BONDS OF JUSTICE

Tammy’s smile was slow, strong as her healer’s heart. “Then I guess Councilor Nikita Duncan had better watch out.”


Having dropped a dubious-looking Morpheus off at DarkRiver HQ—to be taken home by Clay—Max and Sophia arrived at the closest airport to the D2 penitentiary less than three hours after Max’s meeting with Nikita. A twenty-minute drive later and they were at the facility.

“Bonner still refusing to talk?” Max asked Bart after Sophia returned to the room, having undergone a quick preliminary checkup at the M-Psy’s hands. Max met her gaze, caught the very slight shake of her head. Relief twisted around his heart—she was hanging on, refusing to surrender to the death that had been stalking her her whole life.

“Bastard hasn’t said a word since he asked for Ms. Russo,” Bart said, glancing at Sophia. “Be careful, Ms. Russo. I have a feeling he’s enraged after we sent in a male J to do a follow-up on his comm-conference with you.”

Sophia’s expression didn’t change. “I expected that, Mr. Reuben. Bonner isn’t used to being denied.”

Max folded his arms across his chest. “That’s an understatement.” Bonner had been born into wealth, gone to the most exclusive private schools, summered on a vineyard in Champagne, wintered at a ski resort in Switzerland. He’d had simply to ask and his parents had given it to him, their only son—a hundred-thousand-dollar car at sixteen, a trip around the world at seventeen, a private residence on their extensive property at eighteen.

“He’ll try to play you,” Bart said, tapping a pen on the old-fashioned legal pad he insisted on using. “He’s had a few days to do some underground research, maybe find out things about you—”

Sophia shook her head. “I’ve survived worse monsters.” Her eyes met Max’s. “It’s time for me to go in.”

Every single muscle in his body went rock hard in rejection of the idea, but he nodded. “I’ll be right here—one small signal and I come get you.”


Sophia walked into the same room she’d entered only a few days prior, but this time, she was viscerally aware of Max’s gaze on her no matter that he stood hidden behind the wall that separated the room from the observation chamber. And though a prison guard stood with his back to the wall behind Bonner, it was the knowledge of Max watching over her that kept her calm, focused.

Her cop would never let the monster touch her.

With that knowledge in her heart, she said, “Mr. Bonner,” as she reached the table.

Gerard Bonner’s smile presumed an intimacy that made her skin crawl. “Sophia. I’d rise to welcome you, but alas . . .” He gestured to the clamps that kept him immobilized, his hands jerking to a halt.

“It’s for my protection that you can’t move,” she said, taking a seat across from him. “You have very strong hands.” After torturing Carissa White in a multitude of horrific ways, he’d finally killed her with the intimacy of his hands.

“Are you attempting to shock me?” A warm chuckle from the outwardly handsome man in front of her. “I enjoyed it, you know. Poor Carissa. She begged me to do it in the end.”

So clever, she thought, always couching his words in a way that it was never quite a confession. Not that they needed it, not for Carissa White. “I was told you were ready to cooperate.”

“Did I put you to too much inconvenience with my request?” he asked, his expression filling with what many would’ve mistaken for the sincerest of apologies. “I find that I like you the best. You’re so much . . . gentler than the other Js.”

“Did you know, Mr. Bonner,” she said conversationally, “that in the early part of this century, they still incarcerated males together in the same cell? Tell me”—she held his gaze, let him see that she’d looked into the abyss, that nothing he said could touch her—“do you think you would have . . . enjoyed”—a deliberate echo of his word, his tone—“being in a cell with another inmate who might not have shared your more sophisticated tastes?”

Bonner didn’t like that, his eyes showing the sadistic bite of malignant rage before he got it under control. “I’m sure I would have survived, Sophia. Hmm, does anyone call you Sophie?”

She hated that he’d used Max’s pet name for her, hated it so much that for an instant, she wondered if she’d betrayed herself, because Bonner’s blue eyes glinted with pleasure.

“You may call me anything you wish.” A facsimile of calm, good enough that it had fooled the medics all these years. “All I care about are your memories.”