He kissed her, a quick, wild burst of easy male affection that echoed down the mating bond. "I'll take you to the bookstore."
"Will you read the books?"
"I won't have to - you'll read them to me." He smiled and it was a slow, feline curve of his lips. "I do love the things you say in bed."
She burst out laughing, the emotional chaos of the day buried under the incandescence of their mingled joy.
Everyone was early to the Council meeting. "Are we all secure?" Nikita asked.
There was a round of confirmations.
Kaleb asked the next question. "We need to have an idea of what they're capable of. I'm willing to share what I found - I'm assuming I was the hardest to get to?"
"Correct," Ming responded. "Your teleportation abilities made you the most difficult target. However, Tatiana is also close to impossible to get to without warning."
Kaleb had heard rumors the other Psy could strip shields, enter any mind she chose. She hadn't yet broken his shields, and he made sure never to be anything but absolutely guarded against her. "Tatiana?"
"I see no harm in sharing the information," the other Councilor said. "Downloading the details now."
Streams of silvery data began to flow against the pure blackness that was the psychic vault of the Council chambers. Kaleb caught the vital facts on the first pass. "They planned to poison you."
"It appears that way," Tatiana said. "It's difficult to fully guard against insects in my part of Australia. The perpetrators released a number of toxic funnel-web spiders around my property."
"That strategy has a high chance of failure," Shoshanna pointed out.
"Yes," Tatiana agreed. "From what I discovered afterward, I think it was an opportunistic ploy after their first one failed. I was meant to be on a private jet to Papua New Guinea today - that jet, I'm now told, developed mysterious engine failure and crashed into the ocean, killing all on board."
"How did they get to the jet?" Kaleb asked. "I assume it was yours?"
"That's a critical security breach - I know it wasn't any of my people." Her tone of voice made it clear how she knew. "We're still working on it."
Kaleb decided to speak next. "They attempted to blow up my house from a distance." He gave them the necessary facts without betraying his own security protocols.
One by one, the others laid out their data. Surprisingly, it was Ming who'd come the closest to being killed. The assassins had made no attempts at stealth for the most militarily inclined Councilor. Instead, they'd fired at his armored vehicle using high-explosive antitank rounds. The car was so much twisted metal. The sole reason Ming was alive was because one of his Arrows, a true teleporter, had been with him at the time. Vasic had blinked everyone out of the vehicle in the minuscule fragment of time after the rounds hit.
"We have a leak," Kaleb said after scanning the data. "Someone in the upper tiers."
"The body of a man who was known to sell sensitive information washed up yesterday," Nikita told them. "I had it sent to the lab for processing."
"I agree with Kaleb," Ming said. "Even a top-level information thief couldn't have discovered all our locations on a particular day and time without massive effort - even if he was the conduit, he needed to have sources."
"The other option," Nikita pointed out, "is that this was a long-term plan. They watched and waited for the perfect opportunity."
"Possible," Henry agreed, speaking for the first time. "With the recent defections, they consider us weak."
"That's their mistake." Kaleb would allow no one to shatter that which he considered his. And for now, the PsyNet needed his fellow Councilors. When it no longer did . . .
"Perhaps, instead of speculating, we should reconvene once we have further details of the attacks." Shoshanna.
"We do have another issue to discuss," Kaleb pointed out. "The programmed violence. It's stopped."
A pause of several seconds as the other Councilors brought up their files. Tatiana was the first to speak. "Councilor Krychek is correct. All the most recent interpersonal violence has been one on one, or in families. No cases with the potential for mass fatalities."
"The timing is certainly fortuitous." Nikita.
Kaleb waited for Henry to speak. He did. And confirmed all of Kaleb's suspicions about the identity of the shadowy puppet master.
"It may be," the other Councilor said, "that the aim of the events has been realized. We are now, after all, offering voluntary reconditioning. It's a step in the right direction - toward perfect Silence."