Kade pushed his will down Martin Holtzmann’s pathetic mind. This man was completely his. And by God he deserved to die.

Holtzmann tried to scream as the alien mind invaded his. No sound left his lips. Something grabbed control of his limbs, lifted him up, and threw him to the ground. A will unthinkably, inhumanly strong was plowing through him, racking him with pain.

YOU KILLED HER!

An image of Ilya Alexander filled his mind. Her autopsy photo. Her in life, the last time he’d seen her, weeks earlier.

No! he tried to say. No! It wasn’t me!

Nothing came out of his mouth. He felt the mental fist close tighter around his heart. He couldn’t breathe. He struggled against it, tried to push it out of his mind, but it was stronger than he could imagine, locked around him, impervious to his efforts.

DON’T LIE TO ME!

I’m not lying, he tried to say. Please, I didn’t kill her. I didn’t want her to die!

He pulled up the memory, him standing at the one-way mirror, looking down on the Nexus children, the news of her death coming through on his phone, his anger and frustration at the waste of it all!

His heart pounded in his chest with fear.

The mental hand closed into a fist inside him. A sharp pain stabbed through his chest, and then his heart’s pounding was gone. Where it had been there was nothing. Dear God.

It had stopped his heart!

No. Please. Not this way!

Rangan, he pleaded with the mind holding him. Children. Still alive.

The world was dimming, growing darker, fading out, as oxygen stopped reaching his brain.

No. Please.

Please…

And then there was nothing.

Kade ripped into Holtzmann’s mind in a blind rage. He seized control of the man’s body, threw him from his chair and to the ground, crushed Holtzmann’s will with the tools the back door afforded him.

This man was ERD. He was a leader of the organization that fought Nexus. The people who’d blackmailed him, who’d turned Narong Shinawatra into a robot assassin and led to his death, to Mai’s death, to Lalana’s death, a dozen deaths in that Bangkok inferno! The people who’d sent Rangan and Ilya and scores of his friends to jail. That had killed Wats and killed Ilya!

Kade wrapped his mental fist around the man’s brainstem. He felt the power he held over Holtzmann’s life, the supremacy, the absolute control, the complete domination of this pathetic creature. It was a drug, pulsing through him, hot with pleasure.

This man deserved to die.

Holtzmann struggled, pleaded, made excuses.

Kade ignored them all. With a clench of his mental fist he spasmed the man’s brainstem, stopping his heart. The sweet bliss of power coursed through him.

Judge, jury, executioner, Ilya whispered in his head.