Tangle of Need (Psy-Changeling #11)(78)

She was still trying to work out how to respond to the unexpected act when he spoke, his voice creeping under her skin to touch parts of her it had no business touching.

“If you didn’t ask Ashaya to help you test the implant,” he asked, eyes that had returned to their human shade locked on Bowen, “who did you trust enough to do the testing?”

Bowen took his time answering. “We heard about the Laurens,” he said when he did speak, his expression giving nothing away. “About how they’ve been alive all this time. How’d they do it? A familial net?”

Adria leaned forward in excitement, inadvertently breaking the contact with Riaz. “Another family of defectors?”

However Bowen shook his head. “No.” Another pause. “Let’s just call them a well-organized group.” His expression made it clear he’d share no other details of their identity. “They dropped out of the Net in degrees, changed their appearance, and blended into the population. No one would’ve been the wiser, except that one of them was injured in a freak accident six months ago—hit by bricks falling onto the street from a building undergoing maintenance.”

Adria found herself sliding back into her seat, her skin burning at the renewed contact with Riaz’s fingers.

“I saw him trying to limp away,” Bo continued. “I’m certain he wouldn’t normally have said a word, but he was concussed at the time, and kept repeating ‘no DNA profile’ as I was leading him to the ambulance. I figured he had a criminal warrant out on him, but then he mumbled the word ‘PsyNet.’” A shrug. “I did what any good security chief would do. I brought him here, had him patched up, and interrogated him while he was still dopey.”

A ruthless act—but then, from what Adria knew of him, Bo had never pretended to be anything else when it came to taking care of his people. The wolf in her respected that, even as it understood that the Alliance man would betray even the staunchest ally if it came down to a choice between that ally and those he considered under his protection.

“By the time his friends tracked him down,” he said, “we knew who they were and that blackmailing them would be a very bad idea, so we simply suggested that our interests might mesh and let it go at that.”

An intelligent and calculated decision, from a man Riaz had seen leak charm like a tap in a successful effort to divert people’s attention from his cold-eyed intelligence. “You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that.”

Bowen’s grin was a flash of canines. “The reason we know it was Tatiana behind the attack on Reuben,” he said, grin vanishing as quickly as it had appeared, “was that the men who were sent to take me in didn’t bother to hide the comm conversation they had with her once I was onboard, even though the stun had worn off.”

“Careless.” Riaz traced circles on Adria’s nape with the tip of his finger.

“They figured I wouldn’t be in a position to say anything after she got through with me.” Bracing his forearms on the gleaming wood of the table, Bo bit out his next words. “The bitch does her own reprogramming—she made it clear no one else was to touch me.”

Considering the facts, Riaz made the tactical decision to share some knowledge. “Tatiana is thought to have the ability to penetrate almost any shield.”

Bo’s pupils contracted. “Shit.”

“Yes. No way of knowing if the chip would’ve held her off, since it’s technological, not natural,” Riaz said, “but seems she can get into most minds without causing major damage.”

“Less scars to hide,” Adria said, and he heard the empathy in her, the soft heart she hid beneath the tough exterior.

“But,” he added, cupping her nape gently with his hand, “Tatiana’s ability is noteworthy because of how unusual it is, so it doesn’t change the impact of the chip. Still, your people need to make sure they don’t get cocky.”

“Noted.”

“Once you take away their psychic advantage,” Adria said into the silence that had fallen after Bo’s curt nod, “Psy are very vulnerable.”

As, Riaz mused, Bowen had proven with deadly efficiency on the yacht.

“They have a tendency to rely on their abilities,” the human male agreed. “The ones I took down on the yacht were armed, but they paid so little attention to me it was the easiest op I’ve ever completed. A single guard on the door?” He snorted. “Soon as I had his weapon, it was all over. None of the others were on alert because they assumed their telepathic sweeps would warn them of an intruder.”

“Why kill them?” Adria’s question betrayed the inherent compassion of her nature. “Why not simply incapacitate?”

“A message,” Riaz answered, the predator in him recognizing the one who sat three feet away. “He was sending a message. They f*ck with the Alliance, you aren’t going to take prisoners.”

A small shrug from Bowen, his jet-black eyes steely with lethal purpose. “Leaving them alive would’ve been a sign of weakness, and Tatiana expects weakness from the ‘emotional’ races. What the bitch doesn’t understand is that rage is an emotion, too.”





Chapter 40





HAVING SPENT TWO hours with Bowen, going over the advantages the artificial shields might present the humans in SnowDancer and in the packs of their allies, Riaz reported in to Hawke via a highly secure satellite comm link set up using equipment at a small SnowDancer office hidden in Venice. Though the office was unmanned except for when Pierce was in the city, it had multiple layers of security not even a teleporter could breach without setting off a silent alarm. Not that they’d find much except some expensive comm equipment—the call history was set to erase itself the second after a user signed out.