The guard shoved David through the doorway into a shadowed room. The guards wore no name tags, and so he had no idea what to call them. Assholes came to mind, but he figured they wouldn't appreciate that.
David rubbed his shoulder, where the cretin had punched him when he protested at being separated from Sean. Another bruise on his forearm was blossoming a nice shade of plum. That one one he received for blinking, or maybe breathing. The guard hadn't specified.
He scuffled deeper into the room. His shoes scraped across the concrete floor. At a dozen feet wide and long, at most, the space pressed in around him. It reeked of sweat and blood and fear. A single bulb recessed into the ceiling spilled flickering light into the center of the room, but the sickly glow petered out before reaching the corners. A narrow wedge of brighter light from the corridor sliced through the gloom. David squinted. He still couldn't make out much besides the square shape of the prison cell.
And that's what it was. No bed, no chairs, nothing to provide a modicum of comfort. He kicked his toe into the bare concrete, catching it in a pit.
The guard kicked the door shut.
A locking mechanism chunked into position. David trudged further into the room. Halfway across the space, he stopped. A humanlike shape huddled in the far corner, masked in shadows and motionless as a boulder.
He had a cellmate.
The man's ebony skin blended into the gloom. Indirect light glimmered off his clean-shaved scalp. When he lifted his head to gaze at David, the whites of the man's eyes almost glowed. A trick of the dim light, David knew. Still, the sight of the pure white of the man's eyes, with inky disks at their centers, made David hesitate.
At the Mojave Desert facility, the scientists locked him in a cell outfitted like a hospital room, without the windows. His captors kept the door sealed at all times and, toward the end, they sedated him into unconsciousness. Here in Montana, without JT at the helm, Tesler clearly adopted a new tactic for imprisoning psychics, something closer to the way prisons operated. At least the guard removed the zip tie from his wrists before dumping him into the cell.
A spasm wrenched his entire body. Electric shocks ripped his flesh.
He staggered into the wall, gasping, his chest racked with pains. His spine contorted, as if a wire threaded through it was yanked taut. Sweat rolled down his temples, and blackness dotted his vision. He slumped against the concrete wall.
This pain. He'd endured it earlier today. It came from Grace.
Her firewall prevented him from contacting her — directly, anyway. He must try the indirect route, via emotion.
Grace had teased him into an outburst earlier, because she recognized his worst weakness. The inability to express his feelings. The irony of emotions being his only psychic path to her might've given him a laugh under other circumstances. But in this moment, afflicted with her suffering, he found no humor in it.
"Are you ill?"
David jumped away from the wall. He'd forgotten about his cellmate.
His new friend sat unmoving, turning only his spooky eyes to keep track of David. The man did not watch with wide eyes, however, but with a curious gaze. His mouth held a neutral position, not a smile but not a frown either. With his back to the wall, angled into the corner, he had his knees bent in front of him and his forearms resting on his knees with his hands dangling. The man appeared relaxed, yet David sensed a tension beneath the surface, coiled within the man's core like a serpent that might spring out to attack at any moment.
If his cellmate morphed into a werewolf, even that wouldn't stop him from what he needed to do.
"I'm fine," he muttered, to satisfy the other man.
Then he fixated his gaze on the far wall, unleashed his mind from his body and soared up into the crossroads. No traveling this time. He dragged in as much energy as he could withstand, consolidated every drop of passion and longing and adoration for Grace he possessed, and fired the missile down at her wall.
The projectile splintered.
White-hot shards punctured his mind, and he slapped his palms on the wall, swallowing a cry. Force wasn't the way, he should've remembered it from the first time he tried to contact her after she raised her defenses. When he'd shared himself with her before leaving the house, it had been more subtle, more intimate. The fact she'd been in his arms then, completely open to him in body and mind, must've eased the way.
He tried again. This time, he avoided the crossroads and stayed in his body. Instead of attacking her wall, he concentrated on sending her another gift, wrapped in the intensity of his love and concern for her. A single message, conveyed in emotion.
I'm okay.
It slid through, he felt it. Her fear, her pain, it melted away in the heat of his message. She was asleep, he sensed, yet she relaxed out of the torment.
"You don't look fine," his cellmate said.
David pulled himself up straight and forced a smile. "I'm good. Why should you care? We're strangers."
"The smell of decaying flesh bothers me. I'd prefer you don't die until the guards return."
"I'll keep that in mind."
