Cipher Read online

  Carmen peered at the screen and nodded, mollified. “Looks like a graze. Whoever treated it did good work.”

  Settling into her seat again, Kat straightened the laptop and met Carmen’s gaze. “Alec doesn’t necessarily need to know. Andrew said there’s a lot of shit going down up there, and I’m plenty safe with him and Julio lurking around, waiting to eat assassins.”

  “Are you talking to me as a medical professional or as a friend?”

  A loophole, one that would keep Alec and his overprotective instincts in the dark. Kat stomped on temptation. “As a friend. If you think he needs to know, tell him. But we’re handling this. I’m handling this. It’s my mess, and I don’t want to get shuffled aside while everyone else cleans it up.”

  “I get that.” Carmen tilted her head. “Call me back if the shield thing doesn’t work. I think that’s the answer, but there are a few other possibilities.”

  “Is it…” Kat picked her words carefully. “Is that something people do? Bring other people inside their shields? Isn’t it dangerous?”

  “It takes trust,” Carmen answered slowly. “Absolute, unending trust. It’s not inherently dangerous, not usually, but you’re not a typical empath, Kat. You might be a special case.”

  So Callum had told her. He’d beaten it into her with every lesson, stressing the responsibility that came with their power with a straight-faced seriousness that dared her to turn it into a joke.

  She’d never dared. “I haven’t hurt him yet. But things escalate so quickly, and not just when we want them to. And the more intense we get—”

  “I know.” Carmen spoke with the voice of experience, something confirmed by the hint of color that rose in her cheeks.

  Oh God. The last thing Kat wanted to visualize was Alec’s sex life, but it was impossible to stop. At a lower level, the feedback she shared with Andrew would be useful for all sorts of boundary-pushing sexual adventures. Hadn’t she used the same trick to find out what Andrew needed? How easy would it be to test the lines between dominance and submission, or pleasure and pain, with feedback as a perfect, unfailing guide?

  Her cheeks must be redder than Carmen’s—the downside to having awkward conversations by videoconference instead of telephone. “Okay. Well…it’s not working for me. Just in case, could you explain how to make sure I keep him outside my shields when I rebuild them?”

  “Yeah, I can do that.” The older woman cleared her throat and began to explain.

  The tips of Kat’s ears were red when she came out of the office, and Andrew wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “Have a nice chat with Carmen?”

  “Educational.” She flopped onto the couch, legs sprawled haphazardly, and covered her face with her hands. “I’m an idiot. I spent all this time worrying about imprinting and weird psychic phenomenon. I missed the stupid truth because I didn’t want to admit it.”

  He set his book aside and pulled her hands away from her face. “What truth is that?”

  Instead of looking at him, she stared up at the ceiling. “It’s what I always do. I cling to you. I’ve been doing it since I met you, and now it’s just…habit.”

  “If you’ve been doing it for that long, how is it just now throwing us off?”

  “Carmen thinks I rebuilt my shields around you. And it didn’t make sense, until I thought…” The words trailed off. Tension tightened her eyes and kicked up her heart rate. “I know when the first time was. I should have realized, because it’s the one thing in my life I can’t forget.”

  The night of his attack. It had occurred to him before, to wonder what protected him from Kat’s lethal projection when the strike team members had fallen victim to it. He’d thought at first that it had been his own injuries, the fact that he’d been mostly unconscious anyway. Only after spending time with Carmen and Julio had another possibility emerged. “That’s how you kept me safe.”

  “I don’t think I was thinking about it that clearly. I wanted you shielded. And after—” A hitched breath. “My shields were wiped out by the burnout in Mobile. And when we were being chased? I—I thought about that night. I used the pain, and protected you from it. That’s probably why it got worse after that. I rebuilt my shields on the drive back, and I was clinging to you pretty hard.”

  “So it wasn’t imprinting after all.” Andrew pulled her into his arms. “And now you need to put me outside of your shields.”

