Part 5 (1/2)

Every mind-except hers.

He felt along the wall again. Smooth and sheer, he had locked something in the deepest recesses of his mind. Something precious.

The image of that half-remembered room, with scarves tossed over the bed, plants growing lush in every corner, and sunlight spilling along shelves of books, returned. The room looked familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, his only refuge while they tortured his body. The room held a faint, beautiful perfume he'd never smelled before. He kept his eyes closed and imagined himself there, standing on the mellow-glowing wood floor, the edge of his hand warmed with sun pouring through the French doors, and the smells of paper and bindings and wet earth-she just watered the plants, he thought-rising to his nostrils. The thought was gone as soon as it appeared.

Nothing else in the room but the faint, almost imperceptible odor of a woman's skin, clean and fresh.

He was in three places at once-his body, lying on a cheap hotel bed in Lubbock, another part of him in that room full of sunlight and clean peace, and a third part crouched in front of the blank, smooth wall and sc.r.a.ping at it with fingers turned to b.l.o.o.d.y claws.

Let me in. Let me IN!

The answer, when it came, struck as hard as a fist to the gut.

You pushed yourself to forget. Now push yourself to remember. Then you'll know where she's going, and who she is.

It was risky. He might end up a crippled, mind-shattered hulk if the push ricocheted. And if Sigma caught him again, he doubted he could force another push through his memory in time. They wouldn't just beat him up and fill him full of Zed. They wouldn't stop until he was dead. He'd outwitted them twice now, and was too dangerous for any profit his talent could bring them.

So this time was for keeps.

Del lay in the dark with his arm over his eyes and gathered himself, feeling the need for Zed burning in thesubtle traceries of his veins. If he took the hypo now, he wouldn't have the concentration necessary for the push, and he'd foul something up. No, this would be painful anyway, best to just get it over with.

He reexamined the wall, searching the smoothness for any weak spot. Looking at it like someone else's mind, s.h.i.+elded and shut tight, but still vulnerable. Very few minds were completely impenetrable-only Zeke's. That was why they called Zeke ”the Tank,” because he was curiously inoculated against psychic attack. Even Del couldn't crack him.

Delgado thought of the woman's voice, her husky contralto. Justin! No! The flood of feeling from her, underlaid with something too pure to be described, a feeling like- He pushed, gathering all his talent in one single, undeniable thrust. Battered the wall with the sound of her voice, pain striking and curving into his brain's map, black explosions against his eyelids as his back arched and his arms twisted uselessly, his heels drumming the mattress.

And the wall ... broke.

But Delgado was finally, mercifully, unconscious.

He came to hours later, dried blood crusting his nose. His head throbbed, every nerve twisting with excruciating pain. He fumbled for the hypo, pressed it against the inside of his elbow and heard more than felt the airpac discharge. Numbness, blessed relief, crawled chill up his arm, spilled past his shoulder.

Crawled through his chest and reached his legs, headed for his brain to short him out.

Oh, G.o.d, was his first thought. Oh, my G.o.d. No.

Echoes inside his head. Echoes of a woman with long ash-blond hair, her green eyes dark with pain, and her mouth clamped in a thin line. Memories flooding him, of running halfway across the country to escape Sigma, of training her to be an operative, of her voice crackling through a comm-link as the rest of the world turned to gray fuzz because he'd been shot in a raid on a Sigma installation. She had literally pulled him back from death.

Her voice, the exact color of her eyes, the taste of her skin where the fragile pulse beat just above her collarbone. Rowan.

He remembered now, remembered why he had pushed himself to forget. He'd sacrificed himself to get her out and away from the ruin of Headquarters, wiped his own head so he couldn't be used against her, because she was the only thing he cared about. The only thing in the world that mattered to him.

And Sigma was now frantically trying to find her while Delgado, his mind almost shattered by agony, Zed, and his own talent, lay on a hotel bed and began to laugh out loud, a keening unhealthy laughter.

He was going to find her first.

Chapter Eleven.

Vegas rose, s.h.i.+mmering spikes of light bristling into the desert night under small, flinty stars. Outside the window, the city thrummed with an electric bath of greed and light, but it was, for all its desperation, a relaxed town-probably due to the amount of alcohol being consumed, fuzzing all the deadheads out.

