Truth is the best defense." The stylus in her grasp again, tap-tapping. "What do you want in exchange for the item?"

Chapter 16.

"NOTHING YOU CAN'T afford," Kaleb said, his blood calm and as cold as death as he gave Tatiana more rope with which to hang herself. "A piece of information."

She waited.

"I want to know why you had the item in such a secure lockup in the first place." No privacy, no air, blinding light. "Backsight isn't, after all, a particularly useful ability."

"Backsight? You've lost me."

Clever, so clever, not to fall for his trap. "Exactly." As if making a decision, he rose, doing up the b.u.t.tons on his jacket as he did so. "It appears I was mistaken. The item isn't yours-there is only one individual left to whom it could belong."

Tatiana continued to maintain her relaxed pose, but he saw the fine lines form at the corners of her eyes. "Who?"

"Anthony, of course," he said, well aware Tatiana utilized NightStar's forecasting services on a regular basis to increase the financial status of her empire. She could not afford to be blacklisted. Not only would it put her at a severe disadvantage in the Psy financial world, but her current investments would dive in value once the news leaked. And NightStar-Anthony-would make certain it did. The F-Psy clan understood loyalty, too, in a way Tatiana never would.