Iris Johansen - Pandora's Daughter

She couldn't believe that horror. "No," she whispered.

"I wouldn't have given you ugly details but you had to realize just what a son of a bitch Molino really is." He paused. "And why your mother would have left you when she was approached to help stop him."

"And who approached her?"

"The CIA. They were getting flak from the government about the drugs that Molino was using to pay off the bandits flooding the market." He shrugged. "Not that it was more than a drop in the bucket. Molino's network was so extensive that they didn't think they could stop him, but they decided to make the attempt."

"Why involve my mother?"

"They had to locate him and then scoop him up when he was in a position where they could gather evidence with him. At that time he was moving around Africa with the speed of light and the usual informants weren't proving effective. So they borrowed me from my unit and set me loose on trying to track him." He shook his head. "But it wasn't my area of expertise. I can control, not locate. I called Michael Travis, head of a Psychic Investigation Group in Virginia, and asked him to send someone who could do the job. He gave me the name of a woman whom he'd run across about three years before. She had come to him because her daughter was exhibiting signs of being a Listener. She wanted to know how to block the echoes. She could block her own but she needed help in stopping the child's. She'd been able to do it when the voices had started when the little girl was seven, but after puberty the problem became too hard for her to handle alone."

"Me?" she whispered.

He nodded. "Michael Travis helped her as much as he could, but he said she was already stronger than he was. He tested her extensively and found out that she was amazingly multitalented. She was not only a Listener, she was also a Finder. Give her a glove, a scarf, a half-smoked cigarette and she could not only sense the person within a mile's distance but distinguish him in a crowd. He thought she'd be just what we needed if we could get her to cooperate. She didn't want to be involved with anything to do with psychic phenomena. She just wanted the tools to survive it and build a normal life for the two of you. Michael was very disappointed because he kept seeing hints of possible talents he'd rarely run across and wanted to do still more tests. She told him thank you, but no, thanks."

"She walked out on him?"

"He never saw her again. But he kept tabs on her because he felt it would have been irresponsible for him to ignore that potential."

"That sounds so… clinical." She shivered. "She wasn't 'potential,' she was my mother. She had a right to ignore your damn potential and live a normal life. You should have left her alone."

"We didn't force her. We told her the situation and left it up to her." His lips twisted. "I'm not saying that the CIA didn't persuade her with a few photos of the children that they'd managed to free from their owners. Two of them were already AIDS victims."

"Dear God."

"It was enough to make her agree to one job and one job only. She had to make arrangements for your care while she was gone and sent you to summer camp for six weeks. You were thirteen then. Do you remember?"

"Of course, I do. I didn't want to go to the blasted camp. I wanted to stay with her. She said I needed to be around people my own age." But she had never dreamed what her mother had been planning. Her mother was always urging her to be more outgoing and sending her to camp had seemed perfectly natural. "Where did she go?"

"Central Africa. Molino was to rendezvous with one of his bandit cohorts, Kofi Badu, for a payoff. That's where I met her. We became… close."

"How close?" She paused. "Lovers?"

"No. She was scared and I tried to help her. I was used to being a freak in everyone's eyes, but it was the first time she was exposed to it. She'd always hidden her gift." He met her gaze. "Is that what you thought when I showed up at the beach that summer when you were fifteen? That we were lovers?"

"Not at first. Yet sometimes you seemed to read each other's thoughts." And she had been jealous, she remembered suddenly. Her mother had been right. Megan had had a king-sized crush on Grady. From the moment she'd seen him, he'd caught and held her. He'd been her friend and teacher, yet she couldn't deny that he'd drawn her sexually. There had been moments when she'd only had to look at him to have her heart start pounding crazily.

For God's sake, she'd been only fifteen. It was an entirely natural response for a young girl when brought into contact with a man as physically attractive as Neal Grady.

"I assure you that if we read each other's thoughts it wasn't psychic-related," Grady said. "We lived in each other's pockets when we were in the jungle and that's bound to draw anyone close."

"And did my mother find Molino?"

"Yes." His lips twisted. "We furnished her with a red shirt Molino had left at one of his whorehouses in Madagascar and it was enough for her. We flew into the jungle where we thought the bandit, Kofi Badu, had a hideout, and spent three days there. She located Molino and went with the team to keep them on target."

"And that's where she killed Molino's son?"

"No, that was later. The raid proved a bust. They were waiting for us. We lost seven men… and your mother was captured."

She went rigid. "What?"

"We got her back two days later. But by that time the damage was done. She'd already killed Molino's son, Steven."

"I don't care about his son," she said fiercely. "What about my mother? Did they hurt her?"

"Yes. But she survived it and came out on top."

"What did they do to her?"

"Are you sure you want to know?"

"Hell, yes."

"Molino's son raped her."

She felt sick. "Then I'm glad he's dead." Dear God, what her mother had gone through. "She never let me know. She didn't let it change her. When she came home, she was the same as the day she left."

"I told you, she came out on top. Sarah was strong enough not to let that filth make her any less than she was." He paused. "But when she came back home we decided to take precautions and have her disappear for a while. That's why we whisked the two of you away from Richmond the minute she came back."

"She said she had a better job."

"We wanted to give her new credit cards and documents in a new name, but she said that it wasn't necessary since Molino was on the run from the CIA. She said Molino might be caught any day. Sometimes Sarah believed what she wanted to believe. She didn't want you to know anything about him or the talent she'd been trying to hide from you all your life. I tried to talk her out of it."

"Why?"

"Molino is relentless. He digs until he reaches pay dirt. He went underground for a long time and Sarah was feeling safer and safer every week. All the time he was working, searching, bribing everyone to find out everything he could about her and where we'd found her. After her death we discovered that the day before Molino's men had raided Michael Travis's library at the think tank and stolen all the records pertaining to her." He shook his head. "Dammit, I knew he'd find her. He was raised to believe in the vendetta and he wouldn't quit until he'd killed Sarah and her entire family. As the years passed, Sarah was getting more confident and I was getting more uneasy. That was why I rented that cottage and stayed close to you both all that summer."

"Not that last day."

"No, Sarah wouldn't let me come. She was beginning to be impatient with having me near all the time. She wanted to forget what happened with Molino and I wouldn't let her."

"So she died."

Yes.

"Shit." Tears were streaming down her cheeks. "Because of me. Right? She wanted everything to be safe and normal for me and they found both of us."