Chapter 50

Cecilia Bonet began paying taxes in Moscow three years ago. Work listed as private carer of two individuals.

Prior to that, she was paying taxes in the USA. It’s listed as her country of birth, and she worked there all her life before coming to Moscow. Gap of a year in her résumé that aligns with a new educational certificate in caregiving.

All looks clean and aboveboard. Full details attached.

—Message from Pavel Stepyrev to Yakov Stepyrev (11 a.m. today)

THEO WAVED FROM the car as Cissi led Santo and Janine up the walkway toward the front door of the apartment building. Janine and Santo both waved back wildly, and kept on doing so until Cissi got them inside.

Pausing on the doorstep, the carer shot them a quick wave and a smile before she entered behind her charges.

“That was an interesting day,” Yakov said as he pulled away from the curb.

Because it had been a day. Janine had become so attached to Theo in the short time they’d spent together that she’d become distressed when Theo made a move to leave with Yakov.

Wishing she could read the thoughts inside the woman’s deliberately damaged mind, Theo had nonetheless known one thing: she couldn’t hurt this person who’d been broken by her family. If Janine, for some reason, found happiness in her, then Theo would stay with her as long as it took.

She and Yakov had ended up working in the garden with the two, then had taken the pair and Cissi out to lunch, followed by ice cream. After which, they’d gone for a long walk along the river, with Santo and Janine stopping to pet dogs, while Yakov ran into more than one person he knew.

It was after lunch, when Cissi pulled out a small bag of pills to give to Santo one by one, that they’d been given the answer to one of their questions.

“Those are strong medications,” Theo had said quietly when Yakov escorted Santo to the washroom, and Janine was distracted by the aquarium wall in the restaurant. “Especially in combination.”

Cissi had nodded. “When I first started the job, I figured out two by searching the marks on them. Got freaked out.” A tightness to her expression, she’d said, “I brought it up to their guardian, told her I’d refuse to be part of any form of drug abuse.”

“What was the response?”

“She said that she wished she could wean Santo off them as she had Nene, but that the ‘accident’ and the drugs he’d been given in the aftermath had permanently reset Santo’s entire system. He seems to need them to remain stable and sane.”

Cissi had pressed her lips together. “To put my mind at ease, to make sure I’d follow the regimen, she placed Santo on half doses for a day so I could see the impact.” A shuddering breath. “I felt so awful after, even though she took full responsibility for the decision. He . . . becomes lost in nightmare. Garbled speech, whimpers, loss of physical functions, and worst of all, he screams as if he’s trapped in a hellish inner landscape.”

The reaction could as well have been shock at a sudden reduction of dosage, but Theo didn’t believe the guardian’s act showed malice, not when Janine was free of medication. “Did she say how long she tried to wean him off?”

“Longer than with Nene, but he never comes out the other side, and she couldn’t stomach it anymore.” Cissi’s voice had been thick. “She loves them, Theo. Trust me on that. My Silence is shit because while my main ability is telepathy, I have low-level E abilities. I only survived the Council because I buried that part of me out of self-preservation.”

Laughter bitter and ragged. “But I’m through with hiding—and that bit of E in me means I’m not fooled by fake Psy emotion. It’s the real deal. If she could get him free of the drugs, she would. That terrible day, she got into bed with him and hugged him and rocked him until he finally fell asleep. It took hours but she never left, never gave up.”

Now, with the sky growing dusky as they drove back to the apartment, and Yakov’s presence a living warmth that surrounded her, she found herself thinking of this mysterious guardian. Who could it be? A staff member who’d disagreed with what was going on at the facility?

“Who’s Keke?” The rumble of Yakov’s voice, the pitch of it resonating deep within her, an imprint she would never forget, no matter how long she lived.

It would hurt to be away from him.

Shoving that aside because her selfish wants couldn’t have priority here, she said, “I wish I knew. I’ve checked all my mental files and as far as I know, no one with that name—or nickname—is part of my family, worked for my family, or was otherwise connected to us.”

Yakov tapped a finger on the steering wheel. “Not a stretch to assume it’s their guardian. Obviously has to be a person who knew the ins and outs of the facility’s finances well enough to get access to the stream of money your grandfather earmarked for it—and clever enough to have hidden it all this time.”

