MINE TO POSSESS

Clay put his hand over hers. “Any way to find out for sure?”


“My contact was able to confirm Psy involvement, but nothing further.”

“Do you believe him?”

Judd shrugged. “He’s loyal to the Psy race, so he won’t betray them. But he considers the Implant Protocol the worse evil. I pointed out that there is a possibility the kidnapped children are being used as test subjects.”

Talin choked back her rising terror. “Do you really believe that?”

“I can’t see the worth of using non-Psy organs to test such a sensitive implant.” He paused. “However, things are chaotic in the Net at present. The Council’s attention is scattered. It may be losing control over some of those it previously contained.”

Brenna’s expression grew solemn. “The monsters are starting to escape.”

“That could explain why we’re finding bodies at all—if the Council was running this, they wouldn’t have left a trail,” Clay said, as Judd picked up his mate’s hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “Is there any way to infiltrate this lab and verify whether or not it is the base of operations?”

“That,” Judd said, continuing to keep Brenna’s hand in his, “is the issue. If I give you the location of the lab and you go in openly, it may blow my contact’s cover. Only a select few have access to that data.”

“But if we could save Jon—and others they haven’t yet taken—wouldn’t it be worth it?” Talin asked, angry at the SnowDancer male for being so damn uninvolved.

Then she saw the quiet fury in his gaze and realized her mistake. “If my contact is unmasked and the Council shifts the lab again, we might not be able to stop the Implant Protocol. It’ll affect hundreds of thousands. I’m not asking you to make a choice between this boy and the Psy children who will be implanted. I’m telling you there is no easy answer.”

With those words, he turned black and white into gray, left her grappling with a moral dilemma that appeared to have no solution. “I don’t suppose we could sneak in?”

“It’s located in the middle of cornfields deep in Nebraska, open visibility in every direction.”

Clay found himself thinking of the story Tally had told him about her secret caves. “What about underground? There has to be some system to bring in supplies—even if it’s just replacement medical equipment. It can’t be a hermetically sealed environment.” He also knew that if the children were being taken to this facility, the Psy would need to have a system in place to transport the bodies out. But he kept his silence. Tally’s heart was already breaking—she didn’t need to hear that.

Judd’s expression shifted, became thoughtful. “They could be teleporting in everything, but I’d say that’s unlikely. Teleporters are thin on the ground—the Council would never waste them on such menial tasks.”

“And,” Brenna murmured, “they can’t be trucking or flying things in. The traffic would give away the location.”

“There has to be a hidden access point.” Animal instinct told Clay he was right.

“Pity we don’t have a teleporter ourselves,” Talin muttered.

“Wouldn’t help,” Judd told her. “They need an image of where they’re going, particularly when buildings are involved. Otherwise, they could end up inside a wall or stuck halfway through a ceiling. Organs sliced in half, instant death.”

Talin shivered.

“There’s one other thing,” Clay said. “A witness saw Jon disappear off the street. Any way to explain that if we work on the theory that this isn’t a teleporter?”

“They probably threw out a wave of telepathic interference. It would’ve blocked any humans from ‘seeing’ the snatch. Sloppy work if your wit was aware Jon had disappeared—either that or the wit was changeling.”

Clay made a note to check up on that. If one of the Rats had fathered a child, he could understand their protectiveness in hiding the kid, but DarkRiver needed to know. “What’s the closest safe insertion point to the lab?”

“Cinnamon Springs—only town within any reasonable distance.”

“We’ll fly there tomorrow, check it out,” Clay said.

Judd reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a data crystal. “The exact location. Keep it on an absolute need-to-know basis. One slip and they’ll move the lab. If you want me to go in with you, call. Otherwise, everything I know is on that crystal.”

“There has to be a way in,” Brenna murmured. “Sorry, darling, but Psy often don’t think about us animals.”

“Even Psy learn,” her mate responded with an amused smile that was so unexpected, Talin’s mouth fell open. “They’re wary of cats and wolves now. There’s a high probability the area’s been seeded with sensors calibrated to pick them up.”