“Commander,” he said, staring into the aristocratic face of the Psy who ran New York Enforcement, “if I can speak bluntly—”
“You rarely do otherwise, Detective Shannon.”
In most humans and changelings, Max would’ve heard in that statement a wry humor. But Commander Brecht was Psy. He’d look at a rape victim with the same dispassionate gaze as he would a drive-by-shooter.
“So,” Max said, pressing two fingers to the bridge of his nose, “you’ll understand where I’m coming from when I ask you why the hell you’d put me on this. The Psy hate me.”
“Hate is an emotion,” Commander Brecht said from his standing position by an old-fashioned filing cabinet that had somehow survived all attempts at modernization. “You are more of an inconvenience.”
Max felt his lips curve up in a humorless smile. At least you could never accuse Brecht of not cutting to the heart of the matter. “Exactly.” He folded his arms over the crisp white shirt he’d put on in preparation for a court appearance. “Why would you want an inconvenience running an investigation into a Psy situation?” Psy were insular to the nth degree. They kept their secrets even as they stole those of others without pause or conscience. It pissed Max off, but all he could do was keep on doing his job. Sometimes, he won in spite of their interference—and that made it all worth it.
“You have a natural mental shield.” Commander Brecht’s tone was straightforward. “The fact that you’re immune to Psy mental interference may have been a stumbling block when it comes to your career—”
Max snorted. Fact was, with his solve rate and aptitude tests, he should’ve made lieutenant by now. But he knew he never would—Psy controlled Enforcement, and his ability to withstand their attempts at coercion, to run his cases as he saw fit, made him an unacceptable risk in any position of power.
“As I was saying,” the commander continued, his hair solid gilt under the streak of light coming in through the tiny window to his left. “While it may have been an obstacle in your path to a higher position within Enforcement, it is also an advantage.”
“I’m not going to argue with that.” Unlike so many humans, Max had never had to worry about whether he’d closed a case or looked the other way as a result of subtle mental pressure—many a good cop had broken because of that simmering kernel of doubt, that niggling concern that he’d been led to a particular conclusion. He said as much to Brecht. “I would’ve gone into private investigation if I didn’t have the shield—staying here to get mind-fucked wouldn’t have been at the top of my list.”
The commander walked over to his desk. “It’s beneficial for New York Enforcement that you decided to stay—you have the best solve-rate in the city. And you’re also, as the humans would say, mule stubborn.”
Max had been called a rottweiler once in a while. He took it as a compliment. “Still doesn’t answer the question of why you’d want me on a Psy case.” Command always assigned those to Psy detectives.
Max didn’t have a problem with that—so long as it was only Psy who were involved. But it angered the hell out of him when humans and changelings got shortchanged because a member of the cold psychic race was part of the equation. “The Bonner situation—”
“Is currently at an impasse according to the report you turned in last night. You’re going to wait him out, correct?”
Unfolding his arms, Max shoved a hand through his hair. “I still need to be able to respond quickly if he does decide to talk—I know this case like no one else.” And though he’d run the Butcher to ground, his task wasn’t yet over—wouldn’t be over until he’d brought each and every girl home, giving their grieving families the peace of being able to bury their babies in proper graves.
To this day, he could feel the slight weight of Carissa White’s mother as she collapsed into his arms—it had been a snowy winter’s night when he’d gone to their pristine little villa, a villa Carissa had decorated with twinkling Christmas lights two weeks earlier. Mrs. White had opened the door with a laugh. Later, she’d gripped his jacket and begged him to tell her that it wasn’t true, that Carissa was still alive.
And then she’d made him promise.
Find him. Find the monster who did this.
He’d fulfilled that promise. But he’d made other promises to other parents.
No one should have to spend eternity in the cold dark.
“That shouldn’t be a problem.” Brecht’s words crashed through the echo of another Psy voice—through the memory of a haunting statement so at odds with her glacial presence that Max hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her.
