eyes wide when she realized she was floating, she stood up and, after glancing furtively around, jumped up and down on the cushion of air, the sun sparking off hidden strands of red-gold in her hair. waiting until she'd sat back down and was stable, he lowered her gently to the grass.

"that was wonderful," she said, her lips curving into a smile before worry darkened her expression. "i'm sorry. did it hurt you to do that?"

kaleb shook his head at the unexpected question. he'd lain bloodied and broken in front of santano and his pet medics, but not one had ever looked at him like sahara was doing-as if he was a person and not a thing. "your silence is flawed for your age group," he said, the water cool under his fingertips as he swirled it again.

folding her arms, sahara bit down on her lower lip. "are you going to tell on me?"

"no." he had no loyalty to anything or anyone, nothing worth betraying this girl who made him forget she'd been ordered to spend time with him.

when she waved surreptitiously at him as he left, he decided he had to come back, had to find out what she would do if she was free to choose whether or not to talk to him.

it took him almost two weeks to slip away from the training facility. he used sahara's face as a teleport lock, arriving in the backyard of a small home to find her sitting on a wide stump. her feet were bare and her braids messy, a frown of concentration on her forehead as she stared at a datapad.

"hello," he said, and waited for her to scream that an intruder had breached the security of the compound.

except . . . she broke out into a huge smile. "hi!" setting down the datapad, she said, "is that man here again?" her smile faded. "i don't like him."

kaleb shook his head, a strange sensation in his chest at not being rejected. "i came to see you." he thought about not adding the next part, but it seemed wrong to lie to sahara when she'd trusted him with her own thoughts. "i don't know any other children who talk to me."

"that must be lonely." taking a squashed nutrition bar from her pocket, she broke it in half and held out a piece toward him. "i know you probably think i'm a baby, but you can be my friend if you like."

when he accepted the offering, she shifted on the stump to make a space for him.

taking the seat, he said, "i don't think you're a baby. i think you're smart and you see things other people don't." countless adults had seen him after santano tortured him, but none had ever noticed that he was hurt. worse, none had ever seen santano for what he was. "i don't like him, either."

sahara chewed on her half of the nutrition bar and banged the back of her feet on the stump.

"oh, good."

he wasn't aware of what he was about to say until the words were out. "you have to be more careful." if someone like santano found out how bad sahara's silence was for her age group, they'd put her into intensive conditioning and crush her with pain until her responses were "correct." until she wasn't sahara anymore. "you smiled at me."

"that's because i like you." it was a statement so absolute, he couldn't not believe.

"i can help make your psynet shields stronger," he said, a sensation inside him that he thought might be the beginning of loyalty. "so you're not exposed there." he'd have to take care, but the ugly things santano had planted in his mind only reported back if he used too much energy.

"you'd do that? thanks, kaleb!" she threw her arms around him.

it was the first time he could ever remember being held.

chapter 37

sahara woke to find kaleb watching her, his eyes of starlight. "what are you thinking?" she asked in an intimate whisper, her legs tangled with his and one of his arms acting as a muscular pillow for her head.

he tumbled her gently onto her back, his body pressing down on hers. "how you taught me to climb trees."

delighted at the idea, she wrapped her arms around his neck. "was i a good teacher?"

"yes, but you kept trying to trade your teaching skills for answers to your math homework."

the cool comment made her grin and demand further stories about her aborted career as an extortionist. he gave her what she demanded-and she hoped that these wonderful memories, innocent and bright, were safe in the vault, that she'd soon be able to access them herself.

"you even made a plaque to commemorate my first successful climb of the biggest tree in the compound," kaleb added. "it's in my study."

sahara frowned. "i don't . . ." laughing as she realized what he was talking about, she nuzzled at his throat. "the piece of wood with your name?"

fingers weaving into her hair, he held her to him. "you worked on it for weeks," he said, as another related memory tugged free of the vault.

"here."

kaleb took the small, battered book from her hand. "what's this?"