David shuffled into the corner opposite the man. He seated himself at a forty-five-degree angle to the room, mimicking his cellmate's position. David stretched one leg out in front of him and bent the other so he could rest one arm atop his knee. The other arm he let hang down, with his hand on his thigh. He too could feign relaxation.
David nodded at his new friend. "I've never had a roommate before. Not sure what the etiquette is." He leaned his head back against the wall. "My name is David Ransom. What's yours?"
The man stared at him for several seconds, the whites of his eyes gleaming. Then he let out a small sigh and, in an accented voice, he said, "I am Nkosi Uba."
"Where are you from?"
"South Africa. Johannesburg, originally."
"I'm from Wisconsin." The words tasted strange. He hadn't spoken of his home in years. Though he'd told Grace about his childhood, those conversations happened during the eight months she no longer remembered. So essentially, he hadn't mentioned his home to anyone in a very long time.
Nkosi studied him in silence.
"Wisconsin is in the United States," David said. "It's north of — "
"I know where it is."
David shifted position, his pants scritching on the concrete floor as moved out of the corner to lean against the flat wall. "How long have you been a guest in this luxurious resort?"
A trace of a smile played across Nkosi's face, bit it faded swiftly. "I have been here for two months. I know this only because my watch tells me the date. Otherwise, I would have no answer for your question."
"They don't mind cruel and unusual punishment at these places. I imagine you haven't seen the outdoors in two months either."
"I have not — except for a blade of grass that fell off of a guard's boot."
David grunted. "I'm sure they believe that counts as seeing the outdoors."
Nkosi watched David intently, as if measuring up the man before him, and David wasn't quite sure if Nkosi liked the result.
"If they have sent you," Nkosi said, "to befriend me in hopes I will give them what they want, then you may inform them it will not work."
"Why would my befriending you get them what they want?"
"It is their way. It didn't work the four times previously, and it will not work this time either. If they burn you, I will not give in. If they slowly cut off your hand, still I will not give in. If they — "
"I get the idea." David felt a lump hardening in his stomach, like a meal he'd eaten too fast. He knew Tesler salivated at the prospect of torturing psychics, but this was the first he'd heard of burning or cutting off hands. Tesler favored cleaner methods that involved no messy fluids, other than tears. Seeing people cry and listening to them beg for mercy, that was Tesler's pleasure.
"Does your arm hurt?" Nkosi asked.
"What?"
Nkosi waved at David's left arm. "You've been rubbing it as if it hurts."
David glanced down and saw he was rubbing his arm. Old habits, he supposed. The bruise may have healed, but the memory lingered. He'd been strapped to a less-pleasant version of a dentist chair, veins combusting with a novel mixture of drugs meant to boost psychic powers and render the subject compliant. Tesler hunched before him, expressionless except for the glittering in his dark eyes.
"Who is Janet Austen?" Tesler demanded.
He slanted over David with one hand on each arm of the chair, pinning his already restrained arms to the chair. The pressure of Tesler's grasp triggered a dull aching in his arms that spread down into hands. David winced, but said nothing.
Tesler pressed down harder. David gritted his jaw so hard he thought his teeth might shatter. He would never tell this man what he wanted to know. Never.
"I know it's an alias," Tesler said. "Tell me Janet Austen's real name and the pain will stop."
Grace. Her name flitted through his mind, soft as a breeze. Beautiful Grace. Sweet Grace. His gut wrenched. He couldn't betray her even when his own life depended on it.
"Have it your way." Tesler stepped back, releasing the pressure on David's arms. A sigh rushed out of him unbidden, like the release of air when a vacuum-sealed container was torn open.
Tesler nodded to one of the guards posted near the door. The man strode over to David's chair and unhooked a billy club from his belt, which he offered to Tesler. The scientist took the club, slapping it on his palm.
"Tell me," Tesler said.
David shook his head.
Tesler slammed the club down on David's forearm. He stifled a cry as pain shot through his arm, into his hand, convulsing the tendons. The agony seared his muscles, rushing through his body in a wave that annihilated his thoughts. His ears rang. Darkness licked at the edges of his vision.
Kill me. The thought came from nowhere, it seemed. He didn't want to die, and yet he did not want to betray Grace, not even accidentally.
Tesler studied David with a look of detached interest. He might as well have been observing a baboon in a cage.
"I don't know who she is," David said.
Tesler pursed his lips, thumping the club on his palm. After a couple seconds, he shrugged and tossed the club to the guard. "Ah well, perhaps the drugs will work better. You may have masochistic tendencies, after all."
Then the scientist had left the room.
"How did it happen?" Nkosi's voice broke David out of the past. "Your arm. How did you injure it?"