“The case I want you to work is high priority, but with room for flexibility should you need to fly back to consult on the Bonner case.” Brecht slid into the chair behind his desk. “If you’d take a seat, Detective.” A pause when Max didn’t immediately obey. “Your obsession with Bonner ended with the capture of a sociopath who would undoubtedly have continued to take lives if you hadn’t stopped his killing spree. However, if you let that obsession control you now, you’ll wind up dead of stress while he grows fat behind bars.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “Been talking to the Enforcement shrink?”
“I may be Psy, but I was also a detective.”
And because Max had seen Brecht’s case files, because he knew the man
had
been one hell of a smart cop, he took a seat.
“What I’m about to tell you can’t leave this room, whether or not you decide to accept the task.” Brecht’s eyes were a pale color between gray and blue, shards of ice encased in steel. “Do I have your word on that?”
“If it’s an Enforcement matter, it’s an Enforcement matter.” Irrespective of anything else, he still believed in the badge, in the good that they did.
Brecht gave a nod of acknowledgment. “Over the past three months, Councilor Nikita Duncan—”
A Councilor?
Yeah, that got Max’s attention.
CHAPTER 4
“—has lost three of her advisors by three very different methods. One was a heart attack, the second an automobile accident, the third an apparent suicide.”
Max’s gut went tight as cop instinct took over. “Could be coincidence.”
“Do you believe in coincidence, Detective?”
“About as much as I believe in the tooth fairy.”
The commander nodded. “Councilor Duncan does not believe in coincidences, either. She wants you to find out who is going after her people and why.”
“She’s in San Francisco,” Max said, the same instinct telling him that far more was going on beneath the surface than a simple—and inexplicable—request for a human cop on a Psy case. But Max didn’t go straight for the jugular—there were better ways of getting information. “Cops down there aren’t going to like me stepping on their toes.”
“For the purposes of this case, you’ll be made a special investigator, with the authority to work across state lines. It’s regular practice with detectives who have the specialized skills to work a particular situation.”
That much was true. However, something else was equally true. “I’ve heard the Psy have their own version of a police force. I’d have thought a Councilor”—especially a Councilor with all her secrets—“would want them to take care of it.”
“Normally, yes.” The commander picked up a small data crystal and placed it on the desk between them, a silent prick to the curiosity that made Max a cop who always,
always
found the answers. “However, the Arrow Squad is loyal to another Councilor, and if that Councilor is behind these attacks, then Councilor Duncan will not get the truth. Her own people have proved deficient in the skills necessary to take care of the task.”
Max thought over what he knew of Nikita Duncan. She was an astute businesswoman, one who made money hand over fist—but unlike Councilors Ming LeBon and Kaleb Krychek, he’d never heard her name linked with a military operation, so it might be a legitimate fact that she’d found a gap in her resources once she eliminated this Arrow Squad from the mix.
“Alright,” he said, eyes narrowed. “But mental shield aside, there’s got to be some other reason the Councilor asked for me. What skills make me so special?” He was damn good at what he did, but there were excellent cops in San Francisco.
“Don’t disregard your shield so easily,” the commander responded. “It’s one of the strongest we’ve ever encountered in a human.” An implied confirmation that Psy had tried to break through it any number of times. “However, you’re correct. There is something else—you have friends in the DarkRiver leopard pack. Councilor Duncan seems to believe that that friendship will make it easier for you to run the investigation in her city.”
Ice crawled in a slow spread through Max’s veins. Clay Bennett, the changeling male Max knew best, was one cool customer. Max wouldn’t put it past the leopard pack to whittle down their enemy piece by piece—they were predators after all. But—“Isn’t Councilor Duncan’s daughter mated to Lucas Hunter, the alpha of DarkRiver?” Sascha Duncan’s defection from the Psy world had made news across the country.
“Yes, but they no longer have any kind of a personal relationship.”
