Clay was about to look down at those photos when his attention was caught by the lists Talin had made, the attributes she'd noted beside Mickey's and Diana's names. The one for Iain was almost as detailed. It listed everything from their heights to known hobbies. Excitement fired in his blood, the cutting bite of a hunt begun.
"What do you see?" Talin leaned into him, her body a soft, luscious weight.
He was suddenly one second away from taking her and damn the consequences.
Chapter 20
Clamping down on the savage possessiveness that threatened to derail the new trust between them, he focused on the pages in front of him. "Mickey couldn't sing but it says here that he was a mathematical prodigy. Aren't music and math connected?"
"I think so." She frowned. "But look at Iain's profile - he was a genius at languages."
Clay uncurled his fingers from the back of her chair and stroked his fingers over the skin bared by her sleeveless top, giving in to the starving edge of his need. "Do you have info like this - stuff not in Max's files - on the kids you didn't know personally?" Under his fingertips, she was smooth, resilient, strokable.
"I've been calling around all day," she said, not breaking the contact. "Don't worry, I kept it real low key. A lot of these kids still have open case files at the branches where they connected with Shine, so I pretended to be some office lackey checking data. Sometimes, I called their last known school instead." She dug through her papers.
"Okay, one girl was a brilliant painter. Another had off-the-scale design skills." Talin was very aware of Clay's fingers training up her arm and shoulder to brush her nape. After so many hours without him, she was acutely sensitive to his nearness. More than that, she needed his touch. It anchored her even as it shattered her defenses.
"What else?" His voice was a rumble.
She scrambled to reorder her thoughts. "Diana was a phenomenal runner. Art, sport, math - their strengths are all over the place, no link." It was impossible to hide her disappointment.
Clay's hand closed around her nape and she had the feeling that he wasn't even conscious of the territorial act. "What about the others?"
"My records are incomplete, but I know two more were top athletes," she said, confused by her own reaction to his hold. She was at once wary of what it implied, and hungry for more of the same. "This boy aced every MCAT test that - "
"What?" Tamsyn interrupted. "That's a very specific test. It's used to rank med school applicants."
Talin was so surprised, she almost forgot the dark heat of Clay's possessive touch. Almost. "It's given to all the prospective Shine kids, along with a lot of other tests. To figure out what they're good at."
"But it's so hard." Tamsyn shook her head. "The only people who ace it are M-Psy, and that's understandable because a lot of them can see inside the body."
"This boy was human." Of that Talin had no doubt. "That's the one thing about Shine I'm not comfortable with. They won't widen their mandate to help changelings."
"Gifted human children," Clay said, tone quiet. "That's the link."
Tammy's gaze sharpened. "What about you, Talin? What was your gift?"
"Me?" She shrugged. "Nothing too special. I have an eidetic memory." Except for when the disease ate holes in it, but she didn't want to think about that. It was hard enough to focus with her body rejecting the dictates of her mind, her skin tight with an unnerving depth of sensual hunger. She didn't want to feel desire for Clay. It panicked her to think of their friendship changing in such an irreversible way. "I never forget anything."
Releasing her nape, Clay reached up and tugged at her ponytail. When she shot him a startled glance, he said, "That is special, Tally. How many other people can say that?"
She still felt it like a kick to the heart each time he unbent enough to use her childhood nickname. She had never allowed anyone else the right. "But if you're right," she said, mind clearing in a thundering wave of horror, "that means it's Shine that's recruiting gifted kids. They're the ones separating out these children from the general population, making them targets."
Disliking the shocked pain he could sense within her, Clay hugged her against his side. He'd braced himself for her flinch, but she came without a fight. It was all he could do not to pull her into his lap. "I know you think it's a mole," he murmured, "but is there even a small chance it could be the foundation as a whole?"
"No." She shook her head, as if thrusting off her shock. "No, they care. All the Guardians - that's my title - are ex-Shine kids. We're the kind of people who'll tear the world apart to find our charges. Iain's Guardian, Rangi, is dealing with a huge family crisis right now, but he contacts me twice every day for updates.
"Most of the other kids that were taken, they didn't have assigned Guardians yet, or believe me, you'd have a whole pack screaming for answers. If Shine wanted easy prey, they wouldn't have chosen people like us to watch over the children."
The leopard appreciated her fierce dedication to those under her care. But that only went so far - soon as they found Jon, she was going to see a hundred specialists if that was what it took. She couldn't die. End of story. His eyes narrowed. "Three of your kids got taken, Tally. Why, if they're looking for those who won't be missed?"
"You're right." Her hand trembled. "Jon's easy to explain - he never agreed to an official Guardian. I just sort of bullied him into cleaning up his act." Clay could see how it tore into her that in trying to give Jon a better life, she might have put him in harm's way. He decided he'd kiss the sass back into her when they were alone. "On the official records, I'm listed as his street contact, nothing more."
He nodded. "Mickey and Diana?"
Talin's chest rose as she took a deep breath. "Mickey, he was mine on the records. I don't know why he was targeted." She wanted to touch Clay for comfort, curled her hand into a fist to stop from doing so, though she did lean deeper into his embrace. "Di, I'm almost sure was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Easy prey."
"That implies a certain lack of control," Nate broke in. "Everything else points to clockwork precision."