Theo stared out the windshield. “And a good person,” she found herself saying. “She saved those people, Yasha. My family doesn’t save people. We hurt and kill people. She’s not of our blood.”

“Bullshit, Theo.” His tone was harder than she’d ever before heard it. “Stop telling yourself that. You’re doing exactly the same thing right now. Trying to save people, help people.”

Theo wanted to believe that, believe that she had a seed of goodness in her. She had once upon a time. She’d saved that bird with Pax, had felt good about it. But it had been a long time since she was a child. A long time for her grandfather to twist her into a creature of his own making.

Unable to confront the likelihood of her own conscious involvement in evil, she thought back to something Yakov had said right at the start of the day, but that she’d let slide through the surreal beauty of what followed. “How did you know that Janine was a telekinetic? Was it in her records?”

A shake of his head. “There were far fewer records for her than for Santos. Makes sense if she was working directly for your family.” His chest fell and rose in a deep inhale, followed by the rush of an exhale. “I caught her scent at the site of the murder, Theo.” His words were heavy rocks falling into a glacial pond, cracking through the ice to spread chaos. “Not at the initial site, but at the pickup location in the forest. She teleported the murderer out.”

Theo’s skin was suddenly aflame. “Someone is taking advantage of a person who can’t say no.”

“No,” Yakov murmured. “It’s worse than that. It has to be someone she trusts. Someone to whom she doesn’t say no. Otherwise, she’d have told Cissi. The trust there is pure—but she trusts the murderer more.”

Bones grinding as she clenched her jaw, Theo forced herself to think beyond her anger. Always there, that anger, that rage. Like a furnace she couldn’t switch off. “Obviously you’ve cleared Cissi?”

“Yes. Nothing of her scent at the site except as a secondary thread in Janine’s. And Pasha found nothing suspicious in her history.” He squeezed the steering wheel. “Which leaves us with their mysterious guardian.”

But Theo shook her head. “If we accept that Cissi has the correct information and their guardian is out of the country, then I’d say no. It would require an immense amount of power for Janine to teleport that far to pick her up, drop her off, then return herself. She’s strong, but she’s not a cardinal.”

At 6.1, Janine fell into the relatively rare cadre of Tks who were teleport-capable at under 8 on the Gradient. Her range was limited, as was her endurance. Quite aside from Marshall Hyde’s power, that was likely why she’d ended up in private service rather than a soldier.

Thrusting a hand through his hair, Yakov frowned. “Which means either their guardian is nearby, or it’s another person.”

“Someone in the complex?”

“No hint of the killer’s scent around the building. Doesn’t make sense if they’re a resident—it’d be embedded by dint of simple repetition.”

Theo chewed on the inside of her lip, a dawning horror creeping across her vision. “What if someone else survived the Center?” she said slowly. “A person Janine trusts. Trusts enough not to tell Cissi or her guardian about them.”

“It might not be a patient.” Yakov passed a slower vehicle, his hands easy on the vehicle controls but his expression grim. “What if the survivor was a member of the staff? Easy enough to gain the trust of a patient like Janine if you have constant access to her—a little kindness and she could have come to see the staff member as a friend. A twisted individual playing the long game, keeping a teleporter in their back pocket.”

Theo’s rage burned in her skin, was a haze in her vision. “What do we do? How do we stop it from happening again?”

“I spoke to Cissi while you and the others were looking at the ducks in the river,” Yakov said. “I told Cissi that I picked up Janine’s scent at the location of a brutal crime. Made it clear I didn’t think she was the perpetrator, but that she was leaving the apartment without Cissi’s knowledge.

“Turns out Cissi has access to medication intended to calm Janine and put her to sleep in the aftermath of a severe panic attack. Cissi doesn’t like using it, but she also understands that it’s the only way to keep Janine safe.”

Theo could tell he didn’t like the only viable solution. Neither did she. But whether she knew or not, Janine was an accessory to murder. Leaving her free to teleport at will could lead to another bloody scene. “Will you inform Enforcement?”

Yakov pressed his lips together. “No. Cops will try to interrogate her, and she’s not capable. I also don’t think she’ll ever share her secret—not if she’s kept it from Cissi all this time. She’ll just break.”

“It’s a short-term solution.”

