Dev stopped in the process of turning around. "That's none of your business."

Connor met his eyes, the lines of his face even more austere in the early evening light. "Never thought I'd have to tell you how to take care of your woman."

Dev felt his fingers curl into a tight fist. "Lot of assumptions in that statement, Connor."

"Just telling it like I see it." He pulled the door shut.

Dev was inside the house before the other man finished reversing down the drive. Closing and locking the door, he strode down to the bedroom. Katya wasn't on the bed.

Chapter 47

Dev's eyes zeroed in on the bar of light showing under the bathroom door. He pushed through without knocking.

"Dev!" She pulled a towel in front of her body.

Lust kicked him hard - as if he hadn't all but killed himself with her mere hours ago. Every bit of the anger, the rage he'd felt at seeing her hurt seemed to have transmuted into pure need. Ignoring the savage hunger to teach her exactly how badly he took her hurting herself, he walked over and wrapped the towel more firmly around her damp body. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"I wanted to wash off the blood that dripped down my leg," she said. "It only took a minute."

"Then why are you trembling?" He swung her up in his arms without waiting for an answer. "If you've pulled out the stitches, I'm going to redo them, and I'm not as gentle as Connor."

Instead of snapping back at him, Katya nuzzled her face into his neck and said, "I'm sorry."

He knew she wasn't talking about the shower. "It wasn't your fault." Placing her on the bed with all the tenderness he had in him, he lay down beside her. "They messed with your head."

Shimmering green-gold eyes met his as she shook her head. "I'm a walking weapon. I knew this was coming and I stayed. I should've left yesterday!"

He knew she was right. But he also knew it was far too late. "I told you - you're mine. I don't let go of what's mine." Pressing a kiss to her temple, he raised himself up on his arms.

She gripped his biceps. "Don't leave."

"I need to clean up the floor. I'll be back in a few minutes."

But the cleanup took a little longer than he'd expected, and she was asleep by the time he returned to the bed, curled up on her uninjured side. Sliding in beside her, he tugged away the towel with careful hands - he needed to wrap his body around her instead, feel her safe and warm, protected in his arms.

Only then did he allow himself to accept the fear that had gripped him when he'd seen her bleeding on the floor. Trembling, he pressed a kiss to her shoulder, drawing the clean, warm scent of her into his lungs. For the second time in his life, he was watching a woman who was everything to him slip from his fingers, and he could do nothing to stop it.

The agony of it ripped through him, until he half expected to see his own blood stain the sheets.

"No," he said, and it was a vow. He'd find a way to get Ming to undo or permanently block the compulsions, because no way was he ever again watching Katya cry because her mind had been violated, her limbs turned into a marionette's. And if Ming refused to cooperate - "I'll kill the bastard." He had to believe that once the Councilor was dead, Katya would be able to live a life free of fear.

She shifted in his arms, and he realized she'd woken. "It won't help, Dev - the shield will hold. And being trapped inside it . . . it's killing me cell by cell."

He refused to accept that, to give in. "Can he stop it, release the pressure?" He felt her body tense. "Don't you dare lie to me."

Another pause and he knew she wasn't going to give him the truth. "Don't do this to me, baby." He hugged her tight. "Don't make me helpless." Never again, he thought, never again would he be helpless while a woman he loved died in front of him.

Her body shuddered. "How can you ask me to lead you into death?"

"For me, Katya. Please." He wasn't a man used to begging, but he'd do anything it took to protect her.

"He may be able to," she said at last "He said I'd make the perfect sleeper assassin. I'd have to be alive for that, but I don't know what kind of a life it'd be."

Dev's anguish shifted to grim determination. "It'll be life. We can work out the rest later."

"He's a cardinal, Dev. His power . . . I can't describe it - it's endless, vast. He could turn your mind to putty with a single thought."

Dev had some abilities of his own, not all of them psychic. The director of Shine didn't need to be a powerful psychic - he needed to be ruthless enough to slit enemy throats if necessary. "You let me worry about that." Stroking his hand over her hair, he promised himself that Ming would pay for every second of pain, every injury, every drop of blood.

Even as Dev made his silent vow, the man in question was walking through the doors of the Dinarides facility. "All of the Arrows confined here," he said, "they're being monitored, restricted from using their abilities?"

The M-Psy beside him nodded. "Yes. All seven are cooperating at present."

At present. Ming knew he'd have to implement a much more final strategy if and when that cooperation stopped. Arrows - even damaged Arrows - couldn't be contained indefinitely. "Where's Aden?"

"With one of the men - monitoring the effects of Jax withdrawal. It can sometimes cause sudden cardiac failure."

Ming looked at the M-Psy. Unlike Aden, and like most of the medical team, Keisha Bale was not an Arrow. "Aden," he said now, "is he showing any signs of unusual behavior?"

"As you know," Keisha began, "he was never put on Jax - it would've made him incapable of the value judgments required to monitor the effects of the drug on others." The M-Psy paused as they walked through a security checkpoint. "However," she said after the computer cleared them, "that shouldn't be a cause for concern. Aden's psychological profile makes him highly unlikely to deviate from the rule book."

That was what Ming was counting on. As a boy, Aden had been trained not only by other Arrows, but also by his parents - both members of the Squad at the time. He was the solitary living Arrow who'd been taught to become so from the cradle. Those were not easy bonds to break. Even had he wanted to, Aden lacked the medical knowledge to truly interfere - he'd had specialized training when it came to the effects and side effects of Jax, but aside from that, he was only a field medic.

Opening his telepathic channels, Ming contacted another one of the Squad. Vasic, is the situation in Argentina under control?

The answer came fast, though it wasn't as clear as Ming's voice, Vasic's Tp skills hitting just below 6 on the Gradient. It's going to take a little longer than predicted.

How much longer?

At least four more days. We can do it faster, but you specified no deaths.

Stick to the plan. Ming didn't want to kill the humans, not because humans weren't expendable, but because too many things had already been played out on the public stage. Even he had made that mistake with the destruction of the Implant lab - but he'd learned since then. It was time the Council returned to the old way of doing things - behind the scenes, where no one could stop them.

Dev's heart was still filled with a potent mix of anger, worry, and a furious kind of possession when he walked into the meeting with Jack, Connor, Aubry, Tiara, and Eva - the manager in charge of educational development - the next morning.

Jack and Tiara sat side by side, while Aubry and Eva sat opposite them. Connor, as the representative of the medical team, had positioned himself alone at the other end. Taking in everything with a single glance, Dev looked at Tiara. "Switched camps?" He knew she'd flown back from California specifically for this meeting, leaving Tag to watch over Cruz.

"Always been in this one," she said with a languid wave. "I'm sane, but there for the grace of God . . ."

"So you think we should encase our emotions in ice?" Aubry asked, obviously bewildered. "Damn, Ti, you really want to stop driving Tag crazy?"

Tiara shot him a cool smile. "What's between me and Tag is between me and Tag."

"Aubry is right," Eva interrupted, her accent lending an exotic music to her words. Born in Puerto Rico, she'd only been in New York for two years, since Dev relocated her from a field office on the island. "There'll be nothing between the two of you if we do what Jack wants and implement Silence."

"Hold on." Jack leaned forward, arms crossed on the table, face lined with grim determination. "You think I want to lose the light in my son's eyes? You think I want to teach him that love isn't something precious? You think I want to break his mother's heart?" He shook his head in a violent negative. "But my boy is already losing that light. He killed Spot."

A shocked silence.

Dev was the first one to speak. "That raggedy old dog of his?" He couldn't believe it. William doted on the mutt his father had rescued from the pound.

"Yeah." Jack dropped his head into his hands. "Will cried so hard as we buried the dog. I knew we'd need the body, but I couldn't do it, couldn't put Spot in a chiller in front of him."

"Of course not," Dev said, and it was a gut reaction. "But you went back, didn't you?" He knew his cousin. Jack hadn't graduated at the top of his class in medical school without having a spine filled with pure grit.

"I did an autopsy the night of the day I talked to you, after Will was in bed." A glance at Dev. "I figured I could be of some use to my son - give him proof that he didn't kill his pet. I thought I'd find the old guy had had a heart attack or something."

Eva moved her hand across the table, as if to reach Jack. "He didn't?"

Jack shook his head again. "His heart was just . . . pulverized. Like a little bomb had exploded inside. The crazy thing is, there wasn't a mark on him on the outside."