"Wrestling with a snake."
Grace compared his mission with wrestling an alligator. She was right, his foolishness had whipped around to bite him in the ass.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, but the stain of guilt was embedded too deep to wipe off so easily. If Tesler captured Grace, he'd get answers from her no matter what it took. If she denied him, he might even overcome his aversion to messes and unlock fresh, more agonizing methods of convincing her to cooperate.
All because of me.
"Now you seem angry," Nkosi said. "You must have troublesome memories."
"Troublesome." David laughed, though not with amusement. To his own ears, the laughter sounded harsh and bitter. "You could say that."
Nkosi's eyes narrowed. His lips flattened.
Metaphysical energy tickled at his brain. He winced. Nkosi was attempting to touch his mind without his consent. Only Grace had permission to poke him this way, though from her, it came through with subtle, nearly sensual tenderness. He batted away the mental feather irritating him.
Of course, if Nkosi resolved to get inside David's head, he could batter down the gates without much effort. Every human mind boasted a built-in barrier, not quite a wall, but more of a curtain. Grace's firewall, erected with conscious purpose, blocked out everything. The natural curtain impeded curious travelers. Anyone with a serious interest in mind reading could rip away the veil with little expenditure of energy.
Nkosi prodded him once more.
"Are you sure you want to do that?" David asked. "Maybe you enjoy the occasional psychotic break, but I prefer sanity."
"The risk is only to me."
"I still don't want you ransacking my brain." David relaxed against the wall. "Besides, I don't care to have a lunatic for a roommate. I'd rather not have to clean up after you when you lose control of your bowels."
Nkosi arched an eyebrow. "I thought it was speculation that mind reading caused such dire side effects. You've seen the results before?"
"Yes." David met Nkosi's gaze. "Trust me, you don't want to risk it."
Nkosi squinted for a couple seconds, then nodded. "I have decided to trust you."
"Thanks." David supposed he should feel grateful, but he hadn't decided yet whether he trusted Nkosi. The man might be a plant, using the very techniques he claimed their captors used on him with his previous cellmates. David couldn't know for sure.
He sighed and said, "So you're from South Africa. I had no idea the induction program had gone global."
"Induction?" Nkosi's confusion seemed genuine.
David still had to play it safe. "How did you get here?"
The other man shrugged. "I was backpacking with my brother when men raided our camp. They wore black clothing and helmets that covered their faces. These men attacked while we slept, and by the time we knew what was happening, they had already tied us up. Once they determined our identities, they shot my brother in the head."
David jerked his head up and stared at Nkosi. The man stretched his fingers out, then curled them tight. His upper lip curled in disgust.
"He was of no value to them," Nkosi said. "They wanted me, not my brother. I watched him die before they injected me with something that put me to sleep. I woke up in a place much like this, but in Siberia. I didn't know where I was at first, and only later discovered how far they had taken me from my home. Then two months ago, they shut down the Siberian facility and brought me here." Nkosi shut his eyes. "They killed everyone at the old facility — except for me. I don't understand why I lived, when so many others died."
Nkosi's pain seemed real enough that David felt like a heel for doubting the man. Still, he must doubt. He must be suspicious, of everyone. He knew of just one person in the entire world whom he trusted with no reservations or doubts.
Grace.
He had to get out of this place and get back to her.
David studied his cellmate for a moment. Nkosi had opened his eyes, but he stared down at the floor. His shoulders drooped. He did not move, except for the rising and falling of his chest as he breathed.
"Tell me," David said, "why do our hosts want you so badly?"
"They want me to give them something, but I don't understand what it is."
"What do they say to you?"
"They speak of Golden Power and transference of psychic energies. They force me to watch as they torture my cellmates, all the time demanding I help them acquire this Golden Power they crave. Only when my cellmate dies do they relent."
David knew he had to ask one question, even at the risk of exposing the depth of his suspicion. "Why do they torture your cellmates and not you?"
"They tried in Siberia. It did not work." Nkosi gave him a weary look. "I am not stronger than other men. I simply do not know what they want me to tell them. They used several means to encourage me to cooperate, but I could not. If I had the information, I would've given it to them. Believe me. I am not a superman."
The shame in his voice and on his face triggered a wave of sympathy in David. He knew what it felt like to struggle against Tesler's methods. In his case, however, he would die before talking. If he broke, Grace would be the one to suffer for his weakness.