“Only tonight.” Yakov squeezed the steering wheel. “Tomorrow, Cissi said she’ll take them to a public place, where Janine can’t teleport away in secret. But she’s not willing to drug her again and I’m not about to ask her to—we’ll have to find another way to deal with it.”

“There’s really no way to keep a teleport-capable telekinetic locked up unless you cage their mind, and no one has the right to cage an innocent being’s mind.” Because Theo was certain that whatever it was Janine had done, she’d had no intent to participate in the brutalization and murder of others.

“We may be able to get away with intensive psychic surveillance,” Yakov said. “I’ll talk to Silver—she has connections upon connections. Including any number of deadly minds that’ll keep her secrets.”

Theo could feel control over the whole situation with the facility slipping out of her hands, panic a fluttering beast inside her. But there was no choice now. Others were involved. Others who’d been hurt far worse than her. She’d give them every advantage she could. “Maybe their guardian will get in touch with us tonight.”

“We can hope. If she doesn’t, I’ll talk to Silver about arranging psychic surveillance, and we can head out to the facility.”

“Yes, that sounds like a good plan,” Theo said, knowing she had to update Pax and soon. “Did you get a report back on those pages we found?”

“Yes, I forgot to tell you—I forwarded it to your account. Came in while we were with the others. It’s just a standard run sheet for the facility. Time of meds, time for outdoor exercise, that type of thing.”

Theo felt herself deflate. She’d known it was highly unlikely those pages had anything to do with her, but still she’d hoped. Because she needed to know. Couldn’t move forward with that hole in her memories and in her mind.

“We’ll find the answers you need, Thela.” A rough promise, Yakov brushing his hand over her hair as he brought the vehicle to a standstill in front of a red light.

His phone beeped before she could reply. He’d connected it to the car’s system and the name on the screen in the middle of the dashboard said: Mama Bear.

“Ma doesn’t usually call without reason,” he said, then gave the command to answer the call, following with: “Ms. Mama Bear Kuznets.” He said with a grin, “I have you on speaker. Theo is in the passenger seat.”

“Good” was the firm response. “You can bring her to dinner with the family. In one hour. The cantina.” Then she hung up.

Yakov groaned. “I do believe my mother has heard about our escapades at Club Moscow and about the fact I’ve been spending nights with you in the apartment. She has mother radar.”

Theo felt her cheeks burn, couldn’t quite understand her reaction. “She’s angry.”

Grinning, Yakov shook his head. “No, that’s what she always sounds like when she’s giving an executive order. Disobey at your own peril.” But once they got going again, he glanced over at her. “If you’re not up for it, I’ll say no. I might be scared of my mother, but I’m not a total chicken.”

Theo swallowed hard, and it was the rawness in her throat that decided her. “I’m dangerous,” she said. “I shouldn’t be around any of your family. Especially if there are young children.” She thought of the cubs, so sweet and trusting, that she’d met in the bakery, felt her heart stop at the idea of causing them harm. “You saw how I get, Yasha. I don’t know who I am. I forget how to be rational.”

Yakov’s bear was in his voice when he rumbled, “You can sit next to me, and if there’s a wall available, we’ll put you against it. I know the signs now. It’ll fucking kill me, but I promise I’ll knock you out the instant your expression turns vacant.”

Need a keening echo in her brain, Theo resisted the temptation to just say yes. “During the rages, I siphon power from Pax. I’m not a 2.7 then.”

“You’re also wearing that bracelet that I want to throw into a lake. You said it’s an early warning system.”

Theo looked down at the metal encircling her wrist. She’d fixed it, then secretly tested it in the bathroom. The pain had stabbed right into her bones. “Yes,” she said on a little bubble of hope so fragile and fine. “At its current setting, you’ll have a second, maybe two at most.”

“I always have a stunner on me. A second is all I need.”

Theo had been looking at—admiring—his body for days now, but she’d never once spotted the weapon. He was better than good, she realized, the knowledge a breath of freedom. “No hesitation?”

“No hesitation,” he promised. “The last thing I want is for a bunch of rampaging bears to pounce on you.” The brush of his knuckles against her cheek. “I want you to meet my family, Theo. And I want them to meet the woman of my dreams.”

Theo’s reservations crumbled under the primal caress in his voice. “Okay.”