A chill rippled down Sascha's spine. So close to the implementation of total Silence, had it truly been an accident? "Why isn't there any mention of her online?"
"That's the thing - the rare books guy told me that her work was destroyed in a massive purge around a hundred years ago."
Sascha's hand fisted. Silence had been fully implemented in 1979, a hundred and one years ago. And that was when E-Psy had become a liability . . . so they'd been buried, broken, erased. Somehow, she found the voice to say, "That's great work, Nicki."
"Thanks." The girl sounded so pleased that the chill melted a little. "I found a few bits and pieces on her other book - do you want that information, too?"
"Sure." Anything to delay the return to her "gift."
"Actually," Nicki corrected herself, "it wasn't a book but a manuscript. It seems Eldridge had begun to research another group of Psy after she finished her thesis."
Sascha frowned. "If it was a manuscript, how did you find out about it?"
"Well, it's sort of the Holy Grail to Eldridge scholars," the girl said. "The woman I spoke to - after the rare books dealer introduced us - told me that Eldridge was openly working on a new project before she died. Helene - my source - said there's a reference to it in the book on E-Psy."
Sascha made a mental note to keep an eye out. "Go on."
"The thing is, after her death, no one could find any hint of that work in her office or home. It was like she'd been doing nothing for several years." Nicki hummed a spooky tune. "Weird, huh?"
"Very," Sascha said, but she saw another angle. "The conspiracy theorists think someone got rid of her work."
"Bingo. Even though they don't know what that work was." A pause. "I mean, they think they do - according to Helene, the information was passed down through the family of a colleague of Eldridge's - but they have no clue what it means."
"Did they give you any hint of what they think she was working on?"
"Yes. Helene said Eldridge was doing a long-term project on X-Psy." Nicki paused again. "Do you know what the X stands for?"
Sascha swallowed and sidestepped the question. "You did a fantastic job, Nicki. I'll be sure to tell Keely."
Nicki made a little noise of delight. Laughing, Sascha was about to say good-bye when Nicki said, "Oh, wait, Sascha, I almost forgot - a copy of Eldridge's book goes for over five hundred thousand dollars, it's so rare. Any that are left are mostly in very private collections."
"Thanks, Nicki." Breath lost, she hung up and just sat there for several minutes. Five hundred thousand dollars? Dear God. Not that Nikita couldn't afford it - that amount was nothing to her - but still . . .
She stared at the book once again, knowing it might provide the very answers she'd been seeking. Freed from the bondage of Silence, her empathic powers were changing, developing, growing. What she didn't know was what they were growing into.
Her hand reached out. Withdrew. "Am I being a coward?" she asked out loud, then shook her head. "No, I'm being cautious." Picking it up, she took it back inside the house - storing it in the safe hidden under the eco-cooker.
Despite her questions, her curiosity, she wasn't yet ready to face her mother's gift. Nikita had cut her off without a blink. It would take time to see anything but rejection when she looked at Eldridge's book.
Riley headed out from Mercy's office with a deep sense of rightness in his gut. She'd accepted the mating dance. He had no intention of letting her escape the mating itself, no matter what he had to do.
Walking into the underground garage, he raised an eyebrow when he saw the tall, red-headed male leaning against his four-wheel drive. "Bastien."
"Riley."
"Where are your brothers?"
Bastien smiled and it was nothing friendly. "They'll be along soon. So, what makes you think you have any right to lay a hand on my sister?"
"She gave me that right." He met those bright green eyes without flinching. In a physical fight, he knew he'd win. But this wasn't about the physical. It was about something far more important - Mercy loved her family. He was not going to fuck up their relationship by beating on her brother. "Seems to me she's a woman who knows what she wants."
"She's also my sister." Bastien straightened. "And you're a wolf."
The hairs on Riley's nape rose as another man entered the garage. He was older, his hair lightly threaded with gray. "I didn't expect your father."
"When you're touching his baby girl?" Bastien snorted. "Hi, Dad. Shall we kill him here or take him out to the forest?"
Michael Smith folded his arms and fixed Riley with a gimlet eye. "You going to hurt my girl?"