BONDS OF JUSTICE

“Huh.” He played with the little toy, managed to figure out the mechanism, and voila, he had an improbably pink wolf on his hands. “Like a changeling.”


“Yep. Clay keeps buying them for Noor even though she already has at least a dozen.” Talin was twining her fingers with her mate’s free hand even as she teased him. “One look from those big brown eyes and he folds.”

Clay lifted up her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “You don’t complain when I melt for your big gray eyes.”

“Clay.” Blushing, Talin nonetheless blew her mate a kiss.

Relaxed by the byplay, Max leaned back in his seat—after checking to ensure a still silent Morpheus was okay—and thought about the e-mail he’d received while waiting to board the airjet. It had come via the commander’s office.

Sophia Russo will meet you in San Francisco.

Anticipation thrummed through him—his body didn’t seem to want to accept the fact that the woman was more likely to freeze his balls off in the night than consent to tangle with him in the male/female sense.

But Max had stopped being ruled by his hormones around the age of sixteen, no matter that this J with her night-violet eyes full of secrets tugged at him in the most visceral of ways. Using the time he had before his flight boarded, he’d made a few phone calls, including one to Bart Reuben to get an update on Bonner. The prosecutor had had nothing new to report on that front, but when Max mentioned he was going to be working with Sophia, he’d said, “I got curious about her, did some digging.”

Max had been startled by a sudden—and forceful—surge of possessiveness. “Why?”

“Those gloves,” Bart had replied. “I realized I’d seen them before, on a J I worked with a long time ago. I know they mean something, but I haven’t figured out what yet. However, I did find out something else very interesting.”

Fighting off his unexpectedly strong response to the idea of Bart investigating Sophia, Max had forced his tone to lighten. “You going to make me beat it out of you?”

“No, a bottle of single malt whiskey will do.” He’d been able to hear the laugh in his friend’s voice. “Seems like over the past year, our Ms. Russo has developed a curious little habit of being in close proximity to some very nasty people who decided to mutilate themselves in creative ways.”

“That’s not surprising, given how long she’s been a J.” A cop would have to be willfully blind to miss that occasionally homicidal “quirk” of J psychology. It was always impossible to prove anything, of course, even if a cop felt so inclined given the nature of the individuals the Js invariably targeted, but the Corps policed itself very effectively—it wasn’t good for their image to have their people start going nuts in public.

Even as the thought passed through his head, Max had found himself disturbed by the idea that Sophia Russo might be going slowly insane. “Why hasn’t she been yanked from active duty?” It had come out harsher than it should have.

Bart, thankfully, hadn’t noticed. “She’s very, very good at her job,” he’d replied. “But she’s reaching her use-by-date. One of these days, she’s going to disappear just like every other J I’ve worked with over the years.”

Now, as the car entered the hilly streets of San Francisco proper, Max thought of the last words Sophia had spoken to him, and he felt a low burn of anger in his gut at the idea of her having a “use-by-date.”


Sophia took a seat across from the exotic-looking woman who might well sign the order for her rehabilitation once she was deemed obsolete. It should have concerned her, if only on an intellectual level, but Sophia wasn’t affected by much at present.

So soon after a reconditioning, with her mind piercing in its clarity, the facts were undeniable: her shields against the PsyNet were rock solid—for the simple reason that all Js were drilled remorselessly until they mastered that skill—but the shields that protected her on a day-to-day basis, her telepathic protections, were paper-thin. Any number of occurrences could incite a devastating mental wave.

Results could range from shock and psychic disintegration to death.

Councilor Nikita Duncan raised her head from the file on her desk as Sophia was thinking she’d prefer a sudden and total death over a psychic collapse. Far better that it all end in a sudden, bright burst of agony, than to find herself weakened and at the mercy of those who had none. She’d been helpless once in her life—never again would she allow herself to be in that position.

“Ms. Russo”—Councilor Duncan’s voice was precise—“I believe you had a court appearance this morning?”

“It was at nine,” Sophia said without pause. “I was finished and on my way here by ten thirty.”

“So you’ve had a chance to read the file I e-mailed to you?”