Last Guard by Nalini Singh
Chapter 4
Current percentage of anchors diagnosed as psychopathic: 14%
Current percentage of anchors diagnosed as borderline: 27%
Current percentage of anchors with significant mental health risk factors: 43%
—PsyMed Census Bureau: 2067
CANTO ARRIVED ATthe oasis five minutes prior to his meeting with Payal Rao. “Thanks for the teleport,” he said to Genara.
Lifting two fingers to her temple, her ebony skin gleaming under the desert sunlight, Genara shot him a salute that was just a little too crisp to come off as anything but martial. Her hair, the tight curls buzzed close to her skull with military precision, echoed that impression, as did the way she stood lightly on her feet.
Always ready to snap into motion.
“Nice shirt,” she said.
He scowled. “Arwen calls the color distressed steel. It’s fucking gray.”
Genara’s flat expression didn’t alter. “Heard he stole your other shirts and burned them.”
“Go away,” Canto growled, because while Genara appeared as Silent as they came, she was tight with Arwen. Which told Canto all he needed to know about this new member of the Mercant clan.
Ena rarely adopted in family members, but when she did, it was law. Trust was given at once. Because Ena Mercant was the toughest of them all—if she said Genara was to be trusted, was to be treated as family, that was how it would be.
Canto had said “Yes, ma’am” and gotten on with creating an unbreakable new identity for Genara. The only thing he’d asked his grandmother was where in hell she’d managed to unearth an unknown teleport-capable Tk. Canto ran their intelligence operations, yet Genara was a mystery who’d appeared out of thin air.
Ena had taken a sip of her herbal tea and said, “You know I want you to act as Silver’s right hand when she takes the reins of the family.” Her eyes—unreadable silver at times, fog gray with a hint of blue at others—had been serene, her silky white hair in a pristine knot, and the pale bronze silk of her tunic without a wrinkle. “I had no such right hand until Silver came of age, and life is far easier with one.”
“As long as that right hand lives in the shadows, I have no problem with it.” Canto had about as much desire to live in the public eye as he had to wear the chartreuse horror of a shirt Arwen kept threatening to gift him. “What does that have to do with Genara?”
“A little mystery to keep you sharp.”
“I should quit,” he’d muttered, making a face at the tea she’d insisted on pouring him. “See who you can find to put up with this disrespect.”
Ena’s gaze had altered, holding a warmth he’d first seen when he was eight and motionless in a hospital bed, scared and lost in a way that had come out as childish rage. She’d been so cold then, a woman aflame with ice—except for when she’d looked at him. “You’re home now, Canto,” she’d said in that calm voice that hit down to the bone. “You’re safe. No one will ever again hurt you.”
Canto hadn’t believed the stranger she’d been, but she was all he had. What about her? he’d demanded telepathically, while the machine pumped air into his paralyzed lungs. The girl who helped me. 3K?
“There’s no record of her in the school’s system, and all those staff who had contact with the students are dead, so we can’t scan their minds.” Not even a single flicker in her at the idea of smashing open people’s minds to reveal their innermost thoughts.
Canto had held the implacable steel of her eyes. Did you kill them?
“I would have but only after getting all necessary information. Never act without thought, Canto. That is how your enemies win.” Her cool and smooth hand on his brow, brushing back his hair. “However, they were already dead when we came to bring you home. It appears one of the other students broke their mental bonds and struck out.”
The other kids?Canto had asked.
“We’ve found safe homes for them and will monitor their lives to ensure they have the help they need. Mercants do not abandon children. Remember that. Never will we abandon a child in need. But we found no other cardinal. We’ll do everything in our power to track down your 3K—your mother has already begun the search.”
It was the only promise to Canto that Ena hadn’t been able to keep, 3K being so far under the radar that she’d been a ghost. All these years and Canto hadn’t accepted that the ghost imagery might be harsh reality, that 3K was long dead. Magdalene, he knew, continued to run the search in the background of her other tasks.
Canto and his mother shared the same obsessive streak when it came to things that mattered.
On the subject of Genara, his grandmother had taken another sip of tea before saying, “No one else would put up with my games, dear Canto. Which is why I play with you.” And because she was Ena Mercant, the woman who’d taught a broken, angry boy the meaning of family, the meaning of loyalty, he was now hitting his head against the brick wall that was tracking down the true identity of his new cousin.
