Emerging from her post-breakfast bliss, Murphy said, “And Sarah’s spent these last months learning more about her abilities and how to control them.”

  “Also making some public noise,” Miranda noted with a smile.

  “Tucker’s book about me.” Sarah looked a bit rueful. “Given a choice between hiding and going public, there really wasn’t a choice to make. Plus, we both wanted to stay in this thing, help all we could. I have to admit, though, that the decision to relocate here in Charleston was partly because of all the attention focused on us back in Richmond after the book came out. Tucker has the well-known habit of vanishing for a while whenever he’s researching a new book, so we told a few people we knew would spread the word that was our reason for leaving Richmond—indefinitely.”

  “And you got a break from the spotlight,” Miranda said.

  * * *

  • • •

  On the other side of the quiet condo, Pendragon opened his eyes and his other senses briefly, then released an almost human sigh. He was perfectly comfortable cuddled up beside Annabel, and content that she was sleeping in peace, not cold or lonely or afraid. He’d chosen well for her, he thought.

  She would have a happy life.

  But there were things to do first, Pendragon knew that. Important things. Necessary things. The humans talking so quietly on the other side of the condo knew that, and were slowly working their way toward knowledge and understanding, as humans tended to do.

  Adding up bits and pieces of knowledge, of speculation. Asking themselves and each other questions. Pondering . . . possibilities.

  Pendragon could have offered a shortcut or two to help them along, and thought he might need to do that. Maybe.

  But the fragile little soul beside him was his main concern. Because they would need her help as well, and his, though they didn’t yet know it.

  But they would.

  Soon.

  Pendragon closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Yeah, a nice break,” Sarah said. “Plus the chance to help out with what was going on around Tasha. We were both being so careful at first about being so near one of Duran’s operations. Neither of us realized then that me being connected to Tucker, bonded the way we are, protects both of us.”

  “Recent intel,” Murphy agreed. “After Bishop first made contact, we naturally took a closer look at the Special Crimes Unit. He offered us some fairly bare facts about his teams, and one thing that struck me was the number of personally paired psychics, all of them male-female and most of them married to each other.”

  “Including us,” Miranda murmured.

  Murphy nodded with a faint smile. “Each of you powerful on your own, but a hell of a lot stronger together. Bishop said that was true of all the bonded pairs. So I started to wonder about that.”

  Brodie, his breakfast finished and his attention on the conversation, said slowly, “We’ve come across a few bonded psychics in the last ten years that I know of. All male-female.”

  “Yeah,” Murphy agreed. “More than a few, once I started looking into it and counting. A few of the pairs joined the fight and are still in it. Others, usually because they’d started their families or for other reasons, elected to stay put and be really visible. And not a single bonded pair that we know of has been a target of Duran or any of his people once that bond formed.”

  “Because we’re stronger?” Miranda suggested.

  “It could be partly that, but I think it’s something else too. I don’t know what that is or why it matters, but I know from one of my tense little meetings with Duran that none of the psychics he’s taken or turned, and none produced through their eugenics program has managed to bond with another psychic. Not, at least, any he still controls.”

  “People like me,” Tasha said.

  “Yeah. This whole eugenics thing is so new to us that so far you’re the only one we know about who did escape Duran’s control. There could be others who were good, or lucky, or both; he certainly wouldn’t share that. Now, with you, it’s clear that the connection between you and Brodie happened, or at least started happening, when you first met. I honestly didn’t know if Duran would move against you before the bond was complete—but he didn’t. He knew Brodie was your Guardian, and I’m fairly certain he has a healthy respect for Brodie and his abilities, but I don’t think that’s what stopped him.”

  “You had run him out of Charleston,” Brodie reminded her dryly.

  “So to speak. And he had other things to occupy him. Troublesome political candidates to get rid of. Probably a few carefully crafted explanations to his superiors and delicate questions about whether they really wanted to get into politics, given that very bright spotlight and all the potential problems. Decisions to make about his eugenics program. But he’s back here now, and he knows Tasha is out of reach.”

  “Why’s he back here?” Brodie was frowning.

  “Well, I haven’t asked him because I’m pretty sure Tucker’s right and he doesn’t know that we know about that new base of theirs here. But—I’m also pretty sure he knows we’ve turned this building into a base of our own. And if I had to guess, which at the moment I do, I’d say he’s bothered by a few things.”

  “Such as?”

  “All these years, we’ve gone out of our way to be mobile; even though some of our cells cover a specific area, most of our people stay on the move. Even the boss. So the fact that we’ve committed considerable resources in turning this building into a highly secure base probably bugs him. Resettling Sarah and Tucker here, if he knows that and I’m pretty sure he does, would definitely bug him. Because they’re a bonded pair. And because they’re not only powerful in terms of psychic abilities, but Tucker has mad skills as a researcher and is a technical genius.”