This far away, the city looked like a carpet of colored bonbons. Radioactive bonbons. Cancerous little sweets.

Rowan set her bag gingerly down on the burgundy bedspread. ”My entire body hurts,” she said mournfully. ”My a.s.s most of all.”

”Stretch out.” Cath was unsympathetic. She flung herself down on the bed on her back, her short black hair puffing out like thistledown. ”I'm gonna check the room.”

Rowan nodded, her fists against her lower back. She bent back like the old painting of the Lady of Shallott, shaking her hair out and stretching. There were probably cameras everywhere. She'd kept the baseball cap on the entire time to cover her hair. She probably looked like the world's worst case of hat-head by now.

Cath closed her eyes. Breathless silence filled the room as a faint psychic crackling, like faraway crickets, swept from one corner to the next. Rowan, her mental defenses still absurdly sensitive, s.h.i.+vered and crossed to the windows, looking out on the carpet of light in the distance.

It's beautiful, she thought. Hilary would have loved this.

Thinking of Hilary, with her sleek cap of dark hair and her charcoal suits, still hurt. It was probably a blessing she couldn't remember seeing her childhood friend dead. That was one memory Justin had refused to share with her, even though she'd asked. Don't, Rowan. He had stroked her back, his fingers gentle, kissed her temple and hugged her tighter. You don't want to see that. You don't need to see that.

The old pain rose, and the old rage with it. She stared out at the lights, then reached up and spread her hand against the chill gla.s.s. Mist outlined her fingers, living warmth meeting cold hardness.

Justin was alive. She had hoped, prayed, thought ... but not known. Now she knew. And if he was alive, was he following her? Had he already made contact with Henderson?

The strangeness nagged at her. Who the h.e.l.l are you?

As if he didn't know, or didn't remember. Had Sigma done something to him, made him forget? It was ridiculous, but ... perhaps. If she could touch him without hurting them both, someone else might be able to. If that someone was a Sigma operative, they might well try to strip him of every memory he had of her, both to try to catch her and to break any emotional attachment he might have to her. It was standard in Sigma to break up relations.h.i.+ps that didn't serve the purposes of the handlers and higher-ups, psions moved around like human chess pieces, manipulated like puppets.

Spears of night-burning light pierced the desert sky. Cath sighed from the bed. ”Room's clear,” she said, in the heavy slurred voice of exhaustion. ”Get some shut-eye. Tomorrow's a busy day.”

Yeah, we have to score a few hundred thousand and get out of the city without anyone noticing.

Her eyes burned with fatigue. At least her shoulder wasn't hurting. No, the only thing hurting was her chest. Or to be more specific, her heart. It was a fresh pain, a pain she thought she'd left behind monthsago when she had finally accepted Justin wasn't coming back. That Sigma had stolen him too.

”Go to sleep,” she told Cath. ”I'll turn in, in a few.”

But the girl was already asleep. Her even breathing filled the room. Rowan didn't mind. She had learned not to like sleeping alone. It was nice to have the sense of another psion near. If she pretended hard enough, she might be able to believe it was Justin for a few moments.

Rowan sighed, eased out of her jacket and unbuckled the shoulder holster. Tomorrow she'd wear a full rig. It would cost her in energy to keep it hidden from the crowd of deadheads and security cameras, but it would be worth it if trouble occurred. And the way her nape and upper arms were p.r.i.c.kling, trouble was a definite possibility.

This trip should fund them through the next critical period as well as finis.h.i.+ng the remodeling of the new Headquarters. By the time that was accomplished, the rest of Henderson's preparations should be in place to tap into the reserves the Society had left. It was slow going, because they had to make sure that Sigma hadn't trapped or frozen the financials from the records they'd acquired at the wreck of the old Headquarters. The safeguards had probably protected most of it, but Henderson wanted to be sure before he drew on the funds and brought a whole house of cards down on them.

Rowan rubbed at the back of her neck, sighing. She should be sleeping. If anything untoward happened tomorrow, she was going to need every sc.r.a.p of energy she possessed.

She couldn't help it. She gathered herself and sent a thread-thin call through the city, subtle as a single gold thread buried under wool carpet. There was only one other mind that could find that call, one other mind that would possibly answer her. Are you there?

Nothing. Her hook slid through dark waters, not a nibble. No bite.

Please, if you're there, if you've followed me, please talk to me. I miss you.