Never would he admit to Ena that he relished the challenge.
Today, Genara said, “Next time Arwen should steal your jeans, too,” before she teleported out.
Canto’s jeans were well-washed and shaped to his body. Arwen knew full well that Canto would hunt him down without mercy should he lay his stylish fingers on them. Shirts were shirts. Jeans? A whole different story.
Rather than staying inside the three-walled shelter at this end of the pathway, he made his way to the edge of the water that reminded him of the haunting azure glow of the Substrate. The late-afternoon sun was warm on his face and the skin of his exposed forearms, the dark brown leather-synth of his half gloves soft and supple from use.
He’d switched chairs for this, the wheels on this one wider and more rugged, better able to handle the desert environment. The chair’s computronic components were also designed to survive the fine particles of sand. It had taken him only a single teenage mistake to realize that this particular sand got everywhere and could freeze complex computronics.
The chair did still, however, have hover capacity—along with a hidden compartment that held a sleek and deadly weapon. As a cardinal telepath, he could blow out Payal’s brains even as she picked him up and smashed him against the nearest hard surface. In other words, they were both as dangerous as the other.
The weapon wasn’t redundant. It was practical.
A flicker in the telepathic scan he’d run continuously since his arrival. He couldn’t enter the mind that had appeared in his vicinity, but he knew it was there. Angling his chair to the left, he sucked in a breath as he watched Payal Rao walk along the paved path toward him. She was smaller than his mental image of her—though that made little sense, since he’d looked up her height.
But Payal had a presence that demanded attention, took over a space.
In raw physical terms, she was a bare five feet two inches tall. Her body curved sharply inward at the waist and flared at the hips. She had curves on her upper body, too, her shape not one that was favored among the majority of Psy. He knew damn well why—because it was considered inherently sensual.
That prejudice held even now, but according to his research, Payal had never capitulated to the societal pressure to get cosmetic surgery. Neither did she make any effort to downplay her body. She dressed with perfect businesslike sharpness, without ever blunting her edge; he wondered if she was conscious of the fact that her refusal to back down just added to her reputation as a woman of steel.
Payal Rao, a recent PsyNet Beacon article had stated, is a predator as deadly as any changeling panther. The last rival who forgot that is currently picking up the pieces of his life after a coldly calculating play by Rao saw his company’s valuation dive by seventy-five percent. When asked for comment, Rao said, “He began the skirmish. I ended it.”
Today, the predator wore a top of a lightweight material, the sleeves long and cuffed at the wrists and the neck featuring two long ties that she’d knotted loosely above the generous curves of her breasts.
It was smoky blue, a hue that complemented the honeyed brown of her skin.
According to his research, her father was a Gradient 7.9 Tk of Czech-Indian descent, while the maternal half of her genes came from a Gradient 8.8 F-Psy with a mix of Spanish and Indian ancestry.
The genetic mix had given her a softly rounded face with lush lips and long lashes that belied her reputation. Out of context—and if you ignored the night sky of her eyes—she’d appear a pretty and sensual woman, no threat at all.
As for the rest of her clothing, she’d tucked the blue top into wide-legged pants in a dark gray that flowed over her hips all the way down to just above the ground. Canto caught flashes of spiked black heels as she walked. He knew about those torture devices because Silver insisted on wearing them, too.
“They’re a weapon, Canto,” she’d said once when he’d asked. “Each element of how we dress is a weapon and a warning to the world. Even yours.”
Canto had briefly considered putting on businesslike clothing today, but as Payal was who she was, so was Canto. There was no point pretending to be otherwise if they were going to be working together for any length of time. The new short-sleeved shirt with its aged steel buttons was about as dressed up as he got.
She didn’t stare at his chair when she reached him; no doubt she’d seen and processed the sight when she first teleported in. But she would comment. Most Psy did. It was rare for them to see one of their kind using a device that assisted with motion. The Psy as a race had some very ugly decisions in their past; those decisions included a goal of perfection that had been a de facto program of eugenics.
Now they were all paying the price for those choices.
Right then, Payal did begin to stare. Hard.
Eyes narrowing, he went to snarl at her to take a photo if she was that interested.
Then she said, “7J.”
And his entire world imploded.
