Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Eleri put the trunk liner back on. “The bodies, on the other hand…they’re posed in a way that takes considerable time. He builds open-sided shelters for them on the spot, then decorates the shelters like his fantasy of a woman’s bedroom. Silk hangings, vases of flowers, candles. That takes time, takes materials, takes tools—and the bodies aren’t decomposed enough when I find them.”
Her tone, Adam realized, hadn’t altered through the entire grim recitation. There was nothing in her eyes, either. As if he was speaking to an automaton.
His senses spiked in a rejection that wasn’t born of rage but of something else altogether, something that he’d succeeded in burying for ten long years.
Oh, you’ve cut your knuckles. Let me get a bandage from the first aid—
No, stay, it will heal up real quick. Changeling skin is tough.
Eleri. I’m Eleri.
Eleri. That’s pretty. My name is Adam.
Chapter 7
The Psy race considers humankind prey, our minds theirs to violate at will. Humans will never achieve our true potential as long as we have to conceal our light in order to escape drawing Psy attention.
—Bowen Knight, security chief of the Human Alliance (circa February 2077)
Shoving aside the echoes of a past that had destroyed the boy he’d been, Adam considered her words. “You think he builds the shelters ahead of time, then goes trawling for victims.”
Eleri turned those beautiful mutable eyes on him. “Yes, so they have to be in places he can reach on a regular basis—like after work. Sixty minutes in a high-speed vehicle to the furthest shelter, ninety if in a lower-spec car, three-hour maximum round-trip total.
“Add in a couple of hours of construction on the shelter and—if he finishes work at five or six—he’d still be in bed by eleven, midnight at the latest. I also don’t think the abductions were opportunistic; he’s just taken care to make them appear that way—I believe he goes out of his home range on purpose, to stop anyone tracing him back to Raintree.”
Adam agreed with her thought process, while being aware that he was only getting one side of the story. “What would your colleagues say if I asked them?”
“That he must prefabricate the shelters so he can put them up within an hour, and that he’s as opportunistic in the captivity sites as he is in his abductions. Several members believe he might even keep the victims in his truck or other similar vehicle.”
Adam held that gaze, his falcon in his eyes—both parts of him trying to see through to the truth of her. “And yet you think you’re right. Why?”
“Instinct,” was the toneless response. “The same thing that means I can track serial killers across the PsyNet by their psychic signatures.”
A disbelieving lift of his eyebrow, his gaze not human in any fashion as he watched her. Adam Garrett was a raptor designed to rend his prey to pieces, and he remained, Eleri thought, a breath away from doing the same to her.
“If you can track murderers on your Net, why all this?” He waved at her car, the evidence she carried.
“First, I need to pick up the scent. The PsyNet is a vast place.” What Eleri didn’t say was that for a J like her, a Sensitive on the verge of Exposure, the PsyNet was also a place she tried to avoid as much as possible.
Its psychic fabric teemed with millions upon millions of memories that had slipped free of people’s shields and now floated around in disembodied pieces. Those fragments didn’t affect undamaged Js, but Eleri could no longer claim that status; she risked the memories burrowing their way into her and setting up home atop the vicious memories of far sicker strangers.
“Funny,” Bram had said the last time the four of them had gotten together, “you’d think we’d want those random memories to settle in, dampen the ones from our work.”
Only, of course, it didn’t work that way. The fragments had razored edges that drew psychic blood, and when one embedded itself, it stirred older, darker memories to the surface, like a stone thrown into a still pond.
So no, memory shards weren’t a good thing.
The only time Eleri stepped foot in the psychic network anymore was when she was sure enough of the identity of a killer that she could stalk him on the psychic level. She’d led Enforcement to three so far by that method, and for two others…well, some people didn’t need any kind of a second chance to do what they’d done, and Js were experts at stealth assassinations.
Her mind opened the box of her own memories, time scrolling backward.
“Are you shocked I executed Prisoner 45TN?” Reagan, sitting across from her two years after the court case that had ripped the veil from her eyes.
He’d had a faded smile on his face that night. “It’s a madness in Js,” he’d told her. “It’s why the wardens and guards are meant to watch us closely when we’re in jails or other places with such prisoners. Something breaks in us and we no longer have control when it comes to ending deviant minds.”