Into Darkness

41

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact, because one of her many Gifts was that of Sight, and it allowed her to not only See inside people’s minds with a touch, but also to locate any living creature anywhere who had even a small percentage of Ikati Blood flowing through his or her veins.

Without the collar, she could See. With it, she was blind.

“You’re lying,” she said in a tremulous voice, watching him, smelling him, looking for any tic or tell that what he was saying was false.

There was none.

“I believe you can ascertain perfectly well if I’m lying or not,” he answered, still with that intimate whisper. “My offer is genuine. When Alejandro told us what you could do, I had this suite constructed in less than two weeks. Everything you can ever need is here; most anything you desire will be provided to you, you have only to ask. Your freedom will be restricted, of course, but I had my engineers design this interactive data screen specifically with you in mind. I call it the Oracle. It’s operated solely by voice; just tell it what you’d like to see and you can go anywhere in the world.” Without taking his gaze from her, he raised his voice and said, “Phuket.”

On the screens she’d thought were windows, a crystalline lagoon appeared, dotted with colorful canoes. Beach, sand, craggy cliffs covered with trees, fluffy white clouds freckling the sky.

“Fiji.”

A sun-bleached dock stretched over blue water. A thatched hut sat empty on the sand off in the distance. More fluffy clouds.

Thorne smiled. “It’s all pre-Flash imagery, of course. We had to really dig deep to recover all the data. It works for any spot on Earth, but since you grew up near the beach . . .” He shrugged. The casual smugness of it made her want to kill him so badly she had to bite her lip, hard, to distract herself.

Because what if—what if—what he’d said before was actually true? About Leander? About the girls?

Jenna closed her eyes, fighting hard to maintain her control. She didn’t want this man to see her fall to pieces. She stayed like that for a silent count of ten, until Thorne said something that made her open her eyes.

“Your daughter is lovely, Jenna. She obviously gets that from you.” He reached inside his jacket, withdrew an envelope and stood there fingering it, staring down at her with a predatory light in his gaze. “Would you like to see a picture of her?”

A sob stuck in the back of her throat. She raised a hand and covered her mouth, afraid of what would come out. A sudden hot prick of tears flooded her eyes.

“Here,” he said softly, and removed a photograph from the envelope. He held it out between two fingers, and, for the first time in twenty-five years, Jenna broke down and cried.

The camera had caught the image of a young woman running. Her arms and legs were bent in a way that suggested she was moving fast, and at the exact moment of the shot, neither of her feet was touching the ground. Her hair—long, braided—streamed out behind her in a blurred streak of gold. Her face was turned toward the camera, suggesting she’d been just about to look over her shoulder, and Thorne was right: She was lovely. Lovely and fierce, because Jenna knew deep in her guts that this picture had been snapped when she was being chased, but there wasn’t a trace of fear in her eyes. If anything, she looked almost exhilarated.

Her baby. A grown woman now.

All those years, lost.

“It was taken by surveillance cameras so the quality is a little poor, but there are others.” He removed another photo from the envelope. This one was posed, official-looking, featuring a slightly younger looking version of the girl in the first photo staring directly into the camera.

“This is from her work identification badge. That’s how we discovered her; she didn’t seem to be able to keep her . . . powers until control.” His voice grew as gentle as his eyes. “Tell me where the Ikati are hiding, Jenna, and I promise you I will return your daughters to you. Unharmed.”

Fury flashed over her, scalding hot, and Jenna’s face burned beneath the stream of tears. He’d stolen so much from her—husband, children, family, home—the most precious things in any woman’s life, including years that could never be retrieved. And why?

Simply because he could.

She stood, not caring about her tears, the way her hands were shaking, or the way her voice broke when she vowed, “Someday I’m going to end your life, Sebastian Thorne. For every year you’ve taken from me, for everything you’ve done, one day I’ll watch the light go out of your eyes and then I’ll spit on your corpse. I will never cooperate with you.”

He slid the photos back into the envelope. He placed the envelope back into his coat pocket. He turned to the Oracle. “Bring up subject four-nine-eight-six.”

The wall of glass flashed black, then showed the interior of a cell exactly like the one she’d just left. A man reclined on the folding cot, his back against the wall, a leg folded beneath him, the other stretched out to the floor. Bare-chested and barefoot, lean and leonine, he was reading a book. Thick black hair brushed his broad shoulders, a week’s worth of beard shaded his jaw. The image appeared to be static, the man held so still, but then he turned a page of his book and Jenna fell to her knees on the plush ivory carpet and let out a scream of anguish so primal and raw Sebastian Thorne took a few steps back in alarm.

She sobbed, “Oh God—Leander!”