The teenager froze, her eyes skating away as her skin paled. “No one.”
“Beatrice, I can tell by the way you move, the way you moved during training.” She well remembered how her own muscles had felt after a beating, how every movement had become agony. Beatrice was past that first excruciating stage and into the aching stiffness. “Who beat you?”
The girl stood mute, her eyes huge.
“You feel loyalty?”
A nod. “He has been . . . kind to me.”
“He may simply need an education in our new protocols.” Zaira stifled her instinctive and aggressive protective response because she knew not all the older teachers fully understood the changes in the squad. “Physical torture of any kind is now unacceptable—that means we won’t torture him, either.”
Zaira would also make sure she didn’t go near him, because if she did, she’d smash his bones to dust. “He’ll simply be retrained.”
Beatrice squeezed one of her hands with the other.
“You are now part of my family,” Zaira said. “As such, I have responsibility for your well-being.”
“Wh-what?”
Zaira realized Walker and Cristabel must not have had a chance to interview Beatrice yet. However, given Beatrice’s physical state, any further delay was no longer an option. “You are now part of my family unit,” she reiterated. “That means you are mine to care for. Mine and Aden’s.”
A tremor went through Beatrice’s body. “Why?” she whispered. “I’m not special. Not like you or Aden.”
Zaira touched her hand to Beatrice’s cheek in a conscious gesture of affection. “We’re all special to the people who are our own.”
The girl’s body began to shake. “I—I—”
Zaira hauled her into an embrace, acting on the instincts of the feral, broken survivor she’d once been. She was careful of the girl’s injuries, but her hold was in no way tentative. That wasn’t what Beatrice needed. “There’s no cause for fear. I’m capable of killing almost every other Arrow in the compound.” Sometimes a bigger nightmare was the only thing that kept other nightmares at bay. “Those I can’t kill, Aden and I can together. No one can hurt you.”
Gripping at her with desperate hands, Beatrice whispered, “I failed my mission.”
“What mission?” Beatrice wasn’t yet authorized for live missions, so if her trainer had taken her on one, he’d broken fundamental Arrow protocol.
“To get the scientist’s daughter to speak and tell us the codes.”
Zaira was aware of most of the major operations in progress, but had heard nothing of this. Connecting with Aden on their private and familiar telepathic pathway, she said, Is there a mission in progress to do with a scientist and the retrieval of codes of some kind?
No.
“Beatrice.” Zaira gently tugged up the girl’s head so she could look her in the eye. “This mission was not sanctioned.”
Beatrice’s face went bone white, her already unsteady breathing turning jagged and shallow.
“Don’t be afraid.” Zaira held the girl’s face in her hands as she reinforced her earlier reassurance. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I hurt her.” It was a shaken whisper, her shoulders hunched in. “But I didn’t use the knife like he asked. I promise.”
“I believe you.” Zaira continued to look into Beatrice’s eyes. “The error was your trainer’s. You’re not authorized for wet work.” She used blunt words to reach Beatrice’s Arrow training. “You know that.”
“He said I was special.” It was a lost sound.
“You are. You’ve come through the fall of Silence with the capacity to handle emotion without losing control of your abilities.” No one had made a note in Beatrice’s file about the latter, and it was the lack that Zaira had noticed. Because almost every other student had a note about disintegrating conditioning leading to psychic mistakes.
“You can show your peers the way, teach them how to stay disciplined even with emotion in their lives.” Zaira herself might have been able to learn from the younger woman had it only been about power and emotion, but Zaira’s problems resulted from the way she’d been treated as a child, the scars affecting her every action.
Beatrice’s lower lip trembled. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” Zaira kept her hands on the girl’s face, thinking of how much such a touch would’ve meant to her as a lonely and abused little girl. “What’s his name?”
Chapter 54
BLAKE WAS INTELLIGENT and he was trained. He was also starting to have doubts about Beatrice’s suitability as a partner so he made sure to keep tabs on her. The instant he saw Zaira take her aside, he had a decision to make and he made it quickly. There was a chance Zaira was simply talking to Beatrice about training issues, but there was also a chance the girl would break, and if she did, he’d be dead within minutes.
Then there was the fact that Yuri had been watching him. He’d counted on the squad’s belief in loyalty to shield him from suspicion in the death of the would-be terrorist, but it looked like he’d miscalculated. He’d only done the favor to create a marker with an individual with certain advantageous resources.
Now it was time to collect.
Stepping inside the office he was cleared to use when he came in to run sessions, he tapped a junior telepath who had enough Tk to be useful. Even if they were already suspicious of him, the alert would’ve gone out to senior personnel, not junior. The Tk appeared in seconds, confirming his belief. When Blake asked for a ’port into New York, the younger male hesitated. “Sir, that’s at the end of my range.”