  “Yes.” She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, and an echo of her pleasure hit him, sweet and soft but still hungry enough to stir his body.

  He shifted her until she was stretched out beside him on the sofa. “How do you do that?”

  “Drop my shields and then rebuild them. Carefully.” She tilted her head to peer up at him. “And make sure I keep you on the other side.”

  She’d been so worried about the effect her empathy had on him and their time together that Andrew felt only sheer relief. “It’ll be better for you, and I’m all for that.”

  “I know.” Her sudden smile was shy. “I think I can do it now. It might take a few minutes…”

  “Take all the time you need.” He wasn’t going anywhere, not until she told him she needed him to go.

  With a nod, she closed her eyes. Her breathing evened, then slowed. A tiny furrow appeared between her eyebrows, the only external sign of effort until she caught her lower lip between her teeth.

  The world went silent.

  He hadn’t noticed it until it ceased, the soft murmur of something that must have been Kat’s aura, comforting and ever-present. He missed it immediately, though he would have died before letting her know that.

  “Did it work?” Kat asked a moment later. “I’m thinking a really dirty thought. The kind of dirty that’d make yesterday look tame.”

  It still turned him on like burning—that she was fantasizing about him—but the echo had vanished. “Pretty sure it worked, yeah.”

  She reached for him, twining their fingers together. “So. No emotional craziness. No assassins shooting at me. Just…you and me. On a couch.”

  “The true test,” he murmured. Mundane didn’t scare him, especially not when there was nothing normal or usual about it.

  Kat took a breath. Took another. Her fingers tightened around his hand. “This is like starting over. Except not, because there’s so many things we haven’t talked about.”

  He’d put himself and their relationship in the same category as the rest of the problems plaguing Kat. She’d get around to him when she dealt with other stuff—and he’d be ready. “No rush. Get through the rest of this shit first. For now, we can just…be.”

  She shifted her weight, curling into his side with her feet tucked under her. “What are you reading?”

  He showed her the cover. “The last thing my mom published before she died. I’ve never read it.” But helping Kat search for information about her mother had prompted him to pick it up.

  “I’ve read it.” Her fingertip traced the edge of the book. “I’ve read a lot of her stuff. Not just because she’s your mother, either. I went through a phase when I was nineteen…read nothing but feminist theory for about six months. Alec hated life.”

  “I bet he did.” It was easy to imagine the sorts of heated debates his mother might have gotten in to with Alec. “I used to think the whole shapeshifter thing was a chauvinistic mess. You know, before. Now I know it’s not about gender at all. Derek sure the hell isn’t the boss of Nick.”

  “I always thought Nick was an exception. That Alec treated her like an equal because she was the werewolf princess. Because her dad’s the Alpha.” Kat’s slid her fingers off the edge of the book to twine with his. “But now I’ve seen him around Zola, and you’re right. It’s not gender. It’s power. He treats Miguel and Sera the same, because they’re both weaker than he is.”

  His mother, who had dedicated her life to studying power differentials in all their forms, would have been fascinated—once she understood. “It seems complicated until you’re in it, I
think.”

  “Because there’s shapeshifter power and family power and emotional power…” Amusement laced her voice. “Sexual power. It’s like the most complicated dance in the world, and no one teaches you the steps until you’re getting your toes stomped on.”

  “Or you’re the one doing the stomping.”

  Kat settled her cheek against his shoulder. “I think we step on each other’s feet a lot.”

  “Doesn’t matter, though.” He stroked her hair and smiled. Her proximity had always excited him, but now it soothed him, as well. “We’re figuring it out as we go.”

  “We are.” The tension seemed to be leaving her, drifting away as her body relaxed more fully against his. Attraction was there, and the barest hint of arousal, but she seemed content cuddled against his side, almost as if she was savoring the physical contact. Even her fingers made slow circles over his, tracing his knuckles and up to his wrist before meandering down again.

  A quiet moment, the sort of thing most people would take for granted. But not Kat, who was obviously starved for the simplest of contact.

