BONDS OF JUSTICE

He loved her for not making him fight to protect her. “Right now, he’s on the ground, so there’s not much danger.” But if he managed to get on a flight . . . “I’ll alert Enforcement here, let DarkRiver know so their network can keep an eye out.”


“Why is Enforcement having such trouble tracking him? Wasn’t be embedded?” Sophia asked, referring to the transmitter all violent offenders had placed under their skin for the duration of their sentence.

“He managed to disable it soon after his escape—most likely possibility is that the doctor dug it out for him.”

Sophia took a deep, trembling breath. “Will she—the doctor . . . satisfy him for a period?”

Max’s stomach turned. “He’s been behind bars long enough to have built up his needs.” Refined his perversions.

“What can I do to assist?”

He didn’t want her anywhere near Bonner’s evil—she’d walked into the void enough for ten lifetimes. “Take another look at Quentin Gareth—I have this gut feeling there’s something we’ve missed. Especially with Tulane out of the running.” He told her what he’d discovered at Amberleigh Bouvier’s house.

“Interesting—the dynamics of Nikita’s workforce.” A reflective statement. “I’ll look at Gareth’s file now.”

As she did so, he hunkered down to cross-reference the location of the D2 penitentiary with Bonner’s known bolt-holes, sending the list to the manhunt team as soon as it was in any kind of shape. “He’s smart,” Max told the team over the comm line that he’d secured, after discussing the possibility that Bonner might try to get to Sophia, so that they could put alerts on the relevant routes. “I don’t think he’ll go anywhere near his old hidey-holes.” But the team would still have to check each and every one, just in case. “I’ve also sent you some properties I know were his, but that I couldn’t ever legally link to him—those were never in the police files, so he didn’t have a right to see them during the trial.”

“Fuck it, Max—why can’t he just die and do us all a favor?” The lead on the team, a man who was legendary for never losing his cool, broke for a second before taking a calming breath. “We’re sure the doctor’s already dead—dogs led us to a patch of forest not far from D2. Lot of blood.

“Some of it was Bonner’s—they cut out the transmitter there. From the high-velocity spray, he thanked the doctor for her help by slitting her throat. He’s never been this impatient before—we didn’t even have a chance to save her.”

Max shook his head. “The doctor was a necessity.” A tool. “She was too old to satisfy him in any other way—in his mind, she was probably happy to die once she’d outlived her purpose.”

The other cop shook his head in angry disbelief. “What do you need from us?”

“Any confirmed or credible sightings—send the details to me as soon as you get them. Even a general direction will help me narrow down possible sites. With the amount of money he has at this disposal”—and Max knew there were Bonner family members who still believed in the innocence of their blue-eyed boy—“he could go anywhere.”

“We’ve got the airports covered.”

“Good. He might try to fly domestic”—especially if his fixation on Sophia was stronger than his drive to find other prey—“but I don’t think he’ll leave the country. He enjoys being a star here too much.” Ending the call after a few more quick words, he went to sit beside Sophia on the couch. “Now we wait.”

Sophia couldn’t stand to see the weight on Max’s shoulders, the strain around his mouth. “Don’t hurt, Max.” She cupped his cheek, her emotions stripped bare. “Bonner doesn’t deserve to have you beating yourself up for his evil.”

“Sweetheart.” Max’s kiss was so tender, tears burned at the backs of her eyes. It felt different—more than sexual, more than intimate. If felt as if he was handing her a gift she didn’t understand. Holding on to him, she gave herself to the kiss, gave herself to Max. When his lips wandered over her cheek and down her jaw, she shivered and wove her fingers through the thick silk of his hair.

Nikita could wait, she thought. The whole world could wait. Tonight, this moment, she was stealing for her and the strong, loyal, beautiful man who’d seen every broken part of her—and yet looked at her as if she was perfect. “Max. Don’t stop. Not today.”

Lifting his head from hers, he rose to his feet in a smooth move that spoke of a very masculine strength. When he held out a hand, it felt impossibly right to place her own against his palm and allow him to lead her to the bedroom, to watch him put his fingers to the buttons of her shirt, slide them out of the slots one by one.

His knuckles brushed the side of one breast, making her shiver.

“Cold?” An intimate murmur against her neck as he dropped the shirt to the floor and moved to curve his body around hers from behind, a hard, sleekly muscled male with an arousal he made no effort to hide.