Max nodded to show he’d heard, but the fact of Sascha’s existence, her relationship with Lucas, put his mind at ease. Because while they might be predators, the cats were also big on family. He couldn’t see them culling Nikita’s people on the sly. “If I do this,” he said, knowing he couldn’t let it go now, his curiosity a steel blue flame inside him, “I’m going to need full access. If Duncan has her people blocking me at every turn, it’s going to be impossible for me to do my job.”
“Councilor Duncan understands that.” Brecht picked up the data crystal and moved it in front of Max. “This has the basic background information. However, as you can imagine, there are areas of considerable sensitivity. That’s why you’ll be working with a Psy partner who’ll help you in relation to the peculiarly Psy aspects of the investigation, and who will be tasked with filtering certain data.”
Max had known he’d need a Psy advisor, but the second part of Brecht’s statement made his hand clench on the crystal. “How the fuck is he going to realize what’s relevant and what’s not?”
“
She
,” the commander said, “is to work intimately with you.”
“Makes no difference to the question—what qualifications does this ‘partner’ of mine have to make those decisions?” Max wasn’t just used to working alone, he liked it that way.
“She’s a J,” the commander said. “Has been operative since she was sixteen. She’s now twenty-eight.”
Anticipation licked along his spine. “What’s her name?”
“Sophia Russo.”
His mind reacted immediately—an image of haunting eyes in a face marked by violence, a voice that said things it shouldn’t, a body that made his own itch to thaw out all that ice. It was then, as he considered if the latter was even possible, that he was hit by the import of Brecht’s words. “Twelve years of active service? Most Js don’t last that long.”
He’d worked with at least twenty over his eleven years in Enforcement. Each had retired before the age of thirty, and, he realized, he’d never seen any of them again. It hadn’t struck him as odd before, because Psy weren’t exactly the type to send Christmas cards, but the fact that not one,
not one
, had ended up working in another area of Justice—either they had one hell of a retirement plan or . . . Given the cold-blooded way the Council treated its own people, the possibilities were chilling. And Sophia Russo had been a J for twelve years. She had to be reaching “retirement” age.
When the commander spoke, he didn’t address Max’s implied question, didn’t tell him what happened to Js who reached the end of their working lives. “Ms. Russo has considerable experience in interacting with humans—you should find her a satisfactory partner.” A pause. “Detective, I need an answer today.”
Max played the data crystal over his fingers. He still wasn’t sure what the hell he was doing considering working for the Psy, or the real reason why Nikita had asked for him, but if you stripped away all the bullshit, one thing remained unchanged—he was a cop. And Nikita Duncan was a citizen. “I’ll do it.”
Sophia sat across from the M-Psy in charge of her evaluation at the Pittsburgh branch of the Center, her hands placed on the table, her eyes calm.
“There’s been,” the M-Psy said, “a report of an incident at Liberty Penitentiary.”
She didn’t fall for that trick, didn’t respond. Because he hadn’t asked a question.
“Did you have anything to do with that incident?”
“What was the incident?”
The M-Psy looked down at his notes. “A pedophile mutilated himself.”
It was easy to keep her face expressionless—she’d been practicing since she was eight years old and about to be euthanized. “Was he human?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps he felt remorse,” she suggested, knowing the creature in that cell had felt pity only for himself, for the fact that he’d been caught and locked up. “Humans have emotions after all.”
“There’s no indication he felt remorse.”
At least the man hadn’t managed to fool the prison psychiatrists. “Is he speaking?”
The M-Psy shook his head. “Not coherently.”
“Then it’s impossible to know if he felt remorse,” she responded with total equanimity. Perhaps she should’ve felt guilt, but of course, she was Silent. She felt nothing. But she knew what that prisoner had done, knew every tiny detail of the horror he’d imprinted on a young, unformed psyche. Sophia had buried the memories even as she extracted them from the child’s mind, leaving him with a week-long blank in his past that would only unlock when he was old enough and strong enough to bear it.
It was unfortunate that the trick didn’t work on children who were born with the J facility. If it had, perhaps she would have had a different life . . . Perhaps.
The M-Psy tapped something on his datapad. “This is the third such incident in the past year where you’ve been in close proximity.”