  He could give her that. It couldn’t last forever, not with the shadow of whatever they’d uncovered on that zip drive looming over them, but for now…

  Yes, he could give her that.

  Chapter Eleven

  Three days of peace shattered with the rumble of a motorcycle engine.

  The warehouse’s downstairs kitchen was close enough to the main entrance that Andrew heard not only the engine, but the dull thump of boot soles on the pavement outside. He didn’t drop his dishtowel until the side door rattled and the bell buzzed.

  Kat glanced up, peering at him over the top of the laptop she’d opened on the island. “Are you expecting someone?”

  “Not particularly, but sometimes people show up.” He waved her back, walked to the door and opened it.

  The man on the other side looked like trouble, from his scuffed boots to his sunglasses. His leather jacket was unzipped just enough to reveal a shoulder rig, and tattoos climbing down the sides of his neck and disappearing beneath a black T-shirt. He had a duffel bag over one shoulder and a grin that outdid Alec at his most arrogant.

  He also had an aura of magic that felt like nothing Andrew had ever encountered before.

  When he spoke, it was in the flat cadence of TV newscasters, though a hint of southern drawl lurked around the edges. “You must be Andrew Callaghan. I’m looking for Kat. My brother sent me.”

  Ben’s brother, the one who liked to play with swords. “Patrick, I guess?”

  “Patrick McNamara,” he confirmed, holding out his free hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You too. Come in.”

  As the newcomer stepped into the warehouse, Kat appeared in the kitchen doorway. Her eyes lit up, and she took two excited steps forward before jerking to a halt. “Oh shit. How bad is it?”

  Patrick McNamara looked like trouble—or like the kind of guy you’d send in to deal with trouble. Andrew laid a hand on Kat’s shoulder. “Maybe we should all go sit in the kitchen and talk.”

  Kat didn’t move, but her shoulder was tense under his fingers. “How bad is it?” she asked again.

  “Bad, Kat.” The man nodded to Andrew and lifted his bag higher. “I’ve got the printouts in here. Ben didn’t want to take the chance they’d get intercepted.”

  Andrew hesitated. “Want to lay them out on the counter, Kat? We can look at them together, or you can have some time.”

  She drew in a steadying breath before shaking her head. “If it’s big enough for Patrick to drive over here personally, it’s not just about my family.”

  Despite the truth of the words, no one else had quite so personal a stake in the information contained in those printouts. “Did Ben give you a rundown before you left?”

  “The basics.” Patrick followed them across the open entryway to the kitchen tucked in the front corner of the warehouse. “I read through the highlights. There’s a lot of information here, and it’s a crazy kind of scary.”

  Kat cleared her laptop out of the way so he could start pulling out files. “Information about…”

  “Psychics.” The folder he pulled out looked like the one Ben had given them with fake identification. “Kids, mostly, or people who were kids ten years ago. Whoever drew up these files was looking to build an army of psychics and planned on using them to break the world wide open.”

  Andrew took the proffered folder, thick with pages, and flipped it open. As soon as his eyes focused on the list of names on the cover sheet, he understood why Patrick had given it to him instead of Kat.

  Psychics of Interest. A list, and lengthy enough to be exhaustive. He recognized too many of them—ones he’d heard in passing, and even people he knew. Members of their community.

  Not to mention the woman Kat’s mother had trusted with her daughter’s life. “Peace Kristoffersen had a power called psychic obscuration. That’s what she was talking about, why Alyson gave her the key. The cult literally couldn’t find her.”

  He flipped the pages, and his blood ran cold. There were other lists—To Watch and Eliminate. Callum, Kat’s mentor, was on that one, along with a few others Andrew didn’t recognize.

  The last section wasn’t a list but a collection of dossiers complete with pictures and a header on every page that left his hands shaking.

  Of Particular Interest.