  Miranda glanced over at what was clearly an extensive technical command center, where Bishop and Tucker were both intently working at keyboards, and said, “Yeah, I can see how that would bother him. Just in the last few years, technology has improved so much that the ability to uncover information has taken more than a quantum leap forward. It’s almost impossible for anyone to hide anything—at least not for long.”

  “Maybe we’re catching up to them technically,” Tasha offered.

  “Could be,” Murphy agreed. “As Tucker said, we have a few more geniuses, some researching and others working on the purely technical end of things. We’ve managed to get our hands on some of the gadgets Duran’s people have used over the years, and reverse-engineered a few of them. And designed a few of our own using the knowledge we gained from them. That’s one reason why we felt we could actually make this a secure base, one Duran’s people won’t be able to just waltz in and out of.”

  “They got into my building,” Tasha said ruefully.

  “This building is way more secure,” Murphy said simply.

  “Wow.”

  “Cost a bundle, but we have background assets more than willing to contribute, and it’s an investment we hope will pay off in protecting whoever or whatever we need to protect, including the intel we’ve been able to collect and will continue to collect. We’ve been building some pretty impressive files on Duran’s operations and his people.”

  Brodie said, “I’d settle for knowing what their endgame really is. It’s tough as hell to be tactical in your general strategy when you don’t know the ultimate goal of the other side. Beyond their apparent need for psychics.”

  Ruefully, Tasha said, “It just seems we keep on getting pieces of the puzzle and still don’t know what the whole picture is supposed to look like.”

  Smiling faintly, Brodie said, “Ten years ago, the only puzzle piece we had was the certainty that psychics were in danger. And I’m pretty sure our side had only been in existence in any organized way for a few years before then. We’ve learned more in the last couple of years than in all the time before.”

  “Yeah,” Murphy said, brooding now. “But we don’t know enough. We don’t know nearly enough. Not yet.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Duran was not happy to find that when he had in front of him the list he had requested of the positions of all their people, he could not find a single operative or psychic who had not been where he or she was supposed to be.

  And no one had been anywhere near the Charlotte house for at least two days, when they had last been visited by the operative and healer who had been sent to scan the women and their unborn babies. Using technology—not psychic abilities.

  More than one of their psychics had said, over the years, that whatever the healers did to heal their various ailments—often the headaches psychics so often suffered—felt very much like an invasion, and a highly unpleasant one at that. But the healers certainly gleaned no abilities or even knowledge from the psychics they healed.

  Not that any of that was uppermost in Duran’s mind at the moment.

  Each of their people had implanted in them a tiny chip that was a GPS locator, a biometric monitoring device, and a passcode, the latter enabling them to pass through the first layer of security in any building of the company’s operation. After that, the layers were progressively more difficult.

  So Duran knew that the official record showed every last operative and psychic in their individual positions as per whatever orders they were following.

  He also knew he had a problem. A very big problem.

  Whoever had torched the Charlotte house must have somehow disabled or somehow . . . deceived . . . that very sophisticated and supposedly unhackable chip. In addition, that person surely had a wide range of abilities to have not only disabled the surveillance without being detected doing so but also to—he believed—have recognized the importance of that particular operation. And to want, for reasons unknown, to delay any duplication of that particular project at best—or have it classed as a failure at worst.

  He had asked his technical people point-blank if there was any way the arsonist could have put all the video feeds on a loop, showing peace while destruction was being wrought right in front of their unseeing electronic eyes.

  One nervous technician said that anything was possible when it came to electronics, but that they’d found no sign as yet that any of the equipment either at the com center or in Charlotte at the house itself had been tampered with before the fire. Just destroyed in the fire.

  Duran had resisted the urge to cause the nervous technician more anxiety; it was a technique he used quite deliberately but carefully; he wanted his operatives to be fully aware of the fact that he was authorized to simply end them at any moment if he wished.

  A reminder of that now and then was a good thing.

  Duran did not wish to be loved by his people, he wished to be feared by them. A goal he had accomplished years ago.

  And that was one reason why he seldom felt concern about any dissension in the ranks. There had been two or three over the years who had altered some plan of his because they had believed their own ideas better; Duran had made certain that every other operative knew what happened to those with such idiotic impulses.

  There had even been a few along the way who had taken a small, simple step out of line for whatever reason; those, too, had been dealt with, less severely but still punishment to be feared.

  But something like this . . . He had never faced this sort of betrayal in all his years in command. Had never seen any such thing in the earlier years, when he was working his way up through the ranks, being a perfect soldier.

