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"I was behaving normally," she retorted

"Yes" He met her eyes "For the first time since your abduction, you behaved as someone fully healed would behave"

Brenna frowned "Judd, you’re going to have to spell it out for me before you bleed to death on my floor" Despite the sharp words, her worry for him was a wound in her eyes

"Brenna, what happened the day Enrique kidnapped you?"

"Why are you asking me that?" she snapped "You know I don’t re else" Every cut, every blow, every hurt

"Shock" She hugged herself "That’s what the healers said"

"Your pack found evidence of an unknown van in the area at the time"

"Enrique must’ve knocked one over this topic er"

"No, you wouldn’t"

"Then, why - " Horror bloo back and forth "No, you’re wrong"

Judd wanted to be wrong if it would wipe that look off Brenna’s face He’d been blinded by her loyalty to the pack when they’d first broached this topic and even now had not even a shred of evidence to support his theory, but he had instinct The details of the kidnapping were the one thing Brenna, and only Brenna, knew about

It eted because of the statement she’d made about Tim’s murder She’d been openly shaken at the ti she claione, no one would ever be able to prove what Judd now suspected - that a felloolf, a packmate, had sold her out to Santano Enriqueto be butchered like so much meat

Chapter 41

Nikita uploaded the data crystal she’d received thatonto a computer in her penthouse suite The crystal held a file she’d paid a premium ah co his life, and his sanity, on the line Nikita had had to agree Kaleb’s little gift - it was rumored he had the ability to cause permanent insanity - made even the most experienced of thees long and sta facility where Kaleb had been placed at age three, when he’d first begun exhibiting his considerable telekinetic strength As was usual, the juvenile files had been sealed at Kaleb’sthemand why she hadn’t known the na away that unexpected piece of data, she scrolled down She soon began to notice odd gaps in the record There was a continuous accounting of his progress up to age seven years, four e seven years, seventhree aps were highly irregular Training logs were meant to be kept strictly up-to-date

She restarted fro and imap in the log appeared one week to the day after Kaleb had had a personal training session with Enrique With any other trainer, it would’ve been a cause for concern, but not a major problem overall

However, Santano Enrique had been no ordinary cardinal He’d been an exceptionally high-functioning sociopath, one of the siven free license by Silence Enrique had escaped all the procedures set in place to detect such anomalous minds and become Council Now it appeared that Kaleb had been far more than e

The NetMind’s recent slew of fragmented reports, especially in relation to the unknown serial killer, took on a new iht of this information The last time they had had such problems, the NetMind had been under Enrique’s control

Returning to the file, she saw that Kaleb’s power arc had also been unusual Most cardinals followed a steady and predictable progression frohter, Sascha, of course, had been a different story It would have been far easier for Nikita to terminate the fetus as soon as the in vitro psychic tests showed the near-certain presence of the E designation It was, in fact, what the Council had ordered in the early years of Silence The ability of E-Psy to heal emotional wounds had been considered redundant in a race that had no emotion

A decade later, they had discovered the Correlation Concept - a direct if not scientifically provable relationship between the number of latent E-Psy and the overall stability of the populace In simple terms, the fewer the E-Psy, the ht to full term and forced to contain their abilities under several undocu That hat had led to Sascha’s irregular develop like that could account for the nature of Kaleb’s psychic growth At ten years of age, he’d been as focused as an adult His concentration hadn’t lapsed during the occasionally problematic period of adolescence, but evidenced a sharp decline at age sixteen That would have been a cause for severe concern, except that Kaleb had stabilized within the , the M-Psy had been unable to find any evidence of psychic or physical trauma that could account for his relapse In the end it had been noted down as a delayed adolescent reaction