nap underwater was news to him.
The PAX League had already discovered that a shocking number of the children who’d survived the Valuatu Island bombing several years earlier had returned home with strange aftereffects. Biological mutations. And thus, the PAX League, once an organization dedicated purely to the philosophical pursuit of global peace through human rights missions, environmental campaigns and charitable projects such as the Valuatu Island hunger delegation, had transformed into something more.
Beginning with those children, the new and secret underlayer of Paranormal Allied Experts had spent years researching the mystical, telepathic and transformational sciences. Its goal was not only to protect the work of the League’s outer humanitarian organization, but to prevent terror worldwide as it molded those original children into agents and created even more through its own experimentation.
And Cade had lost his family—again.
He surged back up to the surface beside the car, not for air—he didn’t need it. But she did. The woman’s head slumped against the window, water rising to her neck. He saw tangled wet hair, blood. Bracing his feet against the side of the vehicle, he yanked at the door.
The water reached her mouth and nose and he slipped beneath the surface now to pull at the door. He saw the woman gasp and jerk back as the lack of oxygen stabbed her into consciousness.
With corneas and lenses shaped to see light through water, he had the visibility to see her eyes bulge as she first jerked up to take in air, then reached for the door handle. She shoved uselessly, then screamed, taking in water again, and pushed up to the interior roof of the car, coughing and gagging, struggling for the last few inches of air.
Then she slid her head sideways, panic in her gaze as she met his through the water. She was in emotional shock, had been even before the crash, and the physical shock was going to set in fast. The lagoon wasn’t cold, but without the specialized thermoregulatory system that kept him warm, she was probably losing body temperature already and at the rate the car was sinking, she’d be out of air in less than a minute if he didn’t get the door open.
Still underwater, he motioned in efficient movements for her to shove as he pulled. Her gaze flicked down then back to his face as the water crept higher.
Fear and survival warred in her eyes.
No two ways about it, she was scared of anyone who would have leaped off that bridge after her.
He grabbed the handle, yanked hard. The pressure of water inside and outside the car held it firm. He felt his muscles bunching as he heaved on the handle again.
The water completely covered the car now and it was sinking at accelerated speed. He could see her holding one last breath of air, anxiously pushing outward against the door even as he pulled. The lagoon wasn’t deep, twenty or thirty feet, he estimated, and the car tumbled heavily now to the bottom, sand clouding upward from the disturbed bottom. He didn’t need more air, but she did, and soon.
One more heaving pull, and the car door suddenly thrust outward. Reaching blindly through the muddied water, he felt her soft, drenched body.
He pushed hard with his feet against the sand of the lagoon floor and streamed upward toward the clear surface and the light of the storm. She felt like nothing in his arms. He gave a last powerful kick, popping up to the surface. He shifted to grip her tightly against his heat with one arm as he swam.
Pulling her up on the damp, sandy shore, he felt her react, coughing and gagging as she had in the car. He set her down and she rolled over, retching.
Rain lashed down. He was stunned for a second by how glad he was that she was alive. The helpless panic in her eyes when the car filled with water…The memory of it streaked into him. In the dim light he watched her shoulders tremble, and she turned, lifting her pale, shocked gaze to his.
For a long moment the storm seemed to almost recede around them, and then she pushed herself up on her elbows. In spite of himself, he felt something strange and unallowable. Sympathy.
He shoved it back. She didn’t deserve it.
He’d been tricked by her once, and he wouldn’t be tricked again.
He stood over her, water streaming down his sides. “You’re coming with me.”
“No,” she gasped, barely audible over the pounding rain. “No.”
She scrambled away. He tore up the bank, twisting her and pinning her on her back where she fell against the soggy ground.
“Stop!” he ordered.
“No!” she screamed. “Let me go!”
Her eyes were huge, shocked, radiating cold fear. He could feel the trembling of her body, see the confusion in her wild eyes. He held on, even as she struggled. She felt different than he expected.
Lighter, softer somehow.
Raindrops slid down his face and onto hers. Her breaths came in panting gasps. The storm blew around them.
“Not this time,” he grated, his voice whipped away in the wind. He jerked her to her feet. “You’re not getting away this time.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, Tabitha.”
“I’m not Tabitha!” she shouted at him. “I’m Sienna!” Inches away, her eyes were lost and scared, and her words knocked him off balance enough that she was able to tear free again and run, slipping and sliding, up the bank.
He made chase, and she didn’t have a chance. Together they slammed into the drenched, sandy bank.
A shocked breath escaped her, then she was fighting him again, shoving against him with her hands. He grabbed both arms and pinned them to her sides, covering her body with his.
“My name is Sienna!” she cried. “Whoever you want, I’m not her! That was my sister’s apartment. My twin sister. Sabrina. I don’t know who Tabitha is!”
He felt something icy prick at the back of his neck. He sensed the shaking desperation of her body, knew the piercing confusion of her gaze.
She was a liar. She had lied to him before. She’d lie to him again. It was all he could do not to shake the truth out of her right there and then on the bank of the storm-tossed lagoon, but—
“Nobody said anything about a sister.” He gripped her arms tighter when she tried to get away. She contorted her body as she struggled to free herself. He could feel her heart pounding against him as she turned her wild gaze back to him.
“Well, I’m saying something about it! I’m not Sabrina,” she cried. “Or Tabitha! I don’t know who those men were at the apartment. I don’t know who you are! I’m telling you the truth.”
“You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you in the ass,” he ground back at her. “Sabrina. Tabitha. Whatever you’re calling yourself today.” Fury rose up again.
“Sienna. My name is Sienna!”
A sound pricked his hearing through the wind and the rain. He lifted his head. Someone was