"poetry." sahara saw from his expression that he had no idea what to make of that and clasped her hands nervously behind her back. "i know the lines seem nonsensical, but they always make me think."

perhaps, she thought, her heart hurting, the sheer perplexing nature of the rhymes would help him see that the world wasn't simply full of horror and pain, that there were strangely wonderful things, too. it worried her how much darkness she saw creeping into him day by day, hour by hour, and she'd fight the slow loss of her kaleb any way she could. even if it was with whimsical poems about fantastical creatures.

"thank you," he said, opening the cover to see the homemade birthday card she'd put inside.

his hands treated both the card and the book with care, as if they were precious. kaleb always treated her gifts as precious.

"i'm sorry it's not in very good condition." she'd bought it with part of her stationery allowance, after managing to fix a broken datapad so she didn't have to replace it.

kaleb's eyes were filled with stars when he looked at her. "it's perfect. even if i am certain i'll be as bad at understanding poetry as you are at math."

the memory fading, sahara smiled at the dangerous man in bed with her. "did you read the poems i gave you?" she asked softly, thankful to the girl she'd been for fighting for kaleb with every weapon in her arsenal, no matter how small.

"first, i had to learn french," he said, to her shout of laughter. "they were still incomprehensible.

i told you that, and next time, you gave me a seventeenth-century romance." his hair fell across his forehead as he dipped his head. "you had to decipher it for me."

laughing even harder, she cupped his face, their foreheads touching. they talked for several more minutes after she finally caught her breath, until kaleb had to leave-but not before he gave her a molten kiss that was a promise. feeling as if her body were one big smile, she tidied up the aerie, then called her father for a chat. of course, he was already at the medical center. "i don't suppose you'll be going home early," she said, worried he was overdoing it.

leon kyriakus gave her a steady look out of eyes of deep blue. "no, but i have confined myself to writing academic papers in the afternoons. does that make you happy?"

"yes," she said, not the least bit sorry for hounding him about his health.

after she hung up, sahara decided it was time to go back into san francisco. she intended to be careful about it, but she had earned her freedom and no bounty hunter was going to steal that from her.

she also wanted to run some informal tests to gauge the development-or lack-of her ability with languages.

catching a ride with mercy when the other woman swung by after a routine perimeter check, she rubbed the eagle charm on her bracelet.

"not that i don't appreciate the company," mercy said as they drove out, "but why didn't you hop in with vaughn? i saw him leaving as i came in."

blowing out a breath, sahara fixed the knitted cap that hid her hair. "he's developed a distinctive protective streak when it comes to me." there was no way her cousin's mate would've left her alone in the city, and it was something she needed to do, to prove to herself that she could.

mercy, by contrast, raised an eyebrow when sahara asked to be dropped off near fisherman's wharf, but didn't attempt to stop her. "according to my orders, we're meant to provide a safe harbor, not imprison you. and if that gun i glimpsed at your ankle's what i think it is, you're smart enough not to need a babysitter.

"still, put this number into your phone." she passed over a card. "any trouble while you're there, call that and a packmate will come get you-our city hq isn't far." a wry smile. "i mean in case you don't feel like being teleported by the scariest man on the planet."

sahara was still smiling an hour later, her mind lingering on the way that scary man had held her against his heart throughout the night, when she noticed the gathering crowd in front of one of the large public comm screens on pier 39. unlike with a sports game or musical performance, the group was deathly silent.

a single look showed her why.

a night-draped hong kong was burning, the smoke so thick, it was a roiling cloud over the glittering steel metropolis that was home to a majority psy population and a minority human one, their combined numbers near to four million.

with the skyscrapers so close together, and the fact that the flames seemed impervious to the fire- retardant building materials used in most inner-city areas, the death toll could be in the hundreds of thousands. horrified, she lifted her hand to her mouth, just as an emblem flashed on the right-hand side of the screen: a black star with a white p at its center.

". . . whether or not it is a purposeful echo," the psy reporter was shouting into the camera in an effort to be heard over the cacophony of rescue vehicles and the voracious roar of the flames.