“I don’t think he ever came to Ivy and Vasic’s home.”
And, Aden realized, he hadn’t been at Ivy and Vasic’s wedding. He’d taken a duty shift so that younger Arrows could attend. “How did I miss this? That he was distancing himself from the squad?”
“You trusted him—he was a senior Arrow who had your ear anytime he wanted.” Zaira took the notebook, went back to earlier entries. “There’s nothing here except his normal notes. It’s as if he made the decision the moment before death.”
“Or he was thinking about it for a long period, but trusted no one with his thoughts.” Aden gathered up all the other notebooks. He would read each and every one, try to understand. “I need to talk to all the senior Arrows.”
Zaira held on to the final notebook when he would’ve taken it. “We’ll read these together, Aden.”
“Protecting me again?”
“Someone has to.” He couldn’t be trusted to do it himself.
Dark eyes met her own, the power in them a violent storm. “So fight for me,” he said, the words passionate. “Fight for the squad. Be the partner I need, the partner I want.”
Zaira had made her decision, knew it was the right one regardless of how brutally it hurt. But at that instant, she wondered who would protect the protector? Who would make sure Aden took a breath, laid down the weight for an hour or for a night? If she didn’t bond with him, she couldn’t be by his side on a regular basis, couldn’t pull him back from the edge. He needed someone in that position. Someone tough enough to stand up to him and lethal enough to force him to rest if necessary.
And someone from whom he’d accept censure.
That particular short list had only two people on it and one of them was already bonded to another. That left Zaira . . . and the monstrous creature inside her.
Chapter 31
SEEING THE PHOTOGRAPH of the Arrow leader alive and well was unexpected, but his survival didn’t have to equal the termination or suspension of their plans. The group had always known the Arrow wouldn’t be an easy target.
It was time to move to plan B: sacrifice the data, go for a public kill.
The Arrow Squad had to die. For some inexplicable reason, this midlevel telepath and field medic was its nucleus; cut him out and the resulting fractures would mean the rest would be far easier to eliminate.
No squad.
No one to hunt the serial killers.
No one to keep unscrupulous corporates in line.
Perfect.
Chapter 32
OVER THE NEXT three days, Aden spoke one-on-one with every single senior Arrow in the squad—classified as Arrows who’d been active in the field for more than two decades. What he heard was troubling.
“I’m forty-five years old,” a female Arrow named Irena said to him. “All I’ve ever known is Silence. All I’ve ever been is a killing machine.” She stopped beside a tree with glossy green leaves in the underground park that abutted Central Command. “Emotion is my enemy and the discipline of the squad is all that keeps me sane.”
The echo of Zaira’s own reason for rejecting his proposal added another layer of ice to his veins. “The Honeycomb?”
Irena touched one of the leaves. “I wish I wasn’t part of it.” Dark hazel eyes met his as she dropped her fingers from the leaf and turned to face him. “I can feel it pressing against me, awakening things that shouldn’t be awakened.” A hand placed over her heart. “This organ is starting to wake, starting to have needs I can never fulfill. I don’t have that capacity and I wonder if the need will one day drive me mad.”
Again and again and again, he had the same conversation, discovered the same disturbing truth: the senior Arrows felt as if they had no place in the new squad. Each promised not to follow Edward into suicide, but only because that would leave him with a personnel shortage.
“I’ve told them we need their expertise, their experience, their strength,” he said to Vasic as they sat on a sand dune in the desert to which Vasic had teleported them late on the third day. “I’m not sure they’re hearing what I’m saying.” He thought of what Irena had said. “They’re having trouble handling the emotions being nudged awake by the connection with the empaths—not one believes he or she can make it, even with you, Abbot, and Judd as examples.”
“And Stefan,” Vasic said. “He might not be an Arrow, but he is one of us.”
“Yes.” Aden knew that should he call, the Tk based on the deep-sea station Alaris would respond without question. “All four of you are powerful yet it doesn’t seem to make a difference to the senior Arrows.”
“They need to see you do it.”
Aden wasn’t ready to talk about that yet, not when the only woman he wanted by his side would only agree to stand there as a soldier—a woman who might only be able to stand there as a soldier. He’d been selfish in pushing her, he knew that. He also knew he’d probably do it again. Zaira was his own madness. “I’m not sure even that’ll be enough,” he said aloud. “We’re all of a younger generation.”
“Have you thought about using your parents?”
“My parents?” He was well aware that neither Zaira nor Vasic were fans of Marjorie and Naoshi.
“They’re older than all the active senior Arrows and despite having lived in the outside world since their defection, surrounded by emotion, they’ve held themselves together,” Vasic responded. “Put them in charge of the welfare of the older Arrows, the ones who are struggling.”