Nkosi had endured the torture not out of moral conviction or love for another, but simply because he knew nothing about the Golden Power. Assuming he told the truth. Assuming he hadn't cracked. If David believed the man's tale, Nkosi let his cellmates die because he had nothing to give his captors, no way to save the others' lives.
If David believed him. If he could trust anything or anyone in this place.
Nkosi had just tried to sneak into his mind after all.
The other man twisted around to lean sideways against the wall. A beam of weak light flashed over his head and neck, revealing a network of thin scars that slashed across his throat. In a tired voice, he said, "They always leave us alone for a few hours, then they return to begin the questioning."
David glanced at the door. A couple hours. He must get out of here before then. Under no circumstances would he betray Grace again, wittingly or not. But if he died…
He would not leave her alone. Some way, somehow, he must get back to her.
Grace roused in stages. First, the coolness of the air-conditioned environment kissed her skin. She wiggled her fingers, and her nails scritched across the chair's leather. Next, she tasted sour acid and sniffed spicy cologne. Finally, she parted her eyelids and blinked away the bleariness. Dim lighting eased her vision out of sleep, into awareness.
Amador crouched in front of her, his face creased with lines of worry. "Are you feeling better? What can I do?"
She recalled the suffering, the soul-rending certainty David was dying. Then, after she passed out, a warm serenity flowed into her, carrying with it reassurance and… love. The kind she luxuriated in whenever David drew her into his arms. Real, pure love.
David penetrated her psychic fortress. For a few long seconds, she wondered how he'd done it. But of course, he accomplished the same feat earlier today, when he poured his emotions into her with all-consuming kiss hotter than any they'd shared before. Though her firewall must've prevented him from traveling to her, it permitted him empathic communication.
"You are smiling," Amador said. "The pain is gone then?"
She touched her lips, which were slanting upward. David's phantom embrace lingered around her, and a ghost of his lips tantalized hers. She cleared her throat. "Uh, yes. No pain."
"Are you injured or ill?"
"Neither. It wasn't physical pain." But it sure as hell shredded her insides like the real thing. "I'm fine, I swear."
Amador eyed her for a moment, lips tight, and then nestled a hand on her knee. "You do look less pale than before you passed out. Perhaps I should call Wickham and have him fetch a doctor anyway. To be certain."
"No no, I'm fine." She noticed he hadn't carried her to a bed or a sofa to make her comfortable, or waved smelling salts to awaken her, or dabbed a cool cloth on her forehead. So far as she could tell, he'd knelt there staring at her until she revived on her own. Creepy.
Without getting up, he grabbed the phone off his desk and dialed a number — an extension within the house, most likely, since he dialed just three digits. "Wickham, please bring some juice and a small snack for our guest. She's feeling peaked."
He hung up, plunking the phone back into its cradle. His attention centered on her once again.
She fidgeted, the solace David imbued her with diminishing. He might've communicated his okay-ness to her, but she needed confirmation. She dug her phone out of her purse, flipped it open, and frowned.
"Is something wrong?" Amador asked.
"No signal. I need to call David." An edge of panic sharpened her voice. Damn. She hated sounding weak in front of Amador, but she couldn't help it.
He snatched the receiver from his desk, offering it to her. "Please use my phone. I insist."
Of course he'd insist. He probably recorded every phone call made from his home, or at least the ones made by guests. He could've jammed cell signals too.
She must hear David's voice.
Her shoulders hunched as she accepted the phone. "Thanks."
Amador nodded. He did not back away to grant her privacy.
After dialing the number for David's cell, she clutched the phone to her ear. One ring. Two. Three. She drummed her fingers on her thigh. Four rings. Five. Six. His voicemail picked up the call. She hung up and dialed her own cell to retrieve any messages. One voice mail awaited her, timestamped twenty minutes ago. Her fingers trembled as David's anxious voice spoke to her from the past. The tension in his tone infected her, and she gripped the phone tighter. Her frantic mind processed his words in snippets.
Tesler. Coming for you. Get out. Your psychic firewall is —
The message cut off. Ringing deafened her. Numbness tingled down her scalp, into her face. She hauled in a breath, and the another. The ringing and numbness faded, but a frozen ball of panic congealed in her gut.
Her psychic firewall was what? Working great? About to collapse?
She redialed David's number, and got his voice mail again. "David, please call me as soon as you get this. I heard your message and — " Amador was scrutinizing her, no doubt paying rapt attention to her words. She performed a quick mental edit of what she wanted to say. "I think we should discuss the possibility before taking any action. I'm away from home, so call my cell. Love you, honey. Bye."