  A much-younger Kat smiled up at him from one page. It detailed her strengths and weaknesses, as well as her most appropriate uses—morale and personnel control. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

  Kat was oblivious, her attention on another set of papers. “This is what she meant.” Her voice held an edge of horror. “Turning me into a weapon.”

  Andrew shuffled the remaining papers. “There must be three dozen dossiers here.”

  She caught his hand and pushed one paper toward him. “It’s not recruitment, Andrew. It’s enslavement.”

  Patrick cleared his throat as Andrew stared down at neat specifications for a collar and an accompanying charm. “It’s a prototype, and according to the notes, they made one. Slap the collar on a psychic, and anyone with a whiff of psychic power can control them. Use their powers, do whatever they want.”

  None of the information on the lists was groundbreaking. Even if Kat’s mother had taken it all, it would be easy to reconstruct, something the cult could have done ten times over in the years since her death. “That must be it, then. She must have taken it, and they have reason to think she wouldn’t have destroyed it.” He frowned at the schematics. “So why didn’t they build another one?”

  “That’s just the user manual,” Patrick said quietly. “The wizard who built it died around the same time this disk was made. His house was razed. Ben’s pretty sure it’s the last thing Kat’s mother did before they killed her.”

  “So this is their only shot.” If it wasn’t so damned dangerous, if Kat hadn’t been shot already, Andrew would have laughed. “All their eggs in this tiny basket.”

  “They could be looking for another witch or wizard,” Kat pointed out. “They could be trying to make another one. But I think, if they’d managed? They wouldn’t be risking this much. Chasing me around has the potential to drag the Southeast council into this. And hell, Derek and Nick and Nick’s dad.”

  “The whole Conclave would get involved in something like this,” he corrected. “Though they obviously meant to intercept the drive before you had a chance to decrypt any of these files, the fact that they didn’t has upped the ante. You could leverage this stuff into a lot of help.”

  “There’s something that’s not in the files.” Patrick leaned back, draping his arms across his chest. “Ben didn’t print it out. Made me memorize it. GPS coordinates, and we’re pretty sure it’s where the collar ended up.”

  Andrew pulled his phone from his pocket. “Did you run them?”

  “Nope. Didn’t want a record left if something happened to me.”

  Patri
ck rattled off the number for Andrew to enter as Kat opened the third folder, her eyebrows coming together. “They were outlining missions. Not vague goals either. This one uses Ben to obtain additional sources of funding by shaving interest off of thousands of corporate accounts.” She flipped a page. “These are detailed. Insanely detailed.”

  “And useless without the collar.” The GPS search program on his phone returned the results. “It looks like a spot out in the middle of Terrebonne Parish, south of Houma. The back end of the bayou.”

  Kat snapped the folder shut and pushed it away from her. “So we go find it,” she said quietly. “We go find it, then we fly to Wyoming and let Michelle Peyton use her badass Seer magic to erase it from existence.”

  It sounded simple, easy. “We have to plan on being followed, one way or another, which means we plan for a fight.”

  “Which means we bring Julio.” Kat glanced up at him. “And Anna. I don’t think we should waste time calling people back from all over the country. We should go as soon as we can round everyone up.”

  Which left out most everyone she hadn’t already named. “And Miguel,” Andrew noted. “This is his fight too, whether he knows it or not.”

  “What about that wizard you work for?” Patrick asked. “Jackson Holt, right? Isn’t he still in town?”

  “He’s out west, helping his wife track down a relative.” The words were absent, most of Kat’s attention fixed on Andrew. “Are you sure about Miguel?” she asked, almost tentatively. “It won’t be complicated?”

  It would be hell, especially if shit went down and they ended up in a fight where Miguel’s instincts might very well lead him to try to protect Kat. “I won’t love it,” Andrew admitted, “but we can’t afford to leave valuable people out of the loop because they make us cranky. It won’t be a problem.” Nothing I can’t control, anyway.

  Kat nodded and turned to Patrick. “And I guess that’s why you’re here.”