Shadowlight

Finally, the person being considered would have had to miraculously survive a fatal accident or illness, and come out of it with a very specific side effect, one they were subsequently compelled by necessity to hide from everyone in their life.

Aphrodite had been the first Takyn Jessa had ever encountered. They’d met on a discussion board for adult adoptees seeking their biological parents, and then had begun exchanging e-mails. What Di had told her had at first enraged Jessa, but then they had begun comparing personal histories and discovering just how alike they were.

Jessa had set up and named The Adopted Kids of Yesterday Network Web site, but it had been Aphrodite who dubbed their private group with the site’s acronym.

We were taken from our real parents and families. We all remember bits and pieces of the rest in our nightmares. The doctors. The treatments. The pain. The goddamn tattoos. Whatever they did to us, they took away our chance of a normal life. Why not call us what we are?

Jessa knew her friend had every right to be bitter. Aphrodite had terrible memories of what had been done to her, and when a nearly fatal illness had caused her ability to manifest, she had been forced to leave home and live in hiding. Virtually the same thing had happened to her when a brush with death had transformed what had been a pleasant, helpful ability into something much darker, uncontrollable and ultimately inescapable. Still, Jessa refused to believe as Di did that they had been used as lab rats when they were children and then simply abandoned.

There had to be more reasons for what they were, and why they had been experimented on in the first place. If Vulcan was right and he had found another one like them, then the new member of the group might know more than they did. Every childhood memory, every ability, and even their individual theories illuminated another shadow of the past.

She would have sat there by the fountain until dark, but the park’s sprinklers came on and the breeze rolled over the automatic sprayers, stealing some of the water and surrounding her in a fine mist. She stood and went to the edge of the basin, where she dug a penny out of her pocket and dropped it in. It sank and settled atop the hundreds of others at the bottom of the basin. A penny for her thoughts, which she paid every time she came to Price Park.

Her last thought before leaving was usually, I miss you. I love you. But tonight she was ready to say something else.

“It’s time.” Jessa looked around the beautiful place she’d created. “Good-bye, Allen.”

She walked through the square to the small lot beside it where she had left her car. As the sweet perfume of the flowers grew distant, she breathed in and noticed another, almost familiar scent. She felt sure she’d smelled the same thing earlier today, downtown. As before it frustrated her; she couldn’t identify it as anything except something very warm, nearly hot. It had been easy to dismiss it this afternoon as a trick played by the last of the summer heat, but now …

Jessa glanced over at the darkening horizon, and felt the coolness of twilight on her skin. The temperature had probably dropped fifteen degrees in the last hour.

Someone was here. Someone who had heard her.

She made a sharp turn and faced the park. It appeared as empty as when she’d arrived, but it didn’t feel the same. Tiny nerves under her skin flared, sending confusing signals to the rest of her senses. She couldn’t see or hear anyone, but someone was there. Someone who stood just out of sight.

Someone who had been watching her.

Running to the car and driving off would have been the safest option, but this was her place, her personal haven. Whoever had been eavesdropping on her had violated her most private moment.

She took out the illegal Taser she carried in her purse as anger propelled her forward toward the fountain and then around the base of every tree. She didn’t find anyone, but wherever she picked up a trace of the scent, she stopped and scanned the area. The sprinklers had left the ground wet and soft, but she found no footprints or any signs that she’d been followed or observed.

If someone had come into the park after her, they’d left before she’d discovered the scent.

Slowly she put away the weapon and scanned the park one final time before she went to her car. She didn’t make the mistake of going near it or unlocking it until she had checked the space beneath the undercarriage and looked into the windows to ensure that no one had broken in and hidden himself in the backseat.

Jessa glanced back at the park a final time, waited, and then disengaged the car alarm before getting in. She sat for another minute and watched the rearview mirror before she started the engine and backed out of the space.

She never took the same route home from the park twice, but now she drove in circles and made a half-dozen U-turns while she watched for a tail. No cars followed her, and after an hour of aimless driving she admitted to herself that she might have overreacted.

“No one cares who you are,” she muttered as she took the final turn toward home. “They’re all dead.”