  And he had a double problem on his hands. There was the urgent need to discover who had destroyed the Charlotte operation and why, and there was the equally urgent need to minimize the fallout once his superiors knew.

  Depending on how much he told them, of course.

  His only luck there was that they had not been aware of his belief that among those unborn children had been at least one that could have been The Supreme. And Duran had been very careful to keep that possibility confined strictly to the healers who had worked on the project and an operative he trusted.

  The question was—who would have been so threatened by the possible birth of The Supreme as to take such drastic and dangerous action?

  And how could he identify that person?

  THIRTEEN

  Murphy paused on the almost-deserted sidewalk, digging in her bag for one of the burner phones that still had a charge. She checked three of them before finding one with about a quarter of a battery left.

  It was enough.

  She punched in the number, and when he answered, asked one hard question.

  “Did you know?”

  There was a brief pause, and then Duran said evenly, “No. It was not sanctioned. At any level.”

  She almost believed him. Enough, at any rate, to forgo asking the question that had been teasing her mind ever since Bishop had called her only moments after her predawn encounter with Duran. Because if it had not been sanctioned, that fire, then perhaps Duran did not know why that particular house had been burned. And why it had been destroyed might well be far more important than who had committed arson.

  “Do you know who?” she asked, her voice still flinty.

  “Not yet. But I will find out.”

  He would certainly be searching for the person responsible, if it really had been an unsanctioned act. He might even find out who had done it.

  But Murphy intended to get to them first. Because anyone who would cold-bloodedly murder a dozen young women and their unborn babies was worse than an enemy.

  She ended the call without another word, then immediately removed the cell’s battery. And as she continued along the nearly deserted sidewalk across from a dog park, she unobtrusively dropped the battery in one trash container. The phone itself was smoothly dropped into another trash container two blocks farther along her journey.

  She changed direction twice more just in case anyone thought they could track her movements by somehow tracking that disabled and discarded phone or pings off cell towers or anything else. Her life had taught her to be cautious, even paranoid. She did not consider either a bad thing, simply her reality.

  She needed to find out who had torched that house.

  And she needed to find out why.

  * * *

  • • •

  As it turned out, it took three days to receive and study all the reports of the Charlotte shadow house fire. And even though Bishop was certain his inside contacts had gotten the original reports, the first reports, it was quickly obvious that Duran’s people must indeed have been prepared for anything.

  And had somehow been able to alter the very scene of the fire, the charred remains themselves, because according to the reports, no pregnant women had died in that horrible fire.

  No unborn babies had perished.

  Just an unfortunate few “patients” who had been recovering from surgery in what was supposed to be a quiet, restful house in a nice, quiet neighborhood.

  Male and female patients of various ages.

  But no babies.

  * * *

  • • •

  Do you really believe someone is looking for us?

  I have to believe it, Henry.

  I’m so tired, Juno.

  I know. I know you are.

  Will they find us?

  I have to believe that too.

  Will they find us in time?

  Henry, you have to keep holding on.

  Do I?

  Yes. Promise me. Promise me you won’t let go.

  Do you really believe someone is looking for us?

  I have to believe it, Henry. I have to . . .

  * * *

  • • •

  No matter how easy they made it look on TV and in the movies, hacking into any good electronic system, especially a security system and even more especially remotely from nearly two hundred miles away, was not an easy or quick process.

  Luckily, Tucker was a genius.

  After successfully hacking into those systems, copying hours of recordings from what turned out to be more than a dozen cameras at other houses in the neighborhood providing even a sliver of a dim view of some part of the shadow breeding house property took a bit more time. And Tucker added in four more cameras he’d discovered with views, not of the shadow house or yard, but of the streets in front of and surrounding the house. Two were directly across from the shadow house; the other two were farther down the street in each direction.

  Just in case the arsonist had parked some distance away, or walked carelessly across that street.

  After all that, and even deciding to work in shifts, with two people always reviewing the tapes to make certain tired eyes didn’t miss something important, it was hours and hours of staring at the large computer screens. Examining every frame of the many recordings made that night, from midnight until after dawn, because Tucker thought it a good idea to see the first responders in action, and maybe look over any neighbors who lingered to watch as well.

  Because you never knew.

  Tucker was somewhat bemused to find out that the Bishops never appeared on any of the cameras near the burning house at any time; he found only a few frames of them slipping across a dark yard and crossing a street two blocks away. And then disappearing into the predawn darkness.

  Since nobody doubted the couple had indeed been at the Charlotte house, he couldn’t help asking Bishop about it. And somehow wasn’t surprised when the reply had been simply, “It’s a knack we have.”