Interrogate if possible; otherwise, execute.”
“You risk losing Vasquez.”
“It’s become obvious to me over the past forty-eight hours that he’s been very, very careful not to connect himself directly to any one of these individuals. I’d been intending to pursue other options in any case.”
“I’ve passed the file to Aden,” Vasic said. “These operatives will be eliminated within the next day. We also have leads on four others.”
In no doubt that the Arrows would take care of that matter, Kaleb turned his attention to something else. “Where’s Ming?”
“He left minutes after the fire was suffocated.” A pause. “Ming knew about the scorch charges, when even the squad didn’t.”
Kaleb had already considered that interesting fact. “If Ming did supply Pure Psy, he had to know I would be the only one capable of stopping the attack.” And the other man would never give Kaleb such a huge platform on which to showcase his strength.
“Pure Psy may have gone off script. Ming’s team could have handled a smaller fire.”
“Yes.” Kaleb watched two men carry a body out of the nearest building. The dead who still had flesh on their bones were being rapidly processed, else the city would become a hothouse for bacteria that fed on necrotizing flesh.
“Keep me informed of your progress,” Kaleb said as another body was brought out. “I’ll funnel through the data I unearth.” He was already scanning the Net for any clue that might lead to the faceless man at the head of the fanatical group. It was time Vasquez learned that there could only be one power in the Net and the position had already been claimed.
* * *
SAHARA knew Kaleb wouldn’t show his pain, but she also knew she had wounded him. So when he appeared on her balcony over twenty-four hours after he’d left, freshly showered but with uncharacteristic lines of strain marring his features, she walked up to him, took his face in her hands, and said, “Forgive me.”
“You never have to ask.” He closed his hands over her wrists, his hair blue-black in the morning sunshine. “There is nothing you can do that I won’t forgive.”
Sahara wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight. “And there is nothing you can ever do that will make me turn away from you,” she whispered. “I love you, Kaleb.” It was an inexorable, beautiful truth.
“You shouldn’t say that.” Kaleb’s arms came around her, his hold almost punishingly tight. “I’m capable of terrible things. I would’ve killed millions if I hadn’t found you.”
“I can say whatever I like.” She pressed kisses along his jaw to his mouth. “And just because I love you doesn’t mean I’ll condone the untenable.” Loving him didn’t make her blind to his flaws. “I will continue to fight to pull you into the light.”
Kaleb’s eyes were that beautiful obsidian sheened with midnight color. “It may be a battle for the ages.”
Her lips curved in a shaky smile. “That’s okay. Someone once told me I’m the most stubborn individual he knew.”
He bent until their foreheads touched. “And you were only nine at the time. I consider myself warned.”
Gently caressing the back of his neck with her fingers, she spoke with her lips on his. “I don’t ever again want to worry about something like this.” A raw confession. “I need you to tell me everything you’re involved in, so I don’t have to wonder, don’t have to guess.”
Kaleb was silent for several minutes before saying, “I planned to have a changeling pack track you by scent if you ran from me.”
Sahara widened her eyes as a smile tugged at her lips. “How astonishing. I didn’t realize you were that possessive.”
He didn’t respond playfully to her tease as one of the leopard males might have; he reacted as only Kaleb would. “I theorized your ability might be limited to those of our race.”
“I’ve never had reason to test it,” she said, fascinated all over again by the complexities of his mind, “so you may be right.” Continuing to caress his nape, she waited, knowing that small confession had been a test to see how she’d take the rest.
“I did something to Tatiana you’re not going to be happy to hear.”
He’d promised her no torture, and Kaleb didn’t break his promises . . . but that left all kinds of loopholes for an intelligence as ruthless as his. “Tell me,” she said, accepting that this relationship was never going to be simple. “Tell me everything.”
They spoke for hours, in which he told her about Tatiana and about many other things, including the fact that he’d killed Marshall Hyde, the senior member of the Council at the time. “It was a flawless operation that no one ever connected to me,” he said, holding her close where they sat on the floor of the aerie with their backs against the bed.
“Why him?” Sahara asked, not shocked in the least. Council politics was notoriously bloody, and Kaleb had become a Councilor at twenty-seven. No one did that without being ready to play the game in cold blood. “Ming would seem the better target if it was about taking control of the Council.”
“It had nothing to do with the fact that he was a Councilor.” Kaleb’s voice chilled. “Marshall knew what Santano was, what he was doing to me, that I was nothing but a kind of toy he had created as an experiment.”
His fingers fisted in her hair. “Just make certain your proclivities don’t affect your duties. That’s what I heard Marshall say to Enrique when I was seven; that’s when I decided I would kill him and destroy his precious Council. Best way to do that was to become a part of it.”