BONDS OF JUSTICE

She placed her hand on his cheek in gentle affection, and he knew she understood what he hadn’t said, the hurt he hadn’t vocalized. “River may have been alive as of two years ago.”


His heart stopped. When it kicked out again, he found himself shaking his head, his hands clenching on her—he’d searched for River ever since he became a cop, through every known database and come up blank. “Why would there be anything about him on the PsyNet?”

“His path crossed with that of a human researcher doing a study on adults who’d been drug addicts as children.” Gentle words, a worried gaze. “That researcher’s paper was footnoted—and linked to—by a Psy scientist’s paper on Jax addiction.”

“Where—” he began, but Sophia was already pulling away to pick up a sheet of paper from beside Morpheus’s purring body. Taking the printout, he went straight to the part she’d highlighted.

There it was. River’s name in black and white. The citation noted that the subject had been free of addiction since his fourteenth birthday, when he’d voluntarily entered a program run by a charitable organization.

“Max.” Sophia’s fingers closing over his wrist.

It was only then that he realized his hand was trembling. “They just used first names—this could be someone else altogether.”

“It’s an unusual name and coupled with his age at the time the paper was written, and the addiction . . .”

His mind wasn’t working too well. He looked up, to see her holding a small piece of notepaper. “What’s that?”

“The phone number of the researcher who wrote the original article. He’s currently lecturing at the University of the South Pacific and is stationed in Vanuatu.” There was a near-painful hope in her eyes. “You should be able to get him in his office a little later on, check if it’s your brother.”

Reaching forward, he tugged her into his arms, crushing the feminine softness of her to him, burying his face in her hair. “You don’t know what this means.”

Her fingers dug into his back, her emotions as clear as if she’d spoken.

“You do, don’t you?” he whispered against her ear, the scent of her a balm across his ravaged soul. “You know exactly what this means.”

“Family, Max. You’ll have family.” Fierce, hopeful words. “You won’t be alone.” After I’m gone.

Max clenched his hand in her hair, drawing back so he could look down into her face, so he could speak with his lips against hers. “We,” he said. “We’ll have family.”

Her eyes filled with light, with untrammeled happiness. “Max.” She pressed a kiss to his jaw just as his cell phone began beeping.

It was Bart. “Bonner’s escaped.”


“How is that even possible?” Sophia stared at Max when he shut off the phone and told her what had happened. The prison was underground, all access points securely guarded. Even the emergency exits were set with pressure-sensitive alarms that would activate upon perceiving anything bigger than a field mouse.

Max’s anger was a cold, hard thing. “He had an ‘accident,’ had to be taken to the medical bay. From the sound of it, he’d been working on the doctor for months. He must’ve convinced her he was innocent.”

“Even so”—Sophia couldn’t imagine the sly evil that was Bonner back out on the streets—“the doctor couldn’t have had the necessary clearance to get him out.”

“But she had access to tranquilizers—she took out the warden, then ransacked his office for the override keys.” Max clenched his jaw so tight, he could hear his bones grind against each other. “Manhunt’s in progress and they’re fairly certain he’s driving the doctor’s car.”

Sophia sat down on the arm of the sofa, her fingers digging into the fabric. “And the doctor?”

“If she’s lucky,” Max said flatly, “she’s already dead. If she’s not . . .” He knew Sophia understood better than anyone what Bonner was capable of, the pain that would be the doctor’s reward for being foolish enough to believe in a sociopath.

A quiet nod. “Do you need to join the manhunt team?”

“I can liaise with them from here.” Bonner was not going to fucking steal Max’s time with Sophia. And—“They have the numbers on the ground.” The team was huge and growing bigger by the hour. “What they need me to do is predict where Bonner might go, update the search grid as we get sightings.” The first thing that had come into Max’s mind had been Bonner’s twisted interest in Sophia. “Sophie, there’s a chance he’ll head to you.”

Sophia swallowed, nodded. “I’ll be with you the majority of the time, and when I’m not, I’ll be in secure buildings. I’ll take one of the security officers with me if I need to go out on my own.”