The last part she added for Amador's benefit. His hand still warmed her knee with a discomfiting familiarity. A niggling at the back of her mind compelled her to remind him she was taken.
She started to hand him the phone, but froze. Grandpa. He was clueless about the danger. "May I make another call?"
"As many as you like."
And he'd observe and eavesdrop on every single call. Stifling a grumble, she dialed her grandfather's number. He answered on the second ring.
"Grace, I'm glad you — "
"Hi, it's Grace Powell. I'm afraid we'll have to cancel our meeting for this evening. Something's come up."
A pause. A gruff sigh. "You're in trouble. And you're not alone."
"Uh-huh. I'm sorry I have to flake out on you. The house is being fumigated, so I don't think we'll want to be in there for a few days at least."
"Fumigated?" He repeated the word slowly, as if puzzling out her meaning. "You mean it may be bugged."
"Worse than that. Some kind of black fungus is invading the place."
"Black — holy heaven, Grace. Are you talking about Tesler's commandos?"
"Yep. Don't put off your vacation on my account. We can catch up next week."
He said nothing for a few seconds. "I will not leave town without you. Tell me where you are, and I'll come get you."
"No." She nearly shouted the word, and Amador's mouth quirked in confused amusement. "I mean, uh… " She floundered for a way to convince him without Amador catching on. Oh screw it. "Please do as I ask. Please."
"Grace… "
"Please." She made no effort to conceal her pleading tone. "I promise I'll make our next meeting."
"All right. I'll go to our backup location. But if I don't hear from you by morning… I don't know. I'll find you somehow."
"Thank you." She disconnected the call. He would be safe, which gave her one less worry to gnaw at her gut.
Passing the phone back to Amador, she scooted sideways in the chair. Her butt had started to ache, thanks to the rock-hard seat. Though she'd fainted moments ago, energy pulsed back into her, on both a physical and psychic level. Her connection to David hummed in the background, easing some of her tension.
Amador's hand caressed her knee.
She gripped the arms of the chair. "Tell me how you know about Tesler."
Amador observed her for a moment, eyes half closed. Then he bent forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "I know of Tesler because I've met him. I spent time at a facility in Siberia where Tesler detained a number of travelers. It was not an enjoyable time."
Grace couldn't decide whether to believe him or not. The tightening of his features, the slight frown on his lips, the hunching of his shoulders — those things suggested the memory distressed him. Yet she didn't know him well enough to distinguish between real pain and great acting.
"The Siberian facility is shut down," Amador told her. "I managed to escape before the guards murdered me, as they did all the others."
Time for a strategic revelation on her part. At least she hoped it was strategic, and not plain stupid. At some point, she had to reveal a little in order to test his knowledge.
"I have some of JT's files," she said, "from the Mojave Desert facility in California. They name the travelers held at all the sites. Your name is not on that list, Mr. Amador."
"My friends call me Biel."
"We're not friends."
"Not yet."
He spoke with such complete certainty about the promise of their future friendship that she almost laughed. Almost. His certainty also struck her as arrogance, a trait she never trusted in anyone. "Whatever. The point is, your name appears nowhere in the database of travelers' names."
"I adopted a pseudonym, as you did." He arched an eyebrow. "Unless your true name is Janet Austen. I hope not, though, because Grace describes you far better."
"How do you know about Janet Austen?"
"I also have some files that once belonged to JT."
"Where did you get them?"
Dark glee colored his smirk. "I stole them. From the Siberian facility."
Liar. The word flared in her mind, but she struggled to keep her expression neutral. She guarded the sole copy of JT's private files on Project Outreach, on the flash drive tucked into her bra. JT told her it was the one and copy, and she believed him — considering the number of people he murdered in his zeal to reclaim the flash drive from her. Even a psycho wouldn't waste that kind of energy on a task unless it was vital. JT lusted for the flash drive because her grandfather had copied the project files onto it right before he trashed the facility's computer system, destroying those precious files. Amador could not have the same information.
Unless someone else, like Tesler, secretly copied JT's files.
Amador's extensive knowledge about her chilled her entire body, from skin straight down to her core. He knew things JT hadn't known about, as far as she knew.
"Please," Amador said, "I speak the truth. You must believe me."
"You've been spying on me," she said. "In my bedroom. You RV'd me in my private space, and that tends to annoy me. So no, I don't have to do anything for you. Especially not believe you."
"I have already apologized. I did not realize you were alone in your bedroom until after the excursion began."
The hairs on the back of her neck stiffened. In Project Outreach, the scientists called the RV sessions excursions. Something about Amador's use of the term bothered her, an indefinable off-ness she couldn't describe.
"Will you trust me?" he asked.
She tapped her fingernails on her purse in a fast rhythm. Trust Amador? No way. But if she wanted to learn how much he knew, and what he really wanted, she had to take a few risks.
Lips pursed, she zeroed in on his dark eyes. "I'm not letting down my psychic wall just yet. First, you need to prove to me you're on the level." Snowballs and brimstone popped to mind. She kept the analogy to herself. "Show me everything you have on JT, his companies, Tesler, the facilities — everything."
"Of course."
He retreated around the desk, flipped open his laptop, and tapped keys on the keyboard. The tickety-ticking of the keys was the only sound in the room, except for the thundering of her pulse in her ears. Nobody else could hear that, though. She hoped.
After a moment, Amador spun the laptop around to face her. "Here it is. Everything I have on anything remotely related to Project Outreach. You may view it here, or I can copy it onto a DVD for you."
"How about I take a peek right now and you give me that DVD to take home."
He nodded. "I'll have Wickham prepare it for you before you leave."
"Thank you." She scooted her chair closer to the desk. Eyes on the screen, she asked, "What pseudonym did you use?"
"John Mendoza."
"Who knew your real name?"
"Only Jackson Tennant. He hungered for psychic power, and strived to harvest the abilities of travelers. And he harbored a bizarre fixation with blood."
A shiver ran down her spine as a memory replayed in her mind. JT grasping a syringe. About to suck the blood from her veins forcibly. His expression wild. His desire for power palpable. He had honestly believed that by injecting himself with the blood of a psychic, he could acquire that person's abilities. Well, at least one part of Amador's story matched up with what she knew.
If he had JT's files, though, he might've learned about the blood thing that way. She hadn't read all of JT's files, since they were extensive, which meant the notes on his blood theory might await her somewhere deep inside the data. Amador might've found it first.
"I'm acquainted with JT's obsession," she admitted.
"He gave up on many travelers, when he realized the blood types were incompatible. He never gave up on you, though, did he?"
"No." She clenched her jaw. "Not until I made him give up."
"Yes," Amador said, his tone contemplative. "You killed him, didn't you?"
She froze, her fingers over the keyboard. Without looking up, she asked, "How do you know that?"
"Postcognition."
She snapped her head up to squint at him. "Post what?"
"Postcognition. I'm sure you know that precognition allows one to see future events. Postcognition is a term my captors used to describe an aspect of remote viewing that allows one to see past events. It doesn't always work, and it can be quite difficult to control. My only successful attempt occurred during an attempt to replay JT's death. I know you shot him."
"Why would you want to replay his death?"
"To know that he was truly gone." He offered her his hand, palm up. "And to thank the person who rid this world of a vile human being."
She glanced at his hand, knowing he wanted her to take it. She didn't move.
He curled his fingers shut. "You may not trust me yet, but know this. I admire you — your strength and determination, your loyalty to those you love, and your incredible psychic talents."
She focused on the computer screen, double clicking to open a database file.
"I can help you get him back," Amador said in a soft voice. "If that is what you truly want."
Head bowed, she turned her eyes to glance at him. "Get who back?"
"David. Your beloved." Amador leaned over the desk, placing his head inches from hers. He smelled of the outdoors, fresh and clean and masculine. "Together, we can find Tesler and stop him. Then David will have no reason to abandon you anymore."
"My relationship with David is none of your business." She drummed her fingernails on the desktop. Through gritted teeth, she said, "How the hell do you know so much about me anyway?"
He shrugged. "The files. And my remote reconnaissance of you and your associates. I needed to know as much as possible about you before I risked exposing myself to you."
She grunted. Yeah, his rationale made sense. She didn't like it, and sure as hell didn't trust him. At the moment, however, she needed him to think she might.
Forcing herself to relax, she said, "Thank you for sharing your information with me. But my relationship with David is off limits."
"As you wish. Nevertheless, I will help you find Tesler." He glanced down at her left hand, and the diamond ring on the third finger. "But in the process, you will learn things about your beloved that you may not like. Do you still wish to proceed?"
"Yes."
Amador settled back into his chair. "Then we shall find Tesler. I hope you are as prepared for the truth as you believe."
"I am."
Was she prepared? No clue. She had to proceed. For her, there was no choice anymore. To save David, she must risk losing him. To save the world from Tesler and his cohorts, she must risk everything — including her own life.
Tesler was coming. For her. Now.