Chapter 3

Matthias stood looking down from his perch for some time after the woman had left the park and driven off into the night. He’d been right to assume that her senses were as acute as his, and after dealing with the only car parked in the immediate vicinity, he’d looked for cover. Concealing himself by climbing up into the twisted heavy branches and dense leaves of the oak tree across from the fountain was an old ambush tactic, but his vantage point had permitted him to watch her face nearly the entire time she had spent in the park.

Sorrow had brought her here, he guessed, as much as the need to change vehicles.

She took no joy from the solitude or the sound of spilling water, but sat like a new widow beside a fresh grave, alone and still. Listening to her whisper and watching her weep had made him restless. A part of him, the part that would never bow its head to the demands of his work, had wanted to go to her. No woman should have to bare her soul as she had, all alone in this lovely, quiet place. She needed to be shown that life had not forgotten her, that the emptiness could be filled again.

What Matthias first thought was sympathy for the sad beauty shifted inside him, impatient and demanding, growing hard and hot. His outcast state had left him cold to the feelings of others; he had drawn on that to make his way in this world. So had she. Of all the women who had come to him over the course of time, she would know what it was to be an exile. It was as if she had been fashioned for him, shaped and tempered to fit him, the lock only he could open, the armor only he could wear.

In another time and place he could have simply taken her for himself. Despite all her precautions, she had few true defenses. She would struggle like the wild thing she was, but in time he would gentle her. She would come to know him, and he would show her the truth of what they could be to each other.

There would be pleasure. She had a strong, young body and sensitive skin. Matthias’s hands curled as he imagined stripping her down and laying her out. She would not be passive or accepting; she would demand as much as she gave. Her mouth would taste like her scent, as sweet as water from a hidden spring. He could feel his seed rising, eager to flood her hidden chambers and give her a child to put to her lovely breasts. He could see a small dark head resting on the graceful curve of her arm, the tiny mouth like a flower as the babe suckled. He could see himself holding them both and watching.

It bemused him when he realized that, in his mind, he already made her his bed partner and mother of his firstborn. He, who had never given any woman more than a few sultry hours to ride out her pleasure on him before he deliberately spilled his seed on her belly. He’d never liked it, but unlike the other men he had served with, he had no intention of scattering a horde of fatherless children in the wake of his travels. He would not allow them to grow up as he had, unaware of what lay slumbering inside them.

Yet try as he might, he could not rid himself of the fancy—the woman at his side, naked and willing in his bed, his son at her breast.

He had not been able to read the messages she had received and sent on her wireless, but they had disturbed her, and destroyed his idyllic dreams. The change that had come over her expression had made him wish he could drop down, take the electronic device from her, and toss it into the fountain.

No matter how much he wanted to go to her, Matthias knew that revealing himself now would be what Rowan called foolish and Drew counterproductive. Taking her too soon would jeopardize endless hours of surveillance and months of meticulous investigative work—and knowing that, still the temptation had come close to overwhelming him.

He climbed down and went to sit on the bench she had occupied. The wooden slats retained the warmth of her body heat, the air the faintest trace of her scent. He let both sink into him as he used his phone.

“Signal’s strong, but I think she’s suspicious,” Drew told him. “She drives like she’s trying to shake a tail.” Before Matthias could ask what that meant, he added, “A tail is a car that is following hers. Shaking it means evading it.”

“She cannot shake off our tail.” The GPS transmitter Matthias had planted on her car would send a signal for the next two weeks before it drained its batteries. “Why does she come here, to this Price Park?”

“Maybe she likes to meditate. Let’s see.” Drew tapped on his keyboard. “It’s a public park, built five years ago. Nothing really special about it, except the property and the landscaping. Both were paid for by a private party and then donated to the city.”

He recalled the sadness on her face. “She did that.”

“I can’t find any records available other than some permits filed by a downtown beautification committee,” Drew told him. “Considering what prime city real estate went for five years ago, I doubt it was her land. She could have made millions selling it to a developer.”

“Not this woman.” He glanced at the modest sign bearing the name of the park. “The name Price—see what you can learn from that.”

“Sure, I have nothing to do for the next ten years. Why don’t I look up Smith and Jones while I’m at it?”

“There was another name. Allen.” Matthias glanced up at the sky. The moon had crossed the spangled celestial dome and peered back at him through a veil of charcoal clouds. “My receiver is in the car. Where